Tag: child abuse

Rate of sexual abuse of kids is highest among religious Zionist sector

Students in religious public schools in Israel are at a higher risk of sexual harassment and assault than any other of the Jewish education streams, a new study examining cases of sexual abuse from the religious Zionist sector by the Ne’emanei Torah Va’avodah movement has found.

“[These results] are a first step in the necessary in-depth discussions that oblige us to fight this phenomenon, recognize it, and to wake up from the illusion that a separated society [of men and women] is a guarantee of preventing harm.” Ne’emanei Torah Va’avodah’s Shmuel Shatach

Researcher Ariel Finkelstein analyzed the scope and profile of sexual abuse victims in Israeli local authorities’ social services departments in 2020, by sector or stream.

In Israel, there are a number of educational streams: Secular public school (Mamlachti), religious public school (Mamlachti Dati) and ultra-Orthodox schools, which are either private or semi-private.

The distribution of the data on sexual abuse was filtered by sector, according to the type of educational stream where the victims are currently or were educated in their childhood.

Keep reading

First arrest made in Utah County ritualistic child sex abuse investigation

The Utah County Sheriff’s Office has arrested a suspect in an ongoing ritualistic child sex abuse investigation.

Former therapist David Hamblin, 68, was previously charged with 18 counts of sexual assault. He was taken into custody Wednesday morning and booked on the following:

  • 3 counts of sodomy on a child
  • Rape of a child
  • 2 counts of aggravated sexual abuse of a child
  • Lewdness involving a child

According to records obtained by FOX 13 News, Hamblin had previously confessed to sexually assaulting at least one of his female family members in an undercover phone recording.

“I am sorry for raping you,” Hamblin reportedly said. “I’m not saying it isn’t true… I’m not saying somebody in my body didn’t do it.”

The Utah County Attorney’s Office dropped all charges.

Hamblin lost his license and was excommunicated from The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

In an interview with FOX 13 News in April, alleged victim Brett Bluth described a long period of abuse and grooming by Hamblin as he tried to “heal” Bluth of his homosexuality.

Keep reading

Brands blast Twitter for ads next to child pornography accounts

Some major advertisers including Dyson, Mazda, Forbes and PBS Kids have suspended their marketing campaigns or removed their ads from parts of Twitter because their promotions appeared alongside tweets soliciting child pornography, the companies told Reuters.

DIRECTV and Thoughtworks also told Reuters late on Wednesday they have paused their advertising on Twitter.

Brands ranging from Walt Disney Co, NBCUniversal and Coca-Cola Co to a children’s hospital were among more than 30 advertisers that appeared on the profile pages of Twitter accounts peddling links to the exploitative material, according to a Reuters review of accounts identified in new research about child sex abuse online from cybersecurity group Ghost Data.

Some of tweets include key words related to “rape” and “teens,” and appeared alongside promoted tweets from corporate advertisers, the Reuters review found. In one example, a promoted tweet for shoe and accessories brand Cole Haan appeared next to a tweet in which a user said they were “trading teen/child” content.

“We’re horrified,” David Maddocks, brand president at Cole Haan, told Reuters after being notified that the company’s ads appeared alongside such tweets. “Either Twitter is going to fix this, or we’ll fix it by any means we can, which includes not buying Twitter ads.”

In another example, a user tweeted searching for content of “Yung girls ONLY, NO Boys,” which was immediately followed by a promoted tweet for Texas-based Scottish Rite Children’s Hospital. Scottish Rite did not return multiple requests for comment.

Keep reading

FBI Whistleblower Alleges Bureau Took Agents Off Child Sex Abuse Cases To Pursue Political Probes

The House Judiciary Committee Republicans released a letter this week that they sent to FBI Director Christopher Wray that featured claims from a whistleblower from the Bureau who claims that FBI agents were moved off child sex abuse cases to work on political investigations.

“We continue to hear from brave whistleblowers about disturbing conduct at the Federal Bureau of Investigation, including politicization within the Washington Field Office (WFO),” said Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH), Ranking Member on the Committee, at the start of the letter. “On July 27, 2022, we wrote to you about protected whistleblower disclosures that FBI officials including an Assistant Special Agent in Charge from the WFO-were pressuring agents to reclassify cases as ‘domestic violent extremism’ (DVEs) even if the cases do not meet the criteria for such a classification.”

The letter stated that since then, the Committee has learned of new whistleblowers who allege that the Bureau is “deliberately manipulating the way case files related to January 6 investigations are maintained in order to create a false and misleading narrative that domestic violent extremism is increasing around the country.”

The letter goes on to state how the FBI allegedly overstates the domestic violent extremism threats in the U.S. and how the Bureau has allegedly “not followed regular procedure” with respect to January 6 cases.

“The manipulative casefile practice creates false and misleading crime statistics,” the whistleblower stated. “Instead of hundreds of investigations stemming from a single, black swan incident at the Capitol, FBI and DOJ officials point to significant increases in domestic violent extremism and terrorism around the United States.”

“In other words, the FBI’s case categorization creates the illusion that threats from DVE are present in jurisdictions across the nation, when in reality they all stem from the same related investigation concerning the actions at the Capitol on January 6,” Jordan’s letter stated. “Such an artificial case categorization scheme allows FBI leadership to misleadingly point to ‘significant’ increases in DVE threats nationwide. These allegations are consistent with disclosures we have received from other whistleblowers that high-ranking FBI officials–including a senior WFO official–are pressing front-line agents to categorize cases as DVE matters to fit a political narrative.”

