Staff at a group of Jewish private schools in Toronto did not notify authorities of allegations of sexual assaults dating back to the 80s, police say after an investigation that has now led to sexual assault charges being laid against a 55-year-old former Toronto elementary school teacher.
Stephen Schacter is now facing gross indecency, sexual assault and exploitation charges that date back to the 1980s and 1990s.
Police say the whole investigation started to take shape in December 2015 when he was arrested for possession of child pornography.
At the time, a photo of Schacter was released and began to circulate in the press. Investigators say that led to three people coming forward with allegations of assault.
Police say Schacter worked as an elementary school teacher teaching Grade 1 and Grade 2 for the Eitz Chaim private schools between 1986 and 2004. But investigators say the earliest alleged sexual offence goes back to 1982. (more...)
Between them, premiers Dalton McGuinty and Kathleen Wynne overseen
spiralling rate increases at a time of lessening demand for power.
It has been a bad nine years for electricity customers in Ontario.
Hydro prices for residential customers have increased at a faster rate than anywhere else in North America.
But you wouldn’t know it by listening to Energy Minister Bob Chiarelli, who said Ontario ratepayers are seeing power bills “increasing slower than they are in neighbouring jurisdictions.”
In fact, no typical residential customers in any of the 50 U.S. states or Canada’s nine other provinces have seen the price of power increase at a faster rate than Ontario customers.
In addition, hydro prices in Ontario have been going up three times faster than the price of other goods and services. (more...)
Suspensions could be on the way for tens of thousands of students in the Greater Toronto Area who haven’t submitted updated information about their vaccinations.
In Toronto alone, 45,000 elementary and high school students are about to get notices that they are being suspended because they either haven't had all their vaccinations or because their parents have yet to submit the paperwork showing they are up to date.
Thousands more students are facing the same fate in the Halton and Peel regions.
Under Ontario’s Immunization of School Pupils Act, all students in the province must be immunized against six diseases: diphtheria, tetanus, polio, measles, mumps, and rubella.
Most children get these vaccines when they’re babies and toddlers, but teens also need booster shots against diphtheria, tetanus and pertussis when they’re between the ages of 14 and 16.
It is up to parents -- not their children’s doctors -- to alert their local public health units when their children receive new vaccinations. (more...)
The Conservative government proposed the setting up of privately run secure training centres in 1993. It was a controversial idea, and remains so today. Can private companies ever be trusted to look after and rehabilitate such vulnerable children when their priority is to turn a profit? Labour was against the establishment of STCs while in opposition.
In March 1993 the then shadow home secretary, Tony Blair, said: “It is far preferable to isolate young offenders from their own peer group and not put them in the company of 40 or 50 other persistent young offenders. What we need is schools of responsibility, not colleges of crime.”
But when Labour came to power in 1997 it carried through the setting up of STCs, arguing it would be too expensive to cancel the project.
Medway was the first to open, in April 1998. The cost was controversial: at £125,000 a year for each “trainee”, it was five times as much as sending a child to Eton. The centre would hold a maximum of 40 children, aged between 12 and 14. By January 1999, the centre was already in crisis – there had been a riot, and a report from the Social Services Inspectorate concluded that children were subject to “excessive use of force”, including neck and wrist restraints. (more...)
Former Liberal leader Jeremy Thorpe is led away by police in 1977
Police have begun an inquiry into claims that a confession implicating Jeremy Thorpe in a plot to murder his former lover was destroyed in a Whitehall cover-up.
Dennis Meighan, now 69, told police in a statement in 1975 that he was hired to assassinate Norman Scott, who at the time was threatening to expose his relationship with the Liberal leader.
After being approached by ‘a representative of Thorpe’, Meighan says he agreed to carry out the murder.
But he changed his mind and gave detectives details of the conspiracy, which he says were ignored. Instead, a false statement exonerating both himself and the politician was apparently given to him to sign.
Now The Mail on Sunday can reveal that Gwent Police’s Major Incident Team has been asked to investigate Meighan’s claim that he was silenced.
