New Reports on child trafficking and slavery

graphic is from here

This month marks the 198th anniversary of Frederick Douglass's birth. He was a firm believer in the equality of all peoples, whether black, female, Native American, or recent immigrant. 

 "I would unite with anybody to do right and with nobody to do wrong." 

— Frederick Douglass

From Al Jazeera, January 31, 2016, this report on trafficking of Syrian children in Europe.

More than 10,000 unaccompanied refugee and migrant children have disappeared in Europe, the EU police agency Europol said on Sunday, fearing many have been whisked into sex trafficking rings or the slave trade. 

Europol's press office confirmed to Al Jazeera the figures published in British newspaper The Observer. [See: http://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/jan/30/fears-for-missing-child-refugees]

The number relates to the past 18-24 months. 

Brian Donald, the agency's chief of staff, said that the vulnerable children had disappeared from the system after registering with state authorities after their arrival in Europe. 

"It's not unreasonable to say that we're looking at 10,000-plus children," Donald told The Observer, adding that 5,000 had disappeared in Italy alone. 

"Not all of them will be criminally exploited; some might have been passed on to family members. We just don't know where they are, what they're doing or whom they are with." 

Donald said there was evidence of a "criminal infrastructure" established since mid-2014 to exploit the refugee flow. 

The Observer reported that Europol found evidence of links between smuggling rings bringing people into the European Union and human trafficking gangs exploiting migrants for sex and slavery. 

"There are prisons in Germany and Hungary where the vast majority of people arrested and placed there are in relation to criminal activity surrounding the migrant crisis," Donald said. 

More than one million migrants and refugees, many fleeing the Syria conflict, crossed into Europe last year. 

"Whether they are registered or not, we're talking about 270,000 children," Donald told the paper.
"Not all of those are unaccompanied, but we also have evidence that a large proportion might be," he said, adding that the 10,000 is likely to be a conservative estimate.

READ MORE: Syrian children struggling to eat in Istanbul  

____________________________________________

Keeping in mind that the Western world, and the white First World is deeply invested in slavery and sex trafficking, we have this report from The New York Times, January 28, 2016:

WASHINGTON — The Department of Health and Human Services placed more than a dozen immigrant children in the custody of human traffickers after it failed to conduct background checks of caregivers, according to a Senate report released on Thursday.
Examining how the federal agency processes minors who arrive at the border without a guardian, lawmakers said they found that it had not followed basic practices of child welfare agencies, like making home visits. 

The Senate’s Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations opened its inquiry after law enforcement officials uncovered a human trafficking ring in Marion, Ohio, last year. At least six children were lured to the United States from Guatemala with the promise of a better life, then were made to work on egg farms. The children, as young as 14, had been in federal custody before being entrusted to the traffickers. 

“It is intolerable that human trafficking — modern-day slavery — could occur in our own backyard,” said Senator Rob Portman, Republican of Ohio and the chairman of the subcommittee. “But what makes the Marion cases even more alarming is that a U.S. government agency was responsible for delivering some of the victims into the hands of their abusers.” 

In addition to the Marion cases, the investigation found evidence that 13 other children had been trafficked after officials handed them over to adults who were supposed to care for them during their immigration proceedings. An additional 15 cases exhibited some signs of trafficking. 

The report also said that it was unclear how many of the approximately 90,000 children the agency had placed in the past two years fell prey to traffickers, including sex traffickers, because it does not keep track of such cases. 

“Whatever your views on immigration policy, everyone can agree that the administration has a responsibility to ensure the safety of the migrant kids that have entered government custody until their immigration court date,” Mr. Portman said. 

Continue reading this story

The Lynching of Trayvon Martin by George Zimmerman: a perspective

image of George Zimmerman (left) and Trayvon Martin (right) is from here

What follows was written by Carolyn Edgar of CNN and by Michael Skolnick of GlobalGrind. I found these excerpts posted together at Racialicious. I have inserted my own commentary in bold and brackets.

Trayvon Martin was a teenaged boy who was walking home from a convenience store. He was not engaged in an unlawful activity. [Other than being Black in the US and walking in a place where non-Blacks live.] He was in a place where he had a right to be – near the home of his father’s fiancée. [He should have had the right to be there.] George Zimmerman followed him [read: stalked him with the intention of doing harm], even after being told by the 911 dispatcher not to. [His fragrant disregard for the counsel of the 911 dispatcher demonstrates to me that he was wanting some form of public attention, or applause, for what he was about to do.] Zimmerman left his vehicle holding a loaded gun and began pursuing Martin on foot. It is plausible to infer that Zimmerman, not Martin, initiated the attack. The tapes indicate that Zimmerman may have been the aggressor in initiating contact with Martin. ["Plausible"? "May have been"? In what moral universe does disregarding the advice of someone trained to deal with crime and crisis, and instead stalking--with a deadly weapon--an innocent person, NOT constitute "initiating an attack"? How could a boy walking from a store where he purchased Skittles to the home of family constitute, and then screaming for help when his live was threatened, constitute "intitiating an attack"? The boy, by all accounts, was not seeking to engage in any way with the virulently white supremacist George Zimmerman. Would anyone think that a Black or Brown man similarly going after a white boy armed with Skittles would be regarded as anything other than behaving with an intent to kill?] Assuming the published reports are true, Martin, not Zimmerman, was exercising his lawful right to “stand his ground and meet force with force” by engaging in an altercation with Zimmerman. [Florida apparently has a law which allows (wealthier and whiter) people to murder (poorer and darker) people who are in their neighborhood if deemed "threatening". But last I heard, carrying Skittles and minding one's own business, such as by talking with a girlfriend on the phone, isn't threatening behavior to residents of a neighborhood.]

By questioning why Martin didn’t simply stop and answer Zimmerman’s questions, and characterizing Martin as the aggressor [aren't we supposed to teach kids not to talk to strangers?], Sanford Police Department Chief Bill Lee Jr. appears to have assessed the Martin case using the standards that apply to law enforcement officers. [This puts aside the rather unavoidable issue of white supremacist police forces systematically harassing and mass murdering people of color in the US.] This is wrong. Martin was under no legal duty to obey or to cooperate with Zimmerman in being questioned, because George Zimmerman is not a law enforcement officer. [And if he were? What right should a law enforcement officer have to stop such a youth?]

