Tag Archive for: child abuse

Society-wide Corruption in Epstein Case is Just the Tip of the Iceberg

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Jeffrey Epstein and his ongoing ability to orchestrate a massive scheme to facilitate and breed the corruption of powerful individuals to sexually exploit others is finally surfacing to the public eye, trickling through the no longer impenetrable gates of unattainable elite society.

It is right and just for our society to demand accountability and transparency about those who sexually abused people through Jeffrey Epstein’s networks. At the same time, while the media and public are in a frenzy about recent releases of names associated with Epstein, the same attention and care is not given to others – women, children, and men – being currently exploited in less high-profile cases.

We, as an everyday nation, are experiencing the absolute power of corruption with the free-flowing flood of over 400,000 youth who go missing in America every year, over 80,000 unaccompanied minors at our nation’s borders, and the countless number of children who are groomed and exploited online all while within their own home. All of this in the Land of the Free. Many of these innocent children are far removed from the interest of high-profile media or promised power of freedom as they tragically are delivered into the atrocities of human sex trafficking.

Big Tech is an exponential digital version of all the same patterns of networks of those with power, age, and privilege grooming and exploiting the innocent, just as we see in the Epstein case. Predators don’t only network and collaborate to abuse on private jets or private islands, they can do so from the comfort of their own homes, laptops, or phones.

Alas the documents. The names. The media coverage. As it should be.

It is crucial that we take action and care just as much about what is happening every moment in every neighborhood as it is about exposing those that chose perversion and abuse of their positions of power. What a devastation to the human race. Imagine where the world would be if human dignity is what everyone protected and fought for, and anything less was unacceptable to all.

Demand Congress make this the Child Protection Congress!

The take action form is at the end of the column.

AUTHOR

Teresa J. Helm

EDITORS NOTE: This NCOSE column is republished with permission. All rights reserved.

5 Things You Should Know about Human Trafficking

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Released in theaters last week, “Sound of Freedom” tells the true story of Tim Ballard, a Homeland Security agent who quits his job and joins forces with local Latin American law enforcement and underground contacts to rescue children caught in human trafficking. The film portrays Ballard as he sets up a sting operation that successfully frees a young Honduran boy and reunites him with his father. When the boy tells him about his sister who is still in captivity, Ballard becomes determined to find her. The heartfelt thriller has proven surprisingly successful, beating “Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny” at the box office on July 4.

Despite the heavy subject matter, “Sound of Freedom” leaves viewers feeling hopeful and motivated to make a difference. In the film, Ballard’s character expresses understandable frustration that more is not being done to free enslaved children, saying, “And every day, ordinary people don’t want to hear it. It’s too ugly for polite conversation.” The film’s early success will hopefully prove that thinking false.

Human trafficking — both sex trafficking and labor trafficking, including of children — remains a widespread global problem, and America is not left untouched. Here is what you should know about human trafficking.

1. Human Trafficking Is More Prevalent Than You Think

The U.S. Department of Justice defines human trafficking as “a crime that involves compelling or coercing a person to provide labor or services, or to engage in commercial sex acts.” This coercion can be presented as “subtle or overt, physical or psychological.” The breadth of the issue creates a complex web of victims with different experiences, the majority of which never receive justice for the evil committed against them.

It is estimated that nearly 28 million individuals are trafficked globally at any given time. Human trafficking creates a global profit of $150 billion each year, making it “the most lucrative crime after drug trafficking.” Even so, only a fraction of traffickers are punished for their crimes. In 2022, there were 15,159 prosecutions worldwide for trafficking, yet these culminated in only 5,577 convictions. In the United States specifically, the National Human Trafficking Hotline received over 10,000 reports regarding 16,554 victims throughout 2021.

While human trafficking is not limited just to sex crimes, statistics reveal that the U.S. is a top consumer of child sex in the world. In the U.S. alone, the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children received more than 17,200 reports of child sex trafficking in the United States in 2021. Geoff Rogers, co-founder of the United States Against Human Trafficking, reports how the “United States is the No. 1 consumer of sex worldwide,” and demand is often being driven with children. Rogers asserts there are “a multitude of kids that are being sold as sex slaves today in America,” over half of which come from the foster care system. These statistics confirm the somber reality of this evil; child sex trafficking not only exists in foreign nations, but it thrives here in our communities.

2. Porn Creates Demand for Sex trafficking, Including for Child Sex Trafficking

Studies have shown the consumption of pornography contributes to the objectification of human beings and an “acceptance of sexual mistreatment.” In a lecture on the link between pornography and sex trafficking conducted by the Family Research Council, Arina Grossu emphasized the addictive nature of pornography, which fuels the demand for more pornographic material and sex acts. Many of these commodities are provided by individuals who are sex trafficked.

Specifically, research shows that those who observe pornography most often were also the ones to purchase women in prostitution for sex acts. Journalist John-Henry Westen asserts that viewership creates increased acceptance for violent, disturbing pornography, ultimately culminating in a clientele for the sex trafficking industry. With desensitization — and even broad acceptance — of porn consumption and engaging in pornographic activity, sex trafficking victims are used to meet the demand and produce content without the opportunity to express true consent. With the worldwide pornography industry worth $97 billion — its success largely attributed to its addictive nature — traffickers have an incentive to continue using victims for continued economic profit.

Even more startling is the growing success of online child pornography consumption. Of those who view child pornography, between 40-80% have in fact molested a minor themselves. Further research concludes 66-90% of women used to create pornographic material were victims of sexual abuse at some point during their childhood. This connection between childhood abuse and increased likelihood of being sex trafficked for pornographic material in the future draws attention to the crisis our society faces in protecting children from this evil.

3. Current U.S. Border Policy Is Enabling Human Traffickers

It is estimated upwards of 72% of all human trafficking victims in the U.S. are immigrants, many of which are transported across the border between the U.S. and Mexico. With the current status of the border, many girls, some as young as 14, are abducted prior to their arrival at the border then smuggled across to perform sex acts at a price. Approximately 60% of children who enter the U.S. illegally and unaccompanied are caught by cartel members and used in the production of child pornography.

In terms of the legislative process, the issues of illegal immigration and human trafficking are generally dealt with separately to pass bipartisan legislation more easily. The recently passed version of the Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act grants unaccompanied minors “special accommodations, such as expedited processing and benefits.” Unfortunately, these opportunities provided to unaccompanied minors incentivize minors to cross the border, ultimately creating minimal restrictions and increased opportunities for cartels to seize these children. To effectively address human trafficking in the U.S., we must also take measures to address rampant illegal border crossings, especially when unaccompanied minors are involved.

4. God Cares Deeply about Those Trapped in Slavery

In “Sound of Freedom,” Tim Ballard’s character successfully catches a pedophile attempting to traffic a child in a sting operation. The film’s representation of these real-world scenarios rightfully creates a stomach-churning reaction. Witnessing the cruelty of humanity in this way draws us to John 3:19: “And this is the judgment: the light has come into the world, and people loved the darkness rather than the light because their works were evil.” It’s a verse that naturally comes to mind when confronted with the evil of child exploitation. In this industry that so overtly disregards the value of human life — especially that of a child — let us remember that they reside in the darkness. For our fight is not against earthly foes, but it is “against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places” (Ephesians 6:12). That is why we should make every effort to administer justice to those in need and to deliver them from the wickedness of this fallen world (Psalm 82:3-4).

Human trafficking of those of any age is an assault on the human dignity of women and men and girls and boys made in the image of God (Genesis 1:27). We are right to be grieved by news of human trafficking and to seek justice for those who are oppressed (Isaiah 1:17).

5. You Can Be a Part of the Solution

If you feel a burden to make a difference on behalf of victims of human trafficking, a first step you can take is learning more about what the current challenges are. Then pray about what God might be calling you to do in your daily life. That may be donating to an organization that fights human trafficking, researching your states’ anti-trafficking laws and encouraging local leaders to make them stronger if needed, or praying with your small group from church.

For more on what you can do to fight trafficking, visit the National Center on Sexual Exploitation’s resources page. It includes action steps like how you can report suspected trafficking, how to upload images of your hotel room to a national database, and more.

Elected representatives at the state or federal level will often not prioritize an issue unless they think that their constituents are prioritizing it. Sharing information about human trafficking on social media, encouraging friends to see the “Sound of Freedom” movie, and telling your representatives you want to see more action done on fight human trafficking can all go a long way towards calling attention to human trafficking.

A quote often attributed to Mother Teresa reminds us, “I can do things you cannot, you can do things I cannot; together we can do great things.” We all can play a part in building momentum to address this evil.

AUTHORS

Arielle Del Turco 

Arielle Del Turco is Director of the Center for Religious Liberty at Family Research Council, and co-author of “Heroic Faith: Hope Amid Global Persecution.”

Alaina Cothran

RELATED ARTICLE: NIH Grants $3.3 Million for Boston Children’s Hospital to Promote Gender Transitions to Out-of-State Minors

EDITORS NOTE: This Washington Stand column is republished with permission. All rights reserved. ©2023 Family Research Council.

