A former district attorney in Montgomery County, Pennsylvania, claims he agreed more than a decade ago that his office wouldn’t use a civil deposition given by Bill Cosby in any criminal matters, an email obtained by CNN shows — a revelation that could call into question the viability of the criminal case against the comedian.
The 2015 email — sent by former District Attorney Bruce Castor to successor Risa Vetri Ferman — details an apparent verbal agreement the prosecutor had a decade earlier with Cosby’s attorneys for Cosby to testify in a civil sexual assault case brought against him in 2005. In the email, Castor writes that his intent in making the deal was to create an atmosphere in which Cosby accuser Andrea Constand would have the best chance of prevailing in her civil suit against the 78-year-old comedian by removing the prospect of Cosby invoking his 5th Amendment right.
The email was sent three months before criminal charges were filed against Cosby in Montgomery County in December, and could call into question the viability of the case, CNN has learned.
In it, Castor writes to Ferman: “I can see no possibility that Cosby’s deposition could be used in a state criminal case, because I would have to testify as to what happened, and the deposition would be subject to suppression.
Bill Cosby: Evolution of an icon
16 photos: Bill Cosby: Evolution of an icon
“I cannot believe any state court judge would allow that deposition into evidence. …. Knowing this, unless you can make out a case without that deposition and without anything the deposition led you to, I think Cosby would have an action against the County and maybe even against you personally.”
The deposition is a key piece of evidence, cited by prosecutors as the impetus for reopening the case.
At the center of the case are allegations made by Constand, a former Temple University basketball employee, who says Cosby sexually assaulted her in his home in 2004.
Dolores Troiani, an attorney for Constand in 2005, told CNN’s Jean Casarez on Friday that she never knew about any such agreement between Cosby’s attorneys and prosecutors.
Castor, when asked by CNN about the email, declined to comment.
The current district attorney, Kevin Steele, who was elected in November after serving as Ferman’s longtime top deputy, told CNN on Friday: “There is a specific legal method to grant immunity. That was not done in 2005.”
Steele also noted that in Castor’s 2005 press release declaring there was insufficient evidence to prosecute Cosby that Castor himself said he would “reconsider this decision should the need arise.”
Felony charges against Cosby
Cosby faces three felony charges of sexual assault in Montgomery County, in connection with Constand’s allegations.
Cosby appeared in court in late December and didn’t enter a plea. But through his lawyers, Cosby has steadfastly denied wrongdoing in this case and dozens of allegations made by at least 50 other women.
Earlier this week, Cosby’s lawyers filed a motion asking for the charges against the comedian to be dismissed.
In a statement, Cosby’s attorneys asserted that the charges were “illegally, improperly and unethically brought by District Attorney Kevin Steele and his office.”
According to the statement, the charges “violate an express agreement made by the Montgomery County District Attorney in 2005, in which the Commonwealth agreed that Mr. Cosby would never be prosecuted with respect to the allegations of sexual assault made by complainant Andrea Constand.
“This agreement, made for the express purpose of inducing Mr. Cosby to testify fully in Ms. Constand’s civil litigation against him, led Mr. Cosby to give deposition testimony in 2005 and 2006 without invocation of his Constitutional rights against self-incrimination. Now, to fulfill campaign promises, the newly-elected District Attorney has repudiated the agreement and has based these criminal charges on the very testimony Mr. Cosby gave in reliance on the Commonwealth’s non-prosecution agreement,” the attorneys said.
Steele said Friday that his office would file a response to the motion to dismiss, which his office has said has no merit.
First public allegation
Constand was the first person to publicly allege sexual assault by Cosby.
In 2005, prosecutors declined to charge Cosby in the Constand case, citing insufficient evidence. But late last year, the new district attorney — Steele — was elected, and he made good on a campaign promise to swiftly reopen the case. Pennsylvania law has a 12-year statute of limitations for sexual assault cases.
“The charge by the Montgomery County District Attorney’s Office came as no surprise, filed 12 years after the alleged incident and coming on the heels of a hotly contested election for this county’s DA during which this case was made the focal point,” Cosby’s attorneys said in a statement after his arraignment. “Make no mistake, we intend to mount a vigorous defense against this unjustified charge and we expect that Mr. Cosby will be exonerated by a court of law.”
The criminal charges are the first to be levied against Cosby since the allegations arose, and the deposition is a vital piece of evidence.
This past July, nine years after the civil case was settled, a judge unsealed Cosby’s deposition in the Constand case in response to a motion by the media.
In it, Cosby admits he had sexual relationships with at least five women outside his marriage, gave prescription sedatives to women he wanted to have sex with and tried to hide affairs from his wife.
Cosby says he gave Constand one and a half tablets of Benadryl — an over-the-counter antihistamine that can cause drowsiness — to relieve stress.
In the deposition, he says the sex and drug-taking were always consensual.
In late December, the DA’s office filed a probable cause affidavit that alleges that Cosby “sought to incapacitate” Constand by giving her a mix of pills and wine that sent her slipping in and out of consciousness and left her unable to consent to sexual activity.
Temple ties
Constand was director of basketball operations at Temple University in Philadelphia when she met the comedian. Cosby is an alumnus — and was a very active one until the school distanced itself in the hail of accusations against the comedian.
In 2004, she visited him at his home in a Philadelphia suburb where she alleges a sexual assault took place.
