Evan Rachel Wood recalls sexual assault during congressional testimony, Sexual Assault Survivors’ Bill of Rights

 

–  Evan Rachel Wood emotionally recalls sexual assault during congressional testimony
–  Cause Celeb: Evan Rachel Wood for sexual assault survivors’ rights
– Implementation of the Survivors Bill of Rights Act
–  Hearing on Implementation of the Sexual Assault Survivors’ Bill of Rights and Clearing the DNA Backlog

Evan Rachel Wood emotionally recalls sexual assault during congressional testimony
ET Online Alex Ungerman‍ Feb 28th 2018

Evan Rachel Wood understands the importance of this moment.
The Westworld star was one of several women who stood before Congress on Tuesday to offer emotional testimony advocating the passage of a Survivors’ Bill of Rights Act, which would write protections for those who suffer emotional and physical sexual abuse due to assault, harassment and rape into the law.

“I’m here today to use my position as an artist, survivor, mother and advocate to bring a human voice to the population of 25 million survivors in the U.S. who are currently experiencing inequality under the law and who desperately need basic civil rights,” the 30-year-old actress shared….

“Seven years after my rapes — plural — I was diagnosed with long-term PTSD,” she shared. “I struggled with depression, addiction, agoraphobia, night terrors.”

https://www.aol.com/article/entertainment/2018/02/28/evan-rachel-wood-emotionally-recalls-sexual-assault-during-congressional-testimony/23373842/

Cause Celeb: Evan Rachel Wood for sexual assault survivors’ rights
By Sarah Polus February 27, 2018

Celeb: Evan Rachel Wood, the 30-year-old star of the sci-fi HBO series “Westworld” and two-time sexual assault survivor turned advocate. Wood rose to prominence with her Golden Globe-nominated role in the 2003 flick “Thirteen.”

Cause: Passage of a bill of rights for sexual assault survivors in all 50 states. The Survivors’ Bill of Rights Act of 2016, which applies only to federal cases, was passed unanimously by Congress and signed by President Obama. The act was intended as a model for states to follow so they could enact their own measures affording rights to sexual assault survivors. The Survivors’ Bill, which was conceived by Amanda Nguyen, founder of the nonprofit Rise, has been passed by nine states so far. In those states, survivors are entitled to rights such as a free forensic medical examination and a sexual assault evidence collection kit (a.k.a. a rape kit) that is preserved on their behalf, without the risk of it being destroyed.

Scene: Seated at a table with three other women from Rise and another anti-sexual violence organization, Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network (RAINN), Wood addressed members of the House Judiciary Subcommittee on Crime, Terrorism, Homeland Security and Investigations in the Rayburn House Office Building….
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/reliable-source/wp/2018/02/27/cause-celeb-evan-rachel-wood-for-sexual-assault-survivors-rights/?utm_term=.676cca12287c

Implementation of the Survivors Bill of Rights Act
2141 RAYBURN HOUSE OFFICE BUILDING 11:00 AM
February 27 2018

Witnesses
Amanda Nguyen CEO and Founder RISE
Evan Rachel Wood Artist and Advocate Survivor
Lauren Libby Chief of Staff, RISE Survivor
Rebecca O’Connor Vice President Rape Abuse Incest National Network (RAINN)
https://judiciary.house.gov/hearing/implementation-survivors-bill-rights-act/

Hearing on Implementation of the Sexual Assault Survivors’ Bill of Rights and Clearing the DNA Backlog
Written Testimony of Rebecca O’Connor of the Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network (RAINN)
Before the U.S. House Judiciary Committee Subcommittee on Crime, Terrorism, Homeland Security and Investigations
February 27, 2018

….Rape is a crime that reaches every corner of our society – once every two minutes, an American is sexually assaulted, according to the Justice Department. Despite progress, it’s also a crime where too often the only one who pays a price is the victim. Sex offenders are less likely to go to prison than those who commit crimes of assault and battery or robbery. This is particularly concerning when you consider that rapists tend to be serial criminals, striking more than once. One underlying reason for this: More than two-thirds of sexual assaults go unreported.

That’s why RAINN is dedicated to improving
the criminal justice response to rape and enhancing and enforcing rights that support victims’ healing and participation in that system.

The Sexual Assault Survivors’ Bill of Rights paints a picture of the ideal: how we expect society should respond to and support victims in the wake of sexual violence.

Providing rights that support victims’ unique needs goes to creating a system where more victims will feel comfortable reporting and more sexual predators can be held accountable…
https://judiciary.house.gov/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/OConnor-Testimony-2.27.2018.pdf

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Rob Porter White House aide resigns, Mother killed baby in Satanic Ritual, Circus school tied to sex abuse and ‘blood rituals’

– Mum ‘killed her eight-month-old baby in horrific Satanic ritual’ as police discover chilling evidence of ceremony
– Australian circus school tied to sex abuse and ‘blood rituals,’ police say
– Rob Porter, White House Aide, Resigns After Accusations of Abuse
– Ex-wife of Trump aide Rob Porter tells of abusive marriage
– Former Wives of Top White House Aide Rob Porter Both Told FBI He Abused Them

describes crimes

Mum ‘killed her eight-month-old baby in horrific Satanic ritual’ as police discover chilling evidence of ceremony
The infant’s mutilated corpse was discovered inside a home in central Mexico, and authorities found the mutilated body in the same building
By Dave Burke 9 FEB 2018

