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A woman is attacked every 15 seconds. One third of women admitted to emergency
rooms are victims of domestic violence. 47% of men who beat their spouses
do so at least three times a year. (United Nations Study, "UN proposes pact
on family violence," ALC News Service, 24 July 1998)
Organizations for child molestors have websites that tell them where to make
contact with children such as public schools, and have links to websites where
children post messages and personal information. ("Prepared Testimony of Officer
Anonymous Before the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation,"
Federal News Service, 11 February 1998)
In shopping malls, on subway trains and at amusement parks, men are pointing
video cameras under the clothes of unsuspecting women. Upskirt" and "downblouse"
tapes often end up on the Internet, where anyone over 18 can legally view
and buy them. Since 1996, the number of voyeur Web sites has grown from just
a handful to more than 100. (Deborah Hastings, "Peeping Toms Using Video Cameras",
Associated Press Online, 9 August, 1998)
The United Nations Special Rappateur on Violence Against Women received very
serious allegations of sexual abuse of women prisoners in Florence Crane Women’s
Facility, Coldwater, Michigan, Camp Branch Facility for Women, Coldwater,
Michigan, and Scott Correctional Facility for Women, Plymouth, Michigan. She
also received serious allegations of sexual abuse of women occurring in the
security housing unit of the Valley State Prison for Women in Chowchilla,
California. (United Nations Press Release, 19 June 1998)
Teenage girls get gonorrhea about 1.5 times as often as teenage boys in the
United States. Girls between 10 and 14 have 4 times the rate of gonorrhea,
as do boys. The rates were 79.3 girls positive per 100,000 versus 19.4 boys
positive per 100,000. (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention epidemiologist
Amanda Sue Niskar reports statistics from 1992 to 1994, "Girls Get Gonorrhea
More Often Than Boys," Washington Times, 18 July 1997)
300,000 children are being sexually abused in the US. (Fernando Toledo, Inter-American
Institute for Children)
The North American Man-Boy Love Association (NAMBLA) has an estimated membership
of 1000 ("Boy's murder casts light on fringe advocacy group," Peter S. Canellos,
Boston Globe, 9 Oct 1997)
There are 9,484 registered sex offenders of whom 715 are sexual predators
in Florida. (Phil Long, "Duval police hunt child molester," Miami Herald,
28 January 1998)
$23 million was paid by the Roman Catholic Diocese of Dallas, Texas to 8
former alter boys who were sexually abused for years by Rudolph Kos, a priest.
The RCC has paid $800 million in the 1990s to victims of sexual abuse by priests.
(Rene Sanchez, "Dallas diocese in huge abuse settlement," The Providence Journal,
11 July 1998)
More than 200 Roman Catholic priests have been jailed in the 1990s for the
sexual abuse of children. As many as 2,000 of the 51,000 priests in the US
have been accused of sexual abuse in the last 2 decades. (Rene Sanchez, "Dallas
diocese in huge abuse settlement," the Providence Journal, 11 July
1998)
The Rene Guyon Society, the North American Man/Boy Love Association, the
Pedophile Information Exchange, the Child Sensuality Circle, the Pedo-Alert
Network, and the Lewis Carroll Collector's Guild are groups that advocate
heterosexual and homosexual adult-child sex and deciminalization of these
acts. (FBI Special Agent Kenneth V. Lanning, National Center for Missing and
Exploited Children, "Boy's murder casts light on fringe advocacy group," Peter
S. Canellos, Boston Globe, 9 Oct 1997)
Victimization of children over the Internet is rapidly increasing according
to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC). ("We must
make the Internet safer for our kids," Virginian Pilot Ledger Star, 12 September
1998)
Since 1993, harassment and abuse on the Internet has increased dramatically.
For example, in the early 1990s at the University of Michigan, campus police
received five or six computer harassment cases a year, n they handle that
many a week. Experts say most computer harassment cases are pranks or nuisances,
driven by the increase in use of the Internet and because of the anonymity
the Internet offers. Most police departments, especially those in smaller
communities, have no computer experts to investigate computer harassment.
