The European Union Times - Breaking News, Latest News » Pedophilia

14-year-old British schoolgirl turned into a sex slave by a gang of 9 Arab Immigrants

EU Times — Tue, 10 Aug 2010 19:28:04 +0000

A girl who was abducted at the age of 14 was forced to work as a sex slave. This picture is posed by model

A girl who was abducted at the age of 14 and forced to work as a sex slave was yesterday praised for giving evidence which saw her abusers jailed.

The privately-educated teenager was picked up and plied with vodka and drugs, passed around groups of older men for sex and then forced to work as a prostitute.

Her ordeal highlights previously-aired fears that white schoolgirls are being groomed for underage sex by gangs of Asian men in northern England.

Former Labour MP Ann Cryer provoked a storm when she warned that the practice of arranged marriages helped tempt a criminal minority of Asian men into targeting young, white girls for sex.

After nine men were jailed over the sustained sexual abuse of their victim, Superintendent Paul Savill of Greater Manchester Police commended her bravery and said: ‘This young girl has been through an absolutely horrifying ordeal.

‘The level of abuse she has suffered is almost beyond belief. She has been treated like a commodity – beaten, threatened and sexually exploited.’

The girl, who cannot be named for legal reasons, was adopted as a baby by a professional, middle-class couple in Greater Manchester and educated at a private school.

She was removed from the school for exhibiting ‘inappropriate sexualised behaviour toward male pupils’, a court heard, and after she twice ran away from home her adoptive parents reluctantly agreed that she be placed in care.

In February 2008 she was picked up in Rochdale by Asad Hassan, 27, who took her to a nightclub.

He and his friends Mohammed Basharat, 27, and Mohammed Atif, 28, then took her to a house where she was given vodka before all three men had sex with her.

The next morning, Hassan, who had given her his phone number, dropped her at a bus station and gave her cigarettes and money, but after being found by her mother she was taken back to the care home.

A week later she went missing again. She met restaurant worker Abdul Rob, 33, in Rochdale and he took her back to a flat where he gave her alcohol before having sex with her.

The following morning she rang Hassan – her initial abuser – and met him, Basharat and Atif who again all had sex with her.

She was then taken to another house in the Rochdale area where she was also abused by a group of men whom police have been unable to trace.

The predators who were jailed: Top row, from left: Asad Hassan, Mohammed Basharat, Mohammed Khan. Middle row: Ahmed Noorzai, Mohammed Anwar Safi, Aftab Khan. Bottom row: Abid Khaliq, Mohammed Atif, Najibullah Safi

The next day, as police hunted for her, the girl took a bus to Manchester and drifted to the city’s ‘Curry Mile’ in Rusholme, where she met Aftab Khan, 30, described by police as a ‘nasty, exploitative individual’.

Khan, who was acquitted two years ago of having sex with an underage girl, lured her back to his house, gave her alcohol, cocaine and cannabis and offered her a bed for the night.

But between 3am and 4am Khan woke the youngster and told her: ‘You’re working for me now.’
He stabbed a door with a kitchen knife and threatened to harm her unless she complied.

Khan then forced her to work for five nights as a prostitute in Manchester.

The girl drank huge amounts of alcohol to blot out her ordeal and even tried to avoid wearing makeup to make herself look too young for sex, but her ploy failed.

On February 28 last year plain-clothed police officers patrolling the area stopped and questioned the girl as she looked for clients but, fearing Khan, she gave a false name and said she was 16.

The officers took the girl to a bus station so that she could go home. But she returned to Khan, who began to ‘tout her round’ groups of men, boasting that he had a girl who was available for sex.

He took her to a block of flats in Hulme where Mohammed Anwar Safi, 30, Ahmed Noorzai, 28, and Mohammed Khan, 25, were waiting.

Safi and Noorzai had sex with her but Mohammed Khan, who paid the money, said he thought she was ‘too young’.

The following day the officers who had stopped the girl recognised her from a missing person appeal and suspected that Khan was holding her.

But by the time they got to his home, he had been tipped off and had sent the girl away with £5.
She returned to Rusholme where she met Najibullah Safi, 32, who plied her with drink and drugs before having sex with her.

Her ordeal finally ended when she left Safi’s house and approached an Asian couple in a car.

Safi tried to drag her away but the woman passenger heard the girl claim she had been raped, and police were called.

In total she is thought to have fallen victim to at least three predatory gangs.

Campaigners say many similar cases go unpunished because the victims refuse to make formal complaints.

However the 14-year-old bravely identified her abusers and gave compelling evidence against them in court, and now nine have been jailed for a variety of offences.

Aftab Khan was jailed for seven years and his friend Abid Khaliq for eight months; Najibullah Safi, Atif, Hassan and Basharat for two years; Mohammed Khan for four years; Mohammed Anwar Safi for 31 months and Noorzai for four years.