If his story is found to be true, detectives will focus on who in Whitehall had authority to sanction the statement swap and whether the security services were involved. (more...)
Disgraced presenter Stuart Hall abused 21 victims at the BBC and the youngest was just 10 years old.
Staff at BBC Manchester knew the former It's A Knockout host was taking women into his dressing room for sex, although not that some of them were under age, a report by former High Court judge Dame Linda Dobbs found.
The report said he had 21 female victims at the BBC, with the youngest aged 10, between 1967 and 1991, but no complaints were passed on to senior management.
However, it emerged that senior managers knew one victim who was told 'you can take a joke'.
Hall, now 86, was released in December after serving half of a five-year jail term for historical indecent assaults against girls aged between nine and 17. Like Jimmy Savile, he often plied his victims with alcohol.
One BBC manager who 'knew' about Stuart Hall was named in the report as Raymond Colley, Regional Television Manager, North West 1970 to 86.
(more...)
From underage prostitutes on orgy island to political royalty and the "Lolita Express," the Jeffrey Epstein case continues to unfold. Today Pearse Redmond of Porkins Policy Review joins us to give us the latest on the ongoing court cases surrounding the case that might still ensnare Epstein and his rich and powerful friends in an even bigger scandal.
Organised criminals were able to infiltrate Scotland Yard “at will” by bribing corrupt officers, according to an explosive report leaked to The Independent. The Metropolitan Police file, written in 2002, found Britain’s biggest force suffered “endemic corruption” at the time.
Operation Tiberius concluded that syndicates such as the notorious Adams family and the gang led by David Hunt had bribed scores of former and then-serving detectives to access confidential databases; obtain live intelligence on criminal investigations; provide specialist knowledge of surveillance, technical deployment and undercover techniques to help evade prosecution; and even take part in criminal acts such as mass drug importation and money laundering.
The strategic intelligence scoping exercise – “ratified by the most senior management” at Scotland Yard – found murder investigations had been infiltrated and sensitive intelligence regarding other organised crime investigations had been leaked, allowing the offenders to escape justice.
The author lamented the Met’s inability to root out the problem. More worryingly, he also appeared to question Scotland Yard’s commitment to tackle organised crime corruption in the ranks. “For whatever reason, the current approach is simply to wait for the corruption intelligence to surface and to then react to it,” Tiberius concluded.
Later, it added: “These syndicates are organised and all working towards the common goals of making profit, laundering their money, evading prosecution and preventing the forfeiture of their assets. The achievement of these goals is focused and determined; the law enforcement investigation should follow this lead.” (more...)
Dame Janet Smith’s report on the Jimmy Savile and Stuart Hall scandals was bound to attract national press criticism.
Newspaper editors, whether favourable or not to the corporation, could hardly react otherwise. The catalogue of predation was all the more shocking for the sober way it was recorded in the judge’s report.
In his statements and interviews on Thursday, the BBC’s current director-general, Lord (Tony) Hall, appeared to accept that the crimes carried out over a 40-year period were impossible to defend, so he did not seek to do so.
His problems in responding to the report were compounded by his decision to fire Tony Blackburn just head of the report’s publication. It opened what amounted to a second front in the general assault on the BBC’s history of failures to confront Savile and Hall over their sexual crimes.
Several papers therefore chose to lead their front pages with the Blackburn sacking, with most concentrating on his claims about being a scapegoat.
The Daily Mail asked whether he had been fired to “deflect attention” from the Smith “whitewash.” The Blackburn effect was also evident on the fronts of the Guardian, Daily Express and the Daily Mirror, with the latter revealing the “secret memos” said to be the reason for his departure.
Much of the newspaper fire was aimed at Smith having produced what Metro’s page 1 headlined called a “£6.5m Savile whitewash”. Several editorials took a similar line. (more...)