A mum has been arrested on suspicion of killing her eight-month-old baby in an horrific Satanic ritual.
Chilling footage shows the silhouette of a baby painted in black in the lounge of a home in central Mexico.
Authorities in the city of Chimalhuacan discovered the infant’s mutilated corpse in the same building.
In the same room police found ritual materials including candles, a human skull, devil figurines and oils. It was not clear whether the skull was real.
The mum, named in Mexico as Leticia N, reportedly named her child Belcebu – a variant of Beelzebub, which is sometimes another name for the devil….
But during a search of the house officers found blood stains and then the baby’s mutilated corpse.
A video that was shared on social networks shows the suspected scene of the alleged fatal ritual….

Her boyfriend, believed to have helped her during the ritual, was not found in the house and is being hunted by authorities.
Leticia was arrested and charged with homicide. She is being held in custody.
https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/world-news/mum-killed-eight-month-old-11997508

Australian circus school tied to sex abuse and ‘blood rituals,’ police say
by Kyle Swenson February 12
….Australian law enforcement now alleges the circus school was not a venue for big top entertainment but a horror show.
Last Monday, investigators arrested seven individuals — two men and five women — affiliated with the school for allegedly sexually abusing three young boys between 2014 and 2016, according to a news release from the New South Wales Police Force.

Altogether the accused face 127 criminal counts, including rape, kidnapping, aggravated sexual assault of a child and making child abuse material. Citing police documents, the Australian newspaper reported the young victims were used in “blood rituals” on at least one occasion. Law enforcement has not detailed how the victims knew the defendants. The Australian Broadcasting Corporation reported the three boys were not students at the school….

Citing court documents, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation reported last week at least one of the assaults occurred on April 25, 2016 — Anzac Day, an Australian holiday honoring military veterans. According to the network, Therese Cook and Yyani Cook-Williams allegedly raped two boys that day. The victims were 4 and 7. Cook-Williams also allegedly forced the two boys to have sex together on the same occasion.

Paul Cook stands accused of filming the aggravated sexual assaults. Meredith is accused of raping one of the victims seven times.
ABC also reported police say the victims were subjected to a “blood ritual” where they were forced to drink their own blood….
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2018/02/12/australian-circus-school-tied-to-sex-abuse-and-blood-rituals-police-say/?utm_term=.f93b37982eef

Rob Porter, White House Aide, Resigns After Accusations of Abuse
By MAGGIE HABERMAN and KATIE ROGERS FEB. 7, 2018

WASHINGTON — As the White House staff secretary, Rob Porter is not a public figure, but he is responsible for paper flow to the president, a job of crucial importance in the Trump administration. He frequently travels with President Trump on Air Force One, and he helped write Mr. Trump’s first State of the Union address last month.

But despite initial support from John F. Kelly, the White House chief of staff, and other West Wing staff aides, Mr. Porter announced his resignation on Wednesday, a day after his two former wives accused him in interviews of physical abuse when they were married to him.
His troubles were not a complete secret at the White House: Two people close to the White House said that the allegations against him made by his former wives, Colbie Holderness and Jennifer Willoughby, had contributed to a delay in granting him a permanent security clearance.
In a statement, Mr. Porter said that “these allegations are simply false,” even as details of the alleged abuse and photographs of one of his former wives with a black eye that she said he had given her were widely circulated…..

Ms. Holderness, Mr. Porter’s first wife, described their relationship as “verbally, emotionally and physically abusive” in an interview with The Daily Mail. In photographs she gave to The Intercept, Ms. Holderness has a blackened right eye and a swollen cheekbone.
In his statement, Mr. Porter said the pictures of Ms. Holderness were misleading….
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/07/us/politics/rob-porter-resigns-abuse-white-house-staff-secretary.html

EXCLUSIVE: ‘He pulled me, naked and dripping from the shower to yell at me.’ Ex-wife of Trump aide Rob Porter who’s dating Hope Hicks, tells how he called her a ‘f***ing b***h’ on their honeymoon and she filed a protective order against him

Jennifer Willoughby, the second wife of President Trump’s staff secretary Rob Porter has spoken on the record to DailyMail.com about her abusive marriage
Porter, 40, is considered one of the most important players in the Oval Office
Last week, DailyMail.com revealed that Porter and Hope Hicks are dating, and were seen kissing in a cab on the way back to her apartment
He has never been given security clearance by the FBI because of his dark past, sources tell DailyMail.com
Willoughby says she was ‘walking on eggshells’ during their marriage due to his explosive anger

On June 19, 2010, she filed a protective order against Porter because he violated their separation agreement and refused to leave their apartment
According to a complaint filed with the police, he punched the glass on the door to their home, cutting his hand in the process
His first wife Colbie Holderness told DailyMail.com: ‘He was verbally, emotionally and physically abusive and that is why I left’
But Willoughby said she never saw Porter take his anger out on other people – ‘not even road rage’ – but that is was all behind closed doors
By Louise Boyle In Arlington, Virginia, For Dailymail.com
7 February 2018
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-5359731/Ex-wife-Rob-Porter-Trumps-secretary-tells-marriage.html

Former Wives of Top White House Aide Rob Porter Both Told FBI He Abused Them
Ryan Grim, Alleen Brown February 7 2018
February 7 2018
As the FBI conducted a background check on an incoming senior White House official last year, the bureau learned of the man’s history of domestic abuse. Rob Porter, a top aide to President Donald Trump, physically assaulted both of his previous wives, according to the two women. Porter’s first wife said she was physically abused for years, providing a photograph she took of herself after she said Porter hit her while on vacation in Florence, Italy — a photo she also shared with the FBI.