Being the local neighborhood watch captain [read: assassin or cold-blooded killer] does not elevate him to that status. Nor was Zimmerman asked by any law enforcement officer to assist in detaining Martin – in fact, he was specifically told not to follow Martin. Zimmerman is entitled to none of the presumptions available to law enforcement officers under Florida law. The presumptions of acting in good faith that are afforded to law enforcement officers do not apply to Zimmerman. [The presumption of acting in good faith should not apply to armed members of racist police forces.]
- Carolyn Edgar, CNN

I got a lot of emails about Trayvon. I have read a lot of articles. I have seen a lot of television segments. The message is consistent. Most of the commentators, writers, op-ed pages agree. Something went wrong. Trayvon was murdered. Racially profiled. Race. America’s [uber-white] elephant that never seems to leave the room. But, the part that doesn’t sit well with me is that all of the messengers of this message are all black too. I mean, it was only two weeks ago when almost every white person I knew was tweeting about stopping a brutal African warlord from killing more innocent children. [Yeah, about that: white celebs and news people, and their followers, are upset about human rights atrocities when whites don't commit them against Black and Brown people; let's see George Clooney speak out against white and male supremacy in the U.S.A.] And they even took thirty minutes out of their busy schedules to watch a movie about dude. They bought t-shirts. Some bracelets. Even tweeted at Rihanna to take a stance. But, a 17 year old American kid is followed and then ultimately killed by a neighborhood vigilante who happens to be carrying a semi-automatic weapon and my white friends are quiet. Eerily quiet. Not even a trending topic for the young man. [Thank you. And in a report about two kids who very negligently threw a shopping cart over a railing, causing a white woman below to be seriously injured, I took note of how many whites made sure to characterize the two youth as "thugs". The first comment on this story at Huffington Post reads as follows:

"WhatIThinkIs

2 Fans

05:24 PM on 11/04/2011

Charge them as adults with attempted murder. At 12 years old they should have known they could hurt someone. The severity of the charges must fit the severity of the crime."]

We’ve heard the 911 calls. We seen the 13 year old witness. We’ve read the letter from the alleged killer’s father. We listened to the anger of the family’s attorney. We’ve felt the pain of Trayvon’s mother. For heaven’s sake, for 24 hours he was a deceased John Doe at the hospital because even the police couldn’t believe that maybe he LIVES in the community.

There are still some facts to figure out. There are still some questions to be answered. But, let’s be clear. Let’s be very, very clear. Before the neighborhood watch captain, George Zimmerman, started following him against the better judgement of the 911 dispatcher. Before any altercation. Before any self-defense claim. Before Travyon’s cries for help were heard on the 911 tapes. Before the bullet hit him dead in the chest. Before all of this. He was suspicious. He was suspicious. suspicious. And you know, like I know, it wasn’t because of the hoodie or the jeans or the sneakers. Cause I had on that same outfit yesterday and no one called 911 saying I was just wandering around their neighborhood. It was because of one thing and one thing only. Trayvon is black.

- Michael Skolnick, GlobalGrind

Again, thank you, Michael.

See also *here* and *here* for more on some of these stories at Democracy Now!

What I take from all of this is that the genocide of Black, Brown, and Indigenous people is on-going without relief across the Americas, across Central Asia (including the mass murder of an Afghan family by Sgt. Robert Bales), and across the globe, by wealthy white male supremacists and their imperialist militias. We know, too, that millions of women and girls will be raped, tortured, and murdered by men again this year, for the "crime" of being female, and that the gynocide will not be reported or understood in these terms. 

 

 

The issue of what constitutes crime (including hate crime), terrorism, and human rights violation and who is immune from any and all laws supporting human rights, will not likely be discussed by the most structurally powerful members of my society who engage in criminal and violating behavior. What will be defended in court by supremely well-paid attorneys is the rights of militias and rich folks and whites--disproportionately male--to threaten, harass, terrorise, and mass murder Black, Brown, and Indigenous people by any means "necessary" to sustain and affirm het white male and imperialist corporate power.

To sign the petition calling for the arrest of the assassin of Trayvon Martin, please see *here*.

From CODE RED: Struggles for Children's and Women's Rights Must Challenge Men's Rights and Fathers' Wrongs

image is from here

What follows is from CODE RED, reprinted here with permission.

CODE RED is a feminist collective of Caribbean women and men. 

Our wordpress blog is an archive of some of our lively discussions and feature articles originally posted on facebook and tumblr. Follow us on twitter and tell your friends about us.

Join the conversation. All voices welcome!

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Spotlight on Paternity Testing During Child Month

In Barbados between April 1, 2010, and February 28 this year there were 737 cases of child abuse involving 1,061 children. Of that number 199 children suffered physical abuse, 151 sexual abuse, 612 neglect, 97 emotional abuse and two were abandoned.   Of course these figures do not reflect the countless other cases of child abuse that go unreported and the other institutionalized and normalized practices of child abuse that are not even considered such.

May is child month.  I learn today that the activities for Child Month include: the launch of a campaign against child abuse, a men’s forum to discuss DNA Testing And Implications For Men And Children, in addition to a forum for the youth on the topic Teenage Pregnancy: Life Before, Life After.

Just who is setting the children’s rights agenda in Barbados? With 1000+ children reported to have been abused  and the countless other cases which go unreported, how is a “a men’s forum to discuss DNA Testing And Implications For Men And Children” a legitimate child month activity? Just how do men’s rights and responsibilities with regards to paternity and paternity testing fall within the remit of an organisation set up to respond to the needs of children? Where are the children’s voices?

I’m not dismissing the relevance or usefulness of paternity testing.  Neither am I dismissing the premise of a men’s forum to discuss it.  Yes, men and women, mothers and fathers have a key in ensuring that children’s rights are not denied.  But theirs interests and agendas cannot be assumed to be the same.  I just think that child month should be about the issues which deny our children their right to a good life and also about the issues which our children define as important to them.

The UNICEF report on “Perceptions of, Attitudes to, and Opinions on Child Sexual Abuse in the Eastern Caribbean” revealed that:

a significant number of people consider that childhood ends at 13 years. This may help to explain why, in the focus group discussions, some men indicated that they considered girls to be legitimate sexual targets once girls have gone through puberty (this phrase was taken to mean that a girl had begun menstruating);

The bible says that when a woman goes through puberty she is ready, so if it happens at 11 she is ready (Male Focus Group Participant).

It also revealed that the majority of respondents agreed that ‘girls draw men’s sexual attention by the way they dress’.  While respondents may have been stating that they believe this to be a fact or that they in fact believed that girls actively seek men’s attention through their choice of dress, it is a belief that ultimately relieves men of their responsibility for their own behaviour and contributes to victim-blaming in cases of rape and sexual abuse.

Another key finding is that the majority of respondents said that if an adult in their family was sexually abusing a child within the family, they would always report it to the police.  However, when asked a related question, a significant number of people said they would try to sort out such a problem without informing the police.   Men were twice as likely as women respondents to state that they would sort it out without going to the police (34% of male respondents said this as compared to 17% of female respondents).