Constand quickly spoke up. When prosecutors passed on a criminal case, she filed a civil lawsuit against Cosby. A lawyer deposed him, but Cosby settled with Constand in 2006; the case’s details were filed away, and years of relative quiet ensued.
Election issue
Nine years later, Montgomery County headed to the polls in November to vote for a new district attorney, and Kevin Steele turned the accusations against Cosby into part of his campaign platform. In the race to succeed Risa Vetri Ferman, Steele defeated Castor, and weeks later reconsidered criminally prosecuting Cosby.
Prosecutors re-examined the original investigation in light of the new documents, re-interviewed some witnesses and decided to pursue criminal charges.
“(When) we learned about allegations from other victims under similar circumstances, reopening this case was not a question,” Steele said.
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Investigators discovered this month that United Nations peacekeepers in the Central African Republic were paying girls at a camp for the internally displaced less than a dollar for sex. It’s the latest of several such incidents plaguing the U.N. mission there — 22 other cases of alleged sexual abuse or exploitation have been reported in the past 14 months.
The new allegations have surfaced just weeks after a damning report found that “gross institutional failures” in the U.N.’s handling of sexual abuse cases helped perpetuate the problem. The organization has been grappling with accusations of sexual abuse by peacekeepers for decades. When the first round of allegations in the Central African Republic came to light last year, Secretary General Ban Ki Moon referred to the issue as “a cancer in our system.”
Part of the issue has to do with the way the organization is structured. The high demand for U.N. peacekeepers means that the the organization is constantly scrambling for personnel — so training and oversight take a hit. And if peacekeepers engage in sexual abuse, the U.N. cannot punish them directly. They’re under the legal protection of their home countries, explains Sarah Taylor, a women’s rights advocate at the nonprofit Human Rights Watch.
So what will it take to cure this persistent cancer? We asked Taylor to explain barriers to overcoming it.
The conversation has been edited for length and clarity.
Why are sexual abuse and exploitation so common in these peacekeeping missions?
I can’t say exactly.
Yet clearly it is happening.
It’s incredibly important to remember how vulnerable these communities are where the peacekeepers are stationed. Civilians and local populations have been subjected to all kinds of violence. There’s been a breakdown of local governance, there’s often food shortages. So there are all sorts of ways that these populations are vulnerable to abuse.
It seems that another issue is the way the U.N. is structured.
Part of the challenge is that the U.N. is dependent on troop-contributing countries for the staff that makes up these missions. And there is usually shortage of troops. So there’s no consequences for these countries [if their representatives commit abuse] — the U.N. doesn’t say, “Until you get your house in order, we’re not going to accept your troops.”
But the U.N. does have some leverage here — there’s money they’re providing to these countries for providing troops.
Do peacekeepers who commit sexual abuse face any consequences?
The U.N. itself has very limited ability to get judicial redress once these troops return to their home countries. It’s then up to the home governments to decide what to do.
In Haiti a few years ago, Pakistani troops were accused of sexual abuse. So [the Pakistani government] actually created a military tribunal in Haiti to try two Pakistani soldiers who were then sent back to Pakistan to serve their sentences, in this case a year in prison with hard labor. That doesn’t usually happen.
There is a very complex bureaucratic system of memorandums of understanding between the U.N. and those countries that provide troops. Within 10 days, member states are supposed to send in an update to say they’re investigating these cases or prosecuting the offenders. But there’s no consequences for countries that don’t provide this information — so half the time they don’t. It becomes extremely difficult to find out what happens to the troops once they’re repatriated into their countries.
So what can the U.N. do?
There are things: strong leadership within the U.N. to follow up on cases, regular reporting so we have a better idea of how many allegations there have been — and of course, providing support and counseling for the survivors. Because this absolutely needs to be about the survivors. They’re often left without medical services, they’re often left without long-term counseling.
Are you optimistic that we’ll finally see some progress on this issue?
This has been going on for such a long time. Since the 1990s, there’s been allegations of this sort of abuse from peacekeeping troops and staff in Bosnia and Herzegovina, in Cambodia, in the Democratic Republic of Congo, East Timor, Haiti, South Sudan, Central African Republic. And the troops that have been responsible — at least the ones we know of — have been from Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Uganda, Burundi, the Democratic Republic of Congo and France.
Now there’s finally a proposal in the U.N. that repeat offender countries will not be allowed to provide troops until they can demonstrate that they’ve addressed this issue. But we’ve yet to see if there’s going to be follow through and if that’s actually going to work.
Full article: http://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2016/01/15/462940913/why-is-sexual-abuse-such-a-problem-with-u-n-peacekeepers?sc=17&f=1001&utm_source=iosnewsapp&utm_medium=Email&utm_campaign=app
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Women are bearing the brunt of an invisible rise in violent crime, a new analysis shows. Domestic violence and violence against women have increased since 2009, researchers found, pushing up overall levels of violent crime.
The findings contradict the official message that violent crime has been in decline since the mid-90s. They also begin to challenge the assertion that men are the most likely victims; violent crime against men continues to fall.
A team led by Sylvia Walby, Unesco chair in gender research and a professor of sociology at Lancaster University, discovered the rise in violent crime after looking again at data collected by the Crime Survey of England and Wales (CSEW) between 1994 and 2014.