During the background interviews for Porter’s security clearance related to his senior White House role, FBI agents interviewed the two women. The former wives told the FBI that Porter was abusive during their marriages, according to interviews with the women. For Porter, the FBI interviews marked a collision of his professional ascendancy and his sometimes violent private life.

Colbie Holderness, Porter’s first wife, provided her correspondence with the FBI to The Intercept. (The FBI did not respond to a request for comment, and the agent involved in the exchange declined to speak about the case.) In an interview, she said the pattern of violence in her marriage to Porter began on their honeymoon in the Canary Islands in 2003 and continued from there. Photo was taken shortly after the alleged incident, in the hotel room in Florence.
“He only punched me once, in the eye,” Holderness said. It was during a vacation in Florence in 2005. She said, “He threw me down on the bed and punched me in the face. I think he was shocked that he had lost control to that extent.”….

“Up until then, he had always done it in a way that didn’t leave marks,” Holderness said. “I don’t know if that was conscious or not. He would get angry and throw me down on a soft surface — to his credit, it was always a soft surface like a couch or a bed — and he would lay on top of me shaking me, or rubbing an elbow or a knee into me. He graduated to choking me, not ever hard enough to make me pass out, or frankly to leave marks, but it was frightening and dehumanizing.”
“He was always a hair-trigger away.”….
https://theintercept.com/2018/02/07/rob-porter-wives-abuse-trump-aide/

The Survivorship Ritual Abuse and Mind Control 2018 Conference
https://survivorship.org/ritual-abuse-and-mind-control-2018-conference/

Child and Ritual Abuse Research https://ritualabuse.us

Articles and Research by Neil Brick http://neilbrick.com

Roy Moore “banned from the Gadsden Mall…soliciting sex from young girls” and fifth woman accuses him of misconduct

– Locals Were Troubled by Roy Moore’s Interactions with Teen Girls at the Gadsden Mall
– Roy Moore Is Accused of Sexual Misconduct by a Fifth Woman
– ‘You’re Just a Child … No One Will Ever Believe You’

“I tried fighting him off, while yelling at him to stop, but instead of stopping, he began squeezing my neck, attempting to force my head onto his crotch,” Ms. Nelson said, growing emotional as she described the assault, which she said happened one night after her shift ended at a local restaurant, where she was a waitress. She said that Mr. Moore warned her that “no one will believe you” if she told anyone about the encounter in his car.”

“Sources tell me Moore was actually banned from the Gadsden Mall and the YMCA for his inappropriate behavior of soliciting sex from young girls,” the independent Alabama journalist Glynn Wilson wrote”

Roy Moore Is Accused of Sexual Misconduct by a Fifth Woman
By JONATHAN MARTIN and SHERYL GAY STOLBERGNOV. 13, 2017
WASHINGTON — An Alabama woman accused Roy S. Moore on Monday of sexually assaulting her when she was 16, the fifth and most brutal charge leveled against the Republican Senate candidate. Senate Republicans are now openly discussing not seating him or expelling him if he wins the Dec. 12 special election.

The new accuser, Beverly Young Nelson, told a packed news conference in New York that Mr. Moore attacked her when she was a teenager and he was a prosecutor in Etowah County, Ala. Ms. Nelson was represented at the news conference by Gloria Allred, a lawyer who has championed victims of sexual harassment.

“I tried fighting him off, while yelling at him to stop, but instead of stopping, he began squeezing my neck, attempting to force my head onto his crotch,” Ms. Nelson said, growing emotional as she described the assault, which she said happened one night after her shift ended at a local restaurant, where she was a waitress.

She said that Mr. Moore warned her that “no one will believe you” if she told anyone about the encounter in his car.
Ms. Allred displayed a yearbook that Ms. Nelson said had been signed by Mr. Moore, and the writing mirrored other examples of Mr. Moore’s signature.
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/13/us/politics/roy-moore-alabama-senate.html

Locals Were Troubled by Roy Moore’s Interactions with Teen Girls at the Gadsden Mall
By Charles Bethea November 13, 2017

Roy Moore, the Republican Senate candidate and former chief justice of the Alabama Supreme Court, was born in Gadsden, a small city flanked by Interstate 59 and the Coosa River, an hour northeast of Birmingham. Gadsden is hilly, woodsy, blue-collar, and religious. “LEGAL OR NOT, SIN IS SIN,” a sign in front of a church announced yesterday. I saw it as I drove around, crisscrossing George Wallace Drive. I also saw Trump posters, Confederate flags, and dozens of signs for Doug Jones, the Democrat tied with Moore in recent Senate-race polls. Gadsden is the seat of Etowah County, which is a conservative place; Donald Trump received three times as many votes in the county as Hillary Clinton did. (Statewide, he received twice as many.) But I didn’t, in all my driving, see a single yard sign for Moore, the home-town son. Even the parking lot of the one mall in town had more bumper stickers for Luther Strange (four), Moore’s opponent in the Republican primary, than for Moore himself (one)….