Clearly we have a long way to go towards recognising the right of all children to a good life. This includes moving away from viewing children as the property of their parents, a view that is very much prevalent in the Caribbean.  We also need to recognise that children’s rights must be addressed on their own terms. We cannot allow the children’s rights agenda to be hijacked by groups whose aims are often inimical to the rights of children.

We need children’s voices on the Children’s Rights agenda.  

Global Misopedia Ring Committing Atrocity Links White Het Men in Canada and the Netherlands

For anyone who thinks the distinct social/political/economic separation of these atrocities: incest, rape, pornography production, trafficking, pimping, procuring, sexual slavery, and gross sexual exploitation and assault of women and children is possible, or--if in even more denial--is actually occurring in any meaningful and "liberating" way, please pay attention to this story and any other story about internationally sexually abused children and women. And please note that the countries involved are sexually liberal, not so conservative. Please drop abstracted theory when reality is presenting itself to you in all its grim horror.

Please stop supporting actions and arguments that "some women" and "some children" are liberated by being able to do "sex work" in societies where both sex and work are exploited to practically incomprehensible and soul-destroying levels. The understanding here of what constitutes liberation is not individualistic, but is collectivist. While some are enslaved and raped, what is the political function of arguments that "some of us" aren't harmed by gross sexual and economic exploitation? How, exactly, does that help the most exploited and harmed?

And, please also note that media will always make it seem as if white het men are heroes, even when that is the key population involved in sexually assaulting girls and women internationally. It is, primarily, women and girls of all colors who are involved in activist and other social efforts to stop prostitution, trafficking, and sexual slavery. Please keep that in mind as you read what follows. Because whether the issue is child sexual abuse, poverty and the rampant spread of disease, such as in Haiti, or nuclear power plant horror and terrorism, such as that which is going on in Japan currently, it has been women at the front lines of activism, advocating for radical social change, for decades.

What follows is cross-posted from *here*. But you can also link back by clicking on the title just below.

Europol's Rob Wainwright says police arrested 184 suspects in a global investigation into a Dutch-based international pedophile ring. Peter Dejong/Associated Press

Global pedophile ring probe nets 2 Canadian charges

Online forum involved rescue of child victims of abuse in 30 countries

CBC News

Posted: Mar 16, 2011 8:24 AM CST

Last Updated: Mar 16, 2011 11:03 AM CST

Beginning of Story Content

Two Canadian men have been charged in connection with an alleged international pedophile ring based in the Netherlands that involved the rescue of 230 children.

The charges in Ontario and Saskatchewan come as police in Europe said Wednesday they had rescued the child victims of abuse and arrested 184 suspects, part of a three-year investigation involving law enforcement officials from 13 countries, including Canada.

Philip Publuske, 40, has been charged with one count of possessing child pornography and one count of distributing child pornography, Waterloo Regional Police spokesman Olaf Heinzel told CBC News.

Publuske, who has been in custody since November, has a lengthy criminal record, including for sexual assault and possession of child pornography, police said.

Meanwhile, Saskatoon police said John William Lapage, 68, of Abernethy, Sask., has been charged with accessing child pornography, possessing child pornography and making child pornography available.

There was no word yet on whether any of the victims or other suspects are Canadian, but police said 670 suspects have been identified around the world.

Europol, the European Union police agency, said the investigation code-named Operation Rescue has identified and rescued children in more than 30 countries.

The alleged ring was based around an online forum and was "probably the largest online pedophile network in the world," Europol director Rob Wainwright said Wednesday.

The forum, based in Amsterdam, had up to 70,000 members, police said.

With files from The Associated Press

 

Related Links

Border child-porn busts on rise: customs

 

Notes on Predation and Affection: When is a Hug not Just a Hug?

image is from here

I've been dealing a lot lately with this matter of how we communicate, physically and emotionally, and whether it is meaningfully loving or respectful to the recipient. How words or other actions are received does matter--it's not just the intentions (if good) that matter. And if my actions are received as abusive or hurtful when they are, to me, intended to be loving, then something is off somewhere. It may mean the recipient isn't capable of receiving love. Or it could be that they are so triggered when approached, due to past aggression and assault, that any kindness if physically initiated by someone else, can feel like another threat or an impending assault. Or it may be that I'm doing something I'm not aware of--subconsciously; I might be callously and selfishly disregarding someone's body language that is not welcoming me to come closer. Or it may be that the other person has a structural political relationship to me, with me in a position of power over them, that I'm unwilling to be appropriately away of. Breaches of safety and consent can happen in many different ways.

I know a woman, a white woman who is many years my senior, who likes to hug me. She comes right up when she sees me and hugs me. What is she intending to communicate? Probably some degree of affection. How do I receive it? As a kind of violation. Why?

Because I grew up feeling like my body wasn't really mine. I grew up feeling like it existed for others to use, to do with what they wanted for their own satisfactions. By age eight I had been molested. By age thirteen I had been sexually assaulted. And in my adult life I gave myself to a relationship with a very sexually selfish man who contacted me when he wanted sex--and that's the only time he would contact me, generally. He'd call from motel rooms and request my presence, which is to say, my absence. He didn't want me, really. He wanted my body to function to please him. To bring him to orgasm. That's what he wanted and that's what he requested. He never kissed me--not once. He never expressed love for me. He only thanked me for coming by when he was done with me.

I grew up in a generation where children were taught to obey adults; to do as they say. To hug if asked to hug. To let adults pick me up if they wished to. Whatever they wanted to do, the message to me and most children of my era was "adults get to decide how and when they have physical access to you". "To say no is to be rude and spoiled and selfish."

I grew up letting people have access to me. "Consensually". Except with the assault. That was in no way consensual, although the predator probably got to think it was because I was petrified and silent during the entire assault. Well, I did manage to say I had to go. I had to leave. He ignored me. So it was like I was silent. I was also afraid if I angered him he'd kill me. Or do something worse than killing me. But he kind of did that anyway.

There are different social rules depending on where one lives. Things are very different in Japan, for example, than in many parts of the U.S. And while I may send out hugs to many people in Japan right now, as they find out who among their friends and loved ones, relatives, neighbors, have died from the tsunami or earthquake, they may not welcome my hug. Men especially. But I'm a huggy kind of person. Unless I get clear messages from someone that they don't wish to be hugged, I'll assume they welcome one.

That's exactly how that white woman is. She is a very affectionate person. Very warm. Not predatory. Except when she was getting to know me she shared with me some things that made me uncomfortable. She shared things that I felt were inappropriate for me to know. She also touched me in ways that didn't feel okay to me.