Federal laws govern many computer crimes like those dealing with fraud, child
pornography and exploitation, but federal authorities are reluctant to enter
the arena of Internet harassment and abuse. Computer crimes are often untraceable,
thus it is hard to enforce criminal laws. If police establish that a case
of computer harassment is a crime, they generally have to act very quickly
to trace the perpetrator because many Internet service providers purge important
information between five and 30 days. Most providers will not give authorities
information on their clients without a warrant and some -- those based in
foreign countries -- won't even do that. Even if the perpetrator can be tracked
down, police agencies must decide if the crime is serious enough to pursue.
("Police departments not equipped to deal with cyber stalkers," Detroit
News, 16 September 1998)
Juvenile Offender Programs
Girls in San Francisco Bay Area (California) detention halls, are in for
such minor crimes as running away or abusing alcohol and drugs, which they
often commit to escape being victims of sexual and physical violence at home
and abuse by pimps and other predators on the street. Officials in several
Bay Area counties would like to invest in detention alternatives -- treatment
for physical abuse and addiction, and job skills training -- to help the girls
overcome the underlying problems that get them repeatedly locked up. The emotional
trauma that fuels girls' trouble with the law makes it very challenging to
help them. (Alan Gathright, "Girl inmates pose problem," San Jose Mercury
News)
Across the San Francisco (California) Bay Area over the past decade, the
number of girls admitted to juvenile halls has grown more than twice as fast
as the number of boys. In several counties, the number of boys declined from
1988 to 1997, while the number of girls increased by as much as 92% in San
Mateo County. In California, the number of girls rose 34% in that period,
while the number of boys rose 18%. (Alan Gathright, "Girl inmates pose problem,"
San Jose Mercury News)
San Mateo County (California) makes more use of "therapeutic detention",
briefly jailing probation violators for minor offenses, than other San Francisco
Bay Area counties with similar populations. Girls are in the hall because
they run away from home, live on the streets, or have sexual relations with
older me, all of which places them in harm’s way. Placing them in juvenile
hall is a means of protecting the girls. (Alan Gathright, "Girl inmates pose
problem," San Jose Mercury News)
About 46% of almost 1,000 girls had a record of abuse or neglect in their
case files, found researchers in a groundbreaking study of girls in California
juvenile halls in Alameda, Marin, Los Angeles and San Diego counties. When
researchers interviewed nearly 200 of those girls, the numbers were even higher:
- 80% reported being physically abused
- 56% reported being sexually abused
- more than 45 % reported being beaten or burned
- 40% had been raped
- 25% had been shot or stabbed
Girls were most vulnerable between age 12 and 15 to their first experiences
of being sexually abused, shot or stabbed, engaging in substance abuse, school
failure, running away or giving birth. Girls, far more than boys, are arrested
for juvenile "status offenses" - breaking curfew, running away, truancy -
acts that are only illegal because the offender is under 18. Most intensive
programs for girl offenders begin after these problems have started, rather
than earlier when they might have been prevented. Prevention services are
recommended to target girls by age 5, when many report first being molested.
"The almost universal characteristic of girls in the juvenile justice system
is a history of violent victimization," said Leslie Acoca, the senior researcher
on the study by the National Council on Crime and Delinquency in San Francisco.
"When a child is molested they learn to not trust anyone; they don't form
relationships well. So, they frequently run away from home or from out-of-home
placements, that violates probation and they end up back in juvenile hall,"
said Deberah Bringelson, executive director of the San Mateo County Criminal
Justice Council. (Alan Gathright, "Girl inmates pose problem," San Jose
Mercury News)
In California, girl-offender programs are at a disadvantage in vying with
the mostly male juvenile population for funding. In August 1998, Governor
Pete Wilson vetoed a bill funding $15 million in state challenge grants to
encourage counties to create specialized programs for female offenders. Wilson
said it duplicated an existing juvenile grant program that allows local governments
to decide whether to fund programs serving girls or boys. He added that he
feared the bill "disproportionately" earmarked half the juvenile grant funding
for girls, who are responsible for only 23% of offenses committed by juveniles.