In the final case at Manchester Crown Court this week, a judge ordered Rob to be found not guilty after accepting he could reasonably have believed the girl’s claims to be over 16.

Yesterday the victim, now 17, condemned her abusers.

‘These people exploit young girls,’ she said.

‘They feed them drugs and alcohol and tell them they love them.

‘i know because it happened to me and it has changed my life enormously.’

Martin Narey of Barnardo’s said his charity worked with at least 1,000 vulnerable girls a year who had been preyed on in this way.

But he said said there was no evidence of a racial element to such abuse.

‘Those who exploit children in this awful way come from all races,’ he added.

Source

Abuse case against rabbi raises larger issues

EU Times — Fri, 23 Jul 2010 19:57:18 +0000

Stanley Z. Levitt is charged with molesting students.

Two years ago, Michael Brecher came to prosecutors in Boston with a disturbing allegation: In the 1970s, he said, he had been molested by a rabbi who was teaching sixth grade at one of the region’s most prestigious Jewish day schools, the Maimonides School.

One of Brecher’s classmates came forward at the same time. And last year, after reading news accounts of indecent sexual assault and battery charges filed against Stanley Z. Levitt, a third person said that he, too, was abused by Levitt.

Now, court records show that Levitt might have tried to entice two more students into having intimate contact with him while they took showers in his Brighton home.

One of those former students has told Boston police that Levitt took him and other students on a field trip to Montreal where Levitt directed the students in a ritual purification bath, or mikvah, while all of them were naked, an inappropriate practice, according to an official at a prominent Jewish theological seminary.

Levitt has also faced allegations in Philadelphia, where he lived after leaving Maimonides.

The case, with echoes of clergy sexual abuse incidents in the Catholic Church, is a reflection, scholars say, of similar abuse cases that have taken place in the orthodox Jewish community, where rabbis are held in high regard and the social penalties for criticizing clergy can be high.

A number of prominent orthdox rabbis have faced charges, including Baruch Lanner, the subject of a 2000 expose in The Jewish Week, and Yehuda Kolko, who was featured in a 2006 New York magazine article.

“There is a growing acknowledgment that we have a problem, which has taken a long time,’’ said Yosef Blau, an Orthodox rabbi who is the spiritual adviser at the theological seminary at New York’s Yeshiva University. “Denial has been very powerful in the community.’’

Suffolk District Attorney Daniel F. Conley has charged Levitt, 64, with molesting three of the students, and the rabbi, now a Philadelphia resident free on $5,000 bail, has pleaded not guilty.

Neither Levitt nor his Boston attorney, Scott Curtis, returned messages from the Globe seeking comment on the allegations made by Maimonides School alumni. But court records show that Curtis is seeking to have the charges against Levitt dismissed based in part on “the age of the allegations.’’

Rabbi David Shapiro, the religious leader at Maimonides, who was an assistant principal in the mid-1970s, and Nathan Katz, the school’s executive director, declined to comment on the allegations by the former students.

Katz, however, issued a statement, saying, “Our hearts go out to the victims of child abuse and we are deeply saddened at the circumstances surrounding this matter, which took place in the mid-1970s.’’ He added that school officials take a variety of measures to ensure the safety of students, including criminal background checks of school employees.

Six years ago, Levitt pleaded no contest to molesting a boy living in an Orthodox Jewish community in Philadelphia and was later cited for violating probation when he refused treatment at an institute for sexual offenders.

“He basically flunked the sex offender course there because he refused to accept responsibility for what he did,’’ said Philadelphia Assistant District Attorney James Berardinelli, who prosecuted the case.

Activists seeking to raise awareness about sexual abuse by rabbis say the Levitt case is an opportunity for Jewish leaders to continue efforts to overcome the religious obstacles that have discouraged some victims from reporting abuse to police.

The obstacles include traditional Jewish rules, adhered to in some pockets of the Orthodox world, such as a prohibition against “chillul Hashem,’’ bringing shame on God’s name, and against “mesirah,’’ informing on fellow believers to secular authorities.

Marci A. Hamilton, a professor at the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law and the author of “Justice Denied: What America Must Do to Protect its Children,’’ said strict adherence to those practices can create an environment where pedophiles flourish.

“If other adults are willing to keep their secrets, they can have multiple victims,’’ she said. “It’s horrifying.’’

Blau, who began his career as a teacher at Maimonides, in the 1960s, said the concept of mesirah is rooted in the history of the Jewish people, who were often persecuted while living in societies that officially sanctioned anti-Semitism. But he also said that the use of chillul Hashem and mesirah as reasons to avoid reporting sexual abuse by rabbis “is a misapplication of those laws,’’ an opinion underscored by the Rabbinical Council of America in a resolution approved at its convention earlier this year.