I tried to express to her that I wasn't comfortable with some of what had happened between us. She seemed to understand. She had worked as a psychotherapist, so I didn't think it would take too much explanation on my part. But, whenever she sees me, which is not often as I don't go out much, she comes over and hugs me, no matter my body language. Is she being insensitive? Probably. Is she being predatory? No. But it feels a bit scary to me to see her coming towards me, whenever I see her. And it's partly because she was inappropriate with me, to me, in some ways in our past. I won't go into the details, but to me she crossed some lines and I was left feeling uncomfortable and unsafe. This doesn't mean she is an unsafe person to be around. These distinctions are tricky.

I am faced with having to write to her to ask her not to do that. I will ask her not to hug me because lately I am dealing with this whole issue of who gets to have access to me. To my body. And the answer is no one does unless I welcome it, explicitly. But I live in a society, in a particular collection of cultures--and there are several I live in--where people having access to me is assumed to be okay. For example, among many middle aged white gay men, kissing on the cheek or the lips when meeting is acceptable behavior for many. Not for me. I don't want anyone kissing me unless we are intimate friends. But culturally it is part of "what happens" that is supposed to be okay.

Men at a gathering, at a party, who feel free with their kisses, are not free to kiss me--which hasn't stopped them. I don't want to be kissed or hugged unless... unless I want to be. And honestly that can be welcomed by me one day and not on another. That's how it goes with me. I try not to go outside if I'm not feeling like being touched at all, because when I do, let's say to go grocery shopping, and someone--anyone at all--bumps into me, I feel physically violated and emotionally triggered. So rather than inflict that on myself and give others the sense that they've committed some great offence when all they did was sway too far in a supermarket aisle, I'll stay home.

On the macro scale, adults feel entitled to have physical (and sexual) access to children; men feel entitled to have physical and sexual access to women; whites feel entitled to have people of color meet their needs in various ways--for example to have people of color do most of the hard labor in the world so that whites can purchase inexpensive clothes and eat food from far away. There are whole systems--economic, social, and sexual--that are built on these entitlements and which operate with these assumptions of who should have access to whom, and in what ways.

On the micro level, it can be hard to see the larger patterns and the political imperatives that underlie them. I feel threatened by a very warm woman who probably means me no harm. And I don't mean my friends in Japan harm when I see them and hug them. But there it is: invasion of people's bodies happens regardless of anyone' intentions to not be harmful. I'd say it is my responsibility to find out what someone else is comfortable with. Because the Japanese woman I know who is married to a Japanese man might be comfortable with me hugging her, but he may not be comfortable receiving my hug of him. So when I communicate to her, I might say that I'm sending a hug. But I won't say that to him. There is likely to be a lot of grief happening in the next days in Japan, as many people find out friends and relatives and loved ones perished in the earthquake and subsequent tsunami. I hope on the non-material level, I send what is useful and requested. Too often, I think, we send what occurs to us to send--materially and emotionally--because it makes us feel better to do so, or because it is what we are accustomed to doing.

It is for me, I think, to write to the white woman who likes to hug me, here in the U.S. and to let her know that unless I open my arms to welcome an embrace, I'd prefer she not do so. It's about the best I can do, for now. If she asks why, I'll try and explain that it is because I need to have more control over who has access to me physically, if and when it is possible. And that because she is someone who does respect boundaries that are established, I know I am safe to express this need to her. That wasn't the case when I was a child. But it is now. I'm male, after all. And my body isn't targeted, usually, for others to touch and violate. The white woman's body is targeted, however. So even while I may be uncomfortable with her hugs, she more than likely has to contend with being physically approached and violated far more than I do.

On the macro level, girls and women worldwide are being physically and sexually violated often. Daily. Hourly. Minute by minute. This is acceptable to many men; it is wanted by many men; it is desirable by many men. If it weren't, many men would stop it. Many men do not stop it. So it continues, because it meets the needs of those men.

What is tricky is that for those people--people such as children, people such as women--who are structurally, politically expected to do what others ask of them, how do we approach and answer this question: When does acceptance of a seemingly consensual hug or other physical or sexual act, become a way of appeasing someone who might reject you, insult you, hurt you, or kill you if you refused? What if the current person won't kill you, but you're triggered when hugged into a time when someone might have killed you, or where you felt paralysed and unable to speak out to say "No!"? And if someone shows no objection to contact, should we assume no harm or invasion is ever occurring? Should we assume that those macro political patterns aren't being reinforced when men behave as men are socialised to behave--too often taking what is wanted and not bothering to find out what is genuinely welcomed and wanted?

In the Melinda Stratton vs. Ken Thompson child abuse case, guess which one is in jail? Here's a clue: not him.

Australian mother imprisoned

The story behind the Australian mother in your Amsterdam  prison. 

Her young son convinces her that he is being sexually molested by his father. 

She turned to the Family Court to protect him. 

As research has shown in Australia mothers who do this are at high risk of being labelled as mad or bad and the children can be handed to those accused of abusing them.

Melinda Stratton is so convinced of the need to protect her son that, with signs that the Family Court will most probably hand her son to the man he says is abusing him, she abandons her house, car, relatives and career and flees overseas.

The father is allowed by the court to publicise (using all forms of international media) that the mother is mentally ill and dangerous.

The mother is located in Europe and, despite not being convicted of any crime, is imprisoned indefinitely while her 6 year-old child is snatched from her and placed in state care, allegedly having been allowed to visit her for one hour in over a month. The father also prevents her family any contact with the boy.

While, thanks to media coverage, the father has gained universal sympathy, all Australians should be concerned and ask: 

If, as Ken Thompson states, this woman is mentally ill, why is she in jail,  not in psychiatric care?

And if, as he maintains, she has committed no crime, why is she a prisoner “awaiting extradition”?

Thirdly, why is the father still allowed to promote his version of events why the mother is gagged by S121 of the Family Law Act?

And finally, what is happening to this child clearly constitutes child abuse by Australian authorities and is in breach of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child.

Sincerely,

Concerned citizens of Australia

All that is above was sent to me. But I am certain of this: her story can be multiplied by a million, and yet men think they don't get justice in courtrooms across the globe. Why? Because they don't recognise injustice against women and children as injustice. "Injustice" and "unfairness" in the patriarchal mind, means "men not treated the way any given man demands to be treated." I'll add that if you're a woman who is not white, who is poor, who is battered, your chances of being helped by courtrooms virtually disappears--because you're so much less likely to ever get inside one.