He meant back to the early eighties, when Roy Moore was, many people say, a regular visitor to the mall. On Thursday, the Washington Post reported that, when Moore was a thirty-two-year-old assistant district attorney in Etowah County, he brought Leigh Corfman, who was fourteen years old at the time, to his home and sexually molested her. Three additional women told the Post that Moore had pursued them when they were in their teens and he was in his early thirties. (On Monday, another woman, Beverly Young Nelson, said that Moore assaulted her when she was sixteen years old. At a press conference, she held up a high-school yearbook that she said Moore signed before the alleged assault.) Two of the women say that they first met Moore at the Gadsden Mall, and the Post reports that several other women who used to work there remembered Moore’s frequent presence—“usually alone” and “well-dressed in slacks and a button-down shirt.”

This past weekend, I spoke or messaged with more than a dozen people—including a major political figure in the state—who told me that they had heard, over the years, that Moore had been banned from the mall because he repeatedly badgered teen-age girls. Some say that they heard this at the time, others in the years since. These people include five members of the local legal community, two cops who worked in the town, several people who hung out at the mall in the early eighties, and a number of former mall employees. (A request for comment from the Moore campaign was not answered.) Several of them asked that I leave their names out of this piece. The stories that they say they’ve heard for years have been swirling online in the days since the Post published its report.

“Sources tell me Moore was actually banned from the Gadsden Mall and the YMCA for his inappropriate behavior of soliciting sex from young girls,” the independent Alabama journalist Glynn Wilson wrote on his Web site on Sunday. (Wilson declined to divulge his sources.) Teresa Jones, a deputy district attorney for Etowah County in the early eighties, told CNN last week that “it was common knowledge that Roy dated high-school girls.” Jones told me that she couldn’t confirm the alleged mall banning, but said, “It’s a rumor I’ve heard for years.”….

But these officers, along with the other people I spoke to, said that Moore’s presence at the mall was regarded as a problem. “I was told by a girl who worked at the mall that he’d been run off from there, from a number of stores. Maybe not legally banned, but run off,” one officer told me. He also said, “I heard from one girl who had to tell the manager of a store at the mall to get Moore to leave her alone.”….
https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/locals-were-troubled-by-roy-moores-interactions-with-teen-girls-at-the-gadsden-mall


‘You’re Just a Child … No One Will Ever Believe You’
An Alabama woman says U.S. Senate candidate Roy Moore sexually assaulted her in 1977. She is now the fifth woman to speak out against the Republican.
David A. Graham Nov 13, 2017
An Alabama woman says that Roy Moore, the Republican nominee for U.S. Senate in Alabama, sexually assaulted her in 1977 outside the restaurant where she worked in Gadsden, Alabama.

Beverly Young Nelson, who will turn 56 on Tuesday, said that when she was 16, Moore, a regular patron, offered her a ride home from work, then pulled his car around the back of the restaurant where he groped her, tried to force her head into his crotch, and tried to remove her shirt.

“I was alarmed and I immediately asked him what he was doing,” she said. “Instead of answering my questions, Mr. Moore reached over and began groping me and putting his hands on my breast. I tried to open my car door to leave but he reached over and he locked it.”

She added, “I thought he was going to rape me. I was twisting and I was struggling and I was begging him to stop.”

Eventually, she said, Moore gave up.

“He told me, he said, ‘You’re just a child,’ and he said, ‘I am the district attorney of Etowah County and if you tell anyone about this no one will ever believe you.'”….
https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2017/11/roy-moore-beverly-nelson-sexual-assault-allegation/545768/

Ilana Glazer and Reese Witherspoon join the chorus of women sharing Hollywood abuse stories

Ilana Glazer and Reese Witherspoon join the chorus of women sharing Hollywood abuse stories
By Stephanie Merry October 18

Ever since the allegations of serial abuse by Harvey Weinstein blew up, a tidal wave of women — plus a few men — in Hollywood have shared their own troubling tales involving high-powered producers, directors and executives….

The #MeToo stories spreading across Twitter and Facebook show that just about every woman has their own personal nightmare, and A-list actresses are no exception. Reese Witherspoon, for example, used her speech at the Elle Women in Hollywood event Monday night to reveal that a director sexually assaulted her when she was just 16. That was the first time it happened to her, she said, though not the last….

She’s not alone. America Ferrera acknowledged that a man sexually assaulted her when she was 9 years old. The actress shared her story in an Instagram post, during which she urged women to “break the silence” to help future generations.

Jennifer Lawrence added her own anecdotes to the growing list. At the same Elle-sponsored event, the Oscar winner talked about being part of a humiliating nude lineup. As a way to shame her into losing weight for a role, she was forced to stand beside much thinner women, then photographed. A female producer suggested Lawrence use the picture as weight-loss “inspiration.”….