Researchers concerned about sexual abuse by rabbis attribute a gradual change in attitudes among orthodox Jews to websites and blogs where victims have felt free to discuss their abuse anonymously. They also cite the example of clergy abuse victims in the Catholic Church, who began speaking out in large numbers after the 2002 scandal in the Boston Archdiocese.

“Victims in Jewish communities were fortified by the experience of Catholics who have blazed a trail for them,’’ said Amy Neustein, editor of the book, “Tempest in the Temple: Jewish Communities & Child Sex Scandals.’’

The case against Levitt began unfolding when Brecher and a New York man decided to approach law enforcement authorities in Boston. Brecher, 46, now a Maryland resident, said Levitt sexually abused him while he was a patient at Children’s Hospital recovering from a school accident.

The second man, a 46-year-old New Yorker who asked that his name be withheld, said Levitt molested him on three occasions in the shower area of his Brighton home during a three-night visit while his parents were on vacation. The Globe does not publish the names of alleged sexual abuse victims who wish to remain anonymous.

In a Globe interview, the New York man said that as a result of Levitt’s alleged abuse he, too, became a sexual abuser and was arrested in 1999 on a related charge. “A child is nothing but a piece of clay,’’ he said. “Anything he sees, touches or does, or is done to him, has an effect.’’

After Brecher and the New York man made their accusations, the third alleged victim stepped forward, and several additional Maimonides alumni have talked with investigators or testified before the Suffolk grand jury that handed up the indictments against Levitt, according to court records.

In addition, the former student who told investigators about the alleged mikvah incident in Montreal also said that his father, after learning of the incident, had a loud argument with Levitt and informed school authorities, according to court records. Yet Shapiro, the assistant principal at the time, testified to the grand jury that the school received no serious complaints about Levitt and that the rabbi left in good standing.

Neither Shapiro nor Katz returned messages from the Globe seeking to resolve the apparent inconsistency.

Whether or not Maimonides officials received complaints about Levitt in the 1970s, it is clear that he did not return to the school after the 1976-1977 academic year and that he was subsequently charged with molesting three boys living in an Orthodox Jewish community in Philadelphia. In the first case, Levitt was found not guilty. In the second case, he pleaded no contest and received a five-year sentence of probation, which expired last December. And in the third case, the alleged victim withdrew his charges.

The statute of limitations for indecent assault and battery on a child in Massachusetts, the time after a crime during which prosecutors may file charges, is 27 years. But Conley was able to cite Levitt with 35-year-old allegations because the clock on the statute stops ticking when an alleged perpetrator leaves the state. Although Levitt’s whereabouts in the years right after he left Maimonides, in 1977, are unclear, prosecutors say he has been living outside Massachusetts since the early 1980s.

Still, Curtis is arguing that the decades that have elapsed since Levitt was teaching religious studies in Brookline have rendered the statements made by his accusers “inherently unreliable.’’ He also argues that prosecutors failed to present corroborating evidence to the grand jury that handed up the indictments.

David Deakin, chief of the Suffolk Family Protection and Sexual Assault Bureau, said prosecutors believe it is important to pursue child sexual abuse accusations, even if they are decades old, in part to prevent perpetrators from offending again.

“One of the things we know about pedophilia is that it tends to be a chronic condition, especially if it’s not treated and even when it is treated,’’ he said. “We have to think about the children the alleged offender may prey on in the future.’’

Mitchell Garabedian, an attorney representing Brecher, agreed, saying the Levitt case is a cautionary tale for anyone working in an institution that serves children.

“Supervisors must be able to notice red flags when supervising adults working with children in institutional settings,’’ he said. “It’s naive to think that sexual abusers stop abusing children because they move from one location to another.’’

Source

Man in Brazil jails daughter, has 7 kids with her

EU Times — Sun, 13 Jun 2010 16:22:35 +0000

A man in a remote fishing village in Brazil kept his daughter imprisoned for 12 years, abused her repeatedly and had seven children with her, police said Wednesday.

The man is also accused of abusing a young girl he had with his daughter.

Police allege that Jose Agostinho Pereira, 54, kept his daughter, now 28, under virtual house arrest in a two-room, thatched-roof hut near a tiny fishing village in northeastern Brazil.

An officer who aided in the arrest said the home was located in such a remote, jungle area that the only way to reach it was by using canoes. Authorities said the children appeared to suffer from malnutrition and could barely communicate with others. Most were unclothed.

The alleged abuse began when Pereira’s wife left him in 1998, said police inspector Jair Lima de Paiva.