(Alan Gathright, "Girl inmates pose problem," San Jose Mercury News)
Nationally, 1 in 4 minors arrested is female, making them the faster-growing
segment of the United States juvenile system. Girl offenders have long been
invisible in a juvenile justice system designed for a largely male population.
(Alan Gathright, "Girl inmates pose problem," San Jose Mercury News)
A quarter of girls arrested nationally in 1996 were arrested for status offenses,
- breaking curfew, running away, truancy - acts that are only illegal because
the offender is under 18. This type of arrest accounted for less than 10%
of boys' arrests in the same year. Girls composed 57% of runaway arrests in
1996, even though research surveys show that boys and girls run away in equal
numbers. (Alan Gathright, "Girl inmates pose problem," San Jose Mercury
News)
A 1974 federal law encouraged authorities to divert status offenders to alternative
programs, so detention halls are reserved for criminals who pose a danger
to themselves or the public. Still, girls on probation for crimes such as
petty theft or public drunkenness can be jailed for chronically running away,
skipping school or breaking curfew. (Alan Gathright, "Girl inmates pose problem,"
San Jose Mercury News)
Cases
Mike Leavitt the Governor of Salt Lake City, Utah, USA suggested that polygamy
is constitutionally protected. There are tens of thousands of polygamists
in Utah, and the crime is not prosecuted. (Mike Carter, "Utah govenor seeks
legal opinion on polygamy prosecution", Associated Press, 29 July 1998)
Reverand David Holley is serving a 275-year sentence for molesting boys in
New Mexico, records show the Catholic church continuously transferred him
to different churches in Massachusetts, Colorado and West Texas. ("Catholic
Church documents suggest that the institution knowingly shuffled a pedophile
priest among different states for 20 years," UPI, 31 August 1997)
U.S citizen John Wetterer, who ran the Mi Casa orphanage in Guatemala was
accused of sexually abusing boys in this care. (Robert E. Kessler, "Ex-Orphan
Tells Court About Abuse/ Long Island Native Accused," Newsday, 24 September
1997)
Pornography material from The North American Man-Boy Love Association, an
organization for paedophiles, was found by police inside a car suspected of
being used to abduct a 10-year-old Massachusetts boy, who was murdered. ("Police
have been watching man-boy love group," Associated Press, 5 October
1997)
A San Antonio woman was kidnapped for the purpose of sexual enslavement by
being zapped with a stun gun and dragged into a van. She was stripped, chained
in a leather harness and instructed to call the kidnappers "M'Lord" and "Lady
Dominatrix". She escaped after 24 hours. (United Press International, 19 November
1997)
Captain Blakey, the first woman to pilot an Airbus A300 jumbo jet for Continental,
testifies that the Continental Airlines corporation did nothing to stop harassment
against her by male pilots who spread pornography in plane cockpits and harassed
her for reporting the incidents. (Associated Press, 10 September 1997)
A sexual harrasment suit has been brought against Garban LCC, a Wall Street
brokerage firm. Attorney General Dennis Vacco has filed a $10 million lawsuit
against Garban and its affiliated companies, alleging some of its 300 brokers
verbally, physically and sexually harassed three female brokers. He said the
harassment dated back to 1984. Garban was accused of making it difficult for
female employees to move up within the company. Garban denounced the behavior
alleged in the lawsuit and is cooperating with Vacco's office. Among the allegations
were that strippers performed for male workers on the trading floor in plain
view of female workers; male employees frequently dropped their pants to fix
their shirts; the door to the men's bathroom was kept open so that the urinals
were in plain sight; and women were called derogatory names. ("Brokerage hit
with harassment suit," Associated Press, 2 September 1998)
A gender discrimination suit has been settled in September 1998, by a federal
judge in Chicago who gave final approval to a settlement between the Merrill
Lynch & Co. brokerage firm and female employees. The settlement allows 2,500
women to file discrimination claims to be heard by mediators, who would determine
what if any award is appropriate. There is no maximum, but attorneys for the
women expected awards to total in the millions of dollars. ("Brokerage hit
with harassment suit," Associated Press, 2 September 1998)
Trafficking |
Prostitution |
Pornography |
Organized and Institutionalized Exploitation
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