The topic of Scientology’s connection to the CIA became commonplace long ago. It’s mentioned in a mass of articles, interviews, and television programs. But when I referred to this in passing during a conversation with one journalist several months ago, he took interest: do I have irrefutable evidence of or clues to this connection? Could I, so to say, point to a “smoking gun?”
The question interested me, and I decided to try and collect materials on this topic. So can we bring irrefutable evidence?
It’s understandable that if I could point to a “smoking gun,” my name would be Edward Snowden, and I would be hunted by US intelligence services, who (like any intelligence services) never disclose the names of organizations that cooperate with them, and for obvious reasons. However, open information on when the US government began to openly and publicly lobby the interests of Scientology (this occurred in 1993) could compose an entire arsenal of smoking guns. It knew full well about the cult’s activity in legally and illegally collecting information on various people and organizations.
From documents published today, we know that already in 1957 the CIA began investigating the activities of L. Ron Hubbard and Scientology. But the collated data that was the result of the investigation has still not been published up to this time. I don’t think we should expect the publication of these materials in the near future.
All his life, Hubbard himself was quite actively and constantly fascinated with two things: occultism and intelligence activities. For example, as a still wholly young man he entered the Rosicrucian order, undertook occult seances, and experienced certain otherworldly meetings. (more...)
The press launch of Dame Janet Smith’s forensic review into Savile’s predatory activities at the BBC was an impressive affair.
Survivors are naturally disappointed that she failed to land a terminal blow on senior management at the BBC. They did not have the satisfaction of seeing heads roll for Savile getting away with sexually or indecently assaulting 72 people at different BBC venues or in private flats after attending BBC events. But it was not a whitewash.
It was impressive for two reasons. Dame Janet is a formidable performer ( as I found out when I tried to sneak two questions past her) and had a real grasp of the issues of why Savile had been able to get away with his monstrous behaviour for decades.
Tony Hall – who looked visibly moved after reading her horrific findings – did not take the easy way out. He did not as I feared say this was a dark period for the BBC but now everything was OK after new measures had been taken to protect children and encourage whistleblowers. He took it on the chin the modified conclusion of Dame Janet that there could be another manipulative, charming, clever paedophile still working at the BBC or any other major organisation. He also pledged to do something about it. (more...)
The Durham District School Board is refuting allegations about bullying incidents at a Pickering, Ont. school at the centre of this week’s stabbing attack.
In a statement released Friday, the Durham District School Board addressed allegations about alleged bullying incidents at Dunbarton High School, saying the allegations are “completely without merit.”
In the statement, DDSB said that the school “has thoroughly investigated these allegations and believes they relate to a single incident between two students that was reported to the school administration and in keeping with safe schools protocol, they were investigated, clarified and dealt with.”
On Tuesday, multiple students and staff members were injured following a knife attack at the high school. A 14-year-old female student was arrested and charged in connection with the incident.
DDBS said that they will not be commenting further “except to say that the inference that there were multiple incidents and that students and staff should fear future incidents is patently false.” (more...)
In an analysis of all the research on childhood trauma and psychosis, my colleagues and I found that exposure to any of...
Posted by Mad In America on Friday, February 26, 2016
Former Chief Superintendant David Duckenfield at the Hillsborough Inquests
The jury in the Hillsborough inquests were told to ignore evidence about rumours of a secret meeting of Freemasons held in the days after the disaster.
The court had heard evidence from retired PC Maxwell Groome that match commander David Duckenfield was rumoured to have attended a meeting in a portable cabin in the car park of Hammerton Road police station, along with ground commander Bernard Murray, inspector Robert Creaser and Assistant Chief Constable Stuart Anderson.
Then superintendent Roger Marshall, who was on duty at the Leppings Lane turnstiles on April 15, 1989, was not believed to have attended.
Coroner Sir John Goldring today told the court: “The rumour, the scuttlebutt, was that most were Freemasons.
“Members of the jury, there was not a shred of evidence that such a meeting ever took place or that all those named were Freemasons.
“Those few witnesses asked about it said there was no such meeting.
