It was a familiar opening.
"I hope you can help me with this as no one else seems concerned," the 40-year-old Winnipeg woman's email began.
Sadly, her story was somewhat familiar, too.
But with a twist.
She wrote of an attempted rape at a Caribbean resort last fall.
What it had done to her.
And -- this is where the twist comes in -- what she chose to do about it when her complaint went nowhere.
* * *
It happened early on the September morning her vacation was ending.
Janie -- the pseudonym she uses online -- was making her way home through the resort alone in the dark when she was grabbed from behind.
She screamed. Then she lost consciousness.
"When I came to, I was lying on my back with some... man sitting on my legs pinning me down. He just finished removing my camera from my purse. I tried to free myself but I was no match for him. He was strong and I'm a rather small person. I started screaming again, so he leaned forward and put his hand over my mouth."
She doesn't remember any pain when, later, he bit her hand as she clawed his face. What she remembers, Janie said, even in the dark, is the man's face.
"I looked him right in the eyes at that point, expecting an ugly monster of a man, but he wasn't.
"He tore angrily at my shorts and I yelled and screamed at him as he broke the zipper."
Just then, a resort worker happened by and her attacker fled.
Later that morning, as she was checking out, she reported the attack to someone at the reception desk. The bus to the airport was leaving at 9 a.m, less than six hours after the attack. Janie didn't bother filing a police report.
When she arrived home in Winnipeg, her parents drove her straight to Grace Hospital where Janie told staff what had happened.
She would go on to report the incident to the travel agency that booked her flight, which forwarded it to Air Canada Vacations. The company sent it to their representative in the Dominican Republic. That led to the resort responding with an investigation that went nowhere.
So she decided to do her own online investigation.
"On a travel website where tourists give their opinions of hotels and post pictures, I went through close to 1,000 pictures but it was worth my while. I found my rapist..."
The man she identified is a resort worker. Janie wondered how many times the man who attacked her in the dark had done it before.
"I wanted to do whatever it takes to protect other women from this man."
This is where the plot twist comes in. She began circulating the man's photo to friends all over North America on Facebook. But it wasn't just because she wanted to warn other women. Clearly, she wanted revenge.
"I'm just going to spread this," she decided. She had been diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder and was having nightmares. "This man has taken away my passion for travelling and tainted my favourite travel destination. Now, I don't want to go anywhere."
Then she wrote this:
"Mr. Sinclair, I don't know whether or not you can post his picture ..."
* * *
I called Janie this week.
Naturally, I was sympathetic.
But I was also disturbed about her putting someone's photo online, with the words RAPIST under it. I asked Janie what if she was wrong?
What if this wasn't the man who attacked her?
Eyewitness testimony is notoriously untrustworthy.
"I'm 100 per cent sure it was him," she said. "I would bet my life on it."
Then Janie asked me a question.
Was I going to use her real name?
"I don't want this coming from me," she said.
Janie wants anonymity, which is understandable for a sexual-assault victim. But there's no anonymity for the man she's accused. A man who hasn't even been charged with a crime, never mind convicted.
Except in the court of Facebook.
That isn't just a twist.
That's grossly twisted.
Convicted of rape in the court of Facebook By: Gordon Sinclair Jr.
Violence too much a part of life for aboriginal women By Angela Brown, The Daily Graphic
Violence affects many women, but more aboriginal women face deadly violence than any other group of women, an issue some groups feel needs more action.
Representatives from the Winnipeg group Mother of Red Nations (MORN) Women's Council of Manitoba Inc. spoke to community leaders Thursday in an effort to raise awareness about violence against aboriginal women.
During a 2 1/2 hour presentation at Portage la Prairie Friendship Centre, Rita Emerson, executive director for MORN, said the agency wanted to work with the community to help spread the word about the challenges aboriginal women face as victims of violence.
Emerson said she was also alarmed Portage has had two women missing in the community.
"We've been wanting to come to Portage because we are very worried about what is going on in this community in terms of the number of women that are being affected and missing," she said. "We are just trying to raise awareness."
During the session, followed by a panel discussion, a film was screened addressing the issue of the numbers of aboriginal women who are missing and murdered across Canada.
The Yellowhead Highway, most notably between Edmonton and Vancouver, has been an especially dangerous place for many aboriginal female hitchhikers who have gone missing.
Currently, the Winnipeg group, which acts as an advocate for aboriginal women, are touring many communities in Manitoba to increase awareness about the threat of violence to aboriginal women.
As part of a two-year project, MORN is initiating research to document and better understand the situation of aboriginal women in Manitoba who are affected by violence. The group is collecting research and developing a database on missing women. It hopes to engage community stakeholders in action, leading to the increased safety of aboriginal women and girls.
MORN's work will support the Native Women's Association of Canada's long-term research, education and policy making, through the Sisters in Spirit Initiative.
Through its work, MORN has identified 82 aboriginal women in Manitoba who have been missing or murdered since 1967. Over two-thirds of the women are under the age of 30.
The group is currently working with the Winnipeg police to develop a safety kit. It is also planning with Child Find Manitoba.
"We're working with them to end violence against aboriginal women and violence against any women," Emerson stressed.
She noted aboriginal women die as a result of violence at five times the rate of any other Canadian women.
Angela Roulette, from Portage's Women of Mother Earth Network, attended the meeting and agreed there needs to be more awareness about violence against women.
Article ID# 1455274
ALBUQUERQUE, N.M Updates!
This news update from ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. --
"I knew that the more bones that they found, the more chance that my daughter would be in that group." Daniel Valdez, father of identified victim
More Remains Found At West Mesa....Total Count Now At 13
UPDATED: February 27, 2009
Albuquerque police have discovered 13 sets of human remains on Albuquerque's west mesa in the past month. The site is on a plot of land at Dennis Chavez Boulevard and 118th Street SW. The first set of remains was discovered by two hikers in early February. Police have identified two of the remains ........
Log onto http://www.koat.com/ for updates and stay with Action 7 News for further details.
Related Stories:
February 26, 2009: Father Hopes Others Are Identified
February 25, 2009: Father Of Identified West Mesa Victim Speaks
February 25, 2009: 11th Body Found At West Mesa
February 24, 2009: Expert Offers Theory On West Mesa Remains
February 24, 2009: FBI To Help In West Mesa Remains Cases
February 24, 2009: Police: Four Bodies Added To Tally Of West Mesa Remains
February 23, 2009: Police Identify One Set Of Bones From Mesa
February 19, 2009: OMI Takes On West Mesa Bones Mystery
February 18, 2009: Search Deepens For More West Mesa Remains
February 13, 2009: Police Find More Human Remains
February 11, 2009: Search For Remains Continues Wednesday
http://www.koat.com/news/18812991/detail.html
http://www.koat.com/news/18798330/detail.html
Sphere: Related ContentThe Tale of a Poet Addicted to Tabloids: AN INTERVIEW WITH SHANNON STEWART
This from Holly/Admin,
Read this interview BY DANIELLE DEVEREAUX with Maisonnueve - Montreal,Quebec,Canada
When 63 women disappear and their body parts are found scattered about a pig farm, what can we say? Cringe, then go about our business? Against the disposable, flat world of our daily news, Shannon Stewart offers her own brand of witnessing.
Her latest poetry collection, Penny Dreadful (Signal Editions, 2008), places the missing women of Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside alongside poems gleaned from tabloids. The result—often fantastical, but never romanticized—is a jarring acknowledgement of the ways in which we are all implicated in the brutality and beauty of a world where facts are as lurid as fiction.
http://maisonneuve.org/index.php?&page_id=12&article_id=3206
Ontario-wide strategy needed for male sex abuse victims, inquiry told
February 27, 2009, EDT.By THE CANADIAN PRESS
CORNWALL, Ont. - Male victims of childhood sexual abuse need specialized support services and a provincial ombudsman dedicated to their plight, the Cornwall inquiry heard Friday as the $40-million probe drew to a close after three years of testimony.
The inquiry, established to examine institutional responses to allegations of sexual abuse in eastern Ontario, spent the majority of its final week hearing submissions dealing with allegations that a pedophile clan operated with impunity in the city for decades.
Lawyers at the inquiry cast the clan stories as fabrications spread by a misguided police officer and embraced by a panic-stricken community.
On Friday, the submissions focused on healing and reconciliation for the community and victims.
Following a complaint in 1992 that a former altar boy had been sexually abused by a priest and a probation officer, many others came forward to allege they had also been abused by prominent people decades ago.
Many of those complainants were men, and a lawyer for the counselling group The Men's Project said even though there were a lot of community services in the city at the time, none could adequately handle men's counselling.
"In fact, they had to bring in my client from Ottawa because they were the only ones with expertise to deal with this," David Bennett told the inquiry.
"Even though there were existing social services they just weren't able to deal with it and (that's) why there needs to be a specialized area."
Both The Men's Project and the Victims Group urged the commissioner to recommend that the Ontario government create victim treatment service centres for male survivors of sexual abuse provincewide.
Both groups also called for the province to create a sex abuse ombudsman.
"There has been a theme from survivors of not being believed, getting the run-around, being kept in the dark, which for some had the effect of re-victimization," the Men's Project said in its written submissions. "An ombudsman could rectify this."
