I've made it to the initial round for favorite progressive blogger in the Air America Cruise Contest. I have to stay in the Top 5 before the second voting round begins, so your vote is appreciated! First voting round:
The Christian Civic League of Maine's Mike Hein calls Pam's House Blend: "a leading source of radical homosexual propaganda, anti-Christian bigotry, and radical transgender advocacy."
He is "praying that Pam Spaulding will "turn away from her wicked and sinful promotion of homosexual behavior."
(CCLM's web site, 10/15/07)
Ex-gay "Christian" activist James Hartline on Pam:
"I have been mocked over and over again by ungodly and unprincipled anti-christian lesbians."
(from "Six Years In Sodom: From The Journal Of James Hartline," 9/4/2006, written from the "homosexual stronghold" of Hillcrest in San Diego).
"Pam is a 'twisted lesbian sister' and an 'embittered lesbian' of the 'self-imposed gutteral experiences of the gay ghetto.'" -- 9/5/2008
Peter LaBarbera of Americans for Truth Against Homosexuality heartily endorses the Blend, calling Pam:
A "vicious anti-Christian lesbian activist." (Concerned Women for America's radio show [9:15], 1/25/07)
"A nutty lesbian blogger." (MassResistance radio show [16:25], 2/3/07)
Pam's House Blend always seems to find these sick f*cks. The area of the country she is in? The home state of her wife? I know, they are everywhere. Pam just does such a great job of bringing them out into the light.
--Impeach Bush
who monitors yours Bevis ?? Just thought I would drop you a line,so the rest of your life is not wasted.
The Catholic Church's damage control over its lack of attention to the repeated crimes against children by its raping, pedophile priests has been to settle the cases with huge payoffs to those who come forward, as if cash could buy off the pain and suffering to the families involved.
For David Guerrero, Dominic Zamora and many others, the psychological toll of the heinous clergy abuse plays itself out over and over as an adult, regardless of the buyout. (AP via MSNBC):
Dominic Zamora rages at his father, who suspects he bought a house in someone else's name. You're not my father, Dominic screams. You just want my money. When the 36-year-old finally calls his parents three weeks later, he is drunk and angry at the world - and most especially, at them.
This was not the future the Guerreros and the Zamoras imagined when their sons received millions from the Roman Catholic church to settle claims they were molested by their childhood priests. But that was before the money ushered in a new and never-ending nightmare.
The money was meant to soothe the victims' wounds and be a bridge to a better life, and for many it did. But for a few, the most deeply scarred, the six- and seven-figure checks have instead made things far worse.
For these victims, the money has seeped like a poison into every relationship and laid bare feelings of anger, mistrust, bitterness and guilt that have been buried deep in their families for years. It has fed drug habits and alcohol binges, divided siblings and fueled resentment in parents who walked through hell with their children, only to find rejection and blame on the other side.
After molesting and doing who knows what to as many as 30 boys from the suburbs of Chicago, Fred Lenczycki, 65, a Roman Catholic priest, has earned the dubious title of being the first of Papa Ratzi's criminal pedophile syndicate members to be declared "sexually violent." What are the chances that he's been "rehabilitated"? Um...I'll put a bet down on...zero. (Chicago Trib):
State officials said that he will be living in Cook County, not with a family member, and that the people in charge of his future treatment will register him at a local police station today as a child sex offender.
The exact details of his treatment plan and his residence were not released this morning. DuPage Judge Bonnie Wheaton impounded the case file last year to protect the identity of the abuse victims. "There will be a lot of people watching you," Wheaton told Lenczycki this morning. "This case engendered a lot of media attention and you will be closely monitored.
"You have a heavy responsibility," she continued. "The people in (the state treatment facility in) Rushville are counting on you to show how you act. You owe it to the people who were young, the victims, you owe them the responsibility. Don't disappoint them.
"The court is going out on a limb. I decided this case not as a criminal case, but as a mental health case."