The Washington Stand is Family Research Council’s outlet for news and commentary from a biblical worldview. The Washington Stand is based in Washington, D.C. and is published by FRC, whose mission is to advance faith, family, and freedom in public policy and the culture from a biblical worldview. We invite you to stand with us by partnering with FRC.

It Started With A Band-Aid: The Intersection of Racism, Adultification, and Exploitation

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*Gabrielle’s story is a composite story, based on common experiences of black survivors which have been expressed to NCOSE and/or documented in research. The header image for this block is a stock image, not a picture of an actual survivor.

It started with a band-aid.

Gabrielle had tripped during recess and scraped up her knee. Crying, Gabrielle limped inside to go find her Kindergarten teacher, Ms. Evans, and show her what had happened.

Ms. Evans was a kind lady. Gabrielle hoped that, when she saw her bleeding knee, she might give her a hug and a lollipop for comfort. She had seen Ms. Evans do this last week for beautiful, blonde-haired Kylie, when that little girl had fallen off the monkey bars.

But Ms. Evans simply gave Gabrielle a pat on the back, told her to “be a big girl,” and reached inside her desk for a band-aid.

Swallowing her disappointment, Gabrielle took the band-aid and struggled to put it on. She’d never put on a band-aid herself before, but she finally managed to get it to stick.

Only, it looked funny . . .

Gabrielle frowned at the band-aid for a moment, trying to figure out what was wrong.

Then she realized.

The band-aid was “skin color.” Not Gabrielle’s skin color. Kylie’s skin color.

It was that band-aid that first made Gabrielle understand that she was “different.” That the color of her skin somehow made her an outsider.

And as Gabrielle frowned at the band-aid, standing out so pale against her dark knee, she couldn’t help but wonder if the color of her skin was also the reason why Ms. Evans hadn’t given her a hug or a lollipop.

Fact: Studies show that adults tend to perceive Black girls as older and less innocent than White girls. This is known as “Adultification” and it often leads to Black girls not receiving the same level of nurturing and compassion as White girls do. It also often leads to Black girls being sexualized at an earlier age, which increases the risk that they will be sexually exploited.

Gabrielle soon realized that Kindergarten teachers weren’t the only ones who treated her differently. There were also the men. Young men, old men – so many of them seemed to leer at Gabrielle like they wanted to do something to her. Gabrielle didn’t know what that something was . . . until one day, her latest foster father made it clear.

Fact: Black children are overrepresented in the foster care system. Although they make up only 14% of children in the United States, Black children make up 23% of the foster care system. Foster children are ten times more likely to be sexually abused and Black children are sexually abused twice as much as their White counterparts in the foster care system. Statistics show that a history of sexual abuse dramatically increases a person’s chance of being exploited in prostitution. 

Gabrielle carried the trauma from what her foster father did to her for years. She carried it into her first relationship, during which she felt intense fear of doing anything physical. When she told her boyfriend that she didn’t want to, he wasn’t pleased.

“I thought girls like you were always into it?” he said.

Gabrielle didn’t ask what he meant by “girls like her.” She didn’t have to. Because next, her boyfriend showed her his favorite “ebony” pornography videos, as examples of what he wanted to do with her.

Gabrielle had nightmares for weeks.

Fact: Contemporary Internet pornography sites feature grotesquely racist themes such as those depicted in the screenshots below. Pornography is perhaps the only remaining mainstream media where racism is not only permitted, it is encouraged.

After years of enduring experiences of this nature, Gabrielle eventually decided: if the men in the world were determined to see her as nothing but a Jezebel whom they could use and abuse as they pleased . . . well then, she might as well get paid for it.

And so, Gabrielle entered prostitution.

What she didn’t know was that, in the prostitution marketplace, racism would be uglier than ever.

Her grim conclusion that she “might as well get paid” for being sexually used turned out to be misplaced – for she found that she could not make as much money in prostitution as the White girls.

Gabrielle almost laughed at the cruel irony of it . . . She had supposed that in the prostitution marketplace, where all the women were degraded to mere objects, she would be on “equal footing” with other women at last. But no. Even here, she was worth less. It was somehow possible for the color of her skin to sink her even below the value of an object.

Watch Dr. Stephany Powell discuss beauty standards in the prostitution marketplace, and how black women/girls are sold for less money:

Gabrielle was barely scraping by, so when she met a pimp who promised to help her make more money, she agreed to his offer.

That was a terrible mistake.

The pimp wasn’t interested in helping Gabrielle – he was only interested in controlling and profiting from her. Not only did he not help her make more money, but he beat her when she didn’t make enough to satisfy him.

When Gabrielle pleaded for mercy, explaining that it was harder for her to make money than his other girls because she was black, he simply laughed.

“I know that,” he said, his lip curling in a derisive sneer. “Why do you think I don’t beat my White girls? They’re too valuable, I can’t mark up their faces. You on the other hand . . .”

Fact: Traffickers disproportionately target Black women and girls. It is reported that 40% of sex trafficking victims in the U.S. are Black, despite Black people making up only 13.6% of the U.S. population.

Then one day, while Gabrielle was soliciting on the streets trying to make enough money to avoid a beating, she was arrested. She would be charged with the crime of prostitution, the policeman told her.

As she sat in the police station, Gabrielle knew she ought to be afraid, but she couldn’t help but feel hope . . . Perhaps if she told the police about being under the control of an abusive pimp, they would recognize her as a victim. Perhaps they would rescue her from her situation and give her services, rather than a sentence.

Unfortunately, that didn’t end up being the case.

Gabrielle told her story – but only skeptical, unimpressed faces stared back at her.

Watch Dr. Stephany Powell explain how implicit bias can influence how black survivors are treated by law enforcement and non-profit agencies, and how NCOSE is seeking to address this with their training programs:

ACTION: Request Information about the ELEET Training Program

The Equipping Law Enforcement to End Trafficking (ELEET) training program was developed with a working group of survivors, prosecutors, and seasoned officers in order to educate law enforcement and/or prosecutors on the importance of developing a victim-centered approach during initial contact with victims of human sex trafficking while minimizing the court appearance of victims and addressing implicit bias. Request to book a training or get more information here.

Stories like Gabrielle’s are not rare. Together, adultification, implicit bias, racism and more are risk factors for experiencing sexual exploitation, and even decrease opportunities to exit. We must act together to learn about these realities ourselves, to hold entities responsible for normalizing these themes, and to better equip those who serve survivors.

AUTHOR

Lily Moric

EDITORS NOTE: This NCOSE column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

Since January 1st, 2022 — 465 Child Rapes by Illegal Aliens in North Carolina Alone

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“In the first place, we should insist that, if the immigrant, who comes here in good faith, becomes an American and assimilates himself to us, he shall be treated on an exact equality with everyone else, for it is an outrage to discriminate against any such man because of creed, or birthplace, or origin. But this is predicated upon the person’s becoming in every facet, an American, and nothing but an American…There can be no divided allegiance here. Any man who says he is an American, but something else also, isn’t an American at all. We have room for but one flag, the American flag… We have room for but one language here, and that is the English language… and we have room for but one sole loyalty and that is a loyalty to the American people.” — President Theodore Roosevelt – 1907

The Department of Homeland Security is responsible by-law to keep the borders secure. Here’s DHS Secretary Mayorkas saying he thinks that they’re doing a “good job.”

Democrats have and are continuing to ignore the social costs of their open borders policies. We know that drugs like fentanyl, human trafficking and crimes by illegal aliens have risen each and every day that our borders remain open. However, there are much more serious crimes being committed against the innocent and most vulnerable—our children

One North Carolina group is monitoring the most heinous of all crimes—the rape of children by illegal aliens.

According to their website:

North Carolinians For Immigration Reform and Enforcement (NCFIRE) reports on a monthly basing crimes committed by illegal aliens.

NCFIRE verifies the illegal alien status of each individual we post in our Monthly Child Rape reports through the arresting agency of each individual.

Pursuant to the state open records law, North Carolina General Statutes; Public Records § 132-1, Criminal investigations, § 132-1.4, and Access to Records, § 132-9, allow for NCFIRE to obtain and post the arrest records of any and all individuals arrested in North Carolina.