Keep reading

Biden signs bill eliminating civil statute of limitations for child sex abuse victims

President Biden on Friday signed a bill that will eliminate the statute of limitations for people who were sexually abused as minors to file civil claims.

The Eliminating Limits to Justice for Child Sex Abuse Victims Act was passed by the House by voice vote on Tuesday after passing the Senate by unanimous consent in March.

The bill eliminates time constraints for survivors to file civil claims related to sex abuse crimes against minors, including forced labor, sex trafficking, sexual abuse and sexual exploitation of children.

Previously, minors who survived such abuse were able to file federal claims until they reached the age of 28 or until a decade after the violation or injury was discovered.

No federal statute of limitations was in place for criminal claims regarding child sex abuse.

Keep reading

State Lawmaker Advised Mormon Bishop Against Reporting Church Member Who Sexually Abused Daughters, Lawsuit Filings Say

A Utah state representative told a Mormon bishop not to report a church member’s sexual abuse, advice that led to seven years of rape and abuse committed by the church member against his own daughters, according to new lawsuit documents.

State Rep. Merrill Nelson (R-UT), a prominent lawyer for the Mormon church, allegedly answered the first call from a help line when Bishop John Herrod told him that Arizona church member Paul Adams had admitted to sexually abusing two of his daughters. For more than two years, Nelson communicated with Herrod and another bishop who knew about the abuse allegations, according to call records, the Associated Press reported.

Nelson told Herrod “that he could be sued if he reported, and the instruction by counsel not to report Paul [Adams] to the authorities was the law in Arizona and had nothing to do with Church doctrine,” according to the plaintiff’s filings. However, as the AP reported, Arizona law allows blanket immunity for those who report child sexual abuse or neglect.

The sex abuser’s two daughters and one of his sons are trying to gain access to records from the Mormon church, but the church has refused them based on confidentiality. After a county judge ruled in the victims’ favor to see the records, the Mormon church took the case to the Court of Appeals.

Keep reading

Former Utah mayor, bishop arrested for sex abuse of multiple children, including toddlers

A former bishop of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has been arrested as part of an ongoing sex abuse investigation involving multiple victims over the course of several decades.

Carl Johnson, 77, was arrested in Orem on Wednesday and booked into the Davis County Jail on seven counts of aggravated sexual abuse of a child.

Detectives say Johnson abused children as young as 2 years old and held numerous positions of trust in the Church, including as a bishop. Johnson also served as Mayor of West Bountiful City in the 90s.

“In all these cases, the victims were told not to tell anyone else about what happened to them. In some cases, these crimes were suppressed in one way or another by Johnson when any disclosures were made. Johnson used his position of trust to influence any disclosures,” a police affidavit says.

Keep reading

Prosecutor for State’s Child Protection Division Arrested on Multiple Charges for Preying on Children

For 12 years, before he retired without notice in 2020, Gary Lee Bell was the assistant attorney general from the Utah Attorney General’s Office where he worked in the Child Protection Division, prosecuting individuals who harmed children. His years of service are now being called into question, however, as he was arrested this month for that very act.

Bell was arrested on August 24th by Utah County sheriff’s deputies and charged with six counts of sexual exploitation of a minor. According to police, the investigation into Bell was launched on May 22, 2022, after they received a tip about child sex abuse material being uploaded to social media.

According to the tip, submitted to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, Bell was distributing images and videos on an unnamed social media app of children under the age of 10 being sexually abused.

Keep reading

Former US Postal Service employee was removed from Georgia’s sex offender registry only to re-offend months later

Stacy Keith Wisener was removed from Georgia’s sex offender registry in 2017 by a Paulding County Superior Court judge. A few months later, Wisener began sexually molesting an 11-year-old girl. The abuse continued for approximately four years, the Justice Department reported.

The now 60-year-old former U.S. Postal Service employee was sentenced to three decades in prison for abusing the young girl, producing child pornography, and stealing mail.

“Wisener’s decision to continue to exploit children, even after working to get off the sex offender registry, now puts him in prison for decades,” said Keri Farley, Special Agent in Charge of FBI Atlanta.

Wisener was placed on Georgia’s sex offender registry in 2003 after he pleaded guilty to molesting a child under the age of 16. For that crime, Wisener dodged jail time and was instead sentenced to probation.

Wisener remained on the registry for 14 years. He petitioned the court in 2017, asking to be removed from the list, and his request was granted. A few months later, Wisener began abusing his next underage victim.

Keep reading

Utah FBI employee charged with sexually abusing multiple children

A man who works for the Federal Bureau of Investigation was arrested last week and charged with molesting multiple children.

Robert Alexander Smith, 65, faces four 1st-degree felony counts of aggravated sexual abuse of a child, four class-A misdemeanor counts of lewdness involving a child, and two class-B misdemeanor counts of lewdness.

According to court documents, Smith was arrested after a young girl told her mom in June that she wanted to talk about something “very uncomfortable.” She said that on multiple occasions, Smith had forced her to touch him inappropriately under his clothes in 2020.

Interviews were then conducted with the girl, as well as four other girls who said Smith had engaged with them in inappropriate ways. One of the girls said Smith forced her to do the same thing as he did with the first victim, and three other girls said Smith had touched them inappropriately under their clothing.

The arrest report states that Smith “occupied a position of special trust as it pertains to the victims in this case.”

Keep reading