Pereira has been in jail since Tuesday in the city of Pinheiro in Maranhao state, about 1,400 miles (2,250 kilometers) north of Rio de Janeiro. Charges have not been filed against him. Under Brazilian law, prosecutors only file charges after police have ended their investigation.

It was not immediately known if Pereira had a lawyer.

Paiva said Pereira kept his daughter and the children in nearly complete isolation in the countryside near the village of Experimento, about 50 miles (80 kilometers) outside of Pinheiro.

While the exact ages of the children — four girls and three boys — were not known as none of their births were registered, police believe they range in age from 2-months-old to 12.

“None of them were allowed to leave the house. None can read, they can barely communicate with other people,” said Paiva. “They were all threatened with their lives if they tried to escape or tell anyone about the situation.”

Paiva said police were tipped off about Pereira’s alleged crimes by an anonymous phone call.

Officers from Pinheiro were sent to the remote area about 10 days ago, where they located Pereira’s house, kept it under observation for a few days and then arrested him.

“He confessed to everything,” said a police officer who helped arrest Pereira, speaking on condition of anonymity, as he was not authorized to discuss the case.

Pereira’s daughter and the seven children are now under the care of the government’s protective services.

It was last year in Austria that Josef Fritzl was found guilty of locking his daughter in a dungeon for 24 years and fathering seven children with her.

Source

Former director of B’nai Brith Quebec pleads guilty to child pornography charges

EU Times — Fri, 28 May 2010 23:24:35 +0000

The former director of B'nai Brith Quebec has pleaded guilty to child pornography charges after agreeing to a plea bargain.

The former director of B’nai Brith Quebec, Bill Surkis, has pleaded guilty to child pornography charges after agreeing to a plea bargain.

Surkis and his wife made a brief appearance at the Montreal courthouse Wednesday morning

In return for a guilty plea to charges of possessing and accessing child pornography, the Crown dropped a charge of distributing child pornography, said prosecutor Cynthia Gyenizse.

Explicit files were discovered on Surkis’ computer when he brought it in for repairs in 2008.

The technician contacted police after 86 videos and 153 photos were found, including images of girls aged six to 12 years.

Surkis’s lawyer had previously said he would argue the videos were downloaded as part of research Surkis was undertaking.

“The purpose of his viewing the child pornography material [was] to educate himself on the topic of child pornography,” lawyer Steven Slimovitch told CBC News outside court in November 2009. “Then he would go into schools and give lectures on people abusing people.”

But, prosecutors said there was no evidence of that. Surkis had not been hired anywhere to research child pornography and had not begun work on a study, they said.

Surkis’s admission of guilt came as a surpise to those who knew the man who also served as the Academic Dean at John Abbott College for 22 years. He had also served as the executive director of the Holocaust Centre in Montreal.

“Shocking a person like that you hold in high esteem,” said one woman who attended proceedings at the Montreal courthouse.

“The shock is how come it was in the closet for so long,” said another man.

Surkis now faces a minimum sentence of three months behind bars.

He is due back in court Sept. 27.

In the meantime, Surkis remains free on very strict conditions. The father and grandfather was ordered to stay away from anyone under the age of 18 in private locations unless another adult, who was aware of the charges against him, was present.

He was also forbidden from accessing the Internet unless it was for work. In such cases, he was prohibited from erasing the web history from his computer.

Surkis was also barred from leaving the province while he awaits sentencing.

Source

Japanese government blocks a ban on child pornography

CIA wanted to make a fake Saddam gay pedophile tape

EU Times — Thu, 27 May 2010 20:57:42 +0000

In the annals of CIA subterfuge, this is a weird one: A special ops unit pitched the idea of trying to discredit Saddam Hussein as a gay pedophile before the 2003 invasion, reports the Washington Post. The idea was to create a phony home video purporting to show Saddam having sex with a teenage boy. Superiors eventually shot it down, though the unit did make a fake video with an Osama bin Laden lookalike bragging about his conquests of young males.

One problem with the scheme: “Saddam playing with boys would have no resonance in the Middle East—nobody cares,” a former CIA official tells the Post. “Trying to mount such a campaign would show a total misunderstanding of the target. We always mistake our own taboos as universal when, in fact, they are just our taboos.”

Japanese government blocks a ban on child pornography

EU Times — Sun, 16 May 2010 11:47:31 +0000

The Japanese government has blocked legal efforts to clamp down on child pornography, with the country becoming the world's "kiddie porn superpower," according to a pressure group.

The ruling Democratic Party of Japan has refused to support legislation that would outlaw the possession of child pornography on the grounds that it would infringe individuals’ freedom of expression – although there has been a stepped-up police campaign against people that sell sexual images of children.

Twenty people were arrested this week for posting child pornography on a mobile phone web site that was set up by a 17-year-old high school student, while Japan was shocked earlier this year at the arrest of a mother who took indecent images of her infant son and sold them via the internet.