In addition, the government needs to remedy how treatment for sexual abuse victims is funded, the Men's Project said.
Currently, the Ministry of Health and Long-Term Care assumes funding for recent sexual assault, but a year after the assault service is often refused and the person is referred to community services run by the Ministry of the Attorney General, the Men's Project said.
"Sexual abuse victims, either male or female, experience post-traumatic stress issues that can only be defined as complex, potentially disabling and requiring specialized treatment," the group said, in recommending the Health Ministry take responsibility for treatment funding.
The Men's Project said given the economic downturn they are worried the government will not have the resources to fund male sex abuse services. But it's too important not to, the group said.
"To not deal with this issue, to not meet it head on, not to implement these types of recommendations will cost the citizens of this province a great deal more," Bennett said.
The group Citizens for Community Renewal also pushed in their submissions for an apology to sex abuse victims and all citizens of Cornwall from the local bishop, the mayor and the premier.
Speaking in Amherstburg, Ont., on Friday, Premier Dalton McGuinty said he wouldn't comment until he has seen what Commissioner G. Normand Glaude has to say.
"I should wait for the report (and) see what recommendations flow from that," McGuinty said.
"Who knows, the report itself may even speak to that kind of a request."
A school resource officer program that has seen police officers in 22 high schools in Toronto should be extended throughout Ontario, the Cornwall Police Service said.
It has been successful and would foster communication between police and youth, Cornwall Police Chief Dan Parkinson said after the inquiry.
"It is for young people that they can speak to police officers, that the barrier of fear perhaps is somewhat reduced and police officers in the schools... are able to build those relationships," Parkinson said.
The police also recommended a review of privacy legislation and how it impacts sexual abuse investigations. Police are not necessarily able to inform the public of alleged child sexual abuse, lawyer John Callaghan said in an interview.
"We're asking that there be a review, not so that we disregard the other societal values (of right to privacy and presumption of innocence), but take another hard look as to under what circumstances and to make it clear when the police can tell the public about predators in their midst," Callaghan said.
-By Allison Jones in Toronto The Canadian Press, 2009
Publication Ban remains in Ivan Henry Case!
Name of 'other offender' in Ivan Henry case to remain private By Keith Fraser, The Province February 26, 2009
The B.C. Court of Appeal has decided to continue a ban on publication of the name of a man referred to only as the “other offender” in an alleged wrongful conviction case.
In January, the court ordered that the case of Ivan Henry, who was convicted in 1983 of a series of sexual assaults in Vancouver and has remained in jail since, be reopened following a review of his file by special prosecutors.
Henry has maintained he was wrongfully convicted and his lawyer argued that there were many similarities between Henry and the “other offender”. Special prosecutor David Crossin said while he didn’t know whether the other offender did Henry’s crimes, he had questions about the case.
The other offender’s lawyer argued in appeal court that media coverage had branded his client as being guilty of the sex assaults committed by Henry and asked that the ban, imposed on a temporary basis, be continued through the appeal.
B.C. Court of Appeal Madam Justice Mary Newbury today granted the application to extend the ban.
Links to the other offender surfaced as an offshoot to the Vancouver police investigation of serial killer Robert Pickton in 2002.
In March 1983, Henry was convicted of 10 sex offences involving eight women and in November of that year declared a dangerous offender and jailed indefinitely.
No date has yet been set for the re-opened appeal for Henry, who is expected at some point to apply for bail.
Violence Against Women: Most Pervasive Human Rights Violation
This note from Holly/Admin very interesting article over at Political Affairs Magazine and People's Voice.
Violence Against Women: Most Pervasive Human Rights Violation
By People's Voice Published: 02/26/2009
Original source: People's Voice (Canada)
As International Women's Day nears the century mark (the first IWD was held in 1911), women have made enormous progress in many respects. But the present global economic crisis will have a profound negative impact on women, and the long struggle to end violence against women remains far from victory. For the past decade, the United Nations has chosen an annual theme to mark International Women's Day. This year, the slogan is "Women and Men United to End Violence Against Women and Girls."
As UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon said on IWD 2007, "Violence against women and girls continues unabated in every continent, country and culture. It takes a devastating toll on women's lives, on their families, and on society as a whole. Most societies prohibit such violence – yet the reality is that too often, it is covered up or tacitly condoned."
Facts and figures from the United Nations Development Fund for Women (UNIFEM) show that this is the single most pervasive human rights violation on a global scale.
At least one out of every three women around the world has been beaten, coerced into sex, or otherwise abused in her lifetime – with the abuser usually someone known to her.
To read the two stories, check out the links!
http://www.politicalaffairs.net/article/articleview/8182/
Sphere: Related ContentPerry Dunlop broke rules: lawyer
By TREVOR PRITCHARD, STANDARD-FREEHOLDER
Former cop Perry Dunlop was an impediment to the Ontario Provincial Police's four-year Project Truth investigation, the Cornwall Public Inquiry heard Wednesday.
"It is obvious that the OPP, among other institutions, was at a loss in trying to deal with the roadblocks put in their way by Mr. Dunlop," argued the organization's lawyer, Neil Kozloff, during final submissions.
Launched in 1997, Project Truth was a four-year investigation by the OPP into allegations a ring of pedophiles preyed on children in the Cornwall area.
The probe was sparked by accusations unearthed by Dunlop, who was well-known in the Cornwall area for shining a light on allegations of sexual abuse.
While 15 men were charged during Project Truth, only one man was convicted in Ontario. Some had their charges stayed, some were acquitted, while others died before their trials.
Kozloff argued that Dunlop was given "three simple rules to follow" at the outset of Project Truth: to avoid contacting witnesses and victims, to not talk to the media, and to disclose any documents he had that were relevant to the criminal prosecutions.
"Perry Dunlop chose to break every one of those rules repeatedly," Kozloff said.
Project Truth's investigating officer, Tim Smith, was concerned that Dunlop's actions would deter complainants from coming forward and undermine public confidence in the investigation, said Kozloff.
The OPP was "at a loss" in dealing with Dunlop's actions, said Kozloff, and was "never able to deal effectively with the rumours, innuendo, half-truths and outright lies" that originated with the former Cornwall cop.
Dunlop refused to testify at the inquiry, and was jailed for seven months after being convicted of civil and criminal contempt.
Kozloff acknowledged the conviction rate for Project Truth was very low. But he told commissioner Normand Glaude that, in addition to Dunlop's involvement, the investigation was plagued by victims with failing memories, few supporting witnesses, and a lack of forensic evidence.
"What's clear, Mr. Commissioner, is that at the end of the day, it is unfair and unproductive to judge the quality of these police investigations solely on the outcome in court," he said.
Article ID# 1452343
Amount of historical sex abuse in Cornwall, Ont., not unique, lawyer says By: The Canadian Press
CORNWALL, Ont. - The Cornwall inquiry is hearing the amount of sexual abuse in the eastern Ontario city was no different than in any other Canadian community.
A lawyer for the Diocese of Alexandria-Cornwall is presenting closing submissions at the inquiry, which is examining institutional response decades ago to sex abuse allegations.
The community was gripped with rumours of a pedophile ring operated by high-profile local officials after scores of allegations against priests, probation officers and others emerged in the 1990s.
David Sherriff-Scott says the rate of sexual abuse in Cornwall is not out of the ordinary, but the public reaction made the situation different.
Sherriff-Scott says there was an "environment of ignorance" at the time, which extended to media coverage, and transformed rumours of a pedophile ring into public paranoia.
He also says then-police officer Perry Dunlop was largely responsible for those rumours.
Stop violence against women: Provocative new rape in conflict advert to appear in London tubes
Posted: 23 February 2009
London Tube advert part of major Amnesty International campaign to protect women and girls in conflict
Amnesty International has launched a two-week London Underground tube poster campaign to increase awareness of the prolific use of sexual violence as a weapon of war.
The striking image of an extended bullet with the caption 'rape is cheaper than bullets' is intended to provoke Tube travellers to text Amnesty International to find out more about its work to protect women and girls from violence in conflict.
The adverts are part of the organisation's wider Stop Violence Against Women Campaign and in particular its global campaign to ensure women and girls' needs and rights are upheld during conflicts and also in the peace and reconstructive stages.
Amnesty International UK Director Kate Allen said:
'The 'Bullet' ads send a clear message to Tube travellers that rape is one of the horrific realities of many wars which is rarely discussed.
'In previous and current conflicts, such as in Darfur and eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, hundreds of thousands of women and girls - some as young as six - are subjected to horrific acts of rape and sexual violence by armed forces and their perpetrators regularly go unpunished.
'Even one-off incidents of rape in war are recognised as war crimes but widespread systematic rape is considered to be a crime against humanity and Amnesty International is vigorously campaigning for an end to such atrocities. Globally, tougher measures need to be in place to protect women and girls in conflicts from this abuse, and those who carry out such acts have to be brought to justice.'
In a report produced last September, Amnesty International gathered testimonies from numerous girls and women who had been subjected to sexual violence in the escalating crisis in Democratic Republic of Congo.
One six-year-old girl was raped by a fighter from a rebel group and was later found to have developed a serious genital infection and severe psychological trauma from the attack.
Kate Allen continued:
'Sexual violence against women and girls is not only devastating and ruinous to the victim but it destabilises the family and the community at large. Unless we address human rights violations such as rape in conflict, then lasting peace and economic regeneration will be more difficult in the post-conflict stage.