So you mean to tell me that Judge Wheaton thinks that a man declared sexually violent with a pedophile problem is going to receive mental health treatment that will "cure" him? First of all he was only sentenced to 5 years in prison after pleading guilty to sexual abuse of three boys in the 80s. So he got a slap on the wrist as far as I'm concerned.
What do you think about these terms of release for Lenczycki?
He'll have a GPS ankle monitor on him.
He'll register as a sex offender.
He'll have to tell officials where he does go.
The judge will receive a report on his progress in 6 months.
Just sickening. Back in September 2008, the feds raided the Tony Alamo Christian Ministries in Fouke, located south of Texarkana, after an investigation into minor children being abused at the property.
The 74-year-old Alamo, who believes that age of consent is puberty, homosexuality is caused by demon possession and "the Vatican, the one-world government and church are spiritually powered by that old serpent called the Devil," is now on trial facing a 10-count indictment alleging he took underaged girls across state lines for sex.
A 9-year-old girl was considered too young to answer the office phone at evangelist Tony Alamo's compound, but old enough for frequent sex with the ministry leader, she alleged at his federal trial on child-sex charges.
The woman, now 18, testified that she dodged security cameras and roving guards to escape the compound in 2006. Her testimony left jurors red-eyed and shaking their heads Thursday....Defense lawyers have largely left the sex and underage marriage claims unchallenged, though they have questioned witnesses' memories and whether they had been coached by authorities.
The teenage witness said Alamo "married" her when she was 8, and groped her after their wedding...She said at one point she asked the minister why he had selected her. "He said, `Because you were cute,'" she said on the witness stand. "It wasn't God's will that he married me. It's just because he thought I was cute.
As detailed in the Fall 2007 issue of the Report, Alamo in recent years has argued that girls should marry once they start menstruating, even if they are as young as 10. In a 2006 radio broadcast, he said: "God impregnated Mary when she was about 11 years old. So the government idiots, the people that don't know the Bible, what you're going to have to do is get a hold of God now, you're going to have to get up there and cuff him and send him to prison for statutory rape."
In early 2007, Alamo cited the alleged promiscuity of 1st-graders as grounds for marrying them before the age of legal consent. "I've found out from people's parents that their daughter started having sex when she was 6 years old and had sex every day of her life," he said in another broadcast. "So right there, by the time she's 15 years old, she's had sex thousands of times. I mean, this is just reality."
A 46-year-old Kimball Township man who is a former local youth pastor is facing a felony charge of accosting a child for immoral purposes, a case that involves confiscated computers and electronics from a Clyde Township church, officials said. Craig Coon is due in court for a preliminary hearing at 1:30 p.m. July 21 in front of District Court Judge John Monaghan, said Mike Wendling, St. Clair County Prosecutor.
...The felony warrant said Coon was wanted since he "did accost, entice, or solicit (victim), a child less than 16 years of age, with the intent to induce or force that child to commit an immoral act, to submit to an act of sexual intercourse or an act of gross indecency, or other act of depravity or delinquency, or did encourage the child to engage in one of these acts."
...In 2004, the Times Herald reported about Coon as the leader of The Quest, a contemporary church service that attracted many teenagers and 20-somethings in a casual setting.
"I want to get people to start asking where they are spiritually, what they need to do to start walking with Jesus," Coon said in the article. "We need to get past those stereotypes they hold about church. They're roadblocks to Christianity."
We all have a few of them. Those "where-were-you-when" moments that simultaneously help define generations and span generational differences. Our parents and grandparents may recall where they were when FDR died or when they heard that Kennedy — John or Bobby — was assassinated. Or when they got news of Martin Luther King's assassination. Or Elvis' death.