Official statisticians cap the number in a series of crimes that a single person can report to the survey at five, to stop outliers skewing the statistics. But Walby argues that this method excludes the experiences of “high frequency” victims – particularly victims of domestic violence – who often make up more than 5% of respondents.
To take these victims into account, Walby and her colleagues instead looked at all reported crimes. The new study also slightly alters the definition of violent crime to include sexual offences such as rape, which are usually given their own category in CSEW figures.
Abandoning the cap and including sex crimes shows the fall in violent crime reached a turning point in 2009, when a rise in domestic violence and violence against women by acquaintances begins. Although violence against women by strangers remains flat, and violence against men continues to fall, the rises are so marked they fuel an overall rise in violent crime.
Women’s groups say it is no coincidence that the rise begins at the same time as the financial crisis and the beginning of austerity politics in Britain. They are calling for a reversal of cuts to specialist domestic violence services. Many have closed as a result of belt-tightening in local government since 2010.
UK violent crime rates over the past two decades, as measured by the Crime Survey of England and Wales and broken down by violence against men and violence against women
The change coincides with the repercussions of the financial crisis, the researchers point out. “The turning point in the rate of these violent crimes is consistent with an explanation focused on the reduced economic independence of women and the impact of the cuts to services on which women disproportionately depend,” they write, although they add that more investigation is needed.
Vivienne Hayes, chief executive of the Women’s Resource Centre, said that while austerity had played a part in the rise in violence against women, some of it was also the result of a troubling resurgence of sexism.
“While we are deeply saddened by the results of Walby’s research, we are not surprised,” she said. “Our member organisations have been telling us repeatedly that demand for their services, which include rape crisis centres and small specialist Violence Against Women and Girls services, has rocketed, whilst investment in services has plummeted.
“Research from a range of sources strongly suggests that over the last few years our societal view of women, from violent pornography, violent computer games, street harassment and everyday sexism, to the lack of women in positions of leadership and the attempt to remove women’s contribution to political progress in the A level curriculum, is creating a view of women which nurtures and normalises our violation.
“Only when we take a bird’s eye view of all of these issues and develop a joined up strategy to tackle them head on, will we see a reduction in violent crime against women.”
WRC cited House of Commons research showing that direct taxes and social security cuts will take £9.6bn net a year from families – £7bn of which is from women. The group’s own research has found that 95% of women’s organisations had experienced cuts, rising to 100% for BME women’s organisations.
The CSEW is a face-to-face survey asking people about their experiences of a range of crimes in the past year. It is regarded as the gold standard of crime statistics since it includes unreported crimes and is unaffected by changes in police recording practices.
Official statisticians have argued that the cap on the number of crimes a single person can report to eliminate volatility in the results, allowing them to better identify trends. Walby and her colleagues get around that problem by instead using a three-year moving average of statistics.
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Survivors of domestic abuse most often report not just one incident of violence and intimidation, or even several, but a systematic and sustained campaign of repression that can last years.
That was the case with Ava Freebody, from Sussex, who spent 27 years with her abusive husband before she was finally able to escape. She has contempt for any suggestion that crime statistics would cap the number in a series of incidents reported by a single victim, calling it ridiculous.
“How can you possibly put a cap on something and say that after five times it doesn’t count? I remember all the incidents, I remember all the things that were done to me, and to say we are only going to count five times makes me feel worthless,” she said. “It’s like somehow this is your fault, it’s like if this had happened more than five times then you must have been asking for it.
“I think we have a situation here where I think of this as domestic terrorism. If the perpetrators were Isis we would be throwing so many resources into it and we would recognise the repeated attacks on liberties and health.”
Walby also condemned the capping, saying it “omits crimes and therefore biases the crime rate downwards – it is lower than it should be. The objection to taking the cap off is that this introduces more year-to-year volatility. Uncapping and [giving] three-year moving averages provides an unbiased figure that also solves the volatility problem.”
Christina Jay, an activist with Sisters Uncut, which campaigns against cuts to such services, added: “This research proves the urgent need for meaningful investment in domestic violence support. We hope the government acknowledges the undeniable human cost of austerity and put substantial measures, policies and funding commitments in place to make sure that all domestic violence survivors can flee violence and live safely.”
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A panel of judges in Philadelphia has ruled that Jehovah’s Witnesses used an “abusive tactic” to delay a trial in which a woman accused the religion’s leaders of covering up her abuse as a child.
The Witnesses’ parent corporation, the Watchtower Bible and Tract Society of New York, had won a motion in a lower court to move the case from Philadelphia to York County, which currently has the largest backlog of civil cases in Pennsylvania.
The Watchtower argued that holding the trial in Philadelphia would burden witnesses who would have to travel to testify. The appellate panel overruled the lower court, calling the Watchtower’s motion a “last-minute gambit to delay trial.”
In her opinion, Judge Patricia Jenkins refers to the Watchtower and other defendants as “the Congregations.”
“The facts strongly suggest that the motion to transfer venue was the product of bad-faith collaboration between the Congregations and the four York County witnesses,” she wrote.
The case was brought in 2013 by Stephanie Fessler, who claims she was sexually abused 30 to 50 times from the ages of 14 to 16 by a middle-aged woman in another congregation.