'We have a global responsibility to do all we can to put a stop to such dreadful atrocities. So we're hoping that millions of Londoners will respond to these adverts and get involved with Amnesty International's Campaign to Stop Violence Against Women.'
The 'Bullet' adverts are appearing in the London Tube carriages across the London Underground Network from now until Wednesday 11 March, across International Women's Day which is celebrated on Sunday 8 March.
The advert was a joint design by Amnesty International and creative design agency, Different Kettle.
For more information on the campaign please visit: www.protectthehuman.com/women
Rape is cheaper than bullets by roger hollander
In the DRC’s troubled region of North Kivu, we are told that more than 2200 cases of rape and sexual violence were reported in the first six months of 2008. Of these only 150 cases were heard in court, and in only one case was the ...
http://rogerhollander.wordpress.com/2009/02/24/rape-is-cheaper-than-bullets
MediaArticles from the World Conference for Women's Shelters
Media
When dad is just bad
By Mindelle Jacobs Published: Wednesday, September 10, 2008
Read Full Story
Grandson recalls Gandhi lessons
Alexandra Zabjek, edmontonjournal.com Published: Wednesday, September 10, 2008
Read Full Story
Group wants funding to help women in crisis
5:45PM (LY, BLB)EDMONTON/630 CHED9/7/2008
Read Full Story
World's shelters for women under one roof for first time
Locally organized conference attracts 800 delegates
Alexandra Zabjek, The Edmonton Journal Published: 8:58 am
Read Full Story
Rape not just 'women's issue,' educator says
Both sexes must deal with gender violence
Alexandra Zabjek, The Edmonton JournalPublished: 1:31 am
Read Full Story
International Women's Shelters Conference.
Wed, September 10, 2008Edmonton Sun
Read Full Story
A promising beginning
The Edmonton Journal Published: Thursday, September 11
Read Full Story
Weaving banner helps bind women's spirits
Florence Loyie, The Edmonton Journal Published: 2:04 am
Read Full Story
IF YOU'RE NOT PART OF THE SOLUTION
Edmonton Sun, Graham Hicks Tue, September 9, 2008
Read Full Story
On front lines of domestic abuse
Carol Goar Sep 03, 2008 04:30 AM
Read Full Story
City set to host women’s shelter event
Posted By Geoff Dembicki (Examiner staff)
Read Full Story
http://www.womensshelter.ca/media_en.php
Sphere: Related ContentCanada not immune to illicit trade...
'A fundamental assault on liberties', By Florence Loyie, The Edmonton Journal
February 25, 2009
Just out of sight and mostly out of mind, traffickers make billions each year buying and selling something far more valuable than diamonds, gold or microprocessors, than insider stock tips or international state secrets.
Theirs is a black market some experts think could one day overtake drug trafficking and become, after arms dealing, the second-most profitable criminal activity on the planet.
The commodities on sale in this violent underworld, every day, everywhere? People.
The United Nations estimates that human trafficking generates up to $32 billion in illegal profits every year.
The International Labour Organization estimates there are between two and four million victims worldwide at any time. Eighty per cent of them are female and 50 per cent are under 18.
"You talk about human rights," says Joy Smith, a Conservative MP from Manitoba and the vice-chair of Parliament's standing committee on the status of women. "This is the ultimate human-rights issue of our time."
The RCMP estimates that 800 to 1,200 people in Canada have been victims of human trafficking, but some non-governmental organizations peg the figure as high as 15,000. An additional 1,500 to 2,200 people are trafficked annually from Canada into the United States, police believe.
The U.S. Department of State's recent annual Trafficking in Persons report pegs Canada as a source, destination and transit country for men, women and children trafficked for the purpose of commercial sexual exploitation or forced labour.
Smith has worked for years on the issue of human trafficking in Canada, Ukraine and Israel. "This is a growing problem in Canada," she says. "We don't know how many foreign victims are here, and Canadians are being victimized as well."
More needs to be done to educate the public and politicians about the impact of human trafficking, Smith says.
"We could do more to ensure traffickers are convicted and punished. We have the laws, but the onus is on the courts and prosecutors to make sure we have the evidence to follow through on convictions. And that just doesn't seem to happen."
Victims of human trafficking are tricked or lured by deception or physical force into captivity. Traffickers will use empty promises, lies, feigned love, intimidation, debt bondage, isolation, threats, physical and sexual abuse, starvation and even the force-feeding of drugs to control their victims.
It is a clandestine and violent world where victims are sold as chattel and discarded like rubbish or killed once they are no longer useful.
"There are aboriginal children who are being victimized," Smith says. "So-called friends will go to the reserves and talk to them. They will say come back to the city and they will get them a job. When they come to the city, sometimes their language is limited or they don't have city smarts, if you want to put it that way. They don't know how to protect themselves and they are forced into the sex trade. They are held as virtual prisoners."
Edmonton police say they are investigating several suspected human trafficking rings targeting vulnerable young Albertans, many of whom are forced into the sex trade in Las Vegas.
While police won't go into specifics, they say they have seen an increase in traffickers or recruiters using social-networking websites such as Facebook and Myspace to troll for victims.
"People, mostly woman, but some men, sadly have become a commodity that some gangs are putting on the shelf," says Staff Sgt. Kevin Galvin, head of the department's organized crime branch and gang unit.
"There is a lot of grooming that happens on social-networking sites," he says.
A recruiter will start up an online relationship, presenting himself as a high-roller with access to VIP rooms at nightclubs, expensive restaurants, drugs and all-night parties. He may appeal to a woman's vanity and tell her he can help her become a model or a singing star. There might even be a free trip or two.
But soon the party ends, and it's payback time. One night the young woman will be invited to a private party, where its a room full of men and herself, perhaps another girl or two. She will be told what is expected. If she resists, she will be gang raped and beaten. She will be threatened with death if she goes to the police. Her family will be threatened as well.
The victim is usually taken to another city, where she is further groomed for her new role, often by another woman. Then she will be taken over the border, usually to Las Vegas, where she will be used as a high-priced escort.
Or she might be moved from one Canadian city to another on a circuit of bawdy houses or massage parlours. Fear and embarrassment will likely keep her from telling her family.
Two years ago, vice detective Jim Morrissey was Edmonton's one-man human trafficking investigation unit, until the administration decided to reassign him.
It's not that his bosses think human trafficking is not a serious crime, says Morrissey. "My administrators made the decision that no municipal police force is really able to investigate human trafficking cases very well. We can handle a little piece of what is happening in our jurisdiction, but they are never a localized phenomenon, by their very nature. They travel the breadth of Canada. They travel over international borders."
The RCMP is mandated to deal with human trafficking, but they rely on municipal police investigators to identify victims. Like other major Canadian cities, Edmonton has international criminal rings running trafficked women through at any given time, says Morrissey. The problem is determining who is really a victim, Canadian or foreign.
"If she doesn't talk, or can't talk to me, or is afraid of me and won't tell anyone she was, in fact, trafficked, we'll just deport her and let the bad guys go," he says.
The other problem is that trafficked women never stay around long. They are usually moved every few weeks.
Last June, the federal government increased the temporary resident permits for foreign trafficking victims from 120 to 180 days.
During this 180 days, immigration officials determine whether a residency period of up to three years should be granted. Trafficking victims may apply for work permits, an option previously unavailable under Canadian law. Only four temporary resident permits were issued in 2007.
Foreign victims also have access to free medical care, dental care and counselling. Victim support services fall under provincial and territorial jurisdiction and do not all follow the same model.
Alberta is rewriting its victim support manual to include a module on human trafficking victims, said Carol Lemieux, a manager in victims programs for the Alberta Solicitor General and Public Security Department.
"Foreign victims may arrive with language barriers or they may have no identification or travel documents, so these are things support groups need to overcome," Lemieux says.
Sherilynn Trompetter, with the Alberta Coalition on Human Trafficking, says her group hopes to soon start training victim services volunteers in Edmonton, Calgary, Red Deer, Lac La Biche, Fort McMurray, Brooks, Airdrie, Cochrane, Lethbridge and Medicine Hat.
"We can't have a blanket solution for the entire province because the situation in Fort McMurray may look very different from Brooks, where you have a lot of people from Sudan," she says.
Crime Stoppers of Edmonton and northern Alberta recently produced two educational clips on human trafficking with Morrissey.
Executive director Flavia Robles said the 90-second clips are aimed at educating young Albertans, primarily girls, about how to protect themselves from human traffickers or pimps.
"You don't think it happens here, but it actually does," Robles says. "We really need to reach out to our youth, particularly girls, on how it happens and how to protect themselves and how drugs and gangs will get you there."
Benjamin Perrin, founder of the Calgary-based The Future Group, a non-government organization dedicated to combating human trafficking and the child sex trade, says most Canadians have no idea how bad the problem is in Canada. In 2003, a Calgary police investigation of bawdy houses called Operation Relaxation exposed a human-trafficking network that forced city officials to re-examine how they license massage parlours and the women who work in them, he says.
"Trafficking is essentially a new label for a very old form of exploitation," says Perrin, an associate professor at the University of British Columbia Faculty of Law and one of Canada's leading experts on human trafficking.
