Tag: rape

Outcry Erupts as California Prepares to Release ‘Pillowcase Rapist’ Who Terrorized Dozens of Women

At some point, Americans must recognize that the people who run their institutions care nothing for their interests.

According to KTLA in Los Angeles, local officials have protested a decision to release a violent serial rapist into the Los Angeles County community of Juniper Hills.

Meanwhile, concerned residents of the nearby city of Palmdale, nestled in California’s Antelope Valley, have also objected to the planned placement of 73-year-old Christopher Hubbart, known as the “Pillowcase Rapist,” so near to their homes.

On Monday, Los Angeles County Supervisor Kathryn Barger set forth her objections in a letter to Judge Robert S. Harrison of the Los Angeles County Superior Court, which has jurisdiction over the placement site.

“There are 25 homes within a square mile of the nominated site,” Barger wrote. “Single women and women with children live in those homes. A resident who identified herself as having been a victim of sex trafficking, a rape survivor, and now suffers from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder would have to live near this Sexually Violent Predator in perpetuity, along with her daughter.”

Indeed, Hubbart’s diabolical history of violence against women should preclude him from ever enjoying even limited freedom.

“A man who has admitted to raping over 40 women and suspected of raping dozens more is not fit for release or community reintegration at any level. Christopher Hubbart belongs in a locked facility where there is no chance of him ever again harming another human being,” Barger concluded.

Hubbart’s 40 confessed rapes constitute by far the worst part of this story. But government officials’ unfathomable behavior makes for a shameful subtext.

According to the Antelope Valley Press, officials placed Hubbart in that same community ten years ago. In 2014, the serial rapist occupied a house in Lake Los Angeles, east of Palmdale, before violating the terms of his release and returning to Coalinga State Hospital.

Palmdale Mayor Austin Bishop echoed Barger’s objections.

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Afghan Migrant Was Granted Swedish Citizenship After Raping Multiple Women, Can Not Be Deported As A Result

An Afghan migrant was granted citizenship after raping multiple women at the hospital where he worked. The unnamed 24-year-old arrived in Sweden as an “unaccompanied minor” in 2016, and committed the assaults while employed at the Akademiska Hospital in Uppsala.

The migrant worked at the hospital from November of 2019 to May 31 of this year, though worked his last shift as a healthcare assistant in August of 2023.

According to Samnytt, the suspect, who moved from Afghanistan to Sweden when he was 16 years old as an “unaccompanied minor,” is believed to have carried out his attack against his first two victims in December of 2021 while on shift at the hospital.

Hospital Human Resources Chief Olivia Laurent Wijkmark confirmed that the migrant’s role involved watching over patients who “require supervision,” suggesting they were particularly vulnerable.

Though the migrant is said to have no previous criminal history, police remanded the asylum seeker into custody last weekend under suspicion he had raped a third victim at a residential address in Uppsala last month. The Västmanland District Court explained in its remand order that “there are probable grounds to suspect the 24-year-old of three rapes.”

However, because the migrant had been granted Swedish citizenship in May of this year, he will not be deported, even if found guilty.

This is not the first time an Afghan migrant has avoided deportation in Sweden. As previously reported by The Publica, two Afghan migrants who received Swedish citizenship in 2020 were recently convicted of raping a young girl and filming the assault.

Despite threatening to murder the girl if she resisted them, Irshad Ahmad and Elham Bahram, both of whom are 16 years old, received light prison sentences and were able to avoid deportation.

In July, the Malmö District Court convicted Irshad of several disturbing crimes, including “aggravated rape against a child, offensive photography, child pornography, and additional assaults against two other girls,” but was only sentenced to 10 months in youth residential care for being a minor.

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Illegal migrant accused of raping Nantucket pre-teen child went free on bail before ICE could nab him

Local authorities in Massachusetts allowed an illegal migrant accused of raping a pre-teen child to walk free on bail — and never called immigration authorities, according to a shocking report from ICE.