“I think I mentioned this at the time that he gave his evidence: in the circumstances, you will obviously put this piece of gossip and hearsay to one side.
The Indonesian Supreme Court is shooting itself in the foot by overturning a lower court’s acquital of the sex abuse charges against Canadian teacher Neil Bantleman, Foreign Affairs Minister Stephane Dion says.
“Already today, Indonesia is penalizing itself because the confidence people may have about the ability to do business in Indonesia, to have justice in Indonesia, has been jeopardized by the decision of the Supreme Court yesterday,” Dion said in a scrum with reporters after question period on Thursday. “Do you feel more secure today to be involved in Indonesia or less secure? Of course we are less secure, everyone.”
Bantleman, 45, and Indonesian teaching assistant Ferdinant Tjion were convicted in April 2015 by the South Jakarta District Court for sexually abusing three kindergarten students between 2013 and 2014 at Jakarta’s prestigious Jakarta International School.
They were sentenced to 10 years in prison but a local appeals court overturned that verdict in August 2015, acquitting both men of the charges.
But the Supreme Court said that acquittal would not stand, reinstating the convictions and lengthening the sentences from 10 years to 11 years. (more...)
Stephen Joseph Schacter, a former teacher at two Toronto-area Jewish day schools, was re-arrested this week in connection with several new sexual offences.
Schacter, 55, was charged with one count of gross indecency, one count of sexual interference, one count of sexual exploitation and two counts of sexual assault.
Police say the charges date to the 1980s and early 1990s.
Schacter still faces a charge of possessing child pornography, for which he was arrested in December.
Schacter was a teacher at Eitz Chaim Schools between 1986 and 2004, an office administrator and supply teacher at United Synagogue Day School (now Robbins Hebrew Academy) between 2005 and 2009, and a private tutor from 2009 until 2011. (more...)
It’s not uncommon for teenagers to say dramatic and emotional things, or even claim they’ll harm others or kill themselves.
But after something terrible happens, said child psychologist and author Lisa Damour, such statements take on a whole new morbid veneer.
The trouble is, how do you separate the trifles of teenage angst from serious signs of danger and depression?
Damour said it’s quite simple.
You ask. And then, if need be, you find help.
“When a child really hurts themselves or somebody else, it’s very hard to say these things come out of the blue,” Damour told the Star on Wednesday.
“Almost invariably they are sending up flags.”
Students and staff at Dunbarton High School in Pickering were reeling after a 14-year-old girl allegedly stabbed and injured seven people there Tuesday morning. Durham Region police later confirmed they are investigating a blog that includes posts from recent weeks and months that include thoughts on suicide, depression and pledges to carry out a stabbing attack at a school. The blog included an entry, since deleted, that promised a school stabbing on the day of the incident. (more...)
Retired judge Dame Janet Smith finds that BBC star Sir Jimmy Savile carried out sexual assaults linked to corporation premises on 72 people.
Some of the 72 women, girls and boys were sexually attacked by Savile more than once, Smith says in her final report published by the BBC today. The figure is slightly higher than was in the draft report leaked to Exaro last month.
Out of the 72, 21 were girls under 16 and another 13 were boys, Smith finds. Savile sexually assaulted one girl of only eight, and one boy who was nine.
She also finds that Savile carried out eight rapes linked to the BBC, including a girl of 13 and a boy of 10. (more...)
The Ministry of Education's revisions to the sexual education curriculum have made headlines and drawn the ire of some Peel parents over the past year.
With the contentious lessons now just around the corner, local school boards have been working to mollify those who feel the changes to the human development and healthy sexuality part of the ministry's health and physical education curriculum are inappropriate for some age groups.
Poleen Grewal, superintendent of curriculum and instruction support services at the Peel District School Board (PDSB), said the unit that's "causing some angst" will be taught in two to four lessons and was loosely slated to be given after March Break, but she suspects the date to now be closer to May or early June.