"People often have a vision in their minds of people being shipped in containers and locked away. Those extreme forms of trafficking do happen, and we find cases of fairly severe physical and sexual abuse and forcible confinement. But the modus operandi of Canadian traffickers is to use psychological manipulation or coercion."
Canadian traffickers run the gamut from street-gang thugs to organized criminal networks, he says.
Perrin, who is writing a book on human trafficking in Canada, says he expects traffickers to flock to the 2010 Olympics in Vancouver, since the crime has been linked to past major international sporting events.
Last November, his group released a 25-page report entitled "Faster, Higher, Stronger: Preventing Human Trafficking at the 2010 Olympics," which outlines measures taken by host countries of recent international sporting events.
The report found that at the 2006 FIFA World Cup in Germany there was a short-term increase in demand for prostitutes, but that extensive prevention campaigns, immigration controls and law-enforcement action likely prevented traffickers from filling that demand.
"It is disturbing to realize there are people who view other people as nothing more than a commodity to be bartered, Perrin says. "This issue for me is the most fundamental assault on human liberties that I have ever come into contact with."
Trafficking Facts
- A typical trafficker relocates his victims every 15 to 30 days.
- Most traffickers are the same nationality as their victims and have no criminal records.
- Trafficked people are most often forced into the sex trade or into work in construction, agriculture or the erotic entertainment industry.
- A foreign trafficking victim's journey from their country of origin into North America can take up to two years and can involve stops in up to eight countries.
Source: RCMP Gazette Magazine
Perry Dunlop crusade hampered pedophile investigation, Cornwall inquiry hears
Former cop's crusade hampered pedophile investigation, Cornwall inquiry hears
February 25, 2009, EDT.By Allison Jones, THE CANADIAN PRESS
CORNWALL, Ont. - The unearthing of sexual abuse allegations, rumours of a decades-old pedophile ring and derailed investigations and prosecutions all begin and end with Perry Dunlop, a public inquiry heard Wednesday.
While the former police constable set in motion the events that saw 15 people charged, any subsequent failings were largely of Dunlop's own making, a provincial police lawyer told the Cornwall inquiry.
When Ontario Provincial Police began probing child sexual abuse allegations brought forward by Dunlop, his refusal to co-operate with the force seriously impeded the Project Truth investigation, said lawyer Neil Kozloff.
"Dunlop's stated purposes of 'doing it for the kids' and 'doing it for the victims' were really excuses for his campaign of self-promotion and self-aggrandizement characterized by a callous indifference to the work of the police and the courts," Kozloff said in his submissions.
"The unfortunate consequence of his negligence was great harm to the proper administration of justice and to the community of Cornwall."
Beginning in 1992 with an allegation that a former altar boy had been sexually abused by a priest and probation officer, Dunlop sought to root out more alleged pedophiles. As people came forward with allegations of sexual abuse spanning decades, Dunlop became convinced it was the work of high-profile local officials operating a clandestine pedophile ring, the inquiry has heard.
Provincial police launched the Project Truth investigation in 1997 and ordered Dunlop to provide information gathered in his own off-hours investigation, to stop interviewing alleged victims and potential witnesses, and to stop spreading allegations through the media of a pedophile clan.
"Perry Dunlop chose to break every one of those rules repeatedly," Kozloff told the inquiry Wednesday.
He became an "impediment" to Project Truth and the provincial police were never "able to deal effectively with rumours, innuendoes, half-truths and outright lies that originated with Mr. Dunlop and his group," Kozloff said.
Of the 15 men charged, only a bus driver was convicted. Four died before their cases came to trial, four were acquitted, four had the charges against them withdrawn, and two had the charges against them stayed over delays.
It is unfair to judge a police investigation solely on the outcome in court, said Kozloff, who nevertheless went on to quote at length from various court decisions slamming Dunlop and blaming him for delays.
Project Truth concluded there was no evidence to support the pedophile clan theory, a conclusion that was confirmed "for all time" on June 28, 2007, Kozloff said.
It was on that day Ron Leroux, who had told Dunlop he witnessed a clan of pedophiles who wore robes, burned candles and sexually abused young boys during weekend meetings in the 1950s and early 1960s, told the inquiry that he fabricated the story.
Dunlop refused to testify at the inquiry and was jailed for seven months on civil and criminal contempt convictions.
Kozloff defended the integrity of Project Truth, but said if there were any shortcomings in how the force dealt both with Dunlop and with the sheer volume of complainants, much has changed since then.
"Hindsight is an excellent tool to assist us in developing better policies and procedures," Kozloff said. "Hindsight is not an appropriate tool to judge either the conduct of an individual or an institution."
The inquiry's mandate is to examine how local and provincial institutions handled allegations of sexual abuse decades ago.
The inquiry also heard Wednesday from the Children's Aid Society. It said the response to allegations of child sexual abuse may seem deeply flawed with the benefit of hindsight, but that the problems of the past have largely been corrected.
"There were many things done or not done in the past that when you look at them today seem illogical and primitive," said Michele Allinotte, representing the agency's local branch.
"(But) long before inquiry began, many of the problems discussed in evidence here had been addressed and corrected."
The Cornwall inquiry has spent three years and $40.8 million investigating decades-old institutional responses to sex abuse allegations.
The Children's Aid Society of the United Counties of Stormont, Dundas and Glengarry is just one of many institutions at the centre of the probe to tell the inquiry: that was then and this is now.
The Canadian Press, 2009
Childhood trauma has life-long effect on genes and the brain
This is from McGill University,
For more information go to the link below about this study.
http://www.mcgill.ca/newsroom/news/item/?item_id=104667
Study confirms effects of early environment in brains of suicide victims
McGill University and Douglas Institute scientists have discovered that childhood trauma can actually alter your DNA and shape the way your genes work. This confirms in humans earlier findings in rats, that maternal care plays a significant role in influencing the genes that control our stress response.
Using a sample of 36 brains; 12 suicide victims who were abused; 12 suicide victims who were not abused and 12 controls, the researchers discovered different epigenetic markings in the brains of the abused group. These markings influence the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) function, a stress-response which increases the risk of suicide.
This research builds upon findings published last May that showed how child abuse can leave epigenetic marks on DNA.
The research was funded by the Canadian Institutes for Health Research and the National Institute of Child Health and Development (USA).
Scars of child abuse reach down to genetic level, scientists find
Monday, February 23, 2009 CBC News
Child abuse early in life appears to permanently change how people respond to stress, say researchers in Montreal who studied the brains of suicide victims.
The team of scientists found early child abuse changed the expression of a gene that is important for responding to stress.
For the study, Prof. Michael Meaney of McGill University and his colleagues examined the brain tissue of 36 males in Quebec.
'Maybe we can create different interventions, say in adolescents, that will negate these negative impacts that have happened earlier.' — Dr. Stan Kutcher
Among the 36, 12 suffered severe childhood abuse, altering a gene that affects a person's response to trauma, the researchers reported in this week's issue of the journal Nature Neuroscience.
Those 12 were compared with the brains of 12 accident victims who had not been abused and 12 controls. The gene was not altered in either of these groups.
In a way, the researchers said, the men were programmed to be more vulnerable to overwhelming feelings of despair.
The study is the latest in the growing field of epigenetics: how our environment, including the social trauma or chemical substances, affects how our genes do their job and ultimately how they affect behaviour.
"The implications at this stage are you want to identify these people and then probably offer them some sort of intervention," said study co-author Moshe Szyf, an epigeneticist in McGill's department of pharmacology and therapeutics.
The goal, Szyf said, would be to find drugs that could reverse the changes, but researchers don't yet know how to do so.
"Maybe we can create different interventions, say in adolescents, that will negate these negative impacts that have happened earlier," said Dr. Stan Kutcher, a psychiatrist specializing in adolescent mental health at Dalhousie University in Halifax, who was not involved in the research.
"We don't know yet."
Like thermostat on high
Child abuse experts said the findings reinforce the importance of interventions to prevent abuse.
If children are abused early, they are flooded with stress-related hormones such as cortisol and adrenaline, said Louise Newman, a professor of perinatal and infant psychiatry at the University of Newcastle in Australia.
"This impacts directly on how the brain develops and the stress regulation mechanism. It becomes highly stressed so it's like setting the thermostat on high, setting up a system which regulates stress less efficiently," Newman said.
"Also it impacts on the area which controls feelings, so they're more likely to be highly stressed, have difficulties with anger and emotions, and be prone to self-harm, anxiety, suicide and depression."
It's not clear why some people overcome their past while others succumb to it.
Abuse survivor Glori Medrum, 35, of Edmonton, was eight when a relative began to sexually abuse her. By the time she was 12, the abuse was almost too much to bear, and she locked herself in a bathroom with a razor.
"Is it worth how this has made me feel, which was that nobody really cared about me?" she recalled.
Medrum said she was in "survival mode" then, and now her life is about living with no regrets.
A common narrative
At the Distress Centres of Toronto, childhood abuse is a common narrative among callers.
"I don't want people to feel that genetics is their destiny, that there is some hope available if we can understand why some people are able to manage," said Karen Letofsky of the centre.
The samples of tissue used in the study came from the Quebec Suicide Brain Bank, which houses the brains — donated by families for the purposes of research — of about 200 people who died from suicide or other causes.