Here are the 2021 and 2022 NCFIRE reports:

2022 Monthly Child Rapes by Illegal Aliens

  • June 2022              23 illegal aliens arrested for 61 child rape/child sexual assault charges in NC       here
  • May 2022               18 illegal aliens arrested for 42 child rape/child sexual assault charges in NC       here
  • April 2022               19 illegal aliens arrested for 72 child rape/child sexual assault charges in NC       here
  • March 2022            30 illegal aliens arrested for 110 child rape/child sexual assault charges in NC     here
  • February 2022        27 illegal aliens arrested for 84 child rape/child sexual assault charges in NC       here
  • January 2022         18 illegal aliens arrested for 96 child rape/child sexual assault charges in NC        here

2021 Monthly Child Rapes by Illegal Aliens

  • December 2021   18 illegal aliens arrested for 72 child rape/child sexual assault charges in NC      here
  • November 2021   20 illegal aliens arrested for 105 child rape/child sexual assault charges in NC    here
  • October 2021      18 illegal aliens arrested for 62 child rape/child sexual assault charges in NC       here
  • September 2021   27 illegal aliens arrested for 72 child rape/child sexual assault charges in NC       here
  • August 2021          31 illegal aliens arrested for 131 child rape/child sexual assault charges in NC     here
  • July 2021               22 illegal aliens arrested for 96 child rape/child sexual assault charges in NC       here
  • June 2021              32 illegal aliens arrested for 161 child rape/child sexual assault charges in NC     here
  • May 2021               28 illegal aliens arrested for 80 child rape/child sexual assault charges in NC       here
  • April 2021               21 illegal aliens arrested for 200 child rape/child sexual assault charges in NC     here
  • March 2021            17 illegal aliens arrested for 70 child rape/child sexual assault charges in NC       here
  • February 2021        33 illegal aliens arrested for 100 child rape/child sexual assault charges in NC     here
  • January 2021         17 illegal aliens arrested for 55 child rape/child sexual assault charges in NC        here

The Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR) reported the following serious crimes committed by illegal aliens in April and May of 2022 against women and children:

  • On April 19, police in Grovetown, Georgia, arrested Jorge Pineda-Barbosa for allegedly sexually assaulting over 20 women in the area. (WJBF.com, May 3, 2022)
  • On April 25, Yesenia Ramirez and Jose Roman Portillo kidnapped three-month-old Brandon Cuellar in San Jose, California, while the infant’s grandmother was unloading groceries in front of her residence in broad daylight. Fortunately, the baby was found safe twenty hours following the kidnapping. An illegal alien from El Salvador, Yesenia Ramirez had been deported three times: once in 2018, and twice in 2019. (New York Post, April 29, 2022; Breitbart News, May 9, 2022)
  • On May 2, Honduran national Delmer Orlando Ortiz Licona attempted to kidnap a 4-year-old boy in Lubbock County, Texas. He was also accused of sexually assaulting a 7-year-old girl – the daughter of his girlfriend at the time – on August 8, 2021. (Breitbart News, May 25, 2022; KCBD.com, May 25, 2022)
  • In May, police arrested Ronaldo Saul Monteroso Gonzalez for allegedly raping his toddler daughter – whom he also infected with Chlamydia – in Davidson County, Tennessee. Although the child was tested for sexual assault in late February, Monteroso Gonzalez was only arrested in May because the authorities were unable to locate him. ICE has placed a detainer on Monteroso Gonzalez. (ScoopNashville.com, May 12, 2022; Breitbart News, May 18, 2022)
  • On May 19, Reymundo Loa Rodriguez was arrested and charged with allegedly drugging and raping a woman in Wichita Falls, Texas. According to Breitbart News, “Wichita County Jail records show Rodriguez was previously arrested in June 2003 for theft and in October 2013 for assault in a domestic dispute. For each of those arrests, Rodriguez was released within 24 hours.” (Texomashomepage.com, May 23, 2022; Breitbart News, May 30, 2022)

ABOUT NCFIRE

Who We Are

We are a statewide grassroots organization that is dedicated to immigration enforcement. Our organization represents the citizens’ interest in stopping the flood of illegal aliens into North Carolina. We simply can’t afford illegal aliens’ tremendous costs any longer. The damage incurred, the crimes, costs and physical and emotional damage these people are causing, are just too great.

We also seek to educate our citizens to the many costly and destructive aspects of illegal immigrant crime. The crimes we document in our monthly crime reports include some of the most heinous crimes imaginable. (The sad thing about it is, every one of them is 100% preventable if our N.C. Legislators would simply enact and enforce, state level illegal immigration laws.)

What We Believe

We support limiting our jobs and resources to the citizens of North Carolina and we believe that it is time for our Legislators to adhere to their oath of office, “to support the Constitution of the United States; and to be faithful and bear true allegiance to the State of North Carolina” by passing the appropriate legislation to curtail the influx of illegal aliens into our state.

Our Position Statement

“We, as Citizens of the State, call upon the Legislators of North Carolina, to honor their oath of office to support and defend the Constitution of North Carolina, by passing the necessary and appropriate legislation to:”

1) Mandate English as the official language of N.C.

2) Require a valid photo I.D. to vote.

3) Require all companies (public and private) doing business in N.C. to become E-Verify compliant.

4) Mandate stricter punishments and stiffer penalties for hiring illegal aliens in N.C.

5) Enact a N.C. version of Arizona’s SB1070 law to document proof of legal entry and the right to be within N.C. borders.

6) Deny enrollment of illegal aliens to N.C. colleges and universities.

7) Eliminate taxpayer funding to N.C. colleges and universities that allow illegal aliens to enroll.

8) Restrict foreign consulate services to consulate property only.

9) Deny taxpayer funding to any N.C. municipality, town, city or county that supports sanctuary policies for illegal aliens.

10) Require proof of citizenship and residency for all N.C. social welfare eligibility.

11) Cut taxpayer funding to all non-profit organizations in N.C. that provide assistance and/or benefits to illegal aliens.

12) End taxpayer funding of all N.C. ethnic councils.

13) Tighten N.C. vehicle laws by impounding cars driven by unlicensed and uninsured drivers.

14) Restrict the registration of motor vehicles in N.C. to legal N.C. residents only.

What We Do

 We periodically send out “Action Alerts.” These are items that need immediate attention. It may be calling, emailing or faxing your Congressman, signing a petition, attending a rally or to notify you of an upcoming Bill to be voted on in the NCGA. The member contact list is divided up into sections according to their N.C. postal zip code. Information can be sent to specific areas of N.C. according to that zip code. This way, important information can be distributed regionally and action can be taken very quickly.

 How To Join

(It costs you nothing to join and we never ask for your money!)

Simply scroll down to the “Subscribe to our mailing list” section below. Enter your e-mail address. You can also enter your first and last names if you choose but it is not required; then click “Subscribe”. You will be sent a confirmation email that you signed up. Simply click on the link in the email to confirm the request. That’s it!You will be joining 40,000 to 50,000 fellow North Carolinians in the effort to enforce immigration laws in our state. With numbers like that, you can indeed make a difference!

©NCFIRE. All rights reserved.

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The Abuse Summit: It’s Only the Beginning

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Robert Royal: People are happy that McCarrick has finally been defrocked, but now we need to deal with other abusers and enablers. 

February is not high tourist season in Rome. Skies are gray and temperatures low. St. Peter’s Square is relatively empty. But journalists filled the nearby Press Office earlier this week – more, according to one veteran, than since the death of St. John Paul II –because of the summit on the sex abuse crisis, which begins this evening with meetings between abuse survivors and participants, and continues Thursday through Saturday with formal sessions, parts of which will be streamed on the Vatican website. A video of the opening press briefing with remarks by Cardinal Cupich, Archbishop Scicluna, and other key figures is available by clicking here.

To be frank, it’s hard to say why so many journalists are here since no one, including Church spokesmen, expects that anything very dramatic will happen over the next few days – at least not in the formal sessions. What happens outside and around them, however, may be a different matter.

When the summit was announced last September, partly because of papal missteps in handling abuse cases in Chile, it seemed that the Church was going to take some large steps forward. There have been many smaller steps for years in many places around the world, everything from easier reporting mechanisms to better human formation in seminaries to the unprecedented laicization last weekend of former Cardinal Theodore McCarrick.

Expectations ran high, not least because the Holy Father asked the American bishops, during their annual November meeting, not to vote on ways to hold bishops accountable – whether they are abusers themselves, like McCarrick, or covered up abuse by people under their authority. They were told to wait until a uniform approach could be developed in February when many of the presidents of bishops’ conferences and heads of religious orders would gather together in Rome.

But Vatican spokesmen have more recently been encouraging people to lower expectations; and the focus this week is quite different: “The Protection of Minors in the Church.” That, of course, is a worthy goal. In many parts of the Catholic world, rules are in place, but there hasn’t been serious follow through. If the next few days bring proven practices to new places, that will be all to the good.

But it’s also much less than we were hoping for. And in America, we’ve already come a long way towards responding to the part of the abuse crisis that involves priests. We have been expecting – and had been told – that the next phase would be figuring out how to hold bishops accountable. That’s been a continuing problem, not only in America, but in Chile, Honduras, Australia, Europe, the pope’s own Argentina, and the Vatican itself.

People are happy that McCarrick has been expelled from the priesthood, for example, but they want to know how it was possible for a man widely rumored to be an abuser to have moved up in the hierarchy and eventually become cardinal-archbishop of the capital of the most powerful nation on earth. Three popes and dozens of Vatican officials are now part of the story. Pope Francis has promised an investigation into the files. It’s almost a year later and we’ve heard nothing of that, not even whether there’s an active inquiry underway.


Pope Francis by Will Oliver/EPA-EFE

Meanwhile, a new book, which will be officially released Thursday, the first day of the summit here in Rome, claims that 80 percent of the upper echelons of the Vatican are gay. Some remain celibate, others act out in various ways, but they form what, in local parlance, is called “the Parish,” a network of people who either cover for one another or, given their own inclinations, look the other way.

Or at least that’s what Frederic Martel, the author, says. Martel is a gay activist in France and his motives in publishing this book at this particular moment are suspect – as are some of his wilder claims. But he seems to have conducted thousands of interviews with various figures from high-placed Cardinals to Swiss Guards, and quotes some by name.