Jenkins didn’t elaborate on the collaboration, but her remarks were not the first time a judge has taken issue with the Watchtower’s tactics in court. In two cases in California, judges issued default judgments to plaintiffs because the Watchtower refused to produce documents and witnesses.
Fessler, 27, gave Reveal permission to use her name in this story. Jeff Fritz, Fessler’s attorney, said Watchtower policies enabled her abuser.
“The congregation and the Watchtower had knowledge of child abuse that we contend they were obligated to report to law enforcement and child welfare authorities,” he said. “They admit that they had knowledge of it, and they admit that they didn’t report it. As a result, she was subject to continued abuse.”
The Watchtower declined to comment on the case.
Fessler’s lawsuit is one of more than a dozen pending against the Watchtower in the U.S. over the organization’s child abuse policies.
A Reveal investigation last February found that since 1989, the Watchtower had directed Jehovah’s Witnesses elders to hide child sexual abuse from secular authorities. The Watchtower’s pattern of secrecy subsequently was highlighted during an inquiry by an Australian government commission, which found that the Witnesses had failed to report more than 1,000 suspected child sexual abusers in that country.
A commission that regulates charities in England currently is investigating the Witnesses’ child abuse policies.
The trial in Fessler’s case could begin as soon as this spring.
Full article: https://www.revealnews.org/blog/another-judge-criticizes-jehovahs-witnesses-court-tactics/
Watching “Spotlight,” the movie about The Boston Globe’s investigation of Massachusetts clergy who raped children, and reading about employees of St. George’s School in Middletown who sexually abused students, has prompted memories of my 1960s and ‘70s childhood.
Only luck, I have concluded, spared me and my friends the fate of these many victims.
Back then, we were youngsters in a world where authority was accepted without question, and where certain authorities with sanctioned access to children — clergy, teachers, coaches and scout leaders among them — were almost god-like in stature.
It was a world of blind obedience and absolute trust of elders. And it was a world where monsters cloaked in authority roamed free, although no grownup warned us of that.
A resident of Wakefield, Mass., a Boston suburb, I spent eight years at St. Joseph parochial school and was an altar boy during much of that time at the parish church, which was under the control of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Boston. The priests I knew best at St. Joseph were good stewards. But another, William F. Maloney, whom I saw only at Mass, was later accused of sexually abusing someone in the late 1960s at another parish in North Reading, four miles from my home.
A ten-minute drive would have brought me to St. Patrick’s Parish in neighboring Stoneham, where my parents could just as easily have settled when buying their first house. I would have been an altar boy — with Bryan Schultz, who was repeatedly molested by Paul R. Shanley, one of the worst pedophile priests, assigned to St. Patrick’s during much of the 1960s. Father James R. Porter, another monster, was with Shanley in Stoneham in 1967.
As the reporter played by Mark Ruffalo declares in “Spotlight”: “It could have been any one of us!”
In eighth grade, I won a scholarship to St. John’s Prep, in Danvers, Mass., an all-boys school where I received a superb education. I was a day student and never saw headmaster Brother Ricardo, an outwardly warm and charming man, outside the classroom context. But boarders did. They saw also another brother who lived in one dorm – and they told stories of him inviting them to his room for illicit cigarettes and requests to shower naked with him. To my knowledge, this man was never formally accused of sexually abusing a student. But Brother Ricardo, whose given name was Richard Kerressey, was.
In 1994, a former student accused Kerressey of sodomizing him in the school infirmary in 1966. After the rape, according to the victim, Kerressey threatened to keep him from graduating if he told anyone. The grown man claimed his life was ruined, with suffering from “depression, affective disorder, rage attacks, sleep apnea … attention/concentration deficit … is unable to hold a job or even at this point work,” according to a 1994 letter (available on bishopaccountability.org) by the law firm of Eckert Seamans Cherin & Mellott, which represented victims of Porter and Shanley.
Did Kerressey have more victims? We probably will never know, since some of an abuser’s victims take their secrets with them to the grave. Indeed, it is possible that some of my childhood friends were abused but have never disclosed it. If so, I hope they, and all victims, can find peace in their later years.
The record is unclear on what action, if any, was taken against Kerressey, who left St. John’s after my junior year and died in 1996. To its credit, St. John’s more recently moved responsibly against another brother and a priest chaplain who were accused of abusing students. And the Archdiocese of Boston — headed now by a holy man, Cardinal Seán Patrick O’Malley, who succeeded the unholy and unrepentant Cardinal Bernard Law, in charge when many of the more than 800 known victims allege they were abused — has apologized, paid damages, sought justice and enacted real protections.
We say this must never happen again. One way toward that goal is never forgetting what happened, and what didn’t. Luck is not enough to protect children.
G. Wayne Miller, a Providence Journal staff writer and author, graduated from St. John’s Prep in 1972 and Harvard College in 1976.
Full article:
http://www.providencejournal.com/article/20160110/opinion/160119946
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Michael Smerconish and Steve Almasy, CNN Exclusive: Email may derail case against Bill Cosby, CNN
/in Uncategorized /by SOL ReformA former district attorney in Montgomery County, Pennsylvania, claims he agreed more than a decade ago that his office wouldn’t use a civil deposition given by Bill Cosby in any criminal matters, an email obtained by CNN shows — a revelation that could call into question the viability of the criminal case against the comedian.