I remember hearing about John Lennon's murder, though I don't remember exactly where I was or what I was doing. I remember where I was when the space shuttle Challenger exploded. (At home, watching it on television, saying to myself "That wasn't supposed to happen," when it broke apart.) I remember where I was when the Berlin Wall started to come down. (Again, watching it on television.) I remember where I was when I heard that Princess Diana had died. (At a party of gay men — my fraternity brothers — when someone came downstairs after watching a news report, and announced it to everyone.)
And, I'll remember where I was when I heard that Michael Jackson had died.
Here, again, is the video of the exorcism of a 16-year-old boy at Manifested Glory Ministries Church in Connecticut that has sparked a great deal of controversy. This "healing" is supposed to chase out the gay demon that purportedly possesses the boy:
Truth Wins Out condemned Manifested Glory Ministries in Bridgeport, Conn., for practicing child abuse in the name of religion, after a video surfaced where the church tried to exorcize demons from a gay teenager.
"This video reveals the underbelly of the ex-gay ministries and shows the medieval mindset of such organizations," said Wayne Besen, Executive Director of Truth Wins Out. "We call on all such ministries to immediately stop the child abuse, which is harm in the guise of healing. As an organization that helps victims of such barbaric practices, we can attest to the psychological trauma that can result.
The exorcism video shows a teen writhing on the ground as adults implore so-called "homosexual demons" to get out. The leaders yell at the boy on the ground saying, "Right now in the name of Jesus, I call the homosexuality, right now in the name of Jesus." This scene unfolds for 20 minutes with the boy in a near seizure, even vomiting.
Former Roman Catholic priest Desmond Laurence Gannon is finally going to do some hard time after largely getting away for serial sexual abuse of children. (Jonathan Turley):
Gannon, 79, was previously convicted of such abuse in 1995, 1997, 2000 and 2003 but remarkably has served only one year in jail. The latest charge stems from 1968.
What is interesting is that he is claiming that he really did not know it was abusive to have such sexual contact with children at the time: "I thought it was less formal rather than inviting him into the presbytery, and that's all ... I won't say sexual abuse because at the time I didn't know what it was."
Turley notes that this pathetic, sick defense has been tried before - by former Archbishop Rembert G. Weakland.
Weakland insists that he and other priests did not know it was a crime to have sex with children and thought they would not remember or they would "grow out of it."
In his book, "A Pilgrim in a Pilgrim Church," Weakland writes: "We all considered sexual abuse of minors as a moral evil, but had no understanding of its criminal nature." That's right. Despite the daily stories of child abuse arrests and basic common sense, Weakland did not understand that raping choirboys was not actually a crime.
Here we go again...CNN reports that Tony Alamo himself has not been arrested.
Simultaneous federal and state search warrants were executed today at the Tony Alamo Christian Ministries in Fouke, which is located south of Texarkana.
Entry onto the property occurred without incident late this afternoon and was coordinated by a combined team of Arkansas State Police and Agents of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. The search warrants were based on information gathered during the course of an extended and continuing investigation dating back at least two years. This has been a joint investigation between the Arkansas State Police and the FBI, with the assistance of the Arkansas Department of Human Services and the United States Attorney's Office for the Western District of Arkansas.
Agents of the Arkansas State Police Criminal Investigation Division and investigators assigned to the Crimes Against Children Division are interviewing minor age children who live on the Alamo property.
The state investigation is aimed at allegations that children living at the Alamo facilities may have been sexually and physically abused. No arrests have been made in connection with the execution of the search warrants, however an active investigation is continuing.
In an interview with The Associated Press tonight, Alamo said he believes polygamy is allowed in the Bible, but that he did not practice it himself. He also says that he believes "consent is puberty" --unquote -- when it comes to sex.
Alamo told the AP that the government is trying to harass him.
The Southern Poverty Law Center describes Alamo's organization as a cult that opposes homosexuality, Catholicism and the government.