And, if you're white and a woman and charge a man with crimes he commits that society doesn't want to deal with, you won't likely be believed either. But feminist groups are working to ensure that courtrooms are less patriarchal and misogynistic. Meanwhile, FR groups complain and complain about things like "She broke my computer and the courts didn't punish her enough!!!" When women's bones and wills are broken my men, there's no injustice done. Inside patriarchal societies which means most on Earth, only his experience of reality matters. He speaks Truth. She speaks distortions. So he says.

For more, please see below, which is from *here*.

What About Melinda Stratton's side of the Story?

The news articles are flying in supporting a potential sexual abuser and claiming that Melinda Stratton is mentally ill. Mental illness is the only pathetic explanation as to why a business women would run away from everything that is familiar to her and Andrew. If there was a criminal background, it would be featured, but no Melinda Stratton has nothing but the opinion of a court ordered psych.

Ken Thompson has certainly been around pushing his views to all that challenge until most people just give in and say, "Oh...Um...yes, shes crazy and your not an abuser". 

 

Note the word most. The exclusion is the community of REAL mothers and children who have been through this and know what Melinda has gone through. Lets face it, experts get paid for their opinion at the end of the day and I am sure some are willing to alter some to get a nice big payout at the end of the day. I place my bets on experience.

In Australia, we now have grown up children who have been forced by court order to stay with an abusive parent. No law is going to stop them from speaking out in the end as Australian jurisdiction only reaches so far.

Hope Beyond Tragedy: To ANY QUEER, LESBIAN, OR GAY YOUTH: Reach out to those you know who will not hurt you. Find support. WE ARE HERE FOR YOU. Suicide is a terribly permanent solution to a temporary problem. Love exists for you.

image is from here

image is from here

To any queer youth of any color or age--any gay boys, lesbian girls, transgender teens, intersex or intergender children, teens, and young adults reading this, please do one thing: get support from adults and peers who care about you and find support instead of committing suicide. We are here for you (click this link).  

Find adults who will listen but who will not exploit you. We are here for you (click this link). 

Find compassionate people who understand the pain, isolation, and ridicule and torment that can come with being young and not heterosexual or "normally" gendered. You are fine the way you are. There are people out in the world who will respect you and emotionally support you without harassing and exploiting you. We are here for you (click this link). 

Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, and Transgender (GLBT) Youth Support Line
800-850-8078
Gay & Transgender Hate Crime Hotline
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With condolences to all the loved ones of each of these youth and teenagers who took their own lives. And to all queer youth and adults who are bullied, harassed, exploited, abused, and neglected: there is support, help, and hope for you. We are here for you (click this link).

When I was 16, my first ever boyfriend (who was 15) was taken away from me, moved clear away, by his evil-acting step-father who didn't want his step-son being anything other than heterosexual. I was never identified as heterosexual, and I always knew other queer youth, which helped me feel not entirely alone. I am the only out gay, lesbian, transgender, intersex, intergender, or bi person in my family, however, which has done nothing to make me feel less alone.

My boyfriend and I saw another queer youth, more targetable than we were, enduring grotesque levels of harassment and also rejection at home. We stood with him when walking down the hallways, whenever possible. Of course that meant people would assume we were gay too. Well, we were.

The stories which follow of teen gay male suicides are so frequent lately that it's nearly impossible to keep track of the details of each boy's own struggles leading up to his death. What we know is that a form of U.S. terrorism more benignly called heterosexism, homophobia, lesbophobia, and transphobia in school systems and beyond them remains rampant. This form of terrorism, against children and young adults of all genders, all ages, all colors and cultures and ethnicities, will not be dealt with appropriately because, in general, school administrators want to keep their schools pro-heterosexual and anti-gay/lesbian/transgender/intersex. That's the truth of it. Now, how do we deal with that level of institutionalised anti-queer bias and bigotry? We support our youth, for one thing. Out loud. Not only out of view. And we demand more from heterosexist society and its protectors, because our youth need more protection that does heterosexism. Heterosexism isn't being threatened with extinction anywhere by anything. But our youth are taking their own lives at an alarming rate.

Below are too many new stories of gay boys losing their lives for no good reason at all. They want to escape humiliation and emotional torment and pain. But surely our community can be publicly supportive in ways that we have not, as yet, been, in order to help these children and young adults know there is hope beyond the torment. The last piece in this post is a message from a popular U.S. white gay activist and writer and his spouse, on their hell in high school and love together beyond it.

This first boy, Asher Brown, came out as gay to his parents in the morning. And later that day he committed suicide due to being bullied.

From LGBTQ Nation:

With heartfelt condolences for all the loved ones who grieve and remember these gay youth and one gay adult.

From LGBTQ Nation:

Indiana teen’s suicide thought to be result of anti-gay bullying

LGBTQ Nation • Tuesday, September 14, 2010 • Comments (10)
 

A 15-year-old Indiana teen took his own life last week in what is thought to be another suicide at least partially connected to school bullying, a result of the teen’s perceived sexual orientation.

Billy Lucas (via Facebook)

Billy (William) Lucas, a student at Greensburg Community High School in Greensburg, IN, was was found dead in a barn at his grandmother’s home Thursday evening — he had hanged himself.
Friends of Lucas say that he had been tormented for years. [WTHR-TV]

“He was threatened to get beat up every day,” friend and classmate Nick Hughes said. “Sometimes in classes, kids would act like they were going to punch him and stuff and push him.”
“Some people at school called him names,” Hughes said, saying most of those names questioned Lucas’ sexual orientation, and that Lucas, for the most part, did little to defend himself.
“He would try to but people would just try to break him down with words and stuff and just pick on him,” Hughes said.

Decatur County Coroner Doug Banks said Lucas left a note, but that it didn’t refer to bullying or blame anyone; Lucas reportedly never self-identified as gay.

A Facebook memorial page created in Lucas’ honor, begins with this bio: “Everyone made fun of him at school and he couldn’t take it anymore so he decided to end his life”.

Related Posts:

• Rutgers student jumps to his death after roommate posts video of gay encounter on the internet
• Gay teen dies after 10 days on life support, following suicide attempt over anti-gay bullying
• Another suicide: Houston teen, victim of anti-gay bullying, shoots himself
• California boy on life support after suicide attempt -- another case of anti-gay bullying
• Dan Savage has a message for gay teens facing adversity: 'It gets better'

*          *          *

From Queerty.com:

BULLIED TO DEATH: Seth Walsh, 13, Dies After 10 Days On Life Support After Suicide Attempt

And just as we're saying goodbye to eighth-grader Asher Brown, who shot himself in the head after enduring anti-gay bullying at school, comes word fellow 13-year-old Seth Walsh died after 10 days on life support following a hanging attempt.

13 year old Seth Walsh, died of suicide attempt following anti-gay bullying

The Tehachapi, California teen spent the last few years being tormented by classmates at Jacobsen Middle School. He made it only two weeks into the current school year before being transferred to an independent study program.