The excerpts that have appeared so far raise as many questions as they answer. But the whole matter of the gay presence in the Church and its role as an enabler – which the summit organizers are avoiding, indeed are denying is a factor – will not go away.

Martel says (and there’s no reason to doubt it since there have been no denials forthcoming) that his access to the Vatican was facilitated by Msgr. Battista Ricca, who is Director of the Papal Residence (i.e., Casa Santa Marta) and an official with the Vatican Bank. Ricca was widely known to have had a boyfriend or two when he was a Vatican diplomat in Uruguay. And he was caught in an elevator with a boy prostitute.

It was in response to a reporter’s question about his past on the plane returning from World Youth Day in 2013 that Pope Francis famously remarked, ““If someone is gay and he searches for the Lord and has good will, who am I to judge?”

But it’s partly the pope’s judgment in such matters that has raised further questions. Not only the bishop he wrongly defended in Chile, but even recent appointments like that of Gustavo Zanchetta – a bishop accused of abusing seminarians in Argentina and a friend of the pope’s – to a specially created post at one of the Vatican financial institutions. He had to be removed while investigations are going on.

And then there’s the recent naming of Irish-American Cardinal Kevin Farrell to the position of camerlengo, the official who declares the pope officially dead and then runs the Vatican, with limited powers, during the interregnum, the period between the death of one pope and the election of another.

Farrell lived for six years in the same residence with then-Cardinal McCarrick and claimed – to widespread skepticism – that he had no knowledge of, had never even heard rumors about, McCarrick’s outrages. It’s curious that the pope would pick a potentially questionable figure for such a sensitive post.

All of this suggests that what goes on in the synod hall this week is the merest beginning to what will continue to be a large and troubling process. More on all that in coming days.

COLUMN BY

Robert Royal

Robert Royal

Dr. Robert Royal is editor-in-chief of The Catholic Thing, and president of the Faith & Reason Institute in Washington, D.C. His most recent book is A Deeper Vision: The Catholic Intellectual Tradition in the Twentieth Century, published by Ignatius Press. The God That Did Not Fail: How Religion Built and Sustains the West, is now available in paperback from Encounter Books.

EDITORS NOTE: This Catholic Thing column with images is republished with permission. © 2019 The Catholic Thing. All rights reserved. For reprint rights, write to: info@frinstitute.org. The Catholic Thing is a forum for intelligent Catholic commentary. Opinions expressed by writers are solely their own. The featured image is by Pixabay.

Rome Failed on McCarrick – and Needs to Change

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Fr. Timothy V. Vaverek: If the Vatican previously investigated abuse, those results must be shared; if Rome didn’t investigate, we need to know why not.

Representatives of the American bishops have now met with Pope Francis to discuss the much-needed investigation of the McCarrick Affair. This is understandable since any process involving the ex-cardinal and other prelates requires papal permission. It’s one thing to ask the pope’s support for an investigation, however, and quite another to trust Vatican officials to run it, given what we now know.

Because we now know – from former Metuchen Bishop P.G. Bootkoski and from Cardinal Leonardo Sandri – that the Vatican Secretariat of State received credible allegations against McCarrick over a decade ago. Yet the Vatican did not deprive him of access to seminarians and priests. Therefore, an investigation focused on McCarrick and the American bishops risks ignoring the pivotal role of higher-ranking officials in Rome.

Bootkoski recently acknowledged that in December 2005 he informed then U.S. nuncio, Archbishop Gabriel Montalvo, of three complaints against McCarrick. The accusations involved inappropriate physical contact with a priest as well as sexually touching seminarians. Two of these allegations resulted in financial settlements.

An October 2006 letter has come to light in which Sandri, who worked directly under the Cardinal Secretary of State, referred to “serious matters” involving seminarians at Seton Hall, which had been reported to Montalvo by Fr. Boniface Ramsey in 2000. Ramsey has repeatedly claimed he informed the nuncio of allegations that McCarrick harassed seminarians and shared a bed with them at his beach house.

The Secretariat of State, therefore, received credible allegations in 2000 and 2005 that McCarrick harassed and “groomed” priests and seminarians, sexually exploiting the latter. If Rome investigated, they should now share the results and save us the trouble of repeating their work. If they didn’t investigate, they need to account for their failure to protect seminarians and priests.

Even if Rome did investigate, another crucial question arises: were dioceses notified of the allegations and the possibility their seminarians and priests had been exploited? That would include any diocese that used seminaries frequented by McCarrick, especially the seminaries where he resided after 2005. Minors might have been at risk since incoming college seminarians can be under 18.

The Penitent Saint Jerome by Lorenzo Lotto, c. 1514 [National Museum of Art, Bucharest]

Cardinal Wuerl insists that neither he nor the Archdiocese of Washington knew of the allegations. This would mean Rome said nothing. To confirm Rome’s silence, Catholics and journalists should ask Cardinal Dolan whether he or the Archdiocese of New York were notified.

Note that Bootkoski’s statement and Sandri’s letter were not written to support the recent testimony of Archbishop Viganò. In fact, he accused both of cover-ups. Unlike Viganò, their testimonies to Rome’s knowledge of the allegations were not meant to suggest Vatican complicity in the McCarrick Affair.

Whatever the original intention, however, Sandri’s letter now constitutes documentary evidence that Ramsey spoke to Montalvo in 2000. The letter also implies that the Secretariat of State deemed those concerns credible no later than 2006.

Furthermore, Bootkoski’s statement proves that allegations were judged credible since payments were made based on them. Unfortunately, his statement provides only a summary of the memo he sent to the nuncio in 2005, which was presumably forwarded to the Secretariat of State.

The reason offered for presenting a summary is that “the claimants have not given the diocese permission” to publish the detailed allegations. Perhaps the diocese or journalists could ask the claimants to allow the memo to be published, redacting any portions the claimants wished to keep confidential. That way, the public could see documentary evidence of Bootkoski’s report to the Vatican.

Unless Sandri had been protecting McCarrick, he would have promptly notified the Secretary of State, Cardinal Angelo Sodano, of the allegations forwarded by the nuncio from Ramsey and Bootkoski. By the time Sandri wrote the 2006 letter, he would have informed the new Secretary of State, Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone.

We don’t have evidence that the allegations in 2000 or 2005 reached St. John Paul II, Benedict XVI, or – prior to recent revelations – Francis. Yet if the popes were not informed, Vatican officials obviously cannot be now relied on to oversee the upcoming investigation.

The Secretariat’s failure to investigate the matter or to report the allegations to affected dioceses as part of an investigation would demonstrate a reckless disregard for the safety and well-being of priests and seminarians, including minors.

A bishop exploiting seminarians and priests for his own gratification is an outrage that cries to heaven. How could the Secretariat of State have turned away? And did no other Vatican offices receive reports? Were there legitimate reasons an investigation was not initiated or proved inconclusive?  After decades of abuse scandals, how could officials not have recognized the gravity of the accusations? Or were some officials willing to tolerate these monstrous evils?

Answers and accountability are vital for Catholics everywhere, not only in America. In Chile, cries of Catholics were repeatedly ignored or denounced by Rome. Eventually, Chile’s bishops offered to resign, but no Vatican officials followed their example. That scenario must not be repeated.

These circumstances make it impossible for the Vatican to act as a credible guarantor of the forthcoming review of the McCarrick Affair. The pope’s approval and cooperation are necessary, but since American bishops and Vatican officials are under scrutiny now, the investigative process must be independent of both. For the investigation to be effective the pope will need to cooperate by freeing Church officials from the Pontifical Secret and directing them to answer legitimate questions from investigators.

The review should be transparent and overseen by a board comprised of laity, religious, deacons, priests, and bishops. That way the entire Church would be represented in assessing and remedying the problems. That should involve exonerating the innocent, punishing the guilty, repairing the harm, and changing administrative structures and policies. A board like this could become a model for dealing with other failures by bishops and the Vatican.

Fr. Timothy V. Vaverek

Fr. Timothy V. Vaverek

Fr. Timothy V. Vaverek, STD has been a priest of the Diocese of Austin since 1985 and is currently the administrator of St. Mary’s in the city of West. His studies were in Dogmatics with a focus on Ecclesiology, Apostolic Ministry, Newman, and Ecumenism.

EDITORS NOTE: © 2018 The Catholic Thing. All rights reserved. For reprint rights, write to: info@frinstitute.org. The Catholic Thing is a forum for intelligent Catholic commentary. Opinions expressed by writers are solely their own. The featured image is by Unsplash?Nacho Arteaga@nachoarteaga.

SANCTUARY POLICIES PROTECT SEX OFFENDERS: Victims are mere ‘speed bumps’ on the road to anarchy.

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On September 12, 2018 the Department of Homeland Security issued a press release, ICE arrests 16 during 2-day Operation SOAR in the New York City metropolitan area.<

Here is an excerpt from that press release:

In years past, most of these individuals would have been turned over to ICE by local authorities upon their release from jail based on ICE detainers. Now that many sanctuary cities, including New York City, do not honor ICE detainers, these individuals, who often have significant criminal histories, are released onto the street, presenting a potential public safety threat.