"We asked them to delay it," said Grewal, adding that schools have been given time to better prepare for things like student exemptions, community consultations and teacher training.
The PDSB began accepting exemptions on the grounds of religious accommodation in January. PDSB spokesperson Brain Woodland said those numbers aren't being tracked centrally at this time.
However, Grewal suspects the exemption requests to increase when notification letters are sent home to parents two weeks before the lessons begin. The grade-specific letters will explain what the child will be learning. (more...)
BANCROFT, Ont. – A local parent says the community is in disbelief after a female teacher was arrested and charged with dozens of sex crimes, and says it should serve as a warning to parents to keep a closer eye on their childrens’ social media activities.
Central Hastings O.P.P. have laid 36 charges against Jaclyn McLaren, 36, of Stirling, Ont., including multiple counts of sexual exploitation and making child pornography. The charges involve students as young as 12 years old over a three-year span from 2013 to 2016.
ennifer Woodcock, whose daughter attended McLaren’s French classes for two years, said parents are reeling from the notion that the incidents could have occurred right under their noses on their childrens’ cellphones and social media accounts.
“That’s the shocking part of it. It is shocking to think that … these situations can be going on and nobody have a clue,” she told Global News.
“Nobody overheard anything, no parents overheard anything, nobody’s radar went off, and it’s just puzzling,” she said. (more...)
An Ottawa family lawyer with a troubling past who is believed to have fled the country after being accused of sexually assaulting a four-year-old girl has had his licence to practise law revoked.
John David Coon abruptly stopped practising law and left Canada in December 2013, just weeks before Ottawa police secured a warrant for his arrest on charges of sexual assault, sexual interference and invitation to sexual touching on the child of one of his clients.
Now, the Law Society of Upper Canada has revoked Coon’s licence to practise law in Ontario. According to the Law Society, the 49-year-old lawyer who ran a practice specializing in child protection was found to have engaged in professional misconduct for failing to co-operate with Law Society investigations.
The revocation of his licence comes two years after it was first suspended following a complaint by the Ottawa Children’s Aid Society. At the time, Coon was already under investigation by the Law Society following allegations by a female client that Coon had sex with her in his office.
But Law Society documents related to that suspension also revealed that Coon was given a licence to practice law in Ontario despite a history that included a prior criminal conviction for sexually assaulting a child. (more...)
An RCMP officer who was caught with child pornography files on his homebuilt, heavily encrypted computer will face sentencing next week.
At his trial in Prince Albert in October, Const. Aiden Arthur Pratchett denied downloading the child porn files, which showed young girls being victimized by adult men, onto his computer. The judge didn’t believe him.
In his decision, delivered Wednesday in Saskatoon provincial court, Judge Morris Baniak said the notion that Pratchett would be unaware of someone hacking into his computer — on which he admitted monitoring bandwidth usage and installing encryption software — was “without merit” and “fanciful.”
“There is no evidentiary foundation for the presence of the child pornography on his computer other than that the accused was responsible for it being there,” Baniak said.
Pratchett was stationed at the Fond du Lac detachment, 800 kilometres north of Saskatoon, when his IP address was flagged by the Saskatchewan Internet Child Exploitation (ICE) unit’s monitoring system in the fall of 2014. The IP address was traced to his home in a duplex on the grounds of the detachment. (more...)
Indonesia's Supreme Court on Thursday overturned the acquittal of Neil Bantleman and ordered the Canadian sentenced to prison for sexually abusing students at a private school where he taught.
Indonesian teaching assistant Ferdinand Tjiong also had his original conviction restored.
The Burlington Ont., native and Tijong were originally sentenced to 10 years in prison, verdicts overturned by the Jakarta High Court in August 2015.
However, as Bantleman's passport was revoked, he was not allowed to leave the country pending the government's appeal.
Supreme Court spokesman Suhadi said a three-member judge panel made the decision Thursday, adding an additional year onto their sentences.
