Society's ChildS


Cult

Virginia Christian school bans 8-year-old girl - tomboys aren't 'biblical'

girl not biblical
© WSET News
An 8-year-old girl in Virginia has been told that she can not return to her Christian school because she defied "biblical standards" by looking like a boy.

Doris Thompson told WSET that her granddaughter, Sunnie Kahle, was forced to enroll in public school and has been refused admission for the next school year until she can express the proper gender identity.

"You're probably aware that Timberlake Christian School is a religious, Bible believing institution providing education in a distinctly Christian environment," a letter from Timberlake Christian School's principal said.

According to WSET, the letter said that school rules said that students could be banned for "condoning sexual immorality, practicing a homosexual lifestyle or alternative gender identity."

"We believe that unless Sunnie as well as her family clearly understand that God has made her female and her dress and behavior need to follow suit with her God-ordained identity, that TCS is not the best place for her future education," the principal wrote.

Doris Thompson, who has adopted and raised her granddaughter, said that Sunnie is now in public school, and she "cries every morning to get on the bus, she cries when she comes home because she wants to go back to Timberlake Christian with her friends."

"How do you label a child, eight years old, or discriminate against an eight year old child?" grandfather Carroll Thompson asked. "It just don't happen."

Comment: The inmates are definitely running the asylum.


USA

Pathological USA: "Purity balls" where girls 'gift their virginity' to their fathers

Purity balls, in which a girl pledges to remain 'pure' until her wedding day, symbolically 'marries' God, and promises her father that she will remain a virgin until she's a wife, have become a phenomenon in America, now taking place in 48 out of the 50 states.

The balls resemble giant wedding ceremonies, with the girls - all around the age of 12 - wearing white gowns and dancing with their fathers who promise to 'protect' their daughter's chastity.

During the ceremony, fathers present their daughters with purity rings, which they wear to symbolise their commitment to virginity.


No Entry

Sick! Aborted and miscarried babies incinerated to heat UK hospitals

ultrasound
© AlamyMore than 15,000 aborted or miscarried babies were burned as 'clinical waste' an investigation has discovered
The bodies of thousands of aborted and miscarried babies were incinerated as clinical waste, with some even used to heat hospitals, an investigation has found.

Ten NHS trusts have admitted burning foetal remains alongside other rubbish while two others used the bodies in 'waste-to-energy' plants which generate power for heat.

Last night the Department of Health issued an instant ban on the practice which health minister Dr Dan Poulter branded 'totally unacceptable.'

At least 15,500 foetal remains were incinerated by 27 NHS trusts over the last two years alone, Channel 4's Dispatches discovered.

The programme, which will air tonight, found that parents who lose children in early pregnancy were often treated without compassion and were not consulted about what they wanted to happen to the remains.

Chalkboard

Professors in homeless shelters: It is time to talk seriously about wage-slave university adjuncts

adjunct professors tenure
© thelinke via iStock
Adjunct abuse is one of higher education's great sins. So why is a leading writing conference not discussing it?

Hi there, Association of Writers and Writing Programs.

We've known each other for awhile. We first met in 2009 in New York and it was love at first sight. You plied me with talks about writing craft, you offered table after table of literary magazines and small presses. I got the idea to start a lit mag review site and I met some amazing people. You have inspired me, AWP, in so many ways over the years.

But I want to talk to you about something. Because we're friends. Because I trust you and, I hope, you trust me. (You did, after all, help me fix the sign on my table when it kept falling down this year. That was awesome of you.) So I want to tell you: I think you're failing writers in some big and important ways.

Here's the thing, AWP. The percentage of teaching positions occupied by non-tenure-track faculty has more than tripled in the past four decades. According to the Adjunct Project, "Two-thirds of the faculty standing in front of college classrooms each day aren't full-time or permanent professors." The Chronicle of Higher Education reports that "the shadowy world of would-be academia is filled with people cobbling together five or six such teaching gigs at once. That's possible because some 70 percent of college courses offered are now taught by adjuncts - part-timers who are paid a pittance and have no job security."

Yet, at this year's conference in Seattle, the biggest AWP conference yet, you did not have a single panel dedicated to adjunct teaching. Nor were there any panels addressing this shift toward part-time faculty at colleges. Absent also were lectures, discussions or Q&A sessions addressing these changes in the academic climate.

Articles detailing the grueling working conditions of adjuncts abound. I've heard stories about professors with PhD's sleeping in homeless shelters, of adjuncts teaching in rooms filled with cockroaches, of professors without health insurance, unable to afford heat in their homes, living on food stamps.

No doubt, AWP, you have heard these stories too.

Arrow Down

Florida woman files suit alleging cops made her defecate on lawn during drug bust

drug dog
© unknown
A Florida woman is filing a claim against police officers for violating her civil rights when they forced her to defecate on her front lawn during a meth bust. A federal judge ruled that her claim won't stick.

Courthouse News Service reports that Dawn Brooks alleges that police in New Smyrna Beach handcuffed her and brought her outside when she asked to do her business in a private place as they searched her house for meth.

"They 'told her to 'just use the restroom right there' in the front yard, which plaintiff did," U.S. District Judge Roy Dalton Jr. summarized.

Brooks further claims that they looked on and laughed at her as they made her undress and change into a plastic jumpsuit instead of helping her do so.