Bryan Daniel Aldana-Arevalo, 28, was charged on July 26 on the wealthy island of Nantucket with one count of rape of a child with a 10-year age difference and two counts of indecent assault and battery on a child under 14, authorities said.

Three days later, he was released on bail by Nantucket District Court.

ICE officers ultimately arrested Aldana-Arevalo on Sept. 10 after tracking him down.

He is in federal custody awaiting his day in immigration court.

ICE Boston Field Office Director Todd M. Lyons called Aldana-Arevalo’s alleged crimes both “detestable and disturbing.”

“He represents a significant danger to the children of our Massachusetts communities. ERO [ICE Enforcement and Removal Operations] Boston will not tolerate such a threat to the most vulnerable of our population. We will continue to prioritize the safety of our public by arresting and removing egregious noncitizen offenders from our New England neighborhoods,” said Lyons.

Aldana-Arevalo made his way to the island of Nantucket after sneaking into the US from El Salvador.

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Exposed: The US and Canadian Funding Behind Israeli Soldiers Accused of Rape

Cuffed and blindfolded 24 hours a day. Confined to animal pens. Attacked by dogs. This is reportedly the treatment of Palestinian detainees at Sde Teiman, an Israeli military base in the Naqab desert. While claims of torture and abuse at the facility began circulating in December, the Israeli military did not open an investigation into the allegations until July 29, when 10 Israeli soldiers were detained on suspicion of sexually abusing a detainee.

In response to the soldiers’ detention, a mob of right-wing extremists stormed Sde Teiman and later broke into the Beit Lid military base, where the detained soldiers were being held. Among those detained were soldiers from the Force 100 unit, which was resurrected at the onset of the war and has been responsible for guarding the detainees at Sde Teiman. Masked soldiers, wearing black shirts emblazoned with the unit’s logo—a snake inside the Jewish Star of David—were seen participating in the protests.

Several Israeli lawmakers took part in the riots, including Otzma Yehudit’s (Jewish Power) Heritage Minister Amichay Eliyahu, Religious Zionism member of parliament, Zvi Sukkot, and parliamentary members of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud party, Nissim Vaturi and Tally Gotliv.

Protests have continued to erupt in support of the soldiers, including, most recently, outside an Israeli High Court hearing on the case on August 7, 2024.

As allegations of torture and sexual abuse at Israel’s Sde Teiman detention facility escalate and Israeli Military Police prepare to conclude their investigation and file indictments against the suspects, MintPress uncovers the financial and political infrastructure, including from the U.S. and Canada, backing these soldiers through tax-exempt organizations and crowdfunding platforms. This marks a disturbing shift in global support for human rights violations, now extending even to those implicated in the Israeli military’s acts of sexual violence.

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German police kept silent about rape of 12-year-old girl by Syrian national for 3 weeks

A 12-year-old girl is alleged to have been raped by a Syrian in a Braunschweig swimming pool, but the police kept the case quiet for several weeks. No measures are being taken against the alleged perpetrator.

Police and public prosecutors in Braunschweig are investigating a Syrian teen who allegedly raped a 12-year-old girl in a local swimming pool called the Wasserwelt (Water World). The 15-year-old foreigner first molested the child in the pool and then raped her in a changing room, reports the Braunschweiger Zeitung. The crime is said to have taken place on Aug. 10, at 5 p.m. but details are only being made public now, as the police kept mum about the case for three weeks.

The investigation was only confirmed after a reader contacted the regional newspaper, which then inquired with the authorities. According to the police, the incident had been kept quiet because the victim was still so young.

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German envoy admits he spread lie about 7 October mass rapes

The German ambassador in Tel Aviv has admitted that he spread fabricated Israeli atrocity propaganda intended to give credence to Israel’s debunked claims of mass rapes by Palestinian fighters on 7 October 2023.