The 2015 email — sent by former District Attorney Bruce Castor to successor Risa Vetri Ferman — details an apparent verbal agreement the prosecutor had a decade earlier with Cosby’s attorneys for Cosby to testify in a civil sexual assault case brought against him in 2005. In the email, Castor writes that his intent in making the deal was to create an atmosphere in which Cosby accuser Andrea Constand would have the best chance of prevailing in her civil suit against the 78-year-old comedian by removing the prospect of Cosby invoking his 5th Amendment right.
The email was sent three months before criminal charges were filed against Cosby in Montgomery County in December, and could call into question the viability of the case, CNN has learned.
In it, Castor writes to Ferman: “I can see no possibility that Cosby’s deposition could be used in a state criminal case, because I would have to testify as to what happened, and the deposition would be subject to suppression.
Bill Cosby: Evolution of an icon
16 photos: Bill Cosby: Evolution of an icon
“I cannot believe any state court judge would allow that deposition into evidence. …. Knowing this, unless you can make out a case without that deposition and without anything the deposition led you to, I think Cosby would have an action against the County and maybe even against you personally.”
The deposition is a key piece of evidence, cited by prosecutors as the impetus for reopening the case.
At the center of the case are allegations made by Constand, a former Temple University basketball employee, who says Cosby sexually assaulted her in his home in 2004.
Dolores Troiani, an attorney for Constand in 2005, told CNN’s Jean Casarez on Friday that she never knew about any such agreement between Cosby’s attorneys and prosecutors.
Castor, when asked by CNN about the email, declined to comment.
The current district attorney, Kevin Steele, who was elected in November after serving as Ferman’s longtime top deputy, told CNN on Friday: “There is a specific legal method to grant immunity. That was not done in 2005.”
Steele also noted that in Castor’s 2005 press release declaring there was insufficient evidence to prosecute Cosby that Castor himself said he would “reconsider this decision should the need arise.”
Felony charges against Cosby
Cosby faces three felony charges of sexual assault in Montgomery County, in connection with Constand’s allegations.
Cosby appeared in court in late December and didn’t enter a plea. But through his lawyers, Cosby has steadfastly denied wrongdoing in this case and dozens of allegations made by at least 50 other women.
Earlier this week, Cosby’s lawyers filed a motion asking for the charges against the comedian to be dismissed.
In a statement, Cosby’s attorneys asserted that the charges were “illegally, improperly and unethically brought by District Attorney Kevin Steele and his office.”
According to the statement, the charges “violate an express agreement made by the Montgomery County District Attorney in 2005, in which the Commonwealth agreed that Mr. Cosby would never be prosecuted with respect to the allegations of sexual assault made by complainant Andrea Constand.
“This agreement, made for the express purpose of inducing Mr. Cosby to testify fully in Ms. Constand’s civil litigation against him, led Mr. Cosby to give deposition testimony in 2005 and 2006 without invocation of his Constitutional rights against self-incrimination. Now, to fulfill campaign promises, the newly-elected District Attorney has repudiated the agreement and has based these criminal charges on the very testimony Mr. Cosby gave in reliance on the Commonwealth’s non-prosecution agreement,” the attorneys said.
Steele said Friday that his office would file a response to the motion to dismiss, which his office has said has no merit.
First public allegation
Constand was the first person to publicly allege sexual assault by Cosby.
In 2005, prosecutors declined to charge Cosby in the Constand case, citing insufficient evidence. But late last year, the new district attorney — Steele — was elected, and he made good on a campaign promise to swiftly reopen the case. Pennsylvania law has a 12-year statute of limitations for sexual assault cases.
“The charge by the Montgomery County District Attorney’s Office came as no surprise, filed 12 years after the alleged incident and coming on the heels of a hotly contested election for this county’s DA during which this case was made the focal point,” Cosby’s attorneys said in a statement after his arraignment. “Make no mistake, we intend to mount a vigorous defense against this unjustified charge and we expect that Mr. Cosby will be exonerated by a court of law.”
The criminal charges are the first to be levied against Cosby since the allegations arose, and the deposition is a vital piece of evidence.
This past July, nine years after the civil case was settled, a judge unsealed Cosby’s deposition in the Constand case in response to a motion by the media.
In it, Cosby admits he had sexual relationships with at least five women outside his marriage, gave prescription sedatives to women he wanted to have sex with and tried to hide affairs from his wife.
Cosby says he gave Constand one and a half tablets of Benadryl — an over-the-counter antihistamine that can cause drowsiness — to relieve stress.
In the deposition, he says the sex and drug-taking were always consensual.
In late December, the DA’s office filed a probable cause affidavit that alleges that Cosby “sought to incapacitate” Constand by giving her a mix of pills and wine that sent her slipping in and out of consciousness and left her unable to consent to sexual activity.
Temple ties
Constand was director of basketball operations at Temple University in Philadelphia when she met the comedian. Cosby is an alumnus — and was a very active one until the school distanced itself in the hail of accusations against the comedian.
In 2004, she visited him at his home in a Philadelphia suburb where she alleges a sexual assault took place.
Constand quickly spoke up. When prosecutors passed on a criminal case, she filed a civil lawsuit against Cosby. A lawyer deposed him, but Cosby settled with Constand in 2006; the case’s details were filed away, and years of relative quiet ensued.