"The judge panel concluded that the defendants were proven to have violated the 2007 Child Protection Law," said Suhardi, who uses a single name. "It did not only reinstate the District Court's verdict but also lengthened the sentence to 11 years."
Bantleman and Tijong are also fined the equivalent of $7,440 CDN.
Chandra Saptaji, head of the general crime section at the South Jakarta Prosecutors' Office, said Tjiong was taken from his house early in the day and was now serving his sentence at the Cipinang Prison in eastern Jakarta.
"We are still looking for Bantleman, who is actually under a ban to leave the country," Saptaji said. "Hopefully, he is cooperative and complying with Indonesia law." (more...)
A victim of sexual abuse at the hands of a bishop has claimed a "deeply sinister, co-ordinated cover up" allowed him to escape justice.
Bishop Peter Ball, who was jailed last year for abusing young men between the 1970s and 1980s, was investigated by police in 1993 and given a caution.
He admitted to his defence team, which included a priest, that he had committed sexual offences.
Gloucestershire Police said a thorough investigation took place.
Documents seen by the BBC suggest Ball's defence team sought to do a deal with the police to avoid the "scandal of a trial".
Ball, who was previously Bishop of Lewes, promised to resign as Bishop of Gloucester and "immediately leave the country", but instead continued to officiate as a priest in the Church of England until 2010.
The Reverend Graham Sawyer, one of the men abused by Ball said: "It looks like there was a deeply sinister, coordinated, but probably in the end rather inept attempt at a cover-up." (more...)
Radio DJ Tony Blackburn has been sacked by the BBC shortly before the publication of a new report into the “culture of deference” at the corporation that allowed sexual abuse to take place.
The review by Dame Janet Smith, a retired judge, looks at Jimmy Savile’s time at the BBC.
Blackburn, 73, is believed to be referred to in the report as ‘A7’ in the context of criticism of the BBC for covering up claims that he "seduced" a 15-year-old Top of the Pops dancer.
The dancer, Clair McAlpine, killed herself just weeks about writing about the alleged sexual encounter in her diary, discovered by her mother in February 1971.
The report is thought to criticise the BBC for not properly investigating the allegations.
Blackburn said the BBC were "destroying my career and reputation because my version of events does not tally with theirs".
In a long statement the DJ insisted he was “not guilty of any inappropriate conduct” and said the report had made no suggestion he was guilty of any misconduct in relation to the teenager.
Blackburn said he planned to take “legal action” against the BBC. (more...)
THE GODDARD Inquiry into child sexual abuse is investigating links between the Paedophile Information Exchange and a charity once headed by a trusted adviser to Prince Charles.
Investigators have trawled through files relating to PIE and the Albany Trust, a gay advocacy group chaired by Sir Harold Haywood in the 1970s.
PIE was a pro-paedophile activist group, founded in 1974 and disbanded in 1984.
In 1976, records show the Albany Trust worked briefly with PIE to produce an “informative pamphlet” on the “sexuality of children”.
Minutes from a meeting held in Stockwell, south London, in February 1976 show it was attended by Sir Harold, who was also director of the Royal Jubilee and Prince’s Trust, as well as prominent PIE members Keith Hose and Warren Middleton.
After the meeting and a further two held that year, the Albany Trust, which received government funding, commissioned a booklet called “Paedophilia: Some Questions and Answers”.
In the first draft, it stated: “One argument for lowering or abolishing the age of consent rests on the knowledge and experience that children are at least as capable of deciding how to express themselves sexually as they are in expressing other basic needs or desires, for example for food, comfort, security, companionship, play.”
It later adds: “Even babies have ways of expressing their wishes, in broad terms, just by crying when they are hungry.” (more...)
Michael Voris is joined in-studio by Dr. E. Michael Jones of CultureWars.com to discuss the madness surrounding all the claimed apparitions going on in Medjugorje, Bosnia.
Since 1981, six visionaries have claimed to receive visits from the Blessed Mother, E. Michael Jones will break it all down for us
Sex trafficking? Money laundering? The CIA's anti-communist racket?