Heart - Black

Innocent Mississippi woman slated to be executed on Thursday

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Mississippi Will Execute a Woman for a Crime Her Son Confessed To
A Mississippi woman is slated be executed on Thursday for a murder her son confessed to carrying out.

Michelle Byrom's conviction dates back to 1999, when a jury found her guilty of murdering her husband, Edward Byrom Sr. Byrom was convicted on grounds that she hired her son's friend Joey Gillis to kill her husband. Byrom, who was abused by her husband for years, pleaded not guilty to the crime. Her son, Edward Byrom Jr., wrote multiple confession letters in which he explicitly admitted to killing his father, but the jury was forbidden from reading them.

"As I sat on my bed, tears of rage flowing, remembering my childhood my anger kept building and building, and I went to my car, got the 9mm, and walked to his room, peeked in, and he was asleep," he wrote in one of the letters. "I walked about 2 steps in the door, and screamed, and shut my eyes, when I heard him move, I started firing."

Byrom Jr. was initially on trial for murdering his father. During the trial, prosecutors made a deal with Byrom in which they would reduce his sentence if he agreed to testify in court that his mother was involved in the murder plot. Byrom agreed to the deal, even though he has since confessed that the narrative he testified to was a lie.

Bad Guys

Pedophile alert! DuPont family heir rapes his children and gets off scot-free


A DuPont family heir who avoided jail time after pleading guilty to raping his 3-year-old daughter almost a decade ago, now faces a lawsuit from his former wife that accuses him of sexually abusing his toddler son.

Robert H. Richards IV, 47, who is supported by a trust fund and who paid $1.8 million for his 5,800-square-foot mansion near Winterthur Museum, pleaded guilty in 2008 to fourth-degree rape of his daughter, according to USA Today. For pleading guilty to raping his daughter he was only sentenced to probation, and he has seen no consequences in this most recent case of raping his toddler aged son.

Richards is a member of both the DuPont family, who built the worldwide chemical empire, and the Richards family, who co-founded the prestigious corporate law firm Richards Layton & Finger.

Richards was able avoid any jail time, thanks to his overpriced lawyers and the prestige of his families.

Currently, the charges being filed against him are only civil. His ex wife has filed a lawsuit against him for punitive damages.

Eye 1

Notorious British paedophile with a history of child abuse in the UK jailed for only two years after sexually assaulting three boys in Cambodia

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Richard William Fruin was found guilty of committing indecent acts against the three brothers aged eight, 10 and 11
* Richard William Fruin, 36, from Gloucestershire, jailed in Phnom Penh

* Fruin was working as an English teacher at the Universal English School

* Fled to Cambodia after serving a year in prison in Britain for producing child pornography

* He was found guilty of committing indecent acts against three brothers

A notorious British paedophile with a history of child abuse in the UK and South East Asia has been sent to prison for two years in Cambodia for sexually assaulting three young boys.

Richard William Fruin, 36, from Gloucestershire was found guilty by Judge Kim Rathnarin of committing indecent acts against the three brothers aged eight, 10 and 11.

Along with his prison sentence, he was fined £600 and ordered to pay £1,500 to the victims' family.

Fruin was working as an English teacher at the Universal English School in the Cambodian capital, Phnom Penh when he was arrested with one of the boys at a guesthouse in the city.

Anti-human-trafficking police burst into the Boeung Meas guest house where they found Fruin in bed with the eight year old - but he claimed the child was there as a young friend and that he had not molested him.

Fruin will now join in prison another Briton, 67-year-old David Fletcher, from Norwich, who has been convicted of raping a number of children who were living in a slum.

Fruin was arrested in the UK in 2005 and charged with 15 counts of producing indecent images of children, but skipped bail and fled the country.

Stop

The EPA threatens Wyoming family with fines of $75,000 a day for building a duck pond on their property

cartoon
© unknown
A Wyoming family is being threatened with massive fines for building a stock pond on their eight-acre farm.

Andy and Katie Johnson built the pond in 2012. They stocked it with trout, ducks, and geese.

Of course, the government is why we can't have nice things. Naturally, the EPA has found a reason to come around and harass the Johnsons and prevent them from enjoying their property.

Johnson said the EPA has engaged him in a power play and is threatening him with massive civil and criminal penalties over the pond, which they claim is actually a "dam."

Fox News reports:
The agency claims Johnson violated the Clean Water Act by building a dam on a creek without a permit from the Army Corps of Engineers. Further, the EPA claims that material from his pond is being discharged into other waterways. Johnson says he built a stock pond - a man-made pond meant to attract wildlife - which is exempt from Clean Water Act regulations.

Eye 1

Egypt: More than 500 sentenced to death in 'grotesque' ruling

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© AFP/Getty ImagesEgyptian relatives of those sentenced to death react to the news outside the Minya Criminal Court.


Today's Minya Criminal Court death sentences handed down by an Egyptian court are a grotesque example of the shortcomings and the selective nature of Egypt's justice system, Amnesty International said.

According to state media reports, in a single hearing this morning, the Minya Criminal Court sentenced 529 supporters of former President Mohamed Morsi to be executed for their alleged role in violence following his ousting in July last year.

"This is injustice writ large and these death sentences must be quashed. Imposing death sentences of this magnitude in a single case makes Egypt surpass most other countries' use of capital punishment in a year," said Hassiba Hadj Sahraoui, Deputy Middle East and North Africa Programme Director at Amnesty International.

"This is the largest single batch of simultaneous death sentences we've seen in recent years, not just in Egypt but anywhere in the world.