Claiming "homosexuality is caused by demon possession" and "the Vatican, the one-world government and church are spiritually powered by that old serpent called the Devil," this white-hot propaganda comes straight from the mouth of a self-fashioned prophet and convicted tax cheat. Since his release from prison in 1998, Alamo has secluded himself within a guarded compound in a small town near Texarkana, Ark., as opposition from residents and ex-followers mounts.
...In 1993, he published a tract called "The Polygamists" which argued, "the Holy Scriptures proclaim polygamy to be righteous." Fourteen years later, he still pushes that message, producing daily radio broadcasts that are beamed around the country and the world and proclaim a holy man's right to take multiple wives.
"They're condemning polygamy where it's never condemned. God never says, 'No polygamist shall enter the Kingdom of Heaven,'" Alamo declared angrily in one recent broadcast. "But these bastards, these homosexual Vaticanites, they condone homosexuals and they condemn marriage and a man that would take care of his... . [T]hey ... say, 'You're a polygamist,' that I married too many wives. Well, find out! Prove it! And even if I was, there's no law in the Bible [against] it."
Believe it or not, a large number of evangelicals in the town of Mt Vernon, Ohio are protesting the school to for firing 52-year old science teacher, John Freshwater. Freshwater, if you recall, is the science teacher who not only insisted on teaching evolution creationism and preaching his Christian beliefs during class, he also burned crosses on the arms of some students.
Freshwater's supporters claim he is just exercising his right to free [religious] expression and consider him a courageous fighter for religious freedom. Interestingly, those supporting Freshwater as he fights being fired have been curiously silent on the fact he used a tool to burn anywhere from 3-8 students. Freshwater, for his part, justifies burning the students as follows:
. . . he simply was trying to demonstrate the device on three to eight students and described the images an "X" not a cross. But pictures show the images depict a cross, the report said. [Raw Story]
It just goes to show you that when it comes to religious zealots, you can do whatever you want as long as it's considered support for so-called Christianity.
[sorry for the typos :(]
When I look at moralists like Southern Baptist Theology president Albert Mohler Jr., I'm going to think of him and them a little less for their Southern Baptist Convention association than I did even yesterday.
Why? Well, FindLaw has a article up that explains what the Southern Baptist Convention won't do to limit child abuse by their churches' pastors and employees:
The Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) has recently proven why it is that children are at risk for sexual abuse in our society: It's easier not to protect them, and especially easy to issue ineffectual platitudes while looking the other way.
According to the Associated Press, the SBC has concluded that its decentralized structure of independent churches makes it impossible for it to establish a website of pastors credibly accused of child sexual abuse, or even to require the reporting of such crimes to the police. Yes, you read that right: The SBC is citing these lame procedural reasons for not taking the most basic steps to protect children from devastating abuse that can have repercussions that leave victims suffering for a lifetime (and that severely taxes society in medical and other resources).
...In short, there is a basic procedural answer to what the SBC has portrayed as an insuperable barrier - agree among all independent entities to coordinate. If Baptist churches cannot coordinate on a shared, national strategy in favor of children at risk, they rightly lose a great deal of moral capital.
This past week they had their annual convention, and decided the following:
- Approved a resolution supporting a ballot initiative in California that will define marriage as only between one man and one woman.
- Dr. Johnny Hunt, pastor of First Baptist Church of Woodstock, Georgia, was elected president on a first ballot, beating out five other candidates.
- Approved a resolution calling for more minority representation on denomination boards and committees.
- Soundly defeated an amendment that would have called on Christians in the state to remove their children from public schools.
And, of course...
"One sexual predator in our midst is one too many," Chapman said. "Our denomination and our local churches must condemn publicly this vile act."
The executive committee announced Tuesday it would not create a national database of Baptist ministers accused or convicted of sexual abuse. The church representatives - called messengers - asked the committee last year to consider creating such a database.
"The convention has no ecclesiastical authority over local churches," Chapman said.
Instead of a Baptist-only database, Chapman and other Southern Baptist leaders argue that churches should use the national sexual offender database, maintained by the federal government.