Have heretical academics and charismatic fanatics coalesced into a dialectical axis?
To what degree is the Medjugorje axis conspiring to destabilize the Francis papacy?
Dr. E. Michael Jones returns to discuss Neoconservativism, it's origins and takeover of US foreign policy. We also delve into the CIA's efforts to undermine the presidency of Jimmy Carter, the October Surprise, David Rockefeller's machinations, and the infiltration of the Catholic Church by organized crime and Western intelligence agencies during the Papacy of John Paul II.
A 14-year-old girl is facing more than a dozen charges after several students and staff members were injured in a knife attack at a high school in Pickering Tuesday morning.
Police say the teen, who cannot be identified under the provisions of the Youth Criminal Justice Act, will be charged with six counts of assault causing bodily harm, seven counts of assault with a weapon, one count of possession of weapons for a dangerous purpose and one count of assault.
The charges stem from an incident that occurred at Dunbarton High School, , located near Whites Road and Sheppard Avenue, just before classes were set to begin Tuesday morning.
Durham Regional Police say at around 8:30 a.m., they were called to the school after students and staff were reportedly attacked by a female student who was waving around knives.
Nine people suffered minor injuries and only four were taken to hospital for treatment.
The female was subdued, police say, by some quick-thinking teachers, who tackled her to the ground and held her at the scene until police arrived.
Police previously said they believe the students and staff injured in the incident were targetted at random.
The school was closed Tuesday but classes resumed on Wednesday morning. (more...)
An alleged member of the ‘Ndrangheta gives a thumbs-up to his relatives after his arrest in Reggio Calabria.
When Judge Roberto Di Bella returned to Reggio Calabria in 2011 – the home of one of the most powerful criminal networks in the world – he noticed that the minors standing before him in court were the children of the mafiosi he had put away years earlier.
It was “a kind of enlightenment” for the 52-year-old judge, who has spent most of his career, save for five years in Sicily, in this mountainous and somewhat isolated region of Italy, where the ‘Ndrangheta mafia has proven to be stubbornly immune to law enforcement tactics that have helped to stem the culture of organised crime in other mafia strongholds.
“The youth of the ‘Ndrangheta is an endemic phenomenon that has been underestimated for far too long,” Di Bella said. “We needed to interrupt this downward spiral.”
The judge adopted a new approach: since 2012, about 30 “at risk” minors have been removed from their ‘Ndrangheta families by the juvenile court over which Di Bella presides. In some cases, they have been placed with families in northern Italy, and in others, have been put in youth homes or in the care of anti-mafia organisations.
In each case, Di Bella said, the goal is straightforward: to show the teenager, who the court believes has in some way been groomed for a life of criminality, that there is another way. (more...)
In my archives there is a column or two that introduces the reader to John Perkins’ important book, Confessions of an Economic Hit Man. An EHM is an operative who sells the leadership of a developing country on an economic plan or massive development project. The Hit Man convinces a country’s government that borrowing large sums of money from US financial institutions in order to finance the project will raise the country’s living standards. The borrower is assured that the project will increase Gross Domestic Product and tax revenues and that these increases will allow the loan to be repaid.
However, the plan is designed to over-estimate the benefits so that the indebted country cannot pay the principal and interest. As Perkins’ puts it, the plans are based on “distorted financial analyses, inflated projections, and rigged accounting,” and if the deception doesn’t work, “threats and bribes” are used to close the deal.
The next step in the deception is the appearance of the International Monetary Fund. The IMF tells the indebted country that the IMF will save its credit rating by lending the money with which to repay the country’s creditors. The IMF loan is not a form of aid. It merely replaces the country’s indebtedness to banks with indebtedness to the IMF.
To repay the IMF, the country has to accept an austerity plan and agree to sell national assets to private investors. Austerity means cuts in social pensions, social services, employment and wages, and the budget savings are used to repay the IMF. Privatization means selling oil, mineral and public infrastructure in order to repay the IMF. The deal usually imposes an agreement to vote with the US in the UN and to accept US military bases.