One exception is Isa Hackett, a producer for “The Man in the High Castle,” who went public last week with her story about Amazon Studios chief Roy Price, who she alleges sexually harassed her. Price was suspended by the company….
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/arts-and-entertainment/wp/2017/10/17/reese-witherspoon-and-jennifer-lawrence-join-the-chorus-of-women-sharing-hollywood-abuse-stories/ 

Harvey Weinstein Paid Off Sexual Harassment Accusers for Decades

– . A longtime Democratic donor, he hosted a fund-raiser for Hillary Clinton in his Manhattan home last year. He employed Malia Obama, the oldest daughter of former President Barack Obama, as an intern this year

– At Fox News, where the conservative icons Roger E. Ailes and Bill O’Reilly were accused of harassment, women have received payouts well into the millions of dollars. But most of the women involved in the Weinstein agreements collected between roughly $80,000 and $150,000, according to people familiar with the negotiations.

– It’s likely that women have recently felt increasingly emboldened to talk about their experiences because of the way the world has changed regarding issues of sex and power. These disclosures follow in the wake of stories alleging sexual misconduct by public figures, including Bill O’Reilly, Roger Ailes, Bill Cosby, and Donald Trump. In October, 2016, a month before the election, a tape emerged of Trump telling a celebrity-news reporter, “And when you’re a star, they let you do it. You can do anything. . . . Grab ’em by the pussy. You can do anything.” This past April, O’Reilly, a host at Fox News, was forced to resign after Fox was discovered to have paid five women millions of dollars in exchange for silence about their accusations of sexual harassment. Ailes, the former head of Fox News, resigned last July, after he was accused of sexual harassment. Cosby went on trial this summer, charged with drugging and sexually assaulting a woman. The trial ended with a hung jury….

– Many expressed guilt and regret about not having said or done more. They spoke about what they believed to be a culture of silence about sexual assault inside Miramax and the Weinstein Company and across the entertainment industry more broadly.

– Top Actresses Who Have Accused Harvey Weinstein of Sexual Harassment

Harvey Weinstein Paid Off Sexual Harassment Accusers for Decades
By JODI KANTOR and MEGAN TWOHEY OCT. 5, 2017

Update: The Weinstein Company’s board has fired Harvey Weinstein after reports of sexual harassment complaints against him….

“There is a toxic environment for women at this company,” Ms. O’Connor said in the letter, addressed to several executives at the company run by Mr. Weinstein.

An investigation by The New York Times found previously undisclosed allegations against Mr. Weinstein stretching over nearly three decades, documented through interviews with current and former employees and film industry workers, as well as legal records, emails and internal documents from the businesses he has run, Miramax and the Weinstein Company.

During that time, after being confronted with allegations including sexual harassment and unwanted physical contact, Mr. Weinstein has reached at least eight settlements with women, according to two company officials speaking on the condition of anonymity. Among the recipients, The Times found, were a young assistant in New York in 1990, an actress in 1997, an assistant in London in 1998, an Italian model in 2015 and Ms. O’Connor shortly after, according to records and those familiar with the agreements.

In a statement to The Times on Thursday afternoon, Mr. Weinstein said: “I appreciate the way I’ve behaved with colleagues in the past has caused a lot of pain, and I sincerely apologize for it. Though I’m trying to do better, I know I have a long way to go.”

He added that he was working with therapists and planning to take a leave of absence to “deal with this issue head on.”….

Though Ms. O’Connor had been writing only about a two-year period, her memo echoed other women’s complaints. Mr. Weinstein required her to have casting discussions with aspiring actresses after they had private appointments in his hotel room, she said, her description matching those of other former employees. She suspected that she and other female Weinstein employees, she wrote, were being used to facilitate liaisons with “vulnerable women who hope he will get them work.”

The allegations piled up even as Mr. Weinstein helped define popular culture. He has collected six best-picture Oscars and turned out a number of touchstones, from the films “Sex, Lies, and Videotape,” “Pulp Fiction” and “Good Will Hunting” to the television show “Project Runway.” In public, he presents himself as a liberal lion, a champion of women and a winner of not just artistic but humanitarian awards….

In 2015, the year Ms. O’Connor wrote her memo, his company distributed “The Hunting Ground,” a documentary about campus sexual assault. A longtime Democratic donor, he hosted a fund-raiser for Hillary Clinton in his Manhattan home last year. He employed Malia Obama, the oldest daughter of former President Barack Obama, as an intern this year, and recently helped endow a faculty chair at Rutgers University in Gloria Steinem’s name. During the Sundance Film Festival in January, when Park City, Utah, held its version of nationwide women’s marches, Mr. Weinstein joined the parade….

Dozens of Mr. Weinstein’s former and current employees, from assistants to top executives, said they knew of inappropriate conduct while they worked for him. Only a handful said they ever confronted him.

Mr. Weinstein enforced a code of silence; employees of the Weinstein Company have contracts saying they will not criticize it or its leaders in a way that could harm its “business reputation” or “any employee’s personal reputation,” a recent document shows. And most of the women accepting payouts agreed to confidentiality clauses prohibiting them from speaking about the deals or the events that led to them.

