Society's ChildS


Bizarro Earth

Oceanside couple who held girl as sex slave sent to prison

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© Fox5 San DiegoInez Martinez Garcia and Marcial Garcia Hernandez were sentenced for keeping an underage relative as a sex slave, housekeeper, baby-sitter and prostitute.
An Oceanside couple are headed to prison for keeping an underage relative as a sex slave, housekeeper, baby sitter and prostitute.

Inez Martinez Garcia, 44, was sentenced Monday to 20 years in prison, and her husband, Marcial Garcia Hernandez, 45, to 23 years to life. Each had pleaded guilty to multiple counts of abuse.

The two were accused of forcing the girl to clean and cook, take care of the couple's three children and have sex with Hernandez and with other men for money.

Pistol

Elderly mother fatally shoots drunk son after he tries to shoot her

An 86-year-old Florida woman shot and killed her son after he became violently drunk and shot her. William Pennypacker, 64, attacked his mother, Nancy Pennpacker, on Friday night in her Lakeland home. He punched her in the face and eventually pulled a gun on her.

William shot Nancy in the fingers, and the bullet travelled up her arm and into her right shoulder. Nancy, who was also armed at that point, fired one shot back at him, killing him.

A Polk County Sheriff's deputy heard the shots around 10:30 p.m., while patrolling the area. He saw Nancy run out of her home screaming. William was found dead inside.

Black Magic

DR Congo's witchcraft epidemic: 50,000 children accused of sorcery

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© BBC3Children line up to be judged by a pastor.
There are around 50,000 children being held in churches in the Democratic Republic of Congo accused of witchcraft, a BBC film team has discovered.

Branded a Witch shows Kevani Kanda exploring the secretive world of faith-based child abuse, where children are physically assaulted because a church leader believes they possess kindoki or magic powers.

The documentary explores the increase in the number of children abused and murdered by relatives in the name of driving out demons.

Kanda, who was born in the DRC, looks to establish how ancient traditions have resulted in children being singled out for abuse.

Attention

The killing of 12-year-old Mohammed al-Durrah in Gaza became the defining image of the second intifada Only Israel claims it was all a fake

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One of the most evocative and shocking episodes of the second Intifada, the shooting of a 12-year-old Palestinian boy by the Israeli army, was staged. Indeed, Mohammed al-Durrah was not even injured in the incident.

Those, at least, are the findings of an investigation by the Israeli government, published today, which has described the case as a "blood libel on the state of Israel".

The killing of Mohammed al-Durrah in Gaza was played out on television scenes across the West in September 2000, days after the start of the Palestinian uprising. The France 2 network filmed Jamal, Mohammed's father, desperately trying to shield his young son after they were caught up in a heavy gun battle between Palestinian fighters and Israeli soldiers. After 40 minutes of being pinned behind a barrel and against a wall, Mohammed's body appears to crumple, hit it seems, in the crossfire. Mohammed's death became a Palestinian rallying call in the violence that followed.

Despite Israel initially admitting that the bullets had "apparently" come from their positions, and apologising for the incident in what the report describes as the "fog of war", lobbyists have long argued that the footage was staged.

Whistle

Church whistle-blowers join forces on abuse

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© Jeffrey Phelps for The New York TimesThe Rev. James Connell, in Sheboygan, Wis., is a member of Catholic Whistleblowers.
They call themselves Catholic Whistleblowers, a newly formed cadre of priests and nuns who say the Roman Catholic Church is still protecting sexual predators.

Although they know they could face repercussions, they have banded together to push the new pope to clean house and the American bishops to enforce the zero-tolerance policies they adopted more than a decade ago.

The group began organizing quietly nine months ago without the knowledge of their superiors or their peers, and plan to make their campaign public this week. Most in the steering group of 12 have blown the whistle on abusers in the past, and three are canon lawyers who once handled abuse cases on the church's behalf. Four say they were sexually abused as children.