Election issue
Nine years later, Montgomery County headed to the polls in November to vote for a new district attorney, and Kevin Steele turned the accusations against Cosby into part of his campaign platform. In the race to succeed Risa Vetri Ferman, Steele defeated Castor, and weeks later reconsidered criminally prosecuting Cosby.
Prosecutors re-examined the original investigation in light of the new documents, re-interviewed some witnesses and decided to pursue criminal charges.
“(When) we learned about allegations from other victims under similar circumstances, reopening this case was not a question,” Steele said.
Email may derail case against Bill Cosby – CNN
Maanvi Singh, Why Is Sexual Abuse Such A Problem With U.N. Peacekeepers?, NPR
/in Uncategorized /by SOL ReformInvestigators discovered this month that United Nations peacekeepers in the Central African Republic were paying girls at a camp for the internally displaced less than a dollar for sex. It’s the latest of several such incidents plaguing the U.N. mission there — 22 other cases of alleged sexual abuse or exploitation have been reported in the past 14 months.
The new allegations have surfaced just weeks after a damning report found that “gross institutional failures” in the U.N.’s handling of sexual abuse cases helped perpetuate the problem. The organization has been grappling with accusations of sexual abuse by peacekeepers for decades. When the first round of allegations in the Central African Republic came to light last year, Secretary General Ban Ki Moon referred to the issue as “a cancer in our system.”
Part of the issue has to do with the way the organization is structured. The high demand for U.N. peacekeepers means that the the organization is constantly scrambling for personnel — so training and oversight take a hit. And if peacekeepers engage in sexual abuse, the U.N. cannot punish them directly. They’re under the legal protection of their home countries, explains Sarah Taylor, a women’s rights advocate at the nonprofit Human Rights Watch.
So what will it take to cure this persistent cancer? We asked Taylor to explain barriers to overcoming it.
The conversation has been edited for length and clarity.
Why are sexual abuse and exploitation so common in these peacekeeping missions?
I can’t say exactly.
Yet clearly it is happening.
It’s incredibly important to remember how vulnerable these communities are where the peacekeepers are stationed. Civilians and local populations have been subjected to all kinds of violence. There’s been a breakdown of local governance, there’s often food shortages. So there are all sorts of ways that these populations are vulnerable to abuse.
It seems that another issue is the way the U.N. is structured.
Part of the challenge is that the U.N. is dependent on troop-contributing countries for the staff that makes up these missions. And there is usually shortage of troops. So there’s no consequences for these countries [if their representatives commit abuse] — the U.N. doesn’t say, “Until you get your house in order, we’re not going to accept your troops.”
But the U.N. does have some leverage here — there’s money they’re providing to these countries for providing troops.
Do peacekeepers who commit sexual abuse face any consequences?
The U.N. itself has very limited ability to get judicial redress once these troops return to their home countries. It’s then up to the home governments to decide what to do.
In Haiti a few years ago, Pakistani troops were accused of sexual abuse. So [the Pakistani government] actually created a military tribunal in Haiti to try two Pakistani soldiers who were then sent back to Pakistan to serve their sentences, in this case a year in prison with hard labor. That doesn’t usually happen.
There is a very complex bureaucratic system of memorandums of understanding between the U.N. and those countries that provide troops. Within 10 days, member states are supposed to send in an update to say they’re investigating these cases or prosecuting the offenders. But there’s no consequences for countries that don’t provide this information — so half the time they don’t. It becomes extremely difficult to find out what happens to the troops once they’re repatriated into their countries.
So what can the U.N. do?
There are things: strong leadership within the U.N. to follow up on cases, regular reporting so we have a better idea of how many allegations there have been — and of course, providing support and counseling for the survivors. Because this absolutely needs to be about the survivors. They’re often left without medical services, they’re often left without long-term counseling.
Are you optimistic that we’ll finally see some progress on this issue?
This has been going on for such a long time. Since the 1990s, there’s been allegations of this sort of abuse from peacekeeping troops and staff in Bosnia and Herzegovina, in Cambodia, in the Democratic Republic of Congo, East Timor, Haiti, South Sudan, Central African Republic. And the troops that have been responsible — at least the ones we know of — have been from Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Uganda, Burundi, the Democratic Republic of Congo and France.
Now there’s finally a proposal in the U.N. that repeat offender countries will not be allowed to provide troops until they can demonstrate that they’ve addressed this issue. But we’ve yet to see if there’s going to be follow through and if that’s actually going to work.
Full article: http://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2016/01/15/462940913/why-is-sexual-abuse-such-a-problem-with-u-n-peacekeepers?sc=17&f=1001&utm_source=iosnewsapp&utm_medium=Email&utm_campaign=app
Damien Gayle, Hidden rise in violent crime driven by growth in violence against women, The Guardian
/in Uncategorized /by SOL ReformWomen are bearing the brunt of an invisible rise in violent crime, a new analysis shows. Domestic violence and violence against women have increased since 2009, researchers found, pushing up overall levels of violent crime.
The findings contradict the official message that violent crime has been in decline since the mid-90s. They also begin to challenge the assertion that men are the most likely victims; violent crime against men continues to fall.
A team led by Sylvia Walby, Unesco chair in gender research and a professor of sociology at Lancaster University, discovered the rise in violent crime after looking again at data collected by the Crime Survey of England and Wales (CSEW) between 1994 and 2014.