Occasionally a country’s leader refuses the plan or the austerity and privatization. If bribes don’t work, the US sends in the jackals—assassins who remove the obstacle to the looting process.
Perkins’ book caused a sensation. It showed that the United States’ attitude of helpfulness toward poorer countries was only a pretext for schemes to loot the countries. Perkins’ book sold more than a million copies and stayed on the New York Times bestseller list for 73 weeks.
Now the book has been reissued with the addition of 14 new chapters and a 30-page listing of Hit Man activity during the years 2004-2015. (more...)
Could Liz stuff the distractions and diversions; maybe deal with some real issues?
Education Minister Liz Sandals has ruled out metal detectors in schools following a multiple stabbing at a Pickering high school. “That’s a question that keeps coming up,” Sandals said Tuesday. “A lot of the research shows that if you have metal detectors and the sort of security to get into the school that’s quite extraordinary, that in fact that tends to detract from the safe environment, that students feel a bit like they’re having to run the gauntlet into some sort of armed camp or disarmed camp, I guess. “It tends to detract from the safe school climate and the positive learning,” she said. Sandals called Tuesday’s incident in Pickering upsetting and expressed sympathy to the students, staff and families. (more...)
The Crown will not pursue its appeal of the acquittal of a high school teacher who was charged following a relationship with a former student.
Erin Osmond, 30, was found not guilty last year of sexual exploitation following a trial in Saskatoon. The charges related to a relationship with a 16-year-old boy in 2013 in the Watrous area.
The relationship started when the teen was a student and Osmond was a substitute teacher; they shared what the judge determined was a “goodbye” kiss on her last day of teaching. The relationship continued after that, including having sex four times.
In his written decision, Justice Grant Currie said the Crown failed to prove the kiss was sexual in nature and failed to prove that Osmond was in a position of trust or authority over the teen when their relationship became sexual, after she was no longer his teacher. (more...)
The organization governing Ontario teachers cannot yet comment on any investigation into criminal charges against a Belleville-area teacher but is monitoring the case, a spokeswoman says.
“I cannot tell you if there is an investigation (by the college) or not, because at this point, by law, I cannot confirm or deny,” Ontario College of Teachers spokeswoman Gabrielle Barkany said.
However, she said, college officials are aware of the criminal case against Jaclyn McLaren, 36, of Stirling. She faces 36 charges, including sexual assault, related to minors.
“Because it's a matter related to an employer and employee, the school board already took action with that teacher. The teacher is not in the classroom anymore,” Barkany said.
If the college investigates, she said, no results would likely be announced until after court proceedings end.
Barkany said the court and college processes are separate.
“For us it would be to determine – in terms of professional misconduct – what will happen to that teacher.”
Like the courts, she said, the college operates by presuming the person is innocent unless proven otherwise. (more...)
It’s not that Terri Miller thought getting Joseph Peterson out of the classroom would be easy, but she never thought it would take more than a decade.
It was 1983 and Miller had just moved to a small Nevada town when Peterson’s wife revealed during their aerobics class that she was leaving her husband, a high school teacher and coach. The reason: she had found him in bed with one of his students.
“It was shocking,” Miller said. “I knew that my children would one day go to the high school.”
She thought a quick call to the school’s principal relaying the woman’s story would be enough to get the teacher removed. But without a victim coming forward, the administrator told her there was nothing he could do.
The obstacles in her way kept piling up. The bus driver who made three reports about seeing Peterson inappropriately touching female students on the bus was fired. While Peterson was stripped of his coaching duties, rumors about his behavior continued to circulate throughout the community.
But when he decided to run for school board in 1994, Miller intensified her investigation. She pumped her daughter for information that would lead her to his former or current students. Finally she had enough stories of his abuse to hand over to authorities, leading to his arrest and conviction on sexual assault charges. He was paroled after serving 16 years of a life sentence (more...)