The National Police Agency said it received 4,486 complaints from the public of child pornography on the internet in 2009 and a record 650 people were charged with offences related to child pornography. Campaigners believe that represents the tip of the iceberg.

A softcore example of a typical Japanese Hentai cartoon depicting children as sex maniacs

“We are urging all the political parties here to ban the possession of child pornography in the present session of parliament, but I am not at all optimistic that it will happen,” said Keiji Goto, a lawyer and chairman of the Forum for Creating a Society That Does Not Tolerate Child Pornography.

In 2009 the government submitted a bill to revise the law on child pornography but lost the general election in August before it could be enacted.

The DPJ opposed the bill and instead called for the definition of child pornography to be narrowed down, while acquisition for money and multiple acquisitions would be made illegal.

“We consider child pornography to be the worst of all evils and we find it hard to understand how images of naked children tied up with ropes can be considered acceptable,” Goto said.

“The only people who will be pleased at the failure to pass this legislation are paedophiles.”

Source

Nigerian senator marries 13 year old and pays $100,000 to her parents

EU Times — Sat, 01 May 2010 23:00:08 +0000

Senator Ahmad Sanni Yerima

A Nigerian senator accused of marrying a 13-year-old Egyptian girl says he has done nothing wrong.

Ahmad Sani Yerima, 49, told the BBC that his fourth wife was not 13, but would not say how old she was.

He denied breaking the law but said he would not respect any law that contradicted his religious beliefs.

The Nigerian senate ordered an investigation after complaints from women’s groups but the senator said he did not care what the groups thought.

Mr Sani was the governor of Zamfara state, where he oversaw the introduction of Sharia law – for the first time in a northern state – in 1999.

As a Muslim, as I always say, I consider God’s law and that of his prophet above any other law
Senator Ahmed Sani Yerima
He said he felt it was this that was behind the uproar over his marriage.

“I consider all those complaining about this issue as detractors, because since 1999… many people have been waging different kind of wars against me,” he told the BBC’s Hausa Service by telephone from Egypt.

The senator said he had followed “standard rules for marriage in Islam”.

“I don’t care about the issue of age since I have not violated any rule as far as Islam is concerned,” he said.

“History tells us that Prophet Muhammad did marry a young girl as well. Therefore I have not contravened any law. Even if she is 13, as it is being falsely peddled around.

“If I state the age, they will still use it to smear Islam,” he said.

The BBC’s Caroline Duffield in Lagos says newspaper reports of the marriage have created a storm among human rights groups.

This very evil act should not be seen to be perpetrated by one of our distinguished legislators
Mma Wokocha Women’s Medical Association head
Female senators – lawyers and doctors – who are protesting say that they fear for the child’s health.

“What we are concerned with is that our minors, the girl child, should be allowed to mature, before going into marriage,” Mma Wokocha, president of the Women’s Medical Association and one of those behind a petition, told the BBC.

“This very evil act should not be seen to be perpetrated by one of our distinguished legislators… that is what we are saying.”

The senator is reported to have paid a dowry of $100,000 to the child’s parents – and to have brought the girl into Nigeria from Egypt.

The women’s groups want Mr Sani to be taken to court, to face a fine and a jail sentence.

They say he has contravened the Child Rights Act of 2003 which, although not ratified by all Nigeria’s 36 states, is law in the capital where he lives and his marriage is believed to have taken place.

“As a Muslim, as I always say, I consider God’s law and that of his prophet above any other law,” Mr Sani said.

“I will not respect any law that contradicts that and whoever wants to sanction me for that is free to do that.”

Newspaper reports have also accused the senator of having previously married a 15-year-old girl in 2006.

Rabbi Shlomo Aviner, leading Orthodox authority on child sex abuse, himself charged with child sex abuse

EU Times — Mon, 01 Mar 2010 13:26:40 +0000

Rabbi Mordechai Elon, accused of sexual abuse

Yet another prominent Orthodox rabbi has been charged with sexual abuse. This time it is Rabbi Mordechai Elon, one of the foremost rabbinic leaders of the Israeli Orthodox movement and former rosh yeshiva at the flagship Yeshivat HaRav, where last year a Palestinian mounted an assault which left several students dead. The result was that students of the yeshiva and other far right Jews went on a rampage and tried to burn down the home of the family of the perpetrator of the attack. Elon’s brother is Benny, a former MK for a far-right pro-settler party.

At one time the rabbi was so renowned he’d hoped to be named chief rabbi. Alas, that hope is all but dashed as he was charged several years ago with abusing boys at his yeshiva:

Takana, a rabbinic forum established in 2003 to clamp down on sexual misconduct by Orthodox educators, went public February 15 with allegations that Mordechai “Moti” Elon had taken advantage of his influence over male students and performed “acts at odds with sacred and moral values.”