“Many of those arrested in this operation had been found guilty of inappropriate sexual behavior against a minor,” said Thomas R. Decker, field office director for ERO New York. “Our communities are safer, our children are safer, from the efforts of the men and women of ICE. We have removed them from our city’s streets and we will seek to remove them from the United States.”

Arrests include:

  • In the Bronx, a 53 year-old, Mexican national, released from NYPD custody with an active detainer, who has convictions for criminal possession of a loaded firearm; criminal possession of a weapon: defaced for concealment; and sexual misconduct: male has intercourse with a female without her consent;
  • In Manhattan, a 42 year-old previously removed Salvadoran national, who has a conviction for sexual abuse of a child less than 11 years of age;
  • In Maspeth, a 39 year-old Dominican national, who has a conviction for sexual abuse, and is a registered sexual offender;
  • In Wyandanch, a 32 year-old Guatemalan national, who has a conviction for course of sexual conduct against a child less than 13 years of age;
  • In Huntington Station, a 40 year-old previously removed Salvadoran national, who has a conviction for rape, and who has failed to register as a sexual offender;
  • In Deer Park, a 54 year-old Italian national, who has a conviction for possession of sexual performance by child less than 16 years of age;
  • In the Bronx, a 42 year-old Ghanaian national, who has a conviction for sexual contact with an individual greater than 17 incapable of giving consent;

Criminal histories of those arrested during the operation are as follows: Acting in Manner Injure Child, Assault, Attempted Assault, Attempted Rape 1st: Forcible Compulsion, Course of Sexual Conduct Against a Child Criminal Possession of a Loaded Firearm, Criminal Possession of a Weapon, Disorderly Conduct, Forcible Touching, Harassment, Possession of Sexual Performance; Sexual Abuse 1st , Sexual Abuse 2nd, Sexual Contact, Sexual Misconduct, and Unlawful Surveillance.

As the press release noted, and as I have noted in previous articles and commentaries, when criminals complete their prison sentences and are put back on the street, all too often the results are horrific with more innocent people falling victim to these criminals.

For all of the efforts made to  alter the criminal behavior of criminals, the problem of recidivism is pervasive.  Many jails are optimistically referred to as “Correctional Facilities” but tragically all too often the attempts at “correction” fail, frequently with catastrophic results.

One of the best and most effective ways of dealing with the problem of recidivism where alien criminals are concerned, is to deport aliens who have been convicted of committing crimes.  Our immigration laws provide for this remedy, yet the mayors of so-called “Sanctuary Cities” obstruct the federal government’s efforts to enforce immigration laws.

Law enforcement field operations, particularly those that result in arrests are inherently dangerous for all involved.  This includes innocent bystanders who may be injured as the subject of the arrest attempts to flee or violently resist arrest.

When aliens are incarcerated, it is a simple matter to transfer custody of the alien from the prison to ICE agents in the secure and controlled environment of a prison.  Aliens who are incarcerated are certainly not armed.  From all perspectives, transferring custody is safe and time-efficient in this ideal setting.

Yet mayors of Sanctuary Cities are eager to create the illusion that they are being “compassionate” by obstructing ICE agents, whom New York’s Governor Cuomo described as “thugs” from carrying out their sworn duties to protect national security and public safety.

In reality, Sanctuary Cities Endanger – National Security and Public Safety.

It is truly mind-boggling to imagine anyone believing that permitting aliens back on the street, even if they are registered sex offenders, or have been convicted of committing sex crimes, out of a desire to be “compassionate.”

It is beyond comprehension that New York City would refuse to cooperate with ICE to enable an alien from Mexico who had been convicted of carrying a defaced firearm who had been convicted of apparently raping a woman- perhaps at gun point, while New York City boasts that it has the toughest gun laws in the nation.

New York’s Mayor de Blasio is apparently okay with turning loose sex offender aliens who could be deported, even when such aliens illegally possess firearms, even firearms that are defaced (had their serial numbers removed) to make tracing those guns difficult or impossible.

Every violent felon who has been released and remains at large should be thought of as a “ticking time-bomb” who may, at any time, “go off.”

Yet the sympathies of the mayors of “Sanctuary Cities” and the Governors of “Sanctuary States” are clearly with the criminals and not with their potential victims, even when the criminal in question has a demonstrated proclivity to sexually abuse young children.

For all of the public breast-beating these politicians engage in about the separation of illegal alien children from their illegal alien parents, these same politicians, in the name of “compassion,” gleefully shield alien predators, who rape children loose in their “Sanctuary Cities.”

For all of the efforts to take guns away from Americans these same mayors turn illegal aliens, who have committed firearms-related crimes, loose in their towns and cities rather than have ICE take those violent criminals into custody.

Furthermore, by making it clear that criminal aliens will be actively shielded by local law enforcement from detection and arrest by ICE agents, Sanctuary Cities become extremely attractive “Magnet Cities” that attract transnational criminals, international terrorists and fugitives.

Time and again we have seen the publicized cases where criminal aliens who had been deported repeatedly returned to the United States to live and ply their criminal trades in Sanctuary Cities where they knew that they would be far less likely to be arrested by ICE for having illegally returned to the United States.

However for every such highly-publicized case like the case of Kate Steinle, who was killed by an illegal alien who had been previously deported from the United States numerous times, only to illegally reenter the United States, there are many, many more victims that the media does not report on.

This was the underlying them of my article, Many More Victims Of the Immigration Crisis Than Kate Steinle.

In the early 1980’s I approached then-senator Al D’Amato with the idea of amending the immigration law where the crime of reenter after deportation was concerned.  At the time no considering was given to whether or not an alien who had been previously deported and then reentered the Untied States without permission had a criminal history.  Any alien who illegally reentered the United States, without permission, faced a maximum of 2 years in prison.

Because of limited resources and the relatively paltry penalty for the crime, it was almost impossible to get the U.S. Attorneys to prosecute aliens for that crime.  This meant that there was no deterrence.  Aliens who had been deported from the United States were unlikely to be punished for illegally reentering the United States.  At that time that crime was essentially a “punishmeantless” crime.

I suggested to Senator D’Amato that while two years might be a fitting punishment for aliens who had no criminal histories who had been deported and illegally reentered the United States, aliens who had convictions for serious crimes (aggravated felonies) should face a maximum of 20 years in federal prison.

My efforts were backed up by some of my colleagues at the INS along with Walter Connery who had been the head of the Investigations Branch for the INS in New York and was previously the Deputy Inspector for Internal Affairs for the NYPD before he retired and joined the INS.

Senator D’Amato succeeded in changing the law so that today such aliens face a maximum of 20 years in prison.  That section of law is 8 U.S. Code § 1326(b).

In point of fact, today this felony is the most frequently prosecuted federal felony.

However, when Sanctuary Cities shield felonious aliens from detection by ICE.  Consequently their presence goes undetected and their crimes go unpunished, leaving them free to commit more sociopathic crimes in towns and cities across our nation.  Frequently their victims are the members of the ethnic immigrant communities where these thugs live.

I never thought I was see the day when the victims of criminal aliens, including children, would be thought of as mere “speed bumps” by political “leaders” determined to leave America and Americans defenseless against international terrorists and transnational criminals costing thousands of Americans and others their lives.

We the People must demonstrate true compassion for the innocent victims of these criminal aliens by voting their political guardians out of office.

EDITORS NOTE: This column originally appeared in FrontPage Magazine. Photo: Wikimedia Commons.

VIDEO: Hate Can Be a Virtue

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Progressives talk a lot about the evil of hate. We are told that if we object to Sharia law and jihad, then we are intolerant haters. But what about hating what harms people?

I hate wife-beating, yet the Sharia, Koran and Sunna support it.

I am intolerant of child abuse, including child marriage, but the Sunna and Sharia support it.

I hate the jihadist killings of Christians, Jews, Buddhists and apostates.

I am intolerant of religious leaders, such as the Pope and Dai Lama, who will not condemn the jihadic killing of their groups.

I hate dualistic ethics, which lack integrity.

I am intolerant of face coverings, since it cuts off open communication.

As a society, we have lost the ability to become morally outraged and are incapable of anger about the Islamic harm of innocents. I hate that.

Ненависть может быть добродетелью

Прогрессивные много говорят по поводу зла ненависти. Нам говорят, что если мы возражаем против шариата и джихада, то мы проявляем нетерпимость и ненависть. Однако, что насчет ненависти, которая вредит людям?

Я ненавижу избиение женщин, а шариат, Коран и Сунна его поддерживают.

Я нетерпим к надругательству над детьми, включая детские браки, но Сунна и шариат поддерживают их.

Я ненавижу убийства джихадистами христиан, иудеев, буддистов и вероотступников.

Я нетерпим к религиозным лидерам, таким, как Папа и Далай-лама, которые не осуждают джихадистские убийства своих групп.

Я ненавижу дуалистическую этику, в которой отсутствует целостность.

Я нетерпимо отношусь к закрытию лица, поскольку это исключает открытое общение.

Как общество, мы потеряли способность морального возмущения и неспособны проявить гнев по поводу исламского вреда невинным людям. Я ненавижу это.

RELATED ARTICLE: Orlando nightclub shooting timeline: Three hours of terror unfold

EDITORS NOTE: The featured image is of the four cardinal virtues: prudence, temperance, fortitude, and justice.