Christa Brown, the Baptist outreach coordinator for the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, said the decision was disappointing but expected.
"A database is not a threat to local church authority," she said. "It would give churches a much needed resource."
To quote Matthew 7:3-5 on the denomination's condemnation of homosexual marriage to the point of supporting a California initiative to repeal the recent California Supreme Court ruling in favor of marriage equality, while not adequately setting in place a denomination wide system to track church employees (including pastors) accused of child sexual abuse:
"Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother's eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye? How can you say to your brother, 'Let me take the speck out of your eye,' when all the time there is a plank in your own eye? You hypocrite, first take the plank out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother's eye."
Instead of suffering the children to come unto Jesus, the message I'm hearing from the Southern Baptist Convention is "Let the children suffer."
Oh yeah, the Southern Baptist Convention has the moral authority to condemn marriage equality...right?
Yeah, well...not right.
~~~~~
Related reading:
* Baptist Press: SBC's ministry to homosexuals growing
I fell down a bit of a rabbit hole yesterday. During a (rare) quiet moment, I took some time to catch up on my news/blog reading. And I finally started reading a collection of news stories that I'd quietly tucked away until I could actually bring myself to read them. I thought that would be a long time, because they were the kind of stories that I usually put out of my mind, because I can't bear to think about them.
What started me was Katharine's comment, which linked to Scott's post about something Felix Fritzl said upon seeing the moon for the first time.
"Is that God up there?" - Felix Fritzl, 5, sees the moon for the first time since leaving the cellar.
Will we see an outcry from the professional "Christian" set, the Dobsons, Perkins, and all the rest about this story of heinous abuse in Mississippi? Don't hold your breath. They are too busy panicking over the Brown Menace and the Homosexual Agenda. Between the Taser misuse and abuse and the treatment detailed in this story, there are much bigger fish to fry. (CNN):
Represented by attorneys with the Southern Poverty Law Center, Erica and nine other girls housed at Columbia are suing the state, claiming they endured a range of sexual and physical abuse, including shackling. Don Desper, a licensed therapist and former employee at Columbia who opposed the practice, told CNN it was used to prevent the teens from escaping.
In a handwritten affidavit, a 15-year-old girl described a male guard molesting her. She wrote: "He came inside my cell half way half of his body and he started touching me and he tryed (sic) to kiss me and then he left he came back with my snack in his hand and he opened my cell again and he started grabbing me around my waist and he tryed (sic) to stick his hands in my pants and I started crying."
When the lawsuit was filed in 2007, a U.S. Justice Department monitor was making periodic inspections at Columbia as part of a 2005 settlement with Mississippi in a previous case. The Justice investigation that led to that settlement found Columbia youths were hog-tied, forced to strip and eat their own vomit and were held in isolation in what was called the "Dark Room," a windowless room with a hole in the floor used as a toilet. Read the Justice Department report that describes girls being shackled to poles
In Ohio, things aren't any better. Read below the fold.
Robert A. McKee, who is a Republican delegate from Western Maryland as well as a former chaplain for the Hagerstown Jaycees and trustee and community services chairman at First Christian Church, had two computers, videotapes and printed materials from his home in Hagerstown by authorities conducting an investigation into child pornography.
In what can only be described as familiar hypocrisy of epic disgusting proportions, McKee was the sponsor of legislation to protect minors from sexual predators, and placed himself in professional situations involving child welfare. (WaPo):
First elected to the House of Delegates in 1994, McKee was chairman of the Western Maryland delegation and sponsored legislation to protect minors from sexual predators. McKee, 58, also resigned yesterday from his post as executive director of Big Brothers Big Sisters of Washington County, a child mentorship program where he has worked for 29 years.
"For me, this is deeply embarrassing," McKee said in a statement. "It reflects poorly on my service to the community."