The research was funded by the Canadian Institutes for Health Research and the U.S. National Institute of Child Health and Development.
With files from Canadian Press, Australian Broadcasting Corp.
Sex offender residency laws are ineffective
Posted by Readers' Page February 25, 2009 Categories: Letters
By Michael Hungerford
Sunday's article about the court ruling holding that New York state law pre-empts local sex offender residency laws left out a number of very important points. First, the public safety rationale for the local laws is at best questionable. According to the state Division of Criminal Justice Services, most sex assaults are committed by persons who have no prior sex offense convictions. Since only those who have been convicted are on the state sex offender registry, most who commit sex offenses are not subject to any residency restrictions.
Many if not most sex offenses are committed against adults, not children, who are often used as the main justification for these laws.
Sphere: Related ContentPresumption of child sex abuse guilt fuelled sex ring rumours, lawyer says
February 24, 2009, EDT.By Allison Jones, THE CANADIAN PRESS
CORNWALL, Ont. - Sensational allegations that a clandestine pedophile ring operated in eastern Ontario were fuelled by the kind of moral panic that takes hold when the public presumes people accused of sexually abusing children are guilty, a public inquiry was told Tuesday.
There are safeguards in the Canadian legal system to ensure an accused is presumed innocent unless proven otherwise, but no such safeguards exist for public perception, said lawyer Giuseppe Cipriano.
"When society places the onus on the alleged abuser to prove his innocence then a moral panic is possible," Cipriano said in closing submissions to the three-year, $40-million Cornwall inquiry.
In 1992, a 35-year-old former altar boy came forward with allegations he was sexually abused by both probation officer Ken Seguin and Rev. Charles MacDonald.
Seguin committed suicide in 1993 and was never charged. MacDonald was investigated three times, and charges were laid after the third but eventually stayed because the case took too long to come to trial.
As more people came forward and alleged they too had been abused by a priest, or teacher or some other official, the city was gripped by a "hysteria" that a mass of child abusers were in their midst, lawyers Cipriano and Michael Neville told the inquiry.
"What images more caught the imagination and raised the anxieties of the Cornwall community than the allegations that prominent citizens of Cornwall preyed on Cornwall's young and used their positions... to prevent detection, or worse, to corrupt the law enforcement process," said Neville, who represents MacDonald.
Better public education would help ensure accused sex abusers aren't immediately presumed guilty and hopefully prevent the controversy that has gripped Cornwall for so many years from occurring elsewhere, the inquiry heard.
A test of a reasonable prospect of conviction before sexual assault charges are laid should be replaced with the requirement of an "objective likelihood" of conviction, Neville said. When such an allegation is made, it shouldn't automatically be passed on to the accused's employer without proper investigation of the claim, he added.
"Some genies never go back in the bottle," Neville told the inquiry.
He also said the first two decisions not to lay charges against MacDonald were "not only proper, they were legally, indeed constitutionally, correct."
The inquiry's mandate is not to examine the veracity of the clan theory. Rather, it was established to probe how public institutions handled allegations of sexual abuse.
Still, rumours of a pedophile ring make up the context that gave rise to the inquiry, Neville argued.
Following the original abuse complaint in 1992, the Ministry of Community Safety and Correctional Services received 22 complaints of alleged abuse by Seguin.
In its written submissions to the inquiry, the ministry alleged people didn't come forward before because Seguin exploited victims' inability to speak about abuse.
However, Cipriano said all the alleged victims came forward in the context of hysteria created by former Cornwall police officer Perry Dunlop and others.
Dunlop championed the investigation and was determined to unearth a backroom clan, pursuing his own investigation off-hours and passing on information to other police forces.
Provincial police set up the Project Truth investigation in 1997 and laid 114 charges against 15 people, but found no evidence of a pedophile ring and, ultimately, only one person was convicted.
The Crown's failure to convict any others was seen by some as further evidence of collusion among Cornwall's upper echelons of power and fuelled the rumours that not only was a pedophile ring operating in the city, but that high-ranking officials were conspiring to shield its participants.
In closing submissions to the inquiry, the Ministry of the Attorney General acknowledged some problems with the cases, but said there have since been relevant changes made.
Last year, the province launched a "Justice on Target" strategy, which strives toward a 30 per cent reduction in the average number of days and court appearances in 90 per cent of cases by 2012.
In addition, under today's standards, the Project Truth prosecutions would have been handled as a "major case" within a protocol established in 2001.
The Ministry of Community Safety and Correctional Services also said many changes have been made with respect to probation offices since the Seguin allegations and that still more changes will be implemented
"This is a different ministry with different clientele that is operating much more transparently with a higher degree of professionalism," said ministry lawyer David Rose.
The Canadian Press, 2009
Former Roughrider Trevis Smith expected to be deported back to U.S
By THE CANADIAN PRESS
PRINCE ALBERT, Sask. - Former Saskatchewan Roughrider Trevis Smith is expected to become a free man today after serving a sentence for knowingly infecting two women to the virus that causes AIDS.
Smith, 32, is expected to leave the Saskatchewan Penitentiary in Prince Albert, Sask., today. A deportation order was expected to be executed on Smith, and he's to be sent back to the United States.
The National Parole Board granted Smith full parole last month.
He's served two years of a six-year sentence after being convicted of aggravated sexual assault charges in 2007.
Smith told the parole board he plans to rejoin his wife and two children in Alabama, become a substitute teacher and coach football.
Guatemala: For Women, the Most Dangerous Place is at Home
This from Holly/Admin,
Unique Audio interview from MSF director of operations in Guatemala, Fabio Forgion: click the link below to listen and read the full article....
Violence in Guatemala is forcing people to live in a state of fear. More than 6,200 people were murdered in 2008, close to 17 deaths per day. Likewise, more than 10,000 cases of sexual violence were reported to the authorities in 2008, with 4,600 of these cases occurring in the districts of Guatemala City, where Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) runs a program to assist such victims. By the end of the year, MSF was treating more than 80 people, mostly women, per month.
http://www.doctorswithoutborders.org/news/?ref=main-menu
Canadian Police Criticized for Pedophile Witch Hunt
by Kilian Melloy with EDGE Contributor, Monday Feb 23, 2009
Ritualistic group molestation was one wild allegation that arose during an investigation into a suspected pedophilia ring in Cornwall, Ontario.
But this, and other stories, seem to have been fabrication, driven--at least in part--by homophobia.
In the city of Cornwall, Ontario, an investigation into a suspected pedophile ring resulted in accusations leveled at prominent members of the community.
Though pedophilia and homosexuality are understood by professionals to be two separate phenomena, gay men suspected to be part of the group led to new suspects: namely, gay men who were linked to them.
According to one U.S. government estimate, up to 96% of pedophiles are heterosexual.
"Activities that in a less homophobic community would be seen as benign, in Cornwall became evidence of a pedophile ring," read a document by Citizens for Community Renewal, reported a Feb. 23 article published by the Canadian Press.
Continued the document, "For this equation of homosexuality with ’pedophilia’ to occur in the 21st century and for people to reason that associated gay men were guilty by association is a reflection of the depth of the community’s homophobia.
"The document comes at the close of a probe that has cost $32 million and taken three years to conduct.
The groundwork for the later charges of conspiracy and sexual molestation was laid in earlier decades, the article said, when churches and private charities sought to handle any suggestion of improper conduct by adults by themselves.
That gave rise to a climate of suspicion, according to Citizens for Community Renewal, which stated, "These patterns of weakness in the institutional responses prior to 1992 fed the view that institutions were covering up sexual offenses by prominent people.
"That was where one police official in particular, Constable Perry Dunlop, entered the picture, with what the article explained the Citizens for Community Renewal suggested was "a blind crusade," with the result that in the 1990s a total of 114 charges were brought against 15 individuals in Cornwall, though no evidence was uncovered to support the accusations.
Helen Daly, counsel for the Citizens for Community Renewal, said, "The local hero and his supporters then become the alternate constabulary, if you will," the article reported.
"They become the alternate people to whom one goes to report abuse."
But a "pedophile smear campaign" was the purported result, and the testimony it drew proved unreliable, with one witness claiming to have seen groups of men clad in robes molesting children as candles burned--only to admit later on that he had made it all up.
Said Daley, "Constable Dunlop lost his way.
"He lost his way, but no one individual, no matter how misguided or how committed to a misguided cause, should have caused this result."
Dunlop was at the head of a four-year investigation, called Project Truth, that embroiled the 15 accused men in Cornwall in allegations of pedophilia.
Dunlop himself served seven months in prison for contempt, after refusing to testify in the probe of that, and other, investigations.
An account of Dunlop’s winning an award at the 2000 Annual International Ethics appeared at the Web site for the Institute of Law Enforcement Administration.
According to that article, Dunlop became involved in the investigation into the suspected pedophile ring in 1994, when he reportedly took action in the case of an alleged sexual abuser who was, the article said, permitted to pay the victim off rather than face charges.
Dunlop disobeyed instructions and took the story to the Children’s Aid Society, which led, the article said, to Dunlop being disciplined.
The article said that Dunlop was exonerated twice but that he was subjected to harassment and eventually moved out of Cornwall.