Charles Harder, a lawyer representing Mr. Weinstein, said it was not unusual to enter into settlements to avoid lengthy and costly litigation. He added, “It’s not evidence of anything.”….

I am a professional and have tried to be professional. I am not treated that way however. I am sexualized and diminished.
— From Lauren O’Connor‘s memo

At Fox News, where the conservative icons Roger E. Ailes and Bill O’Reilly were accused of harassment, women have received payouts well into the millions of dollars. But most of the women involved in the Weinstein agreements collected between roughly $80,000 and $150,000, according to people familiar with the negotiations.

In the wake of Ms. O’Connor’s 2015 memo, some Weinstein Company board members and executives, including Mr. Weinstein’s brother and longtime partner, Bob, 62, were alarmed about the allegations, according to several people who spoke on the condition of anonymity. In the end, though, board members were assured there was no need to investigate. After reaching a settlement with Mr. Weinstein, Ms. O’Connor withdrew her complaint and thanked him for the career opportunity he had given her….

In interviews, eight women described varying behavior by Mr. Weinstein: appearing nearly or fully naked in front of them, requiring them to be present while he bathed or repeatedly asking for a massage or initiating one himself. The women, typically in their early or middle 20s and hoping to get a toehold in the film industry, said he could switch course quickly — meetings and clipboards one moment, intimate comments the next….

Most women who told The Times that they experienced misconduct by Mr. Weinstein had never met one another. They range in age from early 20s to late 40s and live in different cities. Some said they did not report the behavior because there were no witnesses and they feared retaliation by Mr. Weinstein. Others said they felt embarrassed. But most confided in co-workers….
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/05/us/harvey-weinstein-harassment-allegations.html

From Aggressive Overtures to Sexual Assault: Harvey Weinstein’s Accusers Tell Their Stories
Multiple women share harrowing accounts of sexual assault and harassment by the film executive.
By Ronan Farrow  October 10, 2017

In the course of a ten-month investigation, thirteen women interviewed said that, between the nineteen-nineties and 2015, Weinstein sexually harassed or assaulted them….

Since the establishment of the first studios a century ago, there have been few movie executives as dominant, or as domineering, as Harvey Weinstein. As the co-founder of the production-and-distribution companies Miramax and the Weinstein Company, he helped to reinvent the model for independent films, with movies such as “Sex, Lies, and Videotape,” “The English Patient,” “Pulp Fiction,” “The Crying Game,” “Shakespeare in Love,” and “The King’s Speech.” Beyond Hollywood, he has exercised his influence as a prolific fund-raiser for Democratic Party candidates, including Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton. Weinstein combined a keen eye for promising scripts, directors, and actors with a bullying, even threatening, style of doing business, inspiring both fear and gratitude. His movies have earned more than three hundred Oscar nominations, and, at the annual awards ceremonies, he has been thanked more than almost anyone else in movie history, just after Steven Spielberg and right before God.

For more than twenty years, Weinstein has also been trailed by rumors of sexual harassment and assault. This has been an open secret to many in Hollywood and beyond, but previous attempts by many publications, including The New Yorker, to investigate and publish the story over the years fell short of the demands of journalistic evidence. Too few people were willing to speak, much less allow a reporter to use their names, and Weinstein and his associates used nondisclosure agreements, monetary payoffs, and legal threats to suppress these myriad stories. Asia Argento, an Italian film actress and director, told me that she did not speak out until now—Weinstein, she told me, forcibly performed oral sex on her—because she feared that Weinstein would “crush” her. “I know he has crushed a lot of people before,” Argento said. “That’s why this story—in my case, it’s twenty years old; some of them are older—has never come out.”

Last week, the New York Times, in a powerful report by Jodi Kantor and Megan Twohey, revealed multiple allegations of sexual harassment against Weinstein, a story that led to the resignation of four members of his company’s all-male board, and to Weinstein’s firing from the company….

Three women—among them Argento and a former aspiring actress named Lucia Evans—told me that Weinstein raped them, allegations that include Weinstein forcibly performing or receiving oral sex and forcing vaginal sex. Four women said that they experienced unwanted touching that could be classified as an assault. In an audio recording captured during a New York Police Department sting operation in 2015 and made public here for the first time, Weinstein admits to groping a Filipina-Italian model named Ambra Battilana Gutierrez, describing it as behavior he is “used to.” Four of the women I interviewed cited encounters in which Weinstein exposed himself or masturbated in front of them….

Other employees described what was, in essence, a culture of complicity at Weinstein’s places of business, with numerous people throughout the companies fully aware of his behavior but either abetting it or looking the other way. Some employees said that they were enlisted in subterfuge to make the victims feel safe. A female executive with the company described how Weinstein assistants and others served as a “honeypot”—they would initially join a meeting, but then Weinstein would dismiss them, leaving him alone with the woman….

It’s likely that women have recently felt increasingly emboldened to talk about their experiences because of the way the world has changed regarding issues of sex and power. These disclosures follow in the wake of stories alleging sexual misconduct by public figures, including Bill O’Reilly, Roger Ailes, Bill Cosby, and Donald Trump. In October, 2016, a month before the election, a tape emerged of Trump telling a celebrity-news reporter, “And when you’re a star, they let you do it. You can do anything. . . . Grab ’em by the pussy. You can do anything.” This past April, O’Reilly, a host at Fox News, was forced to resign after Fox was discovered to have paid five women millions of dollars in exchange for silence about their accusations of sexual harassment. Ailes, the former head of Fox News, resigned last July, after he was accused of sexual harassment. Cosby went on trial this summer, charged with drugging and sexually assaulting a woman. The trial ended with a hung jury….