The panel later said that two people, whose complaints alleged acts from about 25 years ago, had been under 18 at the time. More recent alleged acts involved students of Elon who were 18 or older. Since its initial disclosure, the panel reports having received one more complaint of an alleged underage encounter…

What is unusual about this case is that a splinter group of the Orthodox community is taking the position that the entire prosecution is an attempt to destroy rabbinic authority and the Orthodox movement. It calls for refusal to cooperate with state authorities (or to deal with the charge through a beyt din).

Rabbi Shlomo Aviner, leading Orthodox authority on child sex abuse, himself charged with offense

One of the leaders of this group is Rabbi Shalom Aviner, rosh yeshiva of Ateret Cohanim, one of the most extreme of Israeli yeshivot. It is preparing the religious and priestly rite for establishment of the Third Temple, a development which could cause a holy war if the point is pressed too intensely. Aviner is known as an enthusiastic supporter of extremist settler politics, having called Jewish terrorist Baruch Goldstein “a saint.” He declared that anti-Occupation Israelis who refuse army service should be executed. He called settlement evacuation a ‘illegal crime.’ Ironically (when you read what I’m about to tell you), Aviner has also suggested that women would be justified in killing a man who is raping them. No word though on how they would do so unless he plans to provide them a weapon during the assault. This advice shows the rabbi’s complete ignorance of the circumstances of most rapes:

“In either word or deed, fight him off. Yell out loud so that everyone can hear you. If he touches you, slap him. If he attempts to do worse, and there is no other choice, you can kill him…yes, kill him,” Rabbi Aviner wrote.

In many cases, such resistance might lead to the victim’s death or severe beating. One shudders to think what the rabbi would think of a woman who did not resist out of such fear.

Rabbi Aviner also calls for all Orthodox Jews to report any sexual abuse, which at first glance is quite an advance over the traditional approach, which has been to hush such charges up and avoid them like the plague. But in light of what I’m about to tell you you’ll find it odd that he suggests one enormous loophole:

“If the beater or the abuser is aware of his problem and is willing to receive the proper therapy, and in addition meets his commitment and goes to therapy, and is supervised by responsible elements, only in such a case there is no need to report…

So, all the abuser must do to avoid civil punishment is go to therapy. You’ll note there is no mention by Rabbi Aviner of the necessity of the abuser refraining from abusing once he is in therapy. The reason why this distinction is important is that Aviner has become the leading defender of the non-cooperation movement regarding the Elon case:

“I am telling everybody — keep silent,” the head of Jerusalem’s Ateret Cohanim Yeshiva, Rabbi Shlomo Aviner, told the Forward. He said that the affair must not be allowed to undermine the rabbis’ authority.

No word on how Aviner squares this approach with his earlier pronouncement urging reporting abuse to civil authorities. Apparently, Elon’s agreement to pursue counseling convinced Aviner that reporting him was a sin. But the Takanah rabbis disagreed strongly:

The[y] were very clear about why they chose to make the sexual-abuse allegations public now, several years after they themselves were made aware of them. When they were first informed about the charges, the rabbis said, they tried unsuccessfully to persuade the complainants to go to the police. In 2006, they also approached the attorney general at the time, Menachem Mazuz, who felt unable to probe the matter without the complainants’ cooperation. The current attorney general, Yehuda Weinstein, has now told police to look into the allegations.

Stymied on the law-enforcement front, Takana rabbis said they demanded in 2006 that Elon cease face-to-face teaching, counseling and other rabbinic activities; he agreed. That year, he retired from his post at Yeshivat HaKotel and moved to the Galilee. But the forum rabbis say that Elon failed to honor his commitment, leaving them, according to a statement they released, with “no other way to protect the public from possible future harm” than by going public. The final straw was that the forum believed he had resumed counseling young men on sexual matters.

This points out the weakness of the Takana Forum. It is entirely voluntary with the only threat or sanction the rabbis can use being public exposure. Rabbi Elon has exposed this weakness and Rabbi Aviner is further undermining it. What he doesn’t realize is that he is harming Israeli Orthodox Judaism far more by endorsing impunity than a civil prosecution of Elon would.

Why might Aviner take such a position? Well, it turns out he’s likely to have his own sexual skeletons rattling in his closet. Several websites whose goal is to track and report Jewish sexual abuse report Aviner himself has been accused of improprities with women he has counseled:

Back in 2002, serious allegations were made against Rabbi Shlomo Aviner of sexually harassing women both verbally and physically.

…In 2005, two women accused the Aviner of creating emotionally intimate relationships with them. These relationships included his expressions of his love for them during regular late-night phone conversations, extracting details from them of their sexuality and promoting an unhealthy emotional dependence on him.