A subsequent investigation--the one being probed--led to the accusations, and also alleged that a conspiracy between the church, the government, and the police to suppress word of the pedophilia ring was in effect.
The Canadian Press article said that the $32 million probe was not set up to look into the alleged crimes against children, but at how so many prominent members of the community, including members of the clergy, came to be so accused, despite a lack of evidence.
At blog site Cornwall, Truth or Denial an article re-posted from Canadian newspaper the Standard Freeholder said that Dunlop, after returning to his home in the town of Duncan, in British Columbia, after his seven month sentence, was presented with a "Golden Whistleblower Award.
"The award was bestowed "for service to Canada in the pursuit of truth in government," the article said, and was given to Dunlop by the group Peace Order and Good Government.The award was presented in Ottawa, but Dunlop was not at the presentation; instead, a friend, Sylvia MacEachern, accepted it for Dunlop and then read a statement written by Dunlop."The price for taking a stand, telling the truth and protecting our freedom of speech can come at an enormous cost. I am living proof of that," the statement read."The physical, psychological and emotional toll to me and my loved ones continues to hit home each and every day."
A Feb. 23 article at the Standard Freeholder reported on Dunlop’s having been cross-examined during the 2004 trial of one of the fifteen men who faced allegations from Project Truth.During that cross-examination, Dunlop was asked whether he was "anti-homosexual," the article said.
Kilian Melloy reviews media, conducts interviews, and writes commentary for EDGEBoston, where he also serves as Assistant Arts Editor.
Sphere: Related ContentMichel Dumont, a 49-year-old electrician, wants the money as compensation for his legal bills, lost opportunities and wages, and pain and suffering.
Quebec man wrongfully convicted of sex assault seeks compensation
February 23, 2009, EDT.By Sidhartha Banerjee, THE CANADIAN PRESS
MONTREAL - A Quebec man who was the victim of a wrongful conviction and has testified about the 34 harrowing months he spent behind bars labelled a sex offender is seeking $2.5 million from the federal and provincial governments.
Michel Dumont, a 49-year-old electrician, wants the money as compensation for his legal bills, lost opportunities and wages, and pain and suffering.
"There should be an automatic mechanism that would be independent and would be able to judge the nature of what happened to victims of errors," Dumont said outside court as his civil trial wrapped up Monday.
Dumont was acquitted in 2001 by the Quebec Court of Appeal, after an appeal had been ordered a year earlier by then-federal justice minister Anne McLellan.
The acquittal came after it came to light that a few months after his 1991 conviction, the victim had given a statement to police and the Crown saying she was no longer sure Dumont was her attacker.
But Dumont and his lawyer at the time, Paul Gelinas, insisted that information was never relayed to them and did not come up during his initial appeal, which failed in 1994.
Dumont's current lawyer, Jean-Francois Longtin, argued that if Gelinas had had knowledge of the statement, allegedly communicated by the Crown in a letter, he surely would have used it.
Longtin also argued the Crown is at the centre of this case and had an obligation to not only inform the defence attorney, but also the court.
Lawyers for the Quebec government have argued Gelinas was well aware of the statement and that the Crown did not act maliciously in prosecuting him.
The federal lawyers have also said they did nothing wrong and neither government believes compensation is necessary.
"It's a sad case, but not a case where the Crown acted illegitimately or with malicious intent," Michel Deom, a lawyer representing the Quebec government, told the court.
Both sides agree that complicating matters is that Gelinas has passed away.
"Certainly, Gelinas' absence is creating problems in the case," Deom said outside the courtroom.
"He is a key actor in the process, notably when it's alleged the Crown didn't send him the information meant for him."
The judge in the case will deliberate. No date has been set for a decision.
Dumont, who was released from prison in 1997 after having served two-thirds of a 52-month sentence, said it has been difficult having to relive the events.
Earlier this month, he settled with the city of Boisbriand, Que., where police had initially investigated the sexual assault claim by a woman in 1990.
After his acquittal, no one else was ever charged in the case.
Dumont broke down last week during his Superior Court week-long civil trial as he recounted months spent behind bars with a sex offender label attached to his name.
He cried as he described threats and assaults perpetrated against him in jail.
There is no automatic compensation process for victims of wrongful convictions.
Deom said anyone qualifying for compensation generally must prove their factual innocence. That doesn't exist in Dumont's case as the conviction was based on the victim identifying him.
But Longtin pointed to a high-profile case in Ontario where Steven Truscott was awarded $6.5 million in July 2008 following an acquittal and despite the lack of such explicit evidence.
"It's always more difficult to prove something that did not happen," Longtin told Justice Benoit Emery.
Dumont said he would have welcomed the chance to be tried again so he could prove his innocence once and for all.
"Whether it is DNA evidence or someone coming forward and saying 'Hey, it's not him,' I think it's just as good, I think it's equivalent," Dumont said.
Dumont hasn't shied away from the limelight, heading a group called the Quebec Association for the Wrongfully Convicted in recent years.
He also finished third while running under the Action democratique du Quebec banner against Quebec Premier Jean Charest in the riding of Sherbrooke in the 2007 provincial election.
The Canadian Press, 2009
The Boston Globe on Thursday examined a photographic portrait series by Jonathan Torgovnik called "Intended Consequences: Rwandan Children Born of Rap
This from Holly/Admin,
Unique Article from Medical News Today Dated: 23 Feb 2009
The Boston Globe on Thursday examined a photographic portrait series by Jonathan Torgovnik called "Intended Consequences: Rwandan Children Born of Rape," which depicts some of the estimated 20,000 Tutsi rape survivors of the 1994 Rwandan genocide who had children following the rapes. Torgovnik said he was inspired to take the photographs after a 2006 trip to Rwanda, during which he met a woman living with HIV.
Click link below to read entire story!
http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/139882.php
Visit Dr. Deb Blog very interesting post....
This from Holly/Admin,
Dr. Deb unique post on women who have been physically assaulted by a partner.
Information provided in this blog is to be used for educational purposes only.
It should NOT be used as a substitute for psychological therapy.
http://drdeborahserani.blogspot.com/2009/02/anti-abuse-make-up-kit.html
Perry Dunlop lost his way stated Helen Daley
This from Holly/Admin,
Interesting story by Allison Jones, The Canadian Press. Cornwall, Ont., community group says homophobia led to pedophile ring rumours!
CORNWALL, Ont. - Belief in a pedophile ring and a cover-up by local authorities ran rampant in this eastern Ontario community partly due to homophobia and a blind crusade by one police officer, a community group told a public inquiry Monday.
"Activities that in a less homophobic community would be seen as benign, in Cornwall became evidence of a pedophile ring," the group Citizens for Community Renewal said in its written submissions at the Cornwall inquiry.
"For this equation of homosexuality with 'pedophilia'to occur in the 21st century and for people to reason that associated gay men were guilty by association is a reflection of the depth of the community's homophobia."
The group is the first to present closing submissions at the three-year, $40-million inquiry, which was set up to investigate how institutions handled allegations of sexual abuse.
Local institutions such as the Children's Aid Society and churches wanted to deal internally with allegations of sexual abuse by their officials during the 1960s, '70s and '80s and failed to interact with one another about allegations, Citizens for Community Renewal said.
"These patterns of weakness in the institutional responses prior to 1992 fed the view that institutions were covering up sexual offences by prominent people," the group said in its written submissions.
An ensuing lack of confidence in public institutions left a void that was filled by charismatic Cornwall police officer Perry Dunlop, said Helen Daley, the group's counsel at the inquiry.
"The local hero and his supporters then become the alternate constabulary, if you will. They become the alternate people to whom one goes to report abuse," she said in oral submissions.
Dunlop's crusade to unearth a pedophile conspiracy led to wild allegations during a "pedophile smear campaign" that unjustly harmed the reputations of many local authorities, the inquiry heard.
"Const. Dunlop lost his way," Daley said. "He lost his way, but no one individual, no matter how misguided or how committed to a misguided cause, should have caused this result."
The inquiry's mandate was not to examine the alleged pedophile ring. A provincial police probe, dubbed Project Truth, saw police lay 114 charges against 15 men in the 1990s, but no evidence of an organized, backroom clan was ever found.
Still, allegations of high-profile officials, professionals and clergy taking part in bizarre sexual rituals have hung over the proceedings.
One of the inquiry's watershed moments came last summer during the testimony of Ron Leroux, who had told Dunlop he witnessed a clan of pedophiles who wore robes, burned candles and sexually abused young boys during weekend meetings in the 1950s and early 1960s.
Last June, Leroux told the inquiry that he fabricated the story.
Dunlop, for his part, refused to testify at the inquiry and was jailed for seven months on civil and criminal contempt convictions.
Guilt doesn't stop requests for DNA tests
Sunday, February 22, 2009 By Mike Wagner with THE COLUMBUS DISPATCH
When word spread around the Chillicothe prison yard that Robert McClendon had been proved innocent by a DNA test, he was seen as a ticket out by some inmates he had never met.
One of those inmates approached McClendon near the basketball court, pleaded that he, too, was innocent, and asked for help in applying for a DNA test of his own. Contrary to common perception, only a small percentage of Ohio's 50,000 inmates claim they are innocent.
"I was like 'Come on, man, don't be playing me like that -- you know you are not innocent,' " said McClendon, who was exonerated in August after serving 18 years for a rape he didn't commit. "The guy just smiled and said he had to try."