“I regret having believed – like so many others – that that suicide letter was real. It turns out it was a fake,” Ambassador Steffen Seibert posted on X, formerly Twitter, on Thursday. “I find this an appalling act given that so many real lives were taken at the Nova festival, so many crimes committed, so many souls destroyed.”

Last week, Seibert shared a letter purporting to be from an Israeli who died by suicide because he was unable to live with the trauma he experienced at the Supernova rave on 7 October.

The fake letter was widely disseminated after it was shared by two notorious Israeli propagandists, Hen Mazzig, who translated it to English, and Aviva Klompas.

Mazzig had claimed that “After miraculously surviving the October 7 massacre, the young Israeli man decided to end his life after witnessing too many horrors, including the rape of a girl.”

“The overwhelming weight of everything he saw, heard and experienced, along with his inability to save the girl being assaulted nearby, made him feel incapable of continuing his life.”

Mazzig works for an Israeli propaganda outfit called the Tel Aviv Institute. Klompas, a former Israeli government speechwriter, is the CEO of another lobby group called Boundless Israel.

Both have been very active in pushing Israel’s debunked claims of mass rapes on 7 October.

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Palestinian detainees electrocuted, raped with rifles by Israeli soldiers: HRW

Israeli troops are torturing Palestinians from Gaza, including through the use of electric shocks and anal rape using M-16 rifle butts, according to the testimony of a Palestinian medic published by Human Rights Watch (HRW) on 27 August.

Walid Khalili, a Palestinian paramedic and ambulance driver, was abducted by Israeli soldiers in Gaza in November and taken to the Sde Teiman and Negev (Al-Naqab) detention centers in Israel.

Israeli troops abducted Khalili after he was dispatched to the Tal al-Hawa neighborhood of Gaza City to rescue four wounded men.

When he arrived, he saw Israeli troops execute the men on Mughrabi Street, near the Labor Ministry building.

“I saw the four men being executed in cold blood,” Khalili said. “I saw it with my own eyes, I was three meters away. When they were shot, I hid under the ambulance, and next to it there was a building, so then I ran inside the building. The Israeli forces raided the building and started yelling at me to raise my hands.”

Soldiers kicked and beat Khalili with their rifle butts, breaking his ribs, before transferring him to the Sde Teiman facility in southern Israel.

HRW writes that Israeli soldiers dragged him on the ground, removed the cuffs on his ankles, and dressed him in adult diapers. They then took him to a warehouse where dozens of detainees, also in diapers, were suspended from the ceiling, with the chains attached to their square metal handcuffs.

Khalili said he was suspended from a chain so his feet would not touch the ground. The soldiers dressed him in a garment and a headband attached to wires. They shocked him with electricity and threw cold water on him every second day.

He told HRW, “The world was spinning around, and I fainted. They hit me with batons. I kept fainting and hallucinating. He kept asking me about the hostages, and moving Hamas hostages, and where I was on October 7. With every question I was electro-shocked to wake me up. He told me confess and we will stop torturing you.”

Every three days, he was taken to a new location and given an unknown drug in pill form before being interrogated further.

“The pill made me feel weird, it was the first time I have felt like this, as if my inner mind was speaking what was in my heart, not me. I felt like I’m flying. I saw hallucinations.”

An Arabic-speaking Israeli guard interrogated him, asking him about the captives taken by Hamas to Gaza on 7 October. Khalili said the interrogator knew “how many children I have, all their names, my address,” and threatened they would be killed if he did not confess.

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Why raping Palestinians is legitimate Israeli military practice

The Israeli sexual torture scandal, whereby nine soldiers were arrested on 29 July for allegedly physically and sexually torturing Palestinian men, was depicted in western media as a deviation from Israel’s usual torture methods.

The idea is that Israeli torturers of Palestinian prisoners do not usually subject them to rape.

Four of the arrested soldiers were later released following widespread riots.

