Society's ChildS


Ambulance

D.C. officer charged with child porn confirmed dead after Potomac plunge

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Marc Washington
The D.C. police officer who was charged with taking nude photos of a runaway teen girl was pulled from the chilly waters off Hains Point and has died, the department confirmed early Wednesday.

U.S. Park Police received a 911 call at about 8:15 p.m. from a male caller that a man was in the water at Hains Point, between the East Potomac River and the Washington Channel.

Police found some clothing and a parked car that was connected to Marc Washington, the patrol officer who had been released from jail charges of child pornography Monday.

Dozens of police officers, a helicopter and several high-ranking officials rushed to the scene. Metropolitan Police Department rescue boat crews rescued from the roughly 48-degree waters an adult male who was taken to a hospital for treatment.

During a press conference late Tuesday, D.C. Police Chief Cathy Lanier would not confirm that the body was that of Washington and said investigators she did not yet know the origin of the 911 call.

"There's a lot of speculation," Lanier said. "Whether this was a call from someone associated with the Metropolitan Police Department, we don't know."

Sherlock

Steve Jobs' doctor's house deal raises eyebrows

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© Getty ImagesThe story surrounding the late Steve Jobs and his liver transplant is getting murkier as a report emerges that his surgeon, Dr. James Eason, moved into the Jobs-owned Memphis mansion just months after the operation.
Fresh questions about Steve Jobs' liver transplant have been raised after it emerged that the doctor who performed the surgery spent two years in the Memphis, Tenn., house Jobs bought for his recovery.

Dr. James Eason, who performed the March 2009 liver transplant, moved into the palatial house Jobs bought for his recovery just a few months after the operation, according to a report.

It isn't the first time questions have been raised over whether Jobs, a California resident, received an unfair advantage in landing the Memphis transplant.

Eason lived in the house in midtown Memphis for two years before buying it outright in May 2011, a few months before Jobs died.

Eason bought the house for $850,000 - the same amount Jobs paid for it, through a nondescript LLC, in March 2009, according to the report. It was unclear if Eason paid rent while he lived in the two-story, 13-bedroom house at 36 Morningside Place. A man who answered the phone there on Monday evening said Eason was unavailable to talk before abruptly hanging up.

Video

San Diego 'revenge porn' site owner arrested

keyboard
© unknownThe attackers got access to the servers underpinning the porn site
A 27-year-old man has been arrested in connection with the running of a "revenge porn" website.

Kevin Bollaert is accused of being behind UGotPosted, a site that published intimate photographs of people against their wishes.

It would link to relevant social networks of the subjects pictured.

Prosecutors said the website also sought to extort money from the people featured on the site by charging a fee to have pictures taken down.

"This website published intimate photos of unsuspecting victims and turned their public humiliation and betrayal into a commodity with the potential to devastate lives," California Attorney General Kamala Harris said in a statement.

Red Flag

Oregon signs up just 44 people for Obamacare despite spending $300 million

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© Washington Examiner
Oregon, once touted as a model for President Obama's health care law, signed up just 44 people for insurance through November, despite spending more than $300 million on its state-based exchange.

The state's exchange had the fewest sign-ups in the nation, according to a new report today by the Department of Health and Human Services.

The weak number of sign-ups undercuts two major defenses of Obamacare from its supporters.

One defense was that state-based exchanges were performing a lot better than the federal healthcare.gov website servicing 36 states. But Oregon's website problems have forced the state to rely on paper applications to sign up participants.

Question

What's wrong with American media?


Heart - Black

Kids suffer panic attacks after New York school locks them in padded cell to 'calm down'

padded cell
© Unknown
In an effort to get kids to "calm down," a New York City elementary school confines kids as young as five in a padded cell, the New York Daily News reports today.

The Daily News says that two of the three youngsters who have been imprisoned in the nighmarish, cramped quarters decorated with nothing more than a single mat on the floor suffered freak-outs so severe that one of them needed to be hospitalized.

Each padded cell stay lasts 15 to 20 minutes.

The room, about the size of a walk-in closet, is reportedly used at KIPP Star Washington Heights Elementary School, a prestigious charter school in upper Manhattan. But the mother of the boy who was rushed to the hospital with an uncontrollable panic attack from being locked away in the cell has pulled her child out of the school to avoid any more incarcerations.

"He was crying hysterically," said Teneka Hall, 28. "It's no way to treat a child."

Her son Xavier, 5, suffered a breakdown while sentenced to the so-called "calm down room," meant for kids who act up in class, panicking and urinating on himself.

USA

Nearly a quarter of Californians live in poverty

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A deepening social crisis plagues the US state of California, a reflection of a broader national crisis more than five years after the economic crash of 2008.