Transsexualism: Dancing with the Devil

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“You fundamentally can’t change sex… Transsexualism was invented by psychiatrists,” said former “transsexual” Alan Finch in 2004. This is a truth; however, it has not stopped the advocates of an invented status from trying to change society,” writes Selwyn Duke in his column Missing the Point on the “Transgender” Bathroom Wars.

Duke warns:

This is about socially reengineering society — about changing hearts and minds — by legitimizing made-up sexual statuses.

Transsexualism is a belief system, a dangerous one to both the individual and to society. President Obama has made it his mission to further Transsexualism and put American women and little girls at risk, both culturally and physically.

Austin Ruse in a column titled College of Pediatricians Calls Transgender Ideology ‘Child Abuse’  writes:

The American College of Pediatricians warns educators and legislators that “a life of chemical and surgical impersonation of the opposite sex” is dangerous for children.

In a strongly worded statement issued today, the professional association of pediatricians says “a person’s belief that he or she is something they are not is, at best, a sign of confused thinking.” It describes such thinking as problem that exists in the mind and not the body and “it should be treated as such.”

The college of pediatricians is joining a heated debate that increasingly pits concerned parents against school teachers, administrators, legislators, and transsexual advocates who are pushing the trans agenda in grade-schools, city governments, state governments, and the federal government.

Read more.

 reported, “A lesbian lawmaker [Patricia Todd, D-Birmingham] in Alabama suggested this week that the real safety threat for children is not men who identify as female using women’s restrooms, but faith leaders in churches and teachers in schools.”

This is Transsexualism writ large.

George Orwell wrote:

Political language… is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind.

Paul-Scalia-150x150

Fr. Paul Scalia is a priest of the Diocese of Arlington, Va. He serves as the Bishop’s Delegate for Clergy.

Fr. Paul Scalia writes on the demonic nature of the Transsexualism movement: not that transgender people are evil but that their ideology pleases the devil. In Fr. Scalia’s column “The Devil, You Say?” notes:

Three times in his speech at the National Catholic Prayer Breakfast, Cardinal Sarah described gender ideology [Transsexualism] as “demonic.” More recently, Oklahoma City’s Archbishop Coakley used the same word addressing the issue. So did Bishop Paprocki of Springfield regarding gay marriage. A strong word, to be sure. But most people misunderstand why. Some take “demonic” for mere hyperbole. Something is not just bad, but really, really bad. Others see it as rash judgment of opponents – literally demonizing them. Still others take it as just an overstatement by religious fanatics, who are unhinged anyway.

But “demonic” is a sober and sobering assessment of the thought behind gender ideology. It’s not a judgment of people’s intentions. It doesn’t mean that those who endorse gender ideology are demonic or possessed. It means, rather, that the reasoning and results of that philosophy – no matter how innocently held – line up with the desires, tactics, and resentments of “Old Scratch” himself.

Satan and the damned in The Last Judgment by Giotto (di Bondone), 1306 [Cappella Scrovegni, Padua]

Gender ideology repeats the basic lie of the evil one: “You will be like gods.” (Gen 3:5)  Of course, this lie lurks behind every temptation. Every sin comes from that prideful desire to supplant God. But in the arena of human sexuality, it has greater gravity.Read more.

Duke concludes with the following warning:

Unfortunately, the once-closeted is now exalted while the ethereal is closeted. Today we hear that “faith is a private matter,” a profoundly silly statement, while private matters are made public. If one’s faith is a lie, he should dispense with it; if it is the Truth, which is universal, there then is nothing private about it. And as we confuse the public with the private, Christianity is expelled from the public sphere and now even the private one, with businessmen told they can’t live their own faith in their own business.

And that’s what happens when closets aren’t used for the right things.

Is it time to put Transsexualism back into Pandora’s box? It it time to tell the truth?

RELATED ARTICLES:

Restrooms at National Parks ‘Align’ With Gender Identity

The Left Endangers the Rest of Us When It Uses Terms Like ‘Haters’ and ‘Bigots’

ACLU Head Resigns After Trannies Whip It Out in Front of Her Daughters

Homosexuals and Transgenders Embracing Witchcraft

Strong Percentages of Americans Unlikely to Consider Voting for a Muslim, Transgender, or Agnostic/Atheist Presidential Candidate

Missing the Point on the “Transgender” Bathroom Wars

VIDEO: They’re mainstreaming pedophilia!

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Alfred Kinsey’s ongoing sexual anarchy campaign has no end in sight.

Matt Barber, associate dean of the Liberty University School of Law, and I attended the “B4U-ACT” pedophile conference Aug. 17. To eliminate the “stigma” against pedophiles, this growing sexual anarchist lobby wants the American Psychiatric Association (APA) to redefine pedophilia as a normal sexual orientation of “Minor-Attracted Persons.”

Adhering to the Kinsey principle of lulling “straights” into a false sense of security, pedophile dress was largely conservative – short hair, jackets, some ties and few noticeable male ear piercings.

Matt Barber and I sat in the back of the meeting room among roughly 50 activists and their “mental health” attending female enablers. “Pedophilia, Minor-Attracted Persons, and the DSM: Issues and Controversies,” keynoted “Fred Berlin, M.D., Ph.D., as founder, National Institute for the Study, Prevention and Treatment of Sexual Trauma; Johns Hopkins Sexual Disorders Clinic.”

However, the sex clinic was initially founded by John Money, Ph.D., to give judges “leeway” to keep child molesters out of jail. Money (deceased), a pedophile advocate, also called for an end to all age-of-consent laws. Dr. Berlin was his disciple.

In 1973, our “post Kinsey era,” a small APA committee of psychiatrists, quite terrified by homosexist public harassment, agreed to rely on Kinsey’s fraudulent human sexuality “data” to redefine homosexuality as normal, removing it from the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM) of mental disorders.

The APA decision was hyped in college textbooks, law journal articles, judicial rulings, and by 1974 pitched as high-school sex education. Soon the homosexist lobby would sail into primary schools and kindergartens by agitating recurring AIDS “prevention,” “bullying” and “hate” panics.

To redefine homosexuality as a normal “orientation,” nature not nurture, researchers were told to ignore all data of early sex abuse or other trauma. This hoax was followed by the 1999 U.S. Department of Justice data that found 64 percent of forcible sodomy victims to be boys under age 12.

For after claiming 10 percent to 37 percent of men were sometime homosexual, Kinsey also said children are sexual from birth and so deserve to have sex with adults or youths (taught as a 1974 Planned Parenthood sex ed doctrine).

The APA path to pedophile norms follows the success of the homosexual anarchy campaign. Arguably, the pedophile media lobby directed the passionate boy-boy kisses on the TV series “Glee,” to enable fellow “Minor-Attracted Persons” to increasingly be seen as a boy’s sex “friend.”

B4U-ACT claims to “help mental health professionals learn more about attraction to minors and to consider the effects of stereotyping, stigma, and fear.” While the group claimed they want to teach pedophiles “how to live life fully and stay within the law,” no one suggested how to stop their child lust or molestation.

Barber asked what “age of consent” the group proposed and what role pornography plays as a causative factor in child sex abuse. No one would answer the first question, and all denied any harm from pornography.

Arguably, due to our presence, Dr. Berlin (who sat next to me during the entire event) admitted that occasionally pornography could trigger sexual acting out. He also expressed a personal belief that pre-pubescent children (that is, under about age 10) cannot consent, and that perhaps even teenagers might be sexually vulnerable.

All speakers focused on pedophiles as healthy, normal and unfairly victimized by stigma and mean words. Following repeated assertions that pedophiles never force children, are gentle and loving, one researcher did cite a child “victim” who was raped and sodomized.

One speaker laughingly compared doing an obscene act “on” a child to doing the same obscene act on a shoe. No one protested, and some chuckled. One young female suggested pedophiles might be helped by engaging in “sex play” using naked pictures of pseudo children, allied with some sadism, bridal gowns, etc. This Ph.D. social worker candidate proudly noted her objection to any “repression.”

For their attendance, the pedophile political activists could earn 6.0 units of continuing education credits by the “Maryland Board of Social Work Examiners.” These 12 board members credentialed this pedophile academic farce, giving higher education credits to allow felons and near-felons to advance their child sexual abuse agenda by using bogus and fraudulent research. I would encourage people to complain to the board at this link.

Pedo-CEUs-small.jpg

Committed to quietly monitoring this meeting, I offered a few unwelcome closing remarks. I noted the arrogance of this group’s conclusion that Americans’ fear for child safety is due to a puritanical “sex panic.” Since the Department of Justice found 58,200 children kidnapped by non-family members in 1999, such fear seems well-placed.

Before leaving the issue of stigma and hate speech, note a few excerpts from BOYCHAT April 15 by some of these “social worker” credentialed pedophiles:

“Judith Reisman” is “with the worst of them … dehumanizing hate speech … extreme christian [sic], right wing … alarmist … creating gross distrotions [sic] … no genuine integrity … a harlot. … Judith did, in fact, make [Kinsey’s sexual stimulation of infants and toddlers] sound like horrendously violent, child sexual assault … [she is a] horrible, wretched scumbag … pathetic, sorry excuse for a human being. … The world will become a less wretched place, the second Judith Reisman drops dead [from natural causes, of course, though I’d not complain if she got accidentally ran over by a semi]. … With Love, Stevie-D.”