..."In the meantime, I have entered treatment," McKee said, without providing specifics. "My primary focus is to get well and stay well. I know this can only happen with the support and prayers of my family and friends and the help of professionals."
...McKee, who is considered a political moderate, has sponsored bills this year dealing with minors, including the Child Protection From Predators Act and a proposal to collect DNA samples from sexual predators. McKee has sponsored several other sexual offender and child abduction bills in previous years.
...For decades, McKee has been involved in youth athletics and children's groups, according to his General Assembly biography. He has served in officer positions in two Little League groups and as secretary of a parent and child center advisory committee.
Hat tip to Howie Klein, who said "How do can you tell if a Republican legislator is a pervert or not? No, not because he's breathing; don't be a smart-ass. Usually it's the ones who scream and shout the loudest about perversion threatening the American family who are the guiltiest of whatever it is they're obsessing over."
Hypocrisy meter overload. Blender Paul Barwick has been peppering me with updates to this story, each item containing more "you can't make this sh*t up" details.
You might recall the story about the Berkeley Sea Scouts, a Berkeley, California-based Boy Scouts sailing group that was denied the use of a public boat slip by the city because of the nonprofit organization's policy of rejecting atheist and gay members in its ranks. They sued and argued that Berkeley was punishing the organization for exercising its constitutional freedom of association -- the right that the U.S. Supreme Court cited in a 2000 ruling upholding the Boy Scouts' exclusion of gays. That didn't fly in this case.
[S]tate justices ruled unanimously that the city was entitled to subsidize only organizations that complied with its anti-discrimination rules, and that the scouts were not being prevented from expressing their views or limiting their membership.
...She said Berkeley "reasonably concluded the Sea Scouts did not and could not provide satisfactory assurances because of their required adherence to (the Boy Scouts') discriminatory policies."
After all, the Boy Scouts have defended its policies by citing the phrase "morally straight" to excuse its discrimination.
Well, lookee here -- how "morally straight" is this?
A longtime Berkeley Sea Scouts leader was arrested Tuesday on suspicion of molesting four boys aboard his boat, police said.
Eugene Austin Evans, 64, of Kensington abused four Sea Scout members on his boat, the SSS Farallon, over the past several years, said Berkeley police Sgt. Mary Kusmiss.
Evans is being held in lieu of $1 million on six felony counts of sexual assault, including allegations of lewd and lascivious acts with a minor, oral copulation with a minor, penetration with a foreign object of a minor and showing harmful material to minors, police said.
Evans became a hero of the political right when he filed a legal challenge of city policies that deny free city services to organizations which practice discrimination based on sexual preference.
His legal challenge of the city policy was celebrated by uber-conservatives and hailed in hundreds of posts on the Freerepublic.com web site.
Evans is held on a $1 million bail. His alleged victims range between 13 and 17, and law enforcement said it has no idea how long a period of time Evans may have been molesting young boys.
State-side leaders of the Catholic church were well aware that Rev. Donald J. McGuire, a Jesuit priest, was behaving in a manner unbecoming a priest as far back as 1969, when letters were coming in from parents of young sons that McGuire was abusing them. The fact is that one of Papa Ratzi's predators was left running loose, despite all that had been revealed, to hurt children and families. (NYT):
A prominent Jesuit priest accused of sexually victimizing teenage boys who were his valets as he traveled the world leading Roman Catholic spiritual retreats was taken into federal custody yesterday in Chicago.
The priest, the Rev. Donald J. McGuire, was charged by the federal authorities with traveling to Switzerland and Austria to engage in sexual conduct with a minor. Father McGuire was convicted last year of sexually abusing two high school students on trips to Wisconsin.
... The order also received complaint letters from parents in 1993, 1994, 2000, 2001, 2002 and 2003. In that time, Father McGuire traveled alone with teenagers as young as 13, usually sharing a room and often a bed, according to the affidavit unsealed yesterday.