But McClendon was not amused.
"These guys are playing games with the system and games with themselves," he said. "The worst part is that it hurts the credibility of guys like me who really are wrongfully convicted."
DNA testing is responsible for freeing 232 inmates nationwide and seven in Ohio, but it also has proved or confirmed the guilt of other offenders. Three agreed to talk with The Dispatch about their misguided quest for testing.
Some inmates, knowing they are guilty, still think they can beat the scientific system or hope for some biological miracle in testing. Some will go as far as chewing tobacco before their mouths are swabbed for a test, thinking it will somehow obstruct the results. Others manage to convince themselves that they are innocent. Some, even after a test confirms guilt, still contend that they are innocent.
They apply for tests despite warnings from the parole board that a positive test reduces their chance of release.
McClendon was exonerated as part of "Test of Convictions," a Dispatch project that highlighted 30 inmates who were prime candidates for DNA testing. Tests showed that one of those inmates, Carlton Manning of Toledo, probably was guilty of the rape for which he is incarcerated. Results in more than a dozen other cases are pending.
Manning, an inmate at the Southern Ohio Correctional Facility in Lucasville, was being disciplined in segregation and couldn't be reached by The Dispatch.
Julie Bates, the Lucas County prosecutor who handled Manning's DNA request, said the testing system has merit, but there always will be inmates who try to abuse it.
"They are looking for lightning in a bottle," Bates said. "It's the same logic with polygraph tests. Why do people agree to take those when they know they are lying and the tests show that? Just admit it, move on and let the healing process begin for everyone."
Mark Godsey, director of the Ohio Innocence Project, said DNA test results that confirm convictions strengthen the criminal-justice system.
"When the test confirms guilt, we should celebrate that the system got it right," Godsey said. "And that we are open-minded enough as a society to allow our work to be second-guessed."
Recently, three inmates proved guilty by DNA tests agreed to talk with The Dispatch about their cases and why they applied for tests. Here are their stories:
Powerful emotion
The night of the rape, Robert Crider was in a drunken haze and high on drugs.
And for nearly three decades, he convinced himself that he was innocent.
"Denial is a powerful emotion," said Crider, 59, an inmate at the Grafton Correctional Institution serving 28 to 100 years for a rape and burglary conviction in Akron.
Even before his 1982 conviction, Crider had served 40 months in San Quentin State Prison in California for two sexual-assault convictions. But Crider somehow believed he wasn't capable of another sex crime.
About 25 years after his conviction, Crider requested and was granted a DNA test that ultimately showed he was guilty of the rape.
"It's sad and pathetic, but I really thought there was a chance I was innocent before I found out those test results," Crider said. "I was in a dark place of denial for so long."
Crider will go before the parole board for the first time in September and wants to make it clear that he feels remorse for the crime and pain for the victim.
He also knows that some will accuse him of playing games with the system for pretending to be innocent.
"I was living a lie," he said. "I know that now."
Still innocent
Daries Sherrills was convicted more than 20 years ago on rape charges, but he entered a prison conference room to meet with a reporter as if he were ready for another trial.
The 52-year-old inmate was armed with a stack of paperwork that he was certain could prove his innocence. When a prison spokeswoman reached to inspect his pile, he gave her a stern look and initially refused to hand it to her.
"I can't be trusting anyone with anything," said Sherrills, an inmate at the Marion Correctional Institution serving up to 25 years in prison.
For nearly an hour, Sherrills ranted about being railroaded by detectives, prosecutors, lab directors and others who handled his case in 1988. He moved slowly through the highlighted paperwork but quickly discarded one document.
It was a lab report from June 2006 that showed that Sherrills' DNA had matched the evidence that he had wanted tested. In fact, the report showed that the chance that Sherrills didn't rape a woman in Cleveland was 1 in 22 billion.
"Don't be just looking at that one report," he grumbled. "You have to look at the whole case; you have to look at what they did with my evidence all the way."
Sherrills suggested that someone might have tampered with his DNA sample, that his test results were switched with another inmate's, or that the results were just plain false.
Sherrills became agitated at the suggestion that he might be in denial.
"You can only see guilt, not the truth," said Sherrills, as he headed back to his cell. "That test doesn't mean anything."
Just bad news
The dazed look blanketed Wesley Stockton's face when he was asked why he had applied for a DNA test when he knew he was guilty.
"I thought this was good news, some kind of hope for me," said the confused inmate at the North Central Correctional Institution outside Marion. "What are you talking about? You are saying this proved me guilty? Man … you have no idea what you have laid on me."
Stockton, 30, convicted of raping an 11-year-old girl in 1996 in Shelby County, asked for and received a DNA test in 2005. Results of that test showed that Stockton's DNA matched the semen sample found on the victim's underwear.
Prosecutors told the court that they had sent Stockton a copy of the lab report, but he said he had never been informed that the DNA test had proved guilt.
Stockton, who is serving a life sentence, sat in silence and pondered the news. He wouldn't use the word "guilty" when asked whether he had really considered himself innocent before asking for the test, or whether he had attempted to fool the justice system.
He merely repeated these words over and over: "There are a lot of things I could have done differently that night," he said. "I take full responsibility for my actions."
Stockton repeated the line while considering what he might tell the parole-board members next month when he meets them for the second time. And then he paused.
"If I knew this is what you wanted to talk about," he said. "I would have never talked to you in the first place."
Kenneth Erdley Ross BACK IN CUSTODY!
This from Holly/Adm,
Read entire story below.....
A high-risk Winnipeg criminal who was released from prison last week -- only to be rearrested hours after a public alert was issued -- has admitted being capable of "killing a number of people" and was recently interviewed by police officers from a Missing Women's Task Force in Western Canada about unsolved crimes in that region, the Free Press has learned.
Sex offender released from Manitoba prison, Ex-con refused treatment, has rape fantasies: Cops By CHRIS KITCHING, SUN MEDIA
Winnipeg police are warning the public to beware a convicted sex offender who has admitted to having rape fantasies, after he was released from a Manitoba prison yesterday.
Police said Kenneth Erdley Ross, 43, is expected to live in Winnipeg now that he is a free man.
But police warned everyone is at risk as Ross is considered a high-risk violent offender because of his violent past and refusal to participate in substance abuse, violent offending and sexual offending treatment programs behind bars.
Ross was released from Stony Mountain Institution because his 41/2-year sentence for aggravated assault and drug trafficking is complete.
The aggravated assault occurred Sept. 27, 2003, when Ross and another person kicked in a man's door and repeatedly punched and kicked him, inflicting serious injuries, police said in an advisory prepared by the Manitoba integrated high-risk sex offender unit.
Ross has a lengthy history of violent offences, including assault, aggravated sexual assault and aggravated assault.
No remorse
Police said Ross has been convicted of one previous violent sexual assault for which he refused any sex offender treatment and has shown no remorse.
It occurred Jan. 15, 1987, when Ross invited a 20-year-old man back to his apartment, bound his hands behind his back with electrical tape, and raped him.
Ross then slashed the man's neck with a knife and poured laundry detergent into the slash wounds, police said.
Ross was sentenced to five years in prison for that incident. The victim survived.
Police said Ross is volatile and unpredictable.
"Although physical violence is the primary characteristic of his offences there may also be a high-risk sexual component in some circumstances," police said in the advisory.
Any form of vigilante activity or other "unreasonable conduct" against Ross will not be tolerated, police noted.
Ross is white, 5-foot-11, 163 pounds, and has grey hair and green eyes. He has a scar, shaped as a half moon, on his left thumb, a one-inch scar on his right thumb and a one-inch scar on his forehead.
Chi Wai Chan found during a morning john sting!
Kidnapper nabbed in 'john' sting By ALYSSA NOEL, SUN MEDIA
EDMONTON - City cops scooped an escaped B.C. jailbird - imprisoned for a violent kidnapping and wanted on a Canada-wide immigration warrant - during a morning john sting.
Downtown division officers, along with members of the vice unit, arrested 35-year-old Chi Wai Chan during the sting and held him for several hours before they learned of the outstanding warrant.
Chan was serving a 13-and-a-half year sentence for kidnapping, forcible confinement, extortion and administer or cause to be administered a stupefying or overpowering drug for the brutal 1998 kidnapping of a Richmond, B.C. teen.
In December 2008, a day after he won an appeal for freedom, he fled the minimum-security Ferndale Institution in Mission, B.C., possibly because he knew he was to be deported to Hong Kong.
Edmonton police arrested him near 118 Avenue and 92 Street around 9:45 a.m. Thursday.
NOT A PUBLIC RISK
A spokesman for the institution said they had no idea Chan might have left the province. He wasn't considered a risk to the public, she said.
Edmonton city police vice Det. Jim Morrissey said suspects arrested during stings often have an unsavory criminal background or are wanted on other unrelated, serious charges.
"Four out of 40 - around 10% - are not just people (wanted for) unrelated matters, but people who are wanted on very serious warrants," Morrissey said.
"These guys manage to shock, amaze and disgust me regularly, but the (police) who do this, we're all supposed to be professionals. We know what we're doing. If they get someone who doesn't check out the way they say, you snoop a little deeper."