V

Rise Up or Die

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© Mr. Fish
Joe Sacco and I spent two years reporting from the poorest pockets of the United States for our book "Days of Destruction, Days of Revolt." We went into our nation's impoverished "sacrifice zones" - the first areas forced to kneel before the dictates of the marketplace - to show what happens when unfettered corporate capitalism and ceaseless economic expansion no longer have external impediments. We wanted to illustrate what unrestrained corporate exploitation does to families, communities and the natural world. We wanted to challenge the reigning ideology of globalization and laissez-faire capitalism to illustrate what life becomes when human beings and the ecosystem are ruthlessly turned into commodities to exploit until exhaustion or collapse. And we wanted to expose as impotent the formal liberal and governmental institutions that once made reform possible, institutions no longer equipped with enough authority to check the assault of corporate power.

What has taken place in these sacrifice zones - in postindustrial cities such as Camden, N.J., and Detroit, in coalfields of southern West Virginia where mining companies blast off mountaintops, in Indian reservations where the demented project of limitless economic expansion and exploitation worked some of its earliest evil, and in produce fields where laborers often endure conditions that replicate slavery - is now happening to much of the rest of the country. These sacrifice zones succumbed first. You and I are next.

Black Cat 2

Psychopathy of elites! Brit millionaire 'told sexual assault victim: you cannot do anything, this will never go anywhere'

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© EPA/AP
Gregory Cox has been charged with the sexual assault of a 21 year old woman on Bondi Beach in January 2013
Gregory Cox, 32, the founder and chief executive of the UK-based Quintessential Finance Group and a graduate of the exclusive Millfield boarding school near Somerset, has admitted to a sexual encounter with the woman - a 21-year-old from Bermuda - but claims she consented.

The trial started with a new jury this week after the first jury was discharged last week for legal reasons.

The alleged assault occurred on Sydney's famous Bondi Beach after 11pm on a Saturday night in January 2012. The pair met at a beachside bar, The Bucket List, where the woman swapped phone numbers with one of Mr Cox's friends.

The woman, who had only arrived in Australia four days earlier, also chatted with Mr Cox about his boarding school and later walked off with him along the beach. But he faces accusations he held her head while standing with his back against a wall on the beach and forced her to perform oral sex.

The crown prosecutor, Huw Baker, told the court that the woman had a patchy memory of what happened after leaving the bar but recalled being "terrified" as she tried to stop Mr Cox's efforts to force her to perform oral sex.

"She recalls being on her knees and she tried to stand up but being unable to stand up because something was holding her down," Mr Baker told the court. "She recalls being terrified at that point."

After Mr Cox withdrew, the woman allegedly cried: "Please stop, please stop - I don't want this."

Mr Cox allegedly told the woman: "There's nothing you can do about it... You can tell the police, you can tell whoever you like but this will never go anywhere - I've got a lot of money."

Black Magic

Psychopathy! Illinois teen athletes raped 12-year-old girl, posted video on Facebook

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© unknown
Three Illinois teenagers are accused of raping a 12-year-old girl at gunpoint and posting a video of it on Facebook.

Kenneth Brown, 15, Justin Applewhite, 16, and Scandale Fritz, 16 appeared in court on Friday. They are being charged with aggravated criminal sexual assault.

All three are accused of luring the girl into Fritz's home in Englewood where they sexually assaulted her.

The girl was raped by Fritz and told to also have sex with Brown and Applewhite.

When the girl refused to have sex with them, Brown and Applewhite raped her and ordered her again to perform sex acts on them.

She said she was scared to attempt escaping because she was afraid of getting shot.

A day later, she told an adult what had happened and was taken to the hospital. Police were also contacted.

Heart - Black

Immigration law in Alabama requires physicians to prove U.S. citizenship to maintain license

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Physicians and physician assistants in Alabama are now required to prove they are U.S. citizens, under the state's 2011 immigration law.

Medical professionals received letters this week instructing them to submit paperwork to the Alabama Board of Medical Examiners (ABME) in order to maintain their license to practice.

"A person applying for or renewing a professional license is required to sign a declaration of U.S. citizenship and demonstrate U.S. citizenship or demonstrate lawful presence in the U.S., which is then verified by the federal government," read the May 16 letter published by the Huffington Post.

It says the medical professional has only until May 31, 2013 to send the required documentation. "You will not be permitted to renew you license until this agency is in receipt of the signed Declaration and accompanying documentation," said the letter.

Alarm Clock

Protest planned after gay man murdered in Manhattan


New Yorkers -- including mayoral candidate Christine Quinn -- planned a rally Monday to protest the shooting death of a gay man in the neighborhood that was the cradle of the modern US gay rights movement.