The actions continued despite orders from his Jesuit superiors in the Chicago Province in 1991 instructing Father McGuire not to travel on overnight trips “with any boy or girl under the age of 18 and, preferably, even under the age of 21.”
What is mind boggling is that the boy cited in charges against McGuire, traveled with him and roomed with him through 2003, a year, according to the NYT, after U.S. Catholic bishops had mandated that any priest with credible abuse charges against them must be removed from ministry service.
McGuire was allowed to travel with this minor after allegations like this had been lodged by victims:
* While traveling around the U.S. and abroad, young men helped McGuire shower and gave him massages.
* On multiple occasions, Father McGuire showed the boys porno magazines and movies, then sexually abused them and intimidated them into remaining silent.
* After the sexual abuse, in some instances he would heap on futher confusion and emotional abuse by performing the rite of absolution.
* One victim said McGuire molested him at confession, when he was 9.
Barbara Blaine of the Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests said that the problem was not money, but that the Jesuits and Cardinal Francis George, archbishop of Chicago, had failed to protect children by reporting a priest they knew was a predator.
“At a bare minimum,” Ms. Blaine asked, “why didn’t they make sure Father McGuire didn’t have a child in his room?”
In the Seattle Times' article Brothers force Scouts to reveal scope of abuse, two adults who were abused as children by a Boy Scout Leader obtained from the Boy Scouts its entire archive on sexually abusive Scout leaders.
The numbers (emphasis added):
...the Boy Scouts have ejected at least 5,100 adult leaders nationwide for sexual abuse allegations since 1946. And the files reveal that despite efforts to keep potential abusers from joining, the problems persist: In the past 15 years alone, the organization has kicked out leaders for such allegations at a rate of once every other day.
The 45 boxes of files are not public because of a strict court order that prohibits the Stewarts and their lawyers from disclosing specific cases. But a statistical summary of the files, provided by the Stewarts' attorneys, shows the problem is larger than previously known.
But here is the really disconcerting part:
The secrecy of the files has also meant that the Boy Scouts have kept them from their own sex-abuse advisers, a group of respected experts first convened in the late 1980s to help craft a youth-protection program.
During the past 15 years, the group repeatedly suggested that the Boy Scouts study the files to see whether their prevention measures were working, said one adviser, David Finkelhor, who heads the Crimes Against Children Research Center at the University of New Hampshire. But the Scouts' lawyers rebuffed the recommendation, Finkelhor said.
Pretty damn scary bit of info, if you ask me. It's reminiscent of how the Catholic Church has handled their priest abuse scandals.
The director of a Christian boot camp and an employee were arrested Friday for allegedly dragging a 15-year-old girl behind a van after she fell behind the group during a morning run, authorities said.
Charles Eugene Flowers and Stephanie Bassitt of San Antonio-based Love Demonstrated Ministries, a 32-day boot camp, were arrested on aggravated assault charges for the alleged June 12 incident.
The two are accused of tying the girl to the van with a rope then dragging her, according to an arrest affidavit filed Wednesday by the Nueces County Sheriff's Department.
A witness to the dragging said that she saw the victim being pulled along by Flowers in the van on her stomach at least three times.
BTW, the camp has been hailed in the past by the White House Office on Faith-Based and Community Initiatives.
One of the coalition partners, Love Demonstrated Ministries (LDMI), is a faith-based organization which focuses on youth offenders, gang members, and high risk youth. Over the past three years, 135 of 165 young offenders entering its Life Skills and Parenting Camp have graduated from LDMI, a success rate of 82 percent.
Is part of the "success" abusing young people in its care?
The remains of four premature babies have been found hidden in garbage bags and a blanket at the home of the owner of a taxi company in Ocean City, Maryland, police said on Monday.
Christy Freeman, 37, has been charged with first- and second-degree murder and manslaughter in connection with the death of one of the babies. Further charges may follow, said Ocean City police spokesman Barry Neeb.