And while taking one dangerous criminal off the street is a small victory, it doesn't make them any safer for prostitutes to work, Morrissey stressed.
KIDNAPPER
"It will never be safe," he said. "Us arresting one person isn't going to make it safe."
Chan was convicted in a now infamous kidnapping case that began on Dec. 11, 1998, when a group of armed men barged into a Richmond, B.C., home and dragged a teenage girl out with them.
The girl was the only child of a couple from Hong Kong who immigrated to Canada in 1994.
RCMP said the men warned the girl's mother not to call police or they would hurt her daughter. The family contacted RCMP, despite the threat.
The group demanded a ransom that was more than family could pay, launching police into a non-stop, 11 day investigation. Over 55 officers worked full-time on the case - some for 24-hours at a time - until she was rescued from a duffel bag in the trunk of a car.
Edmonton police have charged Chan with communication to obtain sexual services. He was also arrested for the outstanding immigration warrant.
He will now face possible deportation, a police spokesman said.
Italy unveils anti-sex crime and illegal immigration measures
Italy unveils anti-sex crime and illegal immigration measures... 2009-02-20 | Author : DPA
Rome - Italy's conservative government introduced Friday harsher penalties for rape and other sexual abuse cases, the creation of civilian anti-crime patrols and an extension to the period for which illegal immigrants can be kept in detention centres. The measures contained in a decree approved by Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi's cabinet, come in the wake of several high profile gang-rape cases.
They also follow rioting by Tunisian would-be immigrants protesting their repatriation from a detention centre on the island in Lampedusa.
"The government is not acting on a wave of emotion," Berlusconi told reporters.
He said his cabinet was working to keep the centre-right's April 2008 election promise to combat crime and curb illegal immigration.
Rape cases have declined 10 per cent in 2008, compared to the 2006-2007 period when Italy was governed by the centre-left, Berlusconi said.
The decree introduces mandatory life sentences for people convicted of gang-rape, sexual assault resulting in murder and violent sexual abuse of children.
Those charged with such crimes, as well as suspects "caught in the act" for child prostitution and child pornography, "sex tourism" crimes committed abroad, will be kept in jail while awaiting trial, according to the decree.
Recent decisions by magistrates to issue house arrest instead of prison orders to several rape suspects have triggered public outcry in Italy.
The decree also contains a controversial clause allowing mayors to recruit civilians to conduct anti-crime patrols in towns and city.
Italy's opposition opposes the measure saying it will lead to the creation of "ronde" or vigilante squads, taking the law into their own hands and likely to target immigrants.
But Maroni denied this, saying the patrols would "preferably" consist of retired policemen as well as off-duty soldiers and firefighters.
"They will not carry weapons, and will only be equipped with radio transmitters or mobile phones to alert police," he explained.
As for illegal immigrants, Maroni said the government's would continue to seek their "expulsion" except when minors or asylum- seekers are involved.
The decree increases from two to six months the period in which would-be immigrants are to be kept in detention centres.
This will allow for their proper identification and for arranging their repatriation with the authorities of their countries of origin, Maroni said.
Human rights activists, the Roman Catholic Church and much of Italy's opposition say this will lead to overcrowding at the detention centres with associated health and security risks such as the current situation in Lampedusa.
Maroni said the government plans to convert former army barracks and other structures located "away from urban centres and preferably close airports to ease swift repatriation."
Italy toughens penalties for rape after attacks...Article from: Reuters
ITALY'S government rushed through a decree law today toughening penalties for sex offenders and permitting neighbourhood citizen patrols after a spate of high-profile rapes by immigrants sparked national outrage.
Italy's government says data show the number of sexual assaults actually fell last year, but three rapes last weekend in Rome, Milan and Bologna triggered a media frenzy that prompted calls for tougher measures.
The decree approved by Italy's cabinet sets a mandatory life sentence for rapes that result in death, speeds up trials for sex offenders caught in the act, takes away the possibility of house arrest, and gives free legal assistance to victims.
The decree also introduces mandatory life sentences for rapes of minors. It goes into effect immediately but must be approved by both houses of parliament within 60 days. It also establishes rules for citizen street patrols by unarmed and unpaid volunteers. The move came after groups of self-styled and unregulated vigilantes began patrolling some towns, alarming law enforcement officials.
"This is what was needed. I have to wake up at five in the morning to accompany my daughter to the train station because the streets are not safe," a resident of Guidonia, a town east of Rome with a large immigrant population, said.
Mayors will be able to approve citizen patrols, with priority given to membership or leadership roles by retired police and military on leave.
Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi earlier said the number of sexual assaults fell 10 per cent last year compared to 2006 and 2007, which he said showed the government's efforts to improve security were working.
But many Italians are unconvinced, with recent rapes grabbing headlines in newspapers and television, often playing up the role of foreigners as perpetrators.
Some lawmakers have also reopened the debate over whether chemical castration of sex offenders should be instituted.
"There's a rape every 12 hours, every 24 hours, and it's time to end this," another resident of Guidonia, where a group of Romanians last month raped a woman and beat her boyfriend, said.
The Fredericton Sexual Assault Crisis Centre wants to end the shroud of secrecy that surrounds sexual assaults.
In partnership with the province and family violence services around New Brunswick, the crisis centre is launching a campaign called Let's Talk About It.
Ads will appear on radio and TV in both French and English and posters will appear in bars, restaurants and other public places encouraging people to talk about the often taboo subject of sexual assault.
A new website, www.lets-talk-about-it.ca, will be launched today. It will provide information to victims and their supporters on where to get help and other resources.
The site also has a place for submitting questions, and staff at the sexual assault crisis centre will respond.
"Sexual assault is difficult to talk about no matter if you've been directly affected by it or not. But we just want the dialogue to start," said Lorraine Whalley, executive director of the crisis centre.
There are many misconceptions surrounding the issue that make it difficult for victims to come forward, Whalley said at a news conference Tuesday at the Crowne Plaza Hotel in Fredericton.
"We look for different opportunities to let victims know there is a place for them to go, or a place for them to call, or a place for them to send questions. Then it lets them know that somebody is going to listen or support them in some way," said Whalley.
Fredericton has the only sexual assault crisis centre in the province. After 34 years in operation, it has become an important resource for other communities and for the provincial government.
Whalley said this campaign grew from the centre's involvement with the province's 2005 plan out of which came the provincial strategy on sexual assault services.
Its goal is to provide at least a minimal level of services for victims everywhere in New Brunswick.
Social Development Minister Mary Schryer was at the media conference.
She said in an interview there should be more crisis centres in the province.
"When we look at the figures, 39 out of 100 women have experienced some form of sexual assault. There is obviously a need for more (crisis centres)."
But in the meantime, her department has outreach workers in 13 locations working with community based organizations to find ways to deliver services.
"That has certainly been a huge step. But would it be great to have a centre of excellence in every large city across the province? Yes, but we are not there yet."
The Let's Talk About It campaign was developed by Bristol, a communications and marketing company with offices in Atlantic Canada and Qatar.
First Sexually Dangerous Individual Committed Under New Adam Walsh Law By Jim Kouri
After a ten-day trial before Judge Patti B. Saris, Jeffrey Shields of Bath, Maine, was civilly committed to the custody of the Federal Bureau of Prisons as a sexually dangerous person, according to a report sent to the National Association of Chiefs of Police's Child Protection Program.
Shields is the first individual in the country to be civilly committed to federal custody as a sexually dangerous person.
In July 2006, Congress enacted the Adam Walsh Child Protection and Safety Act of 2006, Pub.L. No 109-248, 120 Stat. 587 (2006), to combat sexual violence and to protect children. The legislation created, for the first time, a federal civil commitment program for sexually dangerous persons. To commit an individual under its provisions, the Government must establish that an individual: (1) had engaged in child molestation or sexually violent conduct in the past; (2) suffers from a mental illness, abnormality or disorder; and (3) would, because of that illness, abnormality or disorder, have serious difficulty in refraining from future acts of child molestation or sexually violent conduct in the future.
Evidence presented during the trial proved that Shields had numerous prior sexual offenses against children. In May of 1988, Shields was convicted of making obscene phone calls to two boys in Wakulla County, Florida.
In January of 1989, in Camden, Maine, Shields fondled the genitals of a thirteen-year-old boy after luring him to an abandoned building. In April of 1989, Shields committed an indecent assault on a nine-year-old boy in an elementary school bathroom in Florida. In July of 1989, Shields sexually assaulted a fourteen-year-old boy in the bathroom of a private school in Bath, Maine and in September of 1989, Shields sexually assaulted a six-year-old boy outside the same school. In March of 1998, in Portland, Maine, Shields engaged in unlawful sexual contact with a twelve year old boy. While on probation for his 1998 offense, Shields was arrested by the Portland Maine Police for possession of child pornography and Shields later pled guilty to federal child pornography charges.
At trial, three psychologists opined that Shields suffered from pedophilia, a recognized mental disorder. In finding Shields sexually dangerous, Judge Saris found that, as a result of his pedophilia, Shields would have serious difficulty in refraining from future acts of child molestation if released into the community.
"When the Adam Walsh Act was passed in 2006, it sought to strengthen federal laws to protect our children. The civil commitment of Jeffrey Shields is one step toward keeping our children safe from sexual predators," said U.S. Attorney Michael J. Sullivan.