Love? What was that about stigma and hate speech?

kinsey flow chart

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Pedophiles in American Public Schools and Universities

Pedophile Jared Fogle and the Untold Story of his Visit to Sarasota, FL

Boys Beware: Classic Film warns against Homosexuals, Pedophiles and Pederasts

EXPOSED: The U.S. and British “Sex Industrial Complex”

EDITORS NOTE: This column originally appeared in World Net Daily.

Sex Starts in the Womb? Child Porn and Abuse

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How have we reached the point that “an estimated 50,000 Americans, at any given time, are trading child sex abuse images/videos,” of infants and children being raped and tortured, i.e., child pornography?

Let’s look. Angered by the film “I Pedophile,” an incest survivor blogged recently: “Children are NOT sexual from birth” to which a reader responded by sending her a link to “It starts in the womb.” “Sexpert” Remi Newman echoes the mantra first penned by guru Dr. Alfred Kinsey in 1948 in “Sexual Behavior of the Human Male.” Kinsey claimed to have proven that children are sexual from birth based on his “scientific research,” which was in fact systematic sexual torture of infants as young as two months depicted in tables 30 to 34 on pages 175-180 of his book on males.

Elite institutions from all segments of society have built on Kinsey’s criminal, fraudulent foundation to transform the culture. Among those institutions is the Institute for the Advanced Study of Human Sexuality (IASHS), which published Ms. Newman’s article in its Electronic Journal of Human Sexuality. IASHS, whose “academic dean” was Kinsey co-author/lover Wardell Pomeroy, is an unaccredited storefront that has awarded more than 100,000 unaccredited degrees and certificates in “human sexuality,” “AIDS prevention,” “sex education” and similar “sexology” disciplines. Current IASHS President Rev. Ted McIlvenna says accreditation is “a bunch of crap. … They would never let me keep my … kiddie porn … library.”

Those credentialed by Pomeroy and Rev. McIlvenna’s “library” and morals now train or have trained sex educators, counselors and therapists teaching and counseling America’s children and adults.

Many are among the thousands of university professors and elementary and secondary school teachers arrested for possession of child pornography reported by Dr. Lori Handrahan’s Data4Justice.org, a crowd-sourced database of arrests chronicling our infant and child pornography epidemic.

Kinsey’s frauds have become so engrained in academia, law and the behavioral sciences that fables of “infant sexuality” are taught as truth by “sexperts” resembling Ms. Newman whose courses like, “Helping Parents Understand Infant Sexuality” are part of her stated mission to empower simpler folks “to feel more comfortable as sexual beings.”

My, my. She especially likes us to be comfortable about “infant and child sexuality.” She and her colleagues cite Kinsey, Pomeroy and their disciples’ sexpertise, like Dr. Floyd Martinson, who wants children to be “freed up” for pornography performances as a means of earning financial independence.

Another sexpert Ms. Newman admires is Dr. John Money. Time quotes he and his female coauthor: “One who commits incest … is like a religious deviant in a one-religious society” – thus neatly planting the notion that opposition to incest is quite like religious intolerance.” ISAHS dean Pomeroy adds, “It is time to admit that incest need not be a perversion or a symptom of mental illness. Incest between … children and adults … can sometimes be beneficial.” “The last taboo.”

Newman’s article was a presentation given to the Society for the Scientific Study of Sexuality (SSSS), another of the Kinseyan based “sex science” think tanks. None other than Playboy chuckled in 1996 at the SSSS conference attendees, asked to refrain from, at least:

  • “nasty, hostile remarks about women (and men);”
  • “joking about ones sexual orientation;”
  • “belittling ‘asexual prudes’;”
  • “making nipple, a–, crotch comments;”
  • “kissing, stroking, hugging, or pursuing a sexual advance that was rebuffed;”
  • “revealing a colleagues’ sexual act in public,” etc.

These are the deviants (yes!) and their organizations, which create the school sex education curricula to indoctrinate the teachers who then teach allegedly “medically accurate” sex information. Unfortunately, as Dr. Handrahan documents, in too many cases IASHS and SSSS “trained” teachers practice what they teach – on their students and other children. A recent prominent example from our neighbor to the north is Dr. Benjamin Levin, former deputy education minister in Ontario. Levin developed the province’s current sex education curriculum before being convicted and sent to prison for possessing and creating child pornography.

After all, if people believe children are sexual from – or before birth – that can justify children being tricked, forced into sex acts, particularly having been sexually groomed in our nation’s schoolrooms.

Unfortunately, until the poisonous root of Kinsey’s frauds, his sex crimes against infants and children and the sex education edifice built upon it are fully known, eradicated and replaced by the Judeo-Christian roots upon which our society was built, the pandemic of sexual violence against our children will continue its upward spiral.

Read more by clicking here. 

EDITORS NOTE: Mary McAlister, Esq., contributed to this column. Copyright 2016 WND Click here for reuse options! Dr. Judith Reisman is the foremost expert on how sexuality has been twisted in our day: Order her book “Sexual Sabotage: How One Mad Scientist Unleashed a Plague of Corruption and Contagion on America” — with a free copy of “The Kinsey Corruption.” The featured image is courtesy of ABC News 10 in Schenectady, New York.

Invasion of The Child Snatchers

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Government agents are snatching children from American families without legitimate cause. Is this yet another liberal effort to destroy the family?

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EDITORS NOTE: The featured image is of Stanley family children being removed from home during the night because the father allegedly used an unapproved mineral supplement. Photo from the Bringthestanleykidshome Facebook Page.

The Porn Factor: The Path from Playboy to Sex Offender Is Well Traveled

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In December 1953, Playboy magazine was launched and immediately began normalizing a new world order of autoerotic sexual fantasy. Hugh Hefner (until reading Kinsey in college, a virgin like most single young men) pledged that his “romantic” magazine would turn his “Playboy men” into skillful lovers, readying them for lifelong marriage. Yet his monthly magazine ridiculed virginity and marriage while glamorizing adultery and rape and showing consumers ways to trick women and children into illicit sex.

By 1969, millions of Playboy users, struggling with their unexpected, porn-induced “diminished arousal response,” began eagerly embracing the amplified stimuli offered by Penthouse. This gave us another generation of intimacy and potency challenged men. By 1974, millions of Penthouse users, struggling again with a diminished sexual response, turned to Hustler for help. Hello to yet another generation of arousal-challenged pornography addicts, millions of whom became pushovers for internet pornography. And the addicts were not just grown men. In 1979, psychologist Aaron Hass, in his book Teenage Sexuality, reported that Playboy was commonly sought by juveniles for sex information, advice, values, and mores.

Pornography and Pedophilia

From 1994 to 2007, at least 19 state legislatures in the U.S. passed laws named for a raped and murdered child. In my considered judgment, almost every lust-crime is now energized by pornography. There is plenty of evidence to back me up. For instance, in 1984, FBI Agent Ken Lanning testified about pedophiles’ use of pornography at
a Senate hearing on the “Effect of Pornography on Women and Children”:

Adult pornography is also used, particularly with adolescent boy victims, to arouse and to lower inhibitions  …  A child who is reluctant to engage in sexual activity with an adult or to pose for sexually explicit photos can sometimes be convinced by viewing other children having “fun” participating in the activity … A third major use of child pornography collections is [for] blackmail … If the child threatens to tell his or her parents or the authorities, the existence of sexually explicit photographs can be an effective silencer. The pedophile threatens to show the pictures to parents, friends, or teachers if the child reveals their secret.

John Rabun, then Deputy Director of the National Center for Missing Children, stated at one of the hearings:

100 percent of the arrested pedophiles, child pornographers, pimps, what have you . . . had in their possession at the time of arrest, adult pornography. . . . [It was used] for their own sexual arousal . . . [and] particularly for the pedophiles, was a form of self-validation, “it is OK because I see it in other places. It must be all right, it is published nationally . . .”

On September 16, 1987, before the Select Committee on Children, Youth, and Families in the House of Representatives, legal counselor Alan Sears testified:

In child pornography cases in Los Angeles County, police officers testified that since they began to ask the question, over 95 percent of the children involved in that activity had had pornography used as part of the softening up or the inhibition-lowering process to seduce them and induct them into this activity … [A] substantial number of the men who go on to be abusers were abused children themselves. Pornography plays a significant role in the training of our young people to become sexual abusers.

Detective Lt. Darrell Pope, Commanding Officer of the Michigan State Police Sex Crime Unit, testified at the same hearing:

[I]n 1977, I did a research project where I looked at 38,000 case histories [of sex crimes] and found that 41 percent of those reports indicated that, in fact, pornographic materials were used just prior to or during the actual act. (emphasis added).

Pope interviewed hundreds of sex offenders about their porn use, and “almost to a man,” the reply was: “I used it for one of several reasons: One, to encourage me.” Pope went on:

I can remember talking to one young man who was 19 years old; he said, “It excited me and then I got to thinking about it and I wanted to know how it felt.” … He wanted to know how it felt to rape a woman and kill her … And when we arrested this young man and searched his home, we found a pornographic magazine depicting this very thing that he had done.