...At the apartment, police also found a garbage bag hidden in a trunk in Freeman's bedroom. Inside were three smaller plastic bags, two of which contained the remains of two more infants, and a third contained what police said was a placenta.
The next day, the remains of a fourth infant were found in another garbage bag inside a Winnebago motor home parked in Freeman's driveway, according to a police statement.
And if you're a regular at the Blend, like clockwork, summer means more stories on children left to fry in cars. This AP report is interesting because it is not about any one incident this year, but the disparity in treatment of the person arrested for the act -- the mother, father or caregiver.
An Associated Press analysis of more than 310 fatal incidents in the past 10 years found that prosecutions and penalties vary widely, depending in many cases on where the death occurred and who left the child to die - parent or caregiver, mother or father:
* Mothers are treated much more harshly than fathers. While mothers and fathers are charged and convicted at about the same rates, moms are 26 percent more likely to do time. And their median sentence is two years longer than the terms received by dads.
* Day care workers and other paid baby sitters are more likely than parents to be charged and convicted. But they are jailed less frequently than parents, and for less than half the time.
* Charges are filed in half of all cases -- even when a child was left unintentionally.
In all, the AP analyzed 339 fatalities involving more than 350 responsible parties. July is by far the deadliest month, accounting for nearly a quarter of the total.
Also, the states where this happens most frequently are Texas (41 deaths), Florida (37), California (32), North Carolina (14), Arizona (14) and Tennessee (13).
Of course, the fundamentalists are more concerned about whether gays can adopt or foster children, not whether all children are safe and cared for, regardless of the caregiver's orientation.
Police in northwest Georgia have rescued a boy from a hot car where his mother's companion is accused of tying him up.
Ringgold, Georgia, police say a Cracker Barrel restaurant employee called police after seeing Raymond Minchew take the 6-year-old out of the restaurant and return without him -- then finished eating his meal. Ringgold is 13 miles southeast of Chattanooga, Tennessee.
Police found the bound boy sitting in the car, crying.
Sgt. John Gass says the child was soaked with sweat and had a rope tied to one of his ankles. Gass says the temperature was in the 80s Saturday in Ringgold.
The 61-year-old Minchew and the boy's mother -- 35-year-old Rachel Gilchrist -- were arrested and charged with cruelty to children and concealing a weapon. There was a handgun in the car.
Investigators believe the boy was in the hot car for about a half hour.
Gass says the couple contended the boy had misbehaved, although witnesses at the restaurant disagreed.
The boy has been placed in protective custody.
Does this count as abuse? Sure. But these parents (or parent, since it's mom and her boyfriend) are presumably heterosexual, so that automatically makes them better candidates for parenthood than the hubby and me, according to Savage and his audience. Our every day parenting is the equivalent of tying a kid up in a hot car.
A 10-year-old boy reportedly weighing only 35 pounds was taken for medical treatment after being found knocking on doors Saturday evening asking for food.
The boy's mother, 37-year-old Kelleen Deon Murray Auguste, of the 900 block of Southwest Versailles Avenue, was arrested on a charge of felony child neglect. The state Department of Children and Families took custody of the six other minor children in the home, according to Port St. Lucie police.
The 10-year-old's weight was less than half the normal weight of a boy his age, according to statistics from the Centers for Disease Control. None of the other children appeared to be malnourished, according to Port St. Lucie Police Department spokesman Robert Vega.
...He said Auguste, who is pregnant, has total of nine children.
According to Vega, around 7:30 p.m. Saturday a woman in the 900 block of Southwest Cornelia Avenue answered a knock on her door to find a young boy in a filthy, disheveled condition, with matted hair, asking for food.
What are the chances that he's been "rehabilitated"? Um...I'll put a bet down on...zero. (
A longtime Berkeley Sea Scouts leader was arrested Tuesday on suspicion of molesting four boys aboard his boat, police said.