Official statisticians cap the number in a series of crimes that a single person can report to the survey at five, to stop outliers skewing the statistics. But Walby argues that this method excludes the experiences of “high frequency” victims – particularly victims of domestic violence – who often make up more than 5% of respondents.
To take these victims into account, Walby and her colleagues instead looked at all reported crimes. The new study also slightly alters the definition of violent crime to include sexual offences such as rape, which are usually given their own category in CSEW figures.
Abandoning the cap and including sex crimes shows the fall in violent crime reached a turning point in 2009, when a rise in domestic violence and violence against women by acquaintances begins. Although violence against women by strangers remains flat, and violence against men continues to fall, the rises are so marked they fuel an overall rise in violent crime.
Women’s groups say it is no coincidence that the rise begins at the same time as the financial crisis and the beginning of austerity politics in Britain. They are calling for a reversal of cuts to specialist domestic violence services. Many have closed as a result of belt-tightening in local government since 2010.
UK violent crime rates over the past two decades, as measured by the Crime Survey of England and Wales and broken down by violence against men and violence against women
The change coincides with the repercussions of the financial crisis, the researchers point out. “The turning point in the rate of these violent crimes is consistent with an explanation focused on the reduced economic independence of women and the impact of the cuts to services on which women disproportionately depend,” they write, although they add that more investigation is needed.
Vivienne Hayes, chief executive of the Women’s Resource Centre, said that while austerity had played a part in the rise in violence against women, some of it was also the result of a troubling resurgence of sexism.
“While we are deeply saddened by the results of Walby’s research, we are not surprised,” she said. “Our member organisations have been telling us repeatedly that demand for their services, which include rape crisis centres and small specialist Violence Against Women and Girls services, has rocketed, whilst investment in services has plummeted.
“Research from a range of sources strongly suggests that over the last few years our societal view of women, from violent pornography, violent computer games, street harassment and everyday sexism, to the lack of women in positions of leadership and the attempt to remove women’s contribution to political progress in the A level curriculum, is creating a view of women which nurtures and normalises our violation.
“Only when we take a bird’s eye view of all of these issues and develop a joined up strategy to tackle them head on, will we see a reduction in violent crime against women.”
WRC cited House of Commons research showing that direct taxes and social security cuts will take £9.6bn net a year from families – £7bn of which is from women. The group’s own research has found that 95% of women’s organisations had experienced cuts, rising to 100% for BME women’s organisations.
The CSEW is a face-to-face survey asking people about their experiences of a range of crimes in the past year. It is regarded as the gold standard of crime statistics since it includes unreported crimes and is unaffected by changes in police recording practices.
Official statisticians have argued that the cap on the number of crimes a single person can report to eliminate volatility in the results, allowing them to better identify trends. Walby and her colleagues get around that problem by instead using a three-year moving average of statistics.
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Survivors of domestic abuse most often report not just one incident of violence and intimidation, or even several, but a systematic and sustained campaign of repression that can last years.
That was the case with Ava Freebody, from Sussex, who spent 27 years with her abusive husband before she was finally able to escape. She has contempt for any suggestion that crime statistics would cap the number in a series of incidents reported by a single victim, calling it ridiculous.
“How can you possibly put a cap on something and say that after five times it doesn’t count? I remember all the incidents, I remember all the things that were done to me, and to say we are only going to count five times makes me feel worthless,” she said. “It’s like somehow this is your fault, it’s like if this had happened more than five times then you must have been asking for it.
“I think we have a situation here where I think of this as domestic terrorism. If the perpetrators were Isis we would be throwing so many resources into it and we would recognise the repeated attacks on liberties and health.”
Walby also condemned the capping, saying it “omits crimes and therefore biases the crime rate downwards – it is lower than it should be. The objection to taking the cap off is that this introduces more year-to-year volatility. Uncapping and [giving] three-year moving averages provides an unbiased figure that also solves the volatility problem.”
Christina Jay, an activist with Sisters Uncut, which campaigns against cuts to such services, added: “This research proves the urgent need for meaningful investment in domestic violence support. We hope the government acknowledges the undeniable human cost of austerity and put substantial measures, policies and funding commitments in place to make sure that all domestic violence survivors can flee violence and live safely.”
Hidden rise in violent crime driven by growth in violence against women _ Society _ The Guardian
First civil case against Phila Archdiocese not subject to protective order
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Trey Bundy, Another judge criticizes Jehovah’s Witnesses’ court tactics, Reveal
/in Uncategorized /by SOL ReformA panel of judges in Philadelphia has ruled that Jehovah’s Witnesses used an “abusive tactic” to delay a trial in which a woman accused the religion’s leaders of covering up her abuse as a child.
The Witnesses’ parent corporation, the Watchtower Bible and Tract Society of New York, had won a motion in a lower court to move the case from Philadelphia to York County, which currently has the largest backlog of civil cases in Pennsylvania.
The Watchtower argued that holding the trial in Philadelphia would burden witnesses who would have to travel to testify. The appellate panel overruled the lower court, calling the Watchtower’s motion a “last-minute gambit to delay trial.”
In her opinion, Judge Patricia Jenkins refers to the Watchtower and other defendants as “the Congregations.”