Last Sunday, Sept. 19, he was found unconscious and not breathing after apparently trying to hang himself from a tree branch. He was airlifted to a local hospital, where he remained on life support until this afternoon, where he died surrounded by family. He leaves behind his grandmother Judy Walsh, mother Wendy Walsh, and three siblings, ages 11, 17, and 18. Police, meanwhile, say they cannot prosecute any of the kids responsible for his torment, since school bullying is not a crime. ("Several of the kids that we talked to broke down into tears," says Tehachapi Police Chief Jeff Kermode. "They had never expected an outcome such as this.")

His death follows Brown's suicide in Texas, and 15-year-old Billy Lucas in Indiana. Like Walsh, Lucas hanged himself after enduring relentless teasing and torment inside the walls of his school.

There will be a memorial service on Friday at 3:30pm at the Tehachapi First Baptist Church.

Go tell your sons and daughters, your brothers and sisters, your friends … that you love them. And then tell Kevin Jennings, President's Obama always-silent safe school czar and the founder of GLSEN, to start speaking the fuck up.

[Above, a YouTube tribute to Seth from what appears to be his sister. It includes the caption, "He wonderful this picture is because he's so happy :) I am too because I know he will be back. ... He will wake up we all know it."]

Read more: http://www.queerty.com/bullied-to-death-seth-walsh-13-dies-after-10-days-on-life-support-after-suicide-attempt-20100928/#ixzz10zVf0Pyc

From the comments posted *here*:

Frank Lundburg 1 hour ago

I denied myself the dignity of accepting I was gay until I was 50 years old. Before that I had worked for a governor(D) in Idaho...Looking back I was passed over for a lot of things which affected my career..."He's single and never been married" and stuff like that...At the time I didn't even believe I was gay -- In hindsight I've known since I was 5 years old...Regardless my fears and sometime's I suspect correctly folks perception of me cost me lots in my career and cost me lots in my confidence in myself...I'm 66 years old now and still don't feel free to be myself...And I actually think the folks I voted for two years ago are afraid of people like me...As liberals they know they should like gays but actually they don't like them very much...

From CNN:

 

 From Americablog Gay:

Another gay youth suicide -- roommate secretly filmed him hooking up, put video on twitter, kid killed himself shortly after

Posted by Joe Sudbay (DC) at 9/29/2010 03:56:00 PM

This story just hurts to read. It's painful:

A Rutgers University freshman killed himself after two classmates used a hidden dorm room camera to splash his sex life across the internet, sources told the Daily News.

A distraught Tyler Clementi, 18, left his wallet on the George Washington Bridge before plunging to his death in the Hudson River last Wednesday, sources said.

A Twitter post from one of the students accused of streaming the sexual encounter live on the internet indicated Clementi, a renowned high school violinist, was with another man.

"Roommate asked for the room till midnight," read the post from Dharun Ravi, 18. "I went into Molly's room and turned on my webcam. I saw him making out with a dude. Yay."

The Twitter post went up Sept. 19 - three days before Clementi's suicide.

So, awful. It just hurts.

There have been a number of teen suicides over the past couple weeks. Truth Wins Out reports "In September, there have been three gay teen suicides as a result of school bullying." That's just wrong.

What kind of messages were our elected leaders, like John McCain, Lindsey Graham and Mitch McConnell, sending to young LGBT Americans when those Senators launched their vicious, homophobic attacks on gay and lesbian servicemembers last week? They were denigrating the worth of all LGBT Americans. It was sick. And, those deranged, obsessed religious right-types, led by Tony Perkins and Maggie Gallagher, send the same message. It's pure hatred and it's despicable.

Over the past few days, several sent me the video Dan Savage and his husband, Terry, filmed for the It Gets Better Project. It does. Every gay kid should watch this. It does get better --- and it's worth it:

Portland is "Pornland" and Strip Club-City and that requires Pimps Sexually Buying, Renting, and Trafficking Girls: A True Story of Prostitution and Pimping from Nightline

image above, from here, is part of another ABC news program, Primetime

Please keep in mind what you are about to see is a story that doesn't include the most poor and most marginalised girls and women globally or even in North America who are lured or captured by pimps and slavers. The story you're about to watch is "the nicer end" of the spectrum of how pimps and slavers operate. It's the end that pro-pimp, pro-procurement activists and advocates claim is liberating for women and ought to be legally considered "free speech" or a "civil liberty". Just one question: Speech and liberty for which groups of oppressed people?

The following true story of the purchase and pimping of girls for men is brought to you tonight, in part, by Craigslist whose business motto ought to be: Promoting and Profiting from the Sex Trafficking of Girls for Men Was a Third of Our Business Revenues--until we were "censored". (Note: They were never censored. Anti-sex/pro-sexxxism pornographers, procurers, and slavers love to throw that term around as if they've ever been made to shut up and as if they aren't in the business of silencing women and girls by any means necessary.)

All that follows is from *here*. A video follows just after the title and date below. Click on the center of the image to start it.

In Search of Love: Teens Lured Into Sex Trade

Police Say Portland, Ore., is a Hub for Child Sex Trafficking

By SHARYN ALFONSI and URSULA FAHY

Sept. 22, 2010

The first time "Katie" danced at a strip club, she was 13, and in the seventh grade.

Not long before, the Oregon girl had gone on an ordinary outing to a mall in downtown Portland. She met some boys there and they invited her to a party in the suburbs. At the party, Katie met an older boy she would begin to date.

"He bought me a lot of things, like shoes, outfits and purses and stuff like that," said Katie, of J, who she began to think of as her boyfriend.

Before long, J told her he was having financial trouble, and he asked her if she would she dance, "just once," at a strip club, she said. Katie, who had only ever worn high heels to church and on special occasions, soon was forced into working as a stripper and a street prostitute six days a week, she said.

Every year, at least 100,000 children are forced into prostitution in the United States, according to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children. And Portland, routinely voted one of the most livable cities in the country, hides a dark secret: It is a national hub for child sex trafficking, police and victims' advocates say. 

Children, young teens from all over the country, but mostly from the small towns of the Northwest, walk Portland's streets.

Katie's inauguration into the life was like that of countless other girls.

That first day at the strip club, she remembers looking out from the stage.

"It was gross," she told ABC News. "They're like older than my dad and grandpap and I just wanted to go home. "

She was told, "You can't go home, you have to finish your shift," she recalled. "And I was like, 'I don't work here,' and they were like, 'You do now.'"

"I realized I pretty much walked into a trap," she said.