Feeding Deviancy 

Move up to 1988. In Thrill Killers: True Portrayals of America’s Most Vicious Murderers, Clifford Linedecker wrote:

[M]ost of the killers indulged themselves in violent and sadistic fantasies. Responding to a request to indicate their primary sexual interest, 81 percent of the men put pornography at the top of the list … I found overwhelming evidence of twisted sexual fantasizing, and addiction to pornography in the backgrounds of many of the killers profiled in this book.

By 1990, Dr. W. L. Marshall wrote in Criminal Neglect: Why Sex Offenders Go Free, that “there is mounting evidence that in susceptible men, the material [pornography] feeds and legitimizes their deviant sexual tendencies.”

And in 1997, John Douglas, an FBI serial-rape profiler, reported that serial-rape murderers are commonly found “with a large pornography collection, either store-bought or homemade … [O]ur research does show that certain types of sadomasochistic and bondageoriented material can fuel the fantasies of those already leaning in that direction.”
And in 2003, Vernon J. Geberth, former Commanding Officer of the Bronx Homicide Task Force, wrote the following in Sex Related Homicide and Death Investigations, a book that should be required reading for those involved in sex-crime analyses:

[M]any of these pornographic depictions … were actually the road map to the offenses that the perpetrators of sex crimes were committing. . . . [T]he plan was in the pornography . . . [it is] the fuel that acts as a catalyst for fantasy-driven behavior … [P]ornography plays an important part in violent sex crimes.

A Late Warning

Back in 1986, then U.S. Surgeon General Dr. C. Everett Koop dubbed pornography a “crushing public health problem … a clear and present danger … blatantly anti-human. … We must oppose it as we oppose all violence and prejudice.” Koop was ignored. We now have the results of three generations of pornography use, arguably sufficient and necessary evidence to get us to start treating all pornography as a clear and present danger, harmful to women and children.

In the summer of 2013, Ariel Castro pled guilty to kidnapping and raping three women whom he held captive in his house in Ohio for a decade. When asked by a judge how good his English was, Castro replied that his comprehension was bad because “my addiction to pornography and my sexual problem has really taken a toll on my mind.” It also took a brutal toll on the lives of three women.

How much more evidence do we need?

Endnotes
1. The nineteen laws are listed in my book Sexual Sabotage (WND, 2010), pp. 299–300.
2. Hearings before the Subcommittee on Juvenile Justice of the Committee on the Judiciary, United States Senate, Ninety-Eighth Congress, Second Session, “Oversight on Pornography, Magazines of a Variety of Courses, Inquiring into the Subject of Their Impact on Child Abuse, Child Molestation, and Problems of Conduct Against Women,” Aug. 8, Sept. 12 and 25, and Oct. 30, 1984 (US Government Printing Office, 1985), Serial No. J-98-133, pp. 43–44.
3. John Rabun, testimony before the Senate Subcommittee on Juvenile Justice, 9/12/84, pp. 133–134.
4. https://archive.org/stream/womenviolencelaw00unit/womenviolencelaw00unit_djvu.txt.
5. Ibid.
6. Ibid.
7. Clifford Linedecker, Thrill Killers: True Portrayals of America’s Most Vicious Murderers (PaperJacks, 1988).
8. W. L. Marshall. Criminal Neglect: Why Sex Offenders Go Free (Seal Books, 1990), pp. 156–157.
9. John Douglas, Journey Into Darkness (Pocket Star Books, 1997), p. 299.
10. C. Everett Koop, M.D., American Medical News (Oct. 10, 1986).
11. http://www.cnn.com/2013/07/26/justice/ohio-castro/index.html?iref=allsearch.

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City of Sarasota, FL promotes “kiddie porn” parody?

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The City of Sarasota, FL owns and operates the Van Wezel Performing Arts Hall, which has a budget of over $8.8 million. On April 23, 2013 at 8:00 p.m. 50 Shades: The Musical will be performed. 50 Shades: The Musical is a parody of the controversial erotic book 50 Shades of Grey.

According to Larry Allen, Sarasota County Communication Office, “Sarasota County provided grant funding in the amount of $76,468 to the Arts and Cultural Alliance through the Tourist Development Tax. The Alliance provides funding to the Van Wezel for program series. A  list of prospective show offerings was provided in the grant application process on March, 2012. 50 Shades of Grey was not on the list provided on that date.” [My emphasis]

In August of 2012, the Ulsterman Report posted a letter from a person with “20 years with Child Protective Services.” The author of the letter writes, “Yes, 50 Shades is pornography. Like most pornography, the story line is weak, the characters one-dimensional, while the sex itself graphic, detailed, but formulaic. The underlying theme to 50 Shades is something far more sinister and appalling though than your mere run-of-the-mill porn. It is pedophilia. It is child porn. Kiddie porn.” [My emphasis]

According to the letter writer, “I didn’t seek out 50 Shades of Grey. It was brought to my attention by a longtime friend who is also a clinical psychologist at a university. She’s a bit older than me. She grew up in the counter culture era and did her fair share of experimentation of all kinds.  So she’s hardly a prude. What she today though is a mother and grandmother. And she’s smart. One of the things that fascinates her is this age of cultural phenomena.  How due to technology things now spread so quickly throughout society and become the next big thing at an increasingly rapid pace. She says sometimes this phenomena is pretty much harmless, and other times it can be very damaging to kids and or adults who begin to emulate something out of a need to belong to the ‘next big thing’.”

According to Mary Bensel, Executive Director of the Van Wezel Performing Arts Hall, 50 Shades is the next big thing.

Mary Bensel, Executive Director of the Van Wezel Performing Arts Hall

During a telephone interview Bensel pointed out that the musical is getting rave reviews everywhere it plays. There is a video on the Van Wezel website with patrons (the musical is restricted to those over 18 years old) saying how funny 50 Shades is. But is sexual abuse funny?

Bensel stated she has both read the book 50 Shades of Grey and viewed 50 Shades: The Musical in New York.

When asked if she believed the book 50 Shades of Grey was pornographic Bensel stated, “I have no opinion.” On the phone call was Julia Mays, Director of Marketing for the Van Wezel, who portrayed the book 50 Shades of Grey as a “love story”.

E.L. James, author 50 Shades of Grey

According to Wikipedia, “Fifty Shades of Grey is a 2011 erotic romance novel by British author E. L. James. It is the first installment in the Fifty Shades trilogy that traces the deepening relationship between a college graduate, Anastasia Steele, and a young business magnate, Christian Grey. It is notable for its explicitly erotic scenes featuring elements of sexual practices involving bondage/discipline, dominance/submission, and sadism/masochism (BDSM).” [My emphasis]

Bensel stated that the Van Wezel paid about $10,000 for the musical and has sold $27,424 in tickets. Sex sells and sexual abuse sells even better?

When asked if anyone from the Van Wezel staff reviewed the lyrics or screen play the answer was “no, that is not our job.” A call was placed to David Freeland, Senior Booking Manager with the Broadway Booking Office, NYC, who is the agent for 50 Shades: The Musical to get a copy of the screen play. Freeland has not return our call as of the publishing of this column.

As the Ulsterman Report letter writer states, “Sexual predators are cons. They almost always have a cover. It’s that cover which allows them access. 50 Shades of Grey is a con. It now has access to millions of readers. It is a story about abuse from beginning to end. And it’s not just the abuse of a man and a woman – it’s the abuse of a man and a girl.”

Bensel’s con is the book and musical are popular, thereby justifying its booking. She also noted that 50 Shades: The Musical and Spank! The Fifty Shades Parody have been booked by other Florida performing arts halls including: The Lakeland Center, Broward Center and Barbara B. Mann Performing Arts Center in Fort Myers, FL.

Senator Marco Rubio has made it his mission to stop human trafficking, including the sex trafficking of children in Florida. Perhaps Senator Rubio should visit the Sarasota City Hall when he comes to Sarasota on March 15th and make the Commissioners understand the problem? Please watch this video interview with Senator Rubio where he states “awareness is critical”:

UPDATE:

WDW received the following email sent to the Sarasota City Commissioners:

Dear Commissioners:

Many Adult Ordinances passed in the city of Sarasota, an Ordinance No. 97-4015 was adopted on the 2nd reading on the 15th June 1998 but was amended by Ordinance 98-4073 & passed Dec. 7. 1998. Another amendment to the Adult Ordinance 99-4165 passed Nov. 15, 1999.  Most of the changes were made to strengthen the Ordinances to make them more enforceable.

I would think that these ordinances would prohibit any kind of pornographic performance at the Van Wezel Performing Arts Hall based on this evaluation of 50 Shades of Grey planned to be performed on April 23, 2013.

As a former Director of Florida Family Association for Sarasota/Manatee County, our organization was very much involved with all the Adult Ordinances for the city & County of Sarasota as well as Manatee.

Therefore, I would appreciate knowing what the city of Sarasota plans to do with this performance.

Esther Rachwal
Sarasota, Fl. 

Perhaps the Van Wezel should be issued an Adult Use Permit?

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