The US State Department, presumably appalled by such torture, described a video reportedly showing the alleged rape as “horrific” and insisted that “[t]here ought to be zero tolerance for sexual abuse, rape of any detainee, period… If there are detainees who have been sexually assaulted or raped, the government of Israel, the IDF [Israeli army] need to fully investigate those actions and hold anyone responsible accountable to the full extent of the law”.

The White House, also presumably a stranger to the practice of abusing political prisoners held in US dungeons, remained calm but found reports of Israeli sexual torture “deeply concerning”.

The European Union followed suit and claimed to be “gravely concerned”.

But this is hardly a new development in the cruelty of the Israeli colonial-settler regime. The Israeli army has been systematically using physical and sexual torture against Palestinians since at least 1967, as human rights groups revealed years ago.

Indeed, sadism has been characteristic of the Zionist colonists’ treatment of Palestinians since the 1880s, as even Zionist leaders complained at the time.

This sadism and the sexual torture that often accompanies it are rooted not only in European colonial hubris but also in orientalist views that Arabs only “understand force” and are allegedly more susceptible to sexual torture than white Europeans.

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Israeli media publishes video of soldiers allegedly raping Palestinian detainee

Israeli media has published footage purportedly showing the moment soldiers in an infamous detention facility raped a Palestinian detainee.

Late last month, nine Israeli soldiers were arrested for the alleged rape of a Palestinian detained in Sde Teiman, a facility in southern Israel’s Negev desert.

Since Israel’s war on Gaza began in October, many Palestinians detained by Israeli forces have said they were sexually abused by troops at Sde Teiman.

However, no one had been arrested for the abuse until 29 July, when military police raided the facility, clashed with the soldiers and took them into custody.

The incident created a backlash in Israel, with a far-right mob, that included an MP and minister, storming the detention centre and a military court in protest against the arrests.

Israeli media has published footage purportedly showing the moment soldiers in an infamous detention facility raped a Palestinian detainee.

Late last month, nine Israeli soldiers were arrested for the alleged rape of a Palestinian detained in Sde Teiman, a facility in southern Israel’s Negev desert.

Since Israel’s war on Gaza began in October, many Palestinians detained by Israeli forces have said they were sexually abused by troops at Sde Teiman.

However, no one had been arrested for the abuse until 29 July, when military police raided the facility, clashed with the soldiers and took them into custody.

The incident created a backlash in Israel, with a far-right mob, that included an MP and minister, storming the detention centre and a military court in protest against the arrests.

On Tuesday, Channel 12 released a video reputedly of the moment the Palestinian was sexually abused.

He was taken to a field hospital at Sde Teiman with “a ruptured bowel, a severe injury to his anus, lung damage and broken ribs”, according to media reports.

The footage released by Channel 12, taken from evidence used in the investigation, shows detained Palestinians lying on the floor with their hands and eyes covered.

A group of reserve soldiers are then seen taking one of the detainees aside, then trying to hide their subsequent actions with riot shields.

The reservists are members of Force 100, a unit tasked with guarding the prisoners in Sde Teiman.

According to Channel 12, the suspects in the case were found to be lying on a polygraph test.

Two suspects were asked two identical questions: “Did you insert an object into the Palestinian’s anus during a search? and “Are you hiding the identity of the person who inserted an object into the Palestinian’s anus?”

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Israeli soldiers suspected of raping Palestinian prisoner arrested, sparking far-right riot

Nine Israeli soldiers in the notorious Sde Teiman detention centre were arrested on Monday on suspicion of raping a Palestinian detainee, sparking a riot where far-right activists and MPs stormed the facility.

Israeli military police raided Sde Teiman but were met with resistance by soldiers, who reportedly barricaded themselves into the facility and used pepper spray to defend themselves before eventually being taken into custody.

The soldiers were suspected of abusing a Palestinian detainee, who according to Arab48 is suffering from “a serious wound in his rectum area”.

The prisoner had been transferred from Sde Teiman in the Negev desert to a hospital in Beersheba, which is also in southern Israel. Haaretz said the prisoner is unable to walk.

The Israeli army said an investigation is underway.

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