Katie's is a classic case, said Sgt. Mike Geiger, who heads Portland's sexual assault detail. Cute young girls are being targeted by pimps.

"They look for them in the malls, the parks, on MySpace, Facebook," Geiger said. "(A)nd they look for them in the schools and walking downtown. They strike up a friendship with them."

Preying on Vulnerable Teens

Pimps fish for girls whose home lives are lacking in some way.

Every year, at least 100,000 children are forced into prostitution in the United States, according to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children.

(Getty Images)

If a girl indicates she's not getting enough attention or is having some other problems at home, "They will use the information and become their rescuer,'' said Geiger of the pimps' strategy. "'I can fix all that,' the pimps will say. 'I can give you a place to stay. You're way too mature to be treated like that.'"

The pimp will then give the girl clothes and other things, as well as affection, said Geiger. "And then the trap has sprung."

Ruth Roberts says that's what happened to her daughter.

"I was a single mom working really late ... making six figures,'' she said. "My daughter was getting A's and B's. Playing basketball. ... She had a good life, a good family, she didn't need anything."

But Roberts' daughter, then 16, met a guy on Portland's subway system. They "dated" and he convinced to her run away and live with him, Roberts said.

Soon, said Roberts, "She was walking the streets."

Forced to stroll Portland's notorious prostitution area around 82nd Avenue, referred to as "the track," even in the bitter cold.

Often, though, according to Roberts, her daughter was "rented" out on Craigslist.com.

Roberts said she spent her life savings trying to find her daughter and rescue her from the streets and from her pimp.

But her daughter, Roberts said, was afraid to leave. Her pimp once handcuffed her to a steering wheel of a car while he disappeared into a house, Roberts said her daughter told her. The pimp returned covered in blood, changed his shirt, and they went out to eat.

"She thinks he killed someone," Roberts said.

It is this fear that routinely keeps girls on the stroll.

Katie obediently worked the strip clubs by day and the track by night. At just 13 years old, she often would get picked up by johns within minutes of walking "the track."

She said she lived with J and lived by his rules. Other girls would come and go, she said. She remembers one in particular who was about the same age as she was.

"He bought her," she told ABC News.

Pimp Tells Teen, 'There is No God Where You Live'

That girl would find a way to escape, and Katie said she dreamed of doing the same.

"I just prayed," she said. "I was, like, crying and then he came out and he was like, 'What are you doing?' and I said, 'Praying.' And he said, 'Didn't I tell you there is no God where you live?'"

Michelle Alston knows that desperation first hand. She said her mother was prostitute, and at age 13, she decided to follow in her footsteps.

"When you go out there you risk getting robbed, raped, beat,'' she said. "You're getting in a car with someone you don't know. You risk that. ... Do I think it's worth it? No, but at the time it's all I knew."

Even though she was only 13 when she started, Alston said that sometimes she would have to lie about her age, when the john wanted someone younger.

"That's what they liked,'' she said.

When she was 14, Alston was introduced to the Internet and decided to go into business for herself.

"I would post online, Craigslist, City Vibe, Arrows Guide,'' she said. More than a dozen girls worked for her, she said, and she would post pictures of other girls, along with information about them, their fee and a phone number.

At 17, she was arrested and charged with "compelling and promoting prostitution."

She was a teenaged female pimp.

"I don't like that term,'' she told ABC, saying that she preferred to think of herself as a "financial advisor."
"I'd advise them to put their finances in my hands," she said.

Alston served three years in prison. She was pregnant when she began her sentence and gave birth in prison to a baby girl.

Helping women and girls to escape prostitution is fraught with challenges, experts say. For one, they are often treated as criminals, though they are just children and many have been forced into sex work.

"They might say to you, 'I've lived through more than most 40 year olds,' but then they say 'Oh, and I really love Justin Bieber,'" said Esther Nelson, a victims' advocate in Portland.

Nelson said she now sees girls forced into prostitution who are coming from and going to all parts of the country -- Atlanta, Hawaii, Chicago, New Orleans.

The city of Portland is home to more than 100 strip clubs and massage parlors, making it, per capita, the largest legal commercial sex industry in the nation.

"We have a very vibrant sex industry that is considered legitimate," she said. "And when you have that, you find the exploitation of children, because the sex industry is built on the exploitation of innocent people."

Police say Nelson is witnessing the results of sophisticated human trafficking now run by gangs who've realized it's often easier and more profitable to move girls than it is to move drugs.

Girls Branded With their Pimps' Logos

Authorities have many troubling stories to tell of the ways in which the girls are abused and victimized.
"People have been gang raped, tied up in Saran Wrap," Nelson said. "We're talking about 13-year-old girls left for dead in their hotel rooms without water or food for days. Pimps put logos on their bodies and they're treated like animals."

Geiger said Portland is badly in need of more shelters to help give the teen prostitutes a safe gateway off the streets.

"Often they end up in a juvenile detention center with less resources than they deserve," he said.

More often than not, Nelson said, the girls return to the street.

Escaping the Life
Katie was able to escape her pimp after waiting weeks for a bed in a shelter.

Roberts' daughter is no longer working as a prostitute, she said. But the young woman remains fearful that her pimp will find her.

Alston, who now works at a restaurant, said she hopes the family profession stops with her. She plans to shelter her curly-haired daughter, who she said has her hazel eyes, as much as possible.

"I want her to be successful and happy,'' she said. "I just want her to have everything I didn't."

U.S. Defence Department Employees and Contractors Secretly Purchase Photographs of Children Being Raped and are Not Charged with Committing Any Crime: Anything Wrong with That Picture?

image is from here

Who, exactly, is the U.S. defence department defending? What it tells us is that it is fighting terrorism--searching, scouring the globe for those awful terrorists who have no regard whatsoever for human life; terrorists who would commit atrocity without thinking twice about it. The Pentagon tells us it is in the business of rooting out this level of grotesque and inexcusable inhumanity.

But when we examine the evidence of what the Pentagon does and doesn't consider criminal, we are led to a different conclusion about is function. The new answer appears to that the Defence Department defends terrorist rapers of children and women, and terrorist murderers of people of color who live in countries our troops militarily occupy. So the Pentagon, in other words, is pro-terror, pro-violence, and pro-violation unless or until a rich white het guy who works for the U.S. government is murdered by someone other than the U.S government. (Because when the U.S. government's military murders its own soldiers, that is called, perversely, "friendly fire".)

Only to someone in tremendous denial does the fact that the Pentagon is in the business of genocidal slaughter and serial rape come across as implausible. Denial is a fundamental value, however, in a society that thrives on such abuse and deems it "necessary" for maintaining "democracy" and "freedom" (for a few rich white het men).