None of the former executives or assistants I spoke to quit because of the misconduct, but many expressed guilt and regret about not having said or done more. They spoke about what they believed to be a culture of silence about sexual assault inside Miramax and the Weinstein Company and across the entertainment industry more broadly…..

https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/from-aggressive-overtures-to-sexual-assault-harvey-weinsteins-accusers-tell-their-stories

Top Actresses Who Have Accused Harvey Weinstein of Sexual Harassment
By JACEY FORTIN OCT. 10, 2017

Days after a series of sexual harassment allegations against the film producer Harvey Weinstein were made public in a report in The New York Times on Thursday, women are still coming forward to tell their stories.

Many of the allegations are remarkably similar. Actresses and other employees in Mr. Weinstein’s orbit described being invited to a hotel room, finding the producer in a bathrobe and being urged to exchange massages, have sex or watch him masturbate.

The New Yorker published a report on Tuesday detailing allegations of sexual assault, including rape. In total, more than 20 women have now reportedly accused Mr. Weinstein of assault or harassment. Through a spokeswoman, Mr. Weinstein has denied engaging in nonconsensual sex.

Many of the reported encounters occurred in the 1990s and involved women in their 20s who were just beginning to make names for themselves. Their stories share a common thread: fear that reporting the inappropriate behavior of a titan of the film industry could backfire and destroy their career and reputation….
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/10/us/harvey-weinstein-accusations.html


Child and Ritual Abuse Articles
https://ritualabuse.us

Articles by Neil Brick
http://neilbrick.com

Child Abuse Wiki
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Sexual Abuse: Truth About the Duggars’ Ministry, Time bar on child abuse payouts lifted – Scotland

Sexual Abuse, Shame, Pseudo-Science: The Horrifying Truth About the Duggars’ Ministry
Oct 3, 2017  By Tiffany White

Everyone knows that the Duggars are extremely religious, but the strict rules that they follow don’t exactly align with mainstream Christianity — instead, they’re followers of teachings from the Institute in Basic Life Principles, a non-denominational religious organization. All the kids in the Duggar household (and the Bates) are homeschooled using the ATI curriculum created by IBLP. And sure, you’re probably staring at the screen right now thinking, “That’s a lot of acronyms. What do they have to do with anything?”, but both IBLP and ATI are controversial for many reasons. Its founder, Bill Gothard, was accused of allegedly sexually assaulting more than 30 women back in 2014. And many former members who grew up affiliated with IBLP, much like the Duggars, have spoken out against the organization, accusing it of silencing sexual abuse victims, brainwashing, and, well, being cult-like….

…former members who have since denounced ATI have spoken out about the teachings being weird, archaic, and illogical. According to Gawker, who managed to scan and upload pages out of an ATI workbook, the program teaches such asinine things as “semen causes cancer.” According to ATI, God uses cancer and other illnesses as curses on people who don’t follow his word, particularly when it comes to casual or premarital sex. However, once a woman has a husband, she’s magically “immune” from such diseases.

…Possibly the most upsetting thing about IBLP is how it counsels those who’ve been sexually abused. According to an actual page from an ATI handout, the institute advises counselors to ask victims, “Why did God let [the abuse] happen?” Some examples of answers to this question are “immodest dress,” “indecent exposure,” and “being evil with friends.” The handout goes on to advise victims to be fortunate of their abuse because they are now more “spiritually powerful.” The handout states, “If you had to choose…no physical abuse or more mighty in spirit, which would you choose?”

….But probably the darkest thing about ATI is its founder, Bill. In 2014, Bill was put on administrative leave after several female employees came forward and accused the founder of alleged sexual harassment. No criminal charges were filed. To date, 34 women and two men have accused him of alleged sexual harassment. Although he hasn’t been charged, several women have come forward to describe their experiences with Bill. A woman named “Leigh” (her name was changed to protect her identity) revealed in 2015 that, while working for Bill, she was forced to work grueling long hours without pay, while Bill would behave inappropriately with her, like “holding hands, playing footsies, stroking the hair and that type of unwanted physical affection.” Keep in mind, Bill was a man in his 70s and the woman quoted in the article was in her early 20s. She later went on to say that she and Bill visited the Duggars in 2006 and were “holding hands” in full view of the reality TV family who, according to her, said nothing.

According to the lawsuit filed by victims in 2014, Bill would also “select girls based on how they looked and tell them that it was God’s will for them to come work for him.”