According to the US Census Bureau's Supplemental Poverty Measure (SPM), updated last month, a shocking 8.9 million people in the state live in poverty, more than twice as many as in any other state in the country. Nearly a quarter (23.8 percent) of all Californians live in poverty based on this measures, which is designed to create a more accurate picture of poverty than the official poverty statistics.

The current official poverty measure, which has changed little since its adoption in 1963, is calculated at three times the cost of minimum food purchases. SPM, by contrast, calculates the poverty threshold based on a basic set of goods including food, shelter, clothing and utilities, along with a small additional amount for other expenses. The measure also allows for geographical variations. It does not take into account other significant expenditures, including medical costs, retirement saving and debt servicing.

On a national level, 46.7 million individuals were in poverty in 2012 using the official measure, while 49.4 million were considered to be in poverty using the supplemental measure. In California, 6.2 million were officially poor, compared to the 8.9 million based on the SPM.

Comment: California has always been a trend-setting bell-weather state for the rest of the country. No doubt that will be true of the impoverishing of the American population as well.


Heart - Black

Joshua Shumway, nurse, accused of raping female patient five times in the course of one night

Joshua Shumway
© Duchesne County Jail Joshua Shumway allegedly raped a hospital patient five times in the course of a night.
A Utah nurse has been accused of raping and threatening to kill a female surgery patient.

The Salt Lake Tribune reports that Joshua Platte Shumway, 26, was arrested Monday after an unidentified woman came to police and told them of her alleged ordeal that happened in April.

The details are disturbing.

The 37-year-old woman was staying the night at Uintah Basin Medical Center in Roosevelt, where Shumway worked, to recover after a surgery.

Shumway entered her room during the night and allegedly sexually assaulted the woman five times in the course of the evening. He was not her assigned nurse.

According to a probable cause statement, the nurse first gave her medication before placing her hand on an automatic morphine injector to activate it. The woman told investigators she had stopped using the injector because it was making her nauseous.

Arrow Down

The case of incest and depravity which came to rest in the hills of a quiet country town in Australia

NSW Country Town
© The Daily Telegraph, AustraliaScenes of depravity greeted police and child welfare officers investigating incest on a farm outside a NSW country town.
It is a case of shocking depravity which came to rest in the hills surrounding a picturesque farming community nestled in a valley southwest of Sydney.

Unknown to the 2000 citizens of the town in a fertile valley amid the south-western slopes of NSW, a dark family secret was unravelling.

Now it can be revealed, not only could the case of the Colt family be the nation's most appalling saga of child abuse, it is among one of the worst accounts of incest ever made public.

The NSW Children's Court has taken the rare step of publishing its judgment of actions taken to remove children from the Colt family (a court-appointed pseudonym to protect identification of minors).

Four generations of intimate relations among the Colts had taken place in South Australia, Victoria, Western Australia and finally come to NSW.

Moving state to state, possibly to evade detection, the scandal only came to light when authorities were alerted there were children living in the hills who didn't attend school.

When they turned up on a remote bush block, they uncovered scenes which wouldn't soon be forgotten.

Handcuffs

I Turned Down 3 Years in Prison and Ended up with 15 to Life

Prison
© Unknown
A new report by Human Rights Watch titled "An Offer You Can't Refuse" reveals that only three percent of U.S. drug defendants in federal cases chose to go to trial instead of pleading guilty in 2012. The report explains that the reason only three percent go to trial is because prosecutors warn defendants that if they refuse the plea and go to trial, they will be charged with a more serious crime and end up with a much longer sentence.

Prosecutors live and die for convictions and they use mandatory minimum sentencing as a prosecutorial tool to secure convictions and get people to plead guilty without getting their right to a fair trial.

People's fear of angering prosecutors by going to trial is real. The reports shows that defendants who chose to exercise their constitutional rights to go to trial routinely face sentences three times greater than the original plea deals. This is an astounding revelation.

I know the pressure to take a deal and the disatroious consequences of taking my case to trial. In 1985 I refused a plea deal of three years and end up being sentenced to 15 years to life under the mandatory provisions of New York's Rockefeller Drug Laws.

I was duped into delivering an envelope containing four ounces of cocaine for $500 by a bowling buddy. During the criminal proceedings the district attorney's office discovered I was not a drug dealer but nevertheless, they wanted to secure a conviction.

Comment: Yet another shameful example of the workings of the Prison-Industrial Complex.

Also see:
The prison industrial complex: How Wall Street profits from human misery

Who Profits from Prison?: 24-Year-Old Gets 3 Life Terms in Prison for Witnessing a Drug Deal