…Like in many other cases, those who tried to speak out where shunned and made to look as if they were crazy.

One wonders what the good rabbi would say if he sexually abused the women, would they have the right to kill him? You can see how insane the situation is.

What’s “crazy” is a religious community that bestows any respect on one of its leaders accused of the very crimes about which he makes moral pronouncements. Only in such an insular environment can such a person not be viewed as hopelessly self-interested and suffering from an insurmountable conflict.

Not to mention that Aviner should be an embarrassment to his allies in the settler extremist movement. Yes, the man is innocent till proven guilty. But does that mean he needs to placed on a pedestal and his views about Baruch Goldstein or sexual abuse need to be honored as if they were halacha l’Moshe mi’Sinai (“the law according to Moses on Sinai”)?

Source

Sex abuse and Pedophilia claims against famed rabbi grip Israel

EU Times — Fri, 19 Feb 2010 22:54:51 +0000

Rabbi Mordechai Elon

Israeli police said on Friday they were looking into allegations of sexual abuse against one of the country’s most famous and politically influential rabbis, in a case that has triggered dramatic headlines this week.

Mordechai Elon — known as “Rabbi Motti” by viewers of his popular TV show and by many young men in the West Bank settler movement — has vehemently denied the accusations by a group of fellow rabbis who say their aim is to combat sexual harassment by authority figures.

But that has not stopped a wave of soul-searching, which has some parallels with recent turmoil in the Roman Catholic church.

At issue is the power of charismatic clerics over young people in their care, as well as questions about the extent to which religious communities should regulate their own affairs without involving the Jewish state’s secular authorities.

A Justice Ministry spokesman said the attorney-general had asked police to consider whether there was sufficient evidence to mount a formal criminal investigation, after the organization Takana alleged Elon had broken a promise made to fellow rabbis some years ago to limit his contacts with young men and youths.

Elon, 50, gave up his regular TV show and retired as head of a major yeshiva religious school in Jerusalem three years ago.

A police spokesman said on Friday no investigation had yet been launched but officers were considering the request.

Since Monday, when Takana issued a statement saying Elon was the subject of complaints about “acts at odds with sacred and moral values” and that it wanted to “protect the public,” supporters and critics of the rabbi, a scion of a prominent religious Zionist family, have poured out emotions in the media.

Former students have rallied to his home, some telling of the “fatherly hugs” he was wont to bestow. Others have spoken of “heartbreak” at the division sown within their community.

“THEIR WORLD HAS COLLAPSED”

Columnist Nahum Barnea of Israel’s top-selling newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth said: “Every word in this story becomes an emotional atom bomb when it happens in a religious society — sex, homosexuality, charisma, minors, a rabbi’s power.

“This is not a storm in a teacup. This is a typhoon. No wonder many in the national-religious public felt this week that their world had collapsed,” Barnea wrote on Friday.

Elon’s father sat on Israel’s supreme court and one brother was a cabinet minister. The leftish Haaretz newspaper called the Elons “the Kennedys of the religious Zionist camp.”

While many of Israel’s founders were secular socialists, the religious, nationalist right has a growing role, notably in settlements in occupied land Israel seized in its 1967 war with the Arabs.

Religious Zionists are distinguished from more traditional ultra-Orthodox groups which tend not to share the same focused commitment to building up Israel’s state power and territory.

Mordechai Elon was an outspoken critic of Prime Minister Ariel Sharon’s move in 2005 to pull settlers and troops out of the Gaza Strip and was once spoken of as a future chief rabbi. But he has had a much lower public profile in the years since.

Source

Italy: Mohammed called a paedophile in TV spat

EU Times — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 23:03:37 +0000

Italian feminist and former far right-wing MP Daniela Santanche has sparked a controversy after calling the Prophet Mohammed a “a polygamist and paedophile” during a TV debate. Santanche appeared on a television programme aired on the commercial channel, Canale 5 with the president of Milan’s Islamic centre, Ali Abu Schwaima, on Sunday.

“Mohammed was a polygamist and a paedophile because he had nine wives, one of whom was only nine years old, that is a historical fact,” said Santanche.

A former MP for the post-fascist National Alliance party, Santanche now leads the far-right La Destra party.

Her remark incensed Schwaima and Muslims in the audience, who had been invited to take part in a debate on the contentious issue of placing crucifixes in Italian classrooms after last week’s ban by the European Court of Human Rights.

“Why don’t we talk about serious things, not about your disgusting comments,” he shouted at Santanche.

Santanche continued to shout back: “For us, Mohammed was a paedophile.”

“You’re just showing the ignorance of people like you who have no other arguments to use,” bellowed Schwaima, jabbing his finger at her.