Bill and IBLP still have close ties to the Duggars. Despite all the allegations of sexual harassment running amok around Bill, that didn’t stop the Duggars from throwing their support behind him. In 2012, when Anna Duggar’s sister Priscilla married David Waller, the ATI administrator, Bill was a wedding guest and even gave a 10-minute speech there. The whole thing was filmed for 19 Kids and Counting, but producers conveniently cut him out of the episode. As recently as this year, the Duggars were still attending and making speeches at ATI conferences. The family still hasn’t spoken out about Bill’s alleged abuses, nor have they responded to any critcs of the organization they’re so closely tied to….
http://www.intouchweekly.com/posts/duggar-ati-143260

Time bar on child abuse payouts lifted
Scotland  10-3-17
A long-standing time bar which prevented victims of childhood abuse seeking civil legal action has been lifted.

Survivors of abuse which happened after 1964 previously only had a three-year window to pursue damages.

New laws coming into force have now changed that.

Community Safety Minister Annabelle Ewing said the time bar was “against the interests of justice for those who’d survived abuse”.

The three-year limit has been removed by the Limitation (Childhood Abuse) Bill.

The bill was unanimously approved, by a margin of 115 to zero, when MSPs voted in the Scottish Parliament in June.

It allows the time bar to be lifted so long as the victim was a child under the age of 18 when they suffered sexual, physical or emotional abuse….
http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-scotland-41485863

Top adviser to Pope charged with sexual assault offenses, Church Of England ‘Colluded And Concealed’ Bishop’s Sex Abuse, Leader Says

– Top adviser to Pope charged with sexual assault offenses
– Church Of England ‘Colluded And Concealed’ Bishop’s Sex Abuse, Leader Says

Top adviser to Pope charged with sexual assault offenses
Laura Smith Spark-Profile-Image
By Joshua Berlinger and Laura Smith-Spark, CNN Thu June 29, 2017
Cardinal George Pell, a senior adviser to Pope Francis and the third-ranking official in the Holy See, is taking leave from the Vatican to fight historical sexual assault charges in his home country of Australia.
The case is the latest black mark against the Catholic Church, which has been reeling from sexual abuse scandals across several countries that date back decades. It could also have ramifications for Pope Francis, who counts Pell among his closest aides.

Australian police have not released a detailed list of charges against Pell and didn’t disclose any information about alleged victims, saying only that there were multiple charges and “multiple complainants.” ….
“I’m innocent of these charges, they are false,” Pell said. “The whole idea of sexual abuse is abhorrent to me.”….
Pell has previously denied covering up abuse committed by priests when he served as the Archbishop of Melbourne from 1996 to 2001. But he acknowledged his predecessor, Archbishop Frank Little, now deceased, had destroyed documents to protect priests.

A 2013 Australian government inquiry, the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse, found that 7% of priests in Australia were accused of abusing children, from 1950 until 2015. At least 1,880 alleged perpetrators were identified and 4,444 victims came forward…..

In the United States, analysis of information on 110,000 priests who served the Church between 1950 and 2002 found that 4% of them had been accused of abuse…..
http://www.cnn.com/2017/06/28/asia/cardinal-pell-australia/index.html

Church Of England ‘Colluded And Concealed’ Bishop’s Sex Abuse, Leader Says
June 22, 2017 Colin Dwyer
When faced with allegations of sex abuse against one of its bishops, the Church of England “colluded and concealed rather than seeking to help those who were brave enough to come forward,” the church’s leader acknowledged Thursday.

“For the survivors who were brave enough to share their story and bring Peter Ball to justice, I once again offer an unreserved apology,” Justin Welby, archbishop of Canterbury, said in a statement. “There are no excuses whatsoever for what took place and the systemic abuse of trust perpetrated by Peter Ball over decades.”

Welby was responding to the findings of an independent investigation into how the church handled the allegations against Ball, a former bishop who pleaded guilty in 2015 to indecent assault against young men. That report, also released Thursday, found that Ball “abused many boys and men over a period of twenty years or more.”

“That is shocking in itself but is compounded by the failure of the Church to respond appropriately to his misconduct, again over a period of many years,” Moira Gibb, who led the investigation, said in the report. “Ball’s priority was to protect and promote himself and he maligned the abused. The Church colluded with that rather than seeking to help those he had harmed, or assuring itself of the safety of others.”….
http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2017/06/22/533931155/church-of-england-colluded-and-concealed-bishops-sex-abuse-leader-says

Neil Brick will be speaking at S.M.A.R.T. Child and Ritual Abuse Conference – August 11 – 13, 2017
Neil Brick has developed Internet resources to publish scientific information about child and ritual abuse. He publishes a bimonthly newsletter and organizes informational conferences. The goal of these resources is to help stop child and ritual abuse through public education.
http://www.webwire.com/ViewPressRel.asp?aId=210052

The Survivorship Ritual Abuse and Mind Control 2017 Conference
Video Presentations from The Survivorship Ritual Abuse and Mind Control 2017 Conference https://survivorship.org/presentations-from-the-survivorship-ritual-abuse-and-mind-control-2017-conference

How to Avoid Being Mind Controlled at a Conference and Freedom from Mind Control – 2017 Presentation by Neil Brick
https://ritualabuse.us/ritualabuse/how-to-avoid-being-mind-controlled-at-a-conference-and-freedom-from-mind-control/

Strong accuracy and validity of ritual abuse research:
http://childabusewiki.org/index.php?title=Ritual_Abuse

Fran and Dan Keller legal case information
https://ritualabuse.us/ritualabuse/articles/frans-day-care/