What are the military's rapists and rape-defenders' public reasons for participating in networks of child sexual slavery and trafficking? What governing principles are being defended when rapers and consumers of rape are defended and deemed innocent of committing any crime?

Why, if the U.S. government is genuinely against the practice of rape and child sexual assault, would the crime of possession of child pornography be overlooked by prosecutors working within the U.S. Defence Department? Why, also, are street prostitutes, poor Mexican migrant workers, U.S. Muslim citizens, and Black adults driving cars down public roads all stereotyped and flagged as criminals and terrorists? To state outright that there's a racist, classist, misogynist, and child-hating "double standard" doesn't begin to describe this travesty.

Tragically, this behavior by rich and powerful white het men is entirely consistent with the unprofessed not-so-public values of the Pentagon. Not only do their employees and contractors value and profit from the murder of innocent and generally poor people of color. They also value treating human life (that is not that of the few white rich and powerful white het men) as if it is worthless. Thus these elite predators treat as acceptable the possession of photographic evidence of child rape. Child pornography is, when it exists in computers, electronically purchased evidence which, in and of itself, is a crucial and additional part of the crime committed. To rape is child is one kind of heinous act. One might, if humane, make a case that it is an act of terrorism. To record the rape and mass distribute the violation of the child is an exponential expansion of the violation and loss of control of the children so raped.

image is from here

People who are not elites--whether U.S. male soldiers, female U.S. soldiers routinely raped by those male soldiers, civilians sexually and otherwise assaulted and traumatised in countries occupied militarily by the U.S., or trafficked and incested children--apparently exist to be used, violated, terrorised, and thrown away. Welcome to the actual ethical standards and practices of the employees and employers of the U.S. armed services: pro-terror and anti-freedom.

I found what follows at the following site/link:  

MSTnews: 
Your online resource for everything about Military Sexual Trauma

Pentagon declined to investigate hundreds of purchases of child pornography

A 2006 Immigration and Customs Enforcement investigation into the purchase of child pornography online turned up more than 250 civilian and military employees of the Defense Department — including some with the highest available security clearance — who used credit cards or PayPal to purchase images of children in sexual situations. But the Pentagon investigated only a handful of the cases, Defense Department records show.

The cases turned up during a 2006 ICE inquiry, called Project Flicker, which targeted overseas processing of child-porn payments. As part of the probe, ICE investigators gained access to the names and credit card information of more than 5,000 Americans who had subscribed to websites offering images of child pornography. Many of those individuals provided military email addresses or physical addresses with Army or fleet ZIP codes when they purchased the subscriptions.

In a related inquiry, the Pentagon’s Defense Criminal Investigative Service (DCIS) cross-checked the ICE list against military databases to come up with a list of Defense employees and contractors who appeared to be guilty of purchasing child pornography. The names included staffers for the secretary of defense, contractors for the ultra-secretive National Security Agency, and a program manager at the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency. But the DCIS opened investigations into only 20 percent of the individuals identified, and succeeded in prosecuting just a handful.

The Boston Globe first reported the Pentagon’s role in Project Flicker in July, citing DCIS investigative reports (PDF) showing that at least 30 Defense Department employees were investigated.

But new Project Flicker investigative reports obtained by The Upshot through the Freedom of Information Act, which you can read here, show that DCIS investigators identified 264 Defense employees or contractors who had purchased child pornography online. Astonishingly, nine of those had “Top Secret Sensitive Compartmentalized Information” security clearances, meaning they had access to the nation’s most sensitive secrets. All told, 76 of the individuals had Secret or higher clearances. But DCIS investigated only 52 of the suspects, and just 10 were ever charged with viewing or purchasing child pornography. Without greater public disclosure of how these cases wound down, it’s impossible to know how or whether any of the names listed in the Project Flicker papers came in for additional scrutiny. It’s conceivable that some of them were picked up by local law enforcement, but it seems likely that most of the people flagged by the investigation did not have their military careers disrupted in the context of the DCIS inquiry.




Among those charged were Gary Douglass Grant, a captain in the Army Reserves and a judge advocate general, or military prosecutor. After investigators executing a search warrant found child pornography on his computer, he pleaded guilty last year to state charges of possession of obscene matter of a minor in a sexual act in California. Others included contractors for the NSA with Top Secret clearances; one of them — a former contractor — fled the country after being indicted and is believed to be in Libya.

But the vast majority of those investigated, including an active-duty lieutenant colonel in the Army and an official in the office of the secretary of defense, were never charged. On top of that, 212 people on ICE’s list were never investigated at all.

According to the records, DCIS prioritized the investigations by focusing on people who had security clearances — since those who have a taste for child pornography can be vulnerable to blackmail and espionage. The documents show that the probe then concentrated on people who had been previously suspected of or convicted of sex crimes, or had access to children as part of their Defense Department duties. But at least some of the people on the Project Flicker list with security clearances were never pursued and could possibly remain on the job: DCIS only investigated 52 people, and 76 of those on the Project Flicker list had clearances.

A DCIS spokesman didn’t return phone calls. But the agency’s own documents obtained via The Upshot’s FOIA request indicate that the decision to press investigations forward hinged largely on questions of the resources available to the investigators. “Due to DCIS headquarters’ direction and other DCIS investigative priorities, this investigation is cancelled” is a common summation in the files.

A source familiar with the Project Flicker investigations — who requested anonymity because public disclosure could jeopardize this person’s job — confirmed that departmental resources, and priorities, were decisive factors in letting inquiries lapse.

DCIS is primarily tasked with rooting out contractor fraud and investigating security breaches; its 400 staffers were already plenty busy before Project Flicker dropped 264 more names onto their caseloads. And child pornography investigations are difficult to prosecute. Many judges wouldn’t issue search warrants based on years-old evidence saying the targets subscribed to a kiddie porn website once.

“We were stuck in a situation where we had some great information, but didn’t have the resources to run with it,” the source told The Upshot. Many of the investigative reports obtained by The Upshot end with a similar citation of scarce resources:

Of course, other federal agencies, including ICE and the FBI, may have prosecuted some of the Project Flicker names the DCIS ignored. But that’s unlikely, given that some of the DCIS investigations were closed due to lack of cooperation from ICE.

In one case, involving an Army Reserve corporal in the Pittsburgh area, a DCIS agent expressed exasperation after repeatedly trying to get ICE to collaborate with him on the investigation: “Based upon the complete non-responsiveness of ICE … it is recommended that [the] matter be closed.”

As for the 212 Project Flicker names that DCIS didn’t investigate, the source familiar with the investigation said there was no systematic effort to inform their superiors or commanding officers of their suspected purchases of child pornography.

source
Published: September 5th, 2010 at 2:14