“The facts strongly suggest that the motion to transfer venue was the product of bad-faith collaboration between the Congregations and the four York County witnesses,” she wrote.
The case was brought in 2013 by Stephanie Fessler, who claims she was sexually abused 30 to 50 times from the ages of 14 to 16 by a middle-aged woman in another congregation.
Jenkins didn’t elaborate on the collaboration, but her remarks were not the first time a judge has taken issue with the Watchtower’s tactics in court. In two cases in California, judges issued default judgments to plaintiffs because the Watchtower refused to produce documents and witnesses.
Fessler, 27, gave Reveal permission to use her name in this story. Jeff Fritz, Fessler’s attorney, said Watchtower policies enabled her abuser.
“The congregation and the Watchtower had knowledge of child abuse that we contend they were obligated to report to law enforcement and child welfare authorities,” he said. “They admit that they had knowledge of it, and they admit that they didn’t report it. As a result, she was subject to continued abuse.”
The Watchtower declined to comment on the case.
Fessler’s lawsuit is one of more than a dozen pending against the Watchtower in the U.S. over the organization’s child abuse policies.
A Reveal investigation last February found that since 1989, the Watchtower had directed Jehovah’s Witnesses elders to hide child sexual abuse from secular authorities. The Watchtower’s pattern of secrecy subsequently was highlighted during an inquiry by an Australian government commission, which found that the Witnesses had failed to report more than 1,000 suspected child sexual abusers in that country.
A commission that regulates charities in England currently is investigating the Witnesses’ child abuse policies.
The trial in Fessler’s case could begin as soon as this spring.
Full article: https://www.revealnews.org/blog/another-judge-criticizes-jehovahs-witnesses-court-tactics/
G. Wayne Miller, Only luck protected me and others, Providence Journal
/in Uncategorized /by SOL ReformWatching “Spotlight,” the movie about The Boston Globe’s investigation of Massachusetts clergy who raped children, and reading about employees of St. George’s School in Middletown who sexually abused students, has prompted memories of my 1960s and ‘70s childhood.
Only luck, I have concluded, spared me and my friends the fate of these many victims.
Back then, we were youngsters in a world where authority was accepted without question, and where certain authorities with sanctioned access to children — clergy, teachers, coaches and scout leaders among them — were almost god-like in stature.
It was a world of blind obedience and absolute trust of elders. And it was a world where monsters cloaked in authority roamed free, although no grownup warned us of that.
A resident of Wakefield, Mass., a Boston suburb, I spent eight years at St. Joseph parochial school and was an altar boy during much of that time at the parish church, which was under the control of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Boston. The priests I knew best at St. Joseph were good stewards. But another, William F. Maloney, whom I saw only at Mass, was later accused of sexually abusing someone in the late 1960s at another parish in North Reading, four miles from my home.
A ten-minute drive would have brought me to St. Patrick’s Parish in neighboring Stoneham, where my parents could just as easily have settled when buying their first house. I would have been an altar boy — with Bryan Schultz, who was repeatedly molested by Paul R. Shanley, one of the worst pedophile priests, assigned to St. Patrick’s during much of the 1960s. Father James R. Porter, another monster, was with Shanley in Stoneham in 1967.
As the reporter played by Mark Ruffalo declares in “Spotlight”: “It could have been any one of us!”
In eighth grade, I won a scholarship to St. John’s Prep, in Danvers, Mass., an all-boys school where I received a superb education. I was a day student and never saw headmaster Brother Ricardo, an outwardly warm and charming man, outside the classroom context. But boarders did. They saw also another brother who lived in one dorm – and they told stories of him inviting them to his room for illicit cigarettes and requests to shower naked with him. To my knowledge, this man was never formally accused of sexually abusing a student. But Brother Ricardo, whose given name was Richard Kerressey, was.
In 1994, a former student accused Kerressey of sodomizing him in the school infirmary in 1966. After the rape, according to the victim, Kerressey threatened to keep him from graduating if he told anyone. The grown man claimed his life was ruined, with suffering from “depression, affective disorder, rage attacks, sleep apnea … attention/concentration deficit … is unable to hold a job or even at this point work,” according to a 1994 letter (available on bishopaccountability.org) by the law firm of Eckert Seamans Cherin & Mellott, which represented victims of Porter and Shanley.
Did Kerressey have more victims? We probably will never know, since some of an abuser’s victims take their secrets with them to the grave. Indeed, it is possible that some of my childhood friends were abused but have never disclosed it. If so, I hope they, and all victims, can find peace in their later years.
The record is unclear on what action, if any, was taken against Kerressey, who left St. John’s after my junior year and died in 1996. To its credit, St. John’s more recently moved responsibly against another brother and a priest chaplain who were accused of abusing students. And the Archdiocese of Boston — headed now by a holy man, Cardinal Seán Patrick O’Malley, who succeeded the unholy and unrepentant Cardinal Bernard Law, in charge when many of the more than 800 known victims allege they were abused — has apologized, paid damages, sought justice and enacted real protections.
We say this must never happen again. One way toward that goal is never forgetting what happened, and what didn’t. Luck is not enough to protect children.
G. Wayne Miller, a Providence Journal staff writer and author, graduated from St. John’s Prep in 1972 and Harvard College in 1976.
Full article:
http://www.providencejournal.com/article/20160110/opinion/160119946