He claimed the crucifix should not be removed from classrooms in Italy.

“For us, Christ was one of the five main prophets and we respect him, like the crucifix.”

But Santanche was not appeased by Schwaima’s remark.

“We will never listen to Mohammed, who was a polygamist and a paedophile,” screeched Santanche.

Studio ushers were seen physically restraining an irate, bearded member of the audience from lunging at her.

“I and my staff dissociate ourselves from these comments, which are offensive to Islam,” Domenica Cinque’s presenter, Barbara D’Urso, said in a statement issued after the programme.

A former MP for the post-fascist National Alliance party, Santanche ran for the lower house of parliament on the far-right La Destra list in last year’s general election.

But the party failed to reach the 4 percent threshold required for election to the parliament.

Santanche was last year among rightwing protesters who opposed the conversion of a former velodrome into a mosque in Milan.

She opposes Muslim women wearing the veil in Italy and has called for a referendum to reopen the country’s brothels.

Aisha was believed to be nine-years-old at the time of her marriage to Mohammed.

Child marriages such as Aisha’s were relatively common in Bedouin societies at the time of the prophet and remain so in countries such as Yemen and Saudi Arabia among others.

Source

Lithuania: Father Kills Pedophile Judge and Senior Politician

EU Times — Tue, 20 Oct 2009 06:08:12 +0000

A dad who shot dead a judge and a senior politician because they molested his three-year old daughter has become a national hero after going on the run in Lithuania.

Horrified Drasius Keyds, 37, gunned down the perverted pair on Monday after police turned a deaf ear to his pleas for justice for his tortured tot.

Now in hiding, Keyds has become a hero on YouTube and Facebook with hundreds of thousands of fans from all over the world pledging support.

“You are a hero to all of us,” reads one Facebook message. “What you did is nothing but justice.”

Mugs and t-shirts with his image on them have begun appearing alongside the logo “Drasius: Lone-avenger”.

Support Drasius Kedys on Facebook! According to this blog, the Judge and the Politician were also Jewish.

Keyds’ nightmare began a year ago when daughter Deimantela told him about a meeting set up by his then fiancee with judge Jonas Furmanavicziusa and the Speaker of Lithuania’s parliament , Andrius Us.

The pair allegedly raped and abused the youngster who reported her ordeal to her father.

But a year long campaign for a police investigation failed when detectives told Keyds there was not enough evidence to proceed with a case.

Now the fugitive dad is being offered a safe haven in neighbouring countries like Poland.

Jewish Parliamentary deputy speaker Stefan Niesiołowski said: “This is a clear case of incompetent law enforcement on the original crime.”

Source

Jewish film director Roman Polanski held on 30 year Old Child Sex Charge

EU Times — Tue, 29 Sep 2009 16:05:06 +0000

Film director Roman Polanski has been taken into custody in Switzerland and faces extradition to the US for having sex with a 13-year-old girl in 1977.

Mr Polanski, 76, was detained in Zurich on Saturday as he travelled from France to collect a lifetime achievement award at the Zurich Film Festival.

He is being held under a 2005 international alert issued by the US.

Mr Polanski has been to Switzerland before, but this time US authorities apparently knew of his trip in advance.

That gave them time to prepare the groundwork for his arrest and send a provisional arrest warrant to Swiss authorities, judicial officials said.

A Swiss spokesman said the US would now have to make a formal extradition request.

The director can contest his detention and any extradition decision in the Swiss courts, he added.

Mr Polanski’s lawyer, Georges Kiejman, said he planned to challenge his client’s arrest.

“We are going to try to lift the arrest warrant in Zurich,” he told France Info radio. “The [extradition] convention between Switzerland and the United States is not very clear.”

Mr Polanski fled the US in 1978 after pleading guilty to unlawful sexual intercourse with an underage girl.

He was initially indicted on six counts and faced up to life in prison.

In recent years, he has tried to have the rape case dismissed, claiming the original judge, who is now dead, arranged a plea bargain but later reneged.

Earlier this year, Judge Peter Espinoza agreed there was misconduct by the judge in the original case, but said Mr Polanski must return to the US to apply for dismissal.

Mr Polanski’s lawyers said he would not return to the US because he would be immediately arrested as a fugitive.

The victim at the centre of the case, Samantha Geimer, has previously asked for the charges to be dropped, saying the continued publication of details “causes harm to me, my husband and children”.

She has also called the court’s insistence that Mr Polanski appear in person “a cruel joke”.

‘Shock and dismay’

The Paris-born Polish filmmaker – who is also a French citizen – has not set foot in the US for more than 30 years.

His Oscar for directing 2002 film The Pianist was collected by Harrison Ford, who had previously starred in his 1988 thriller, Frantic.

France’s culture minister said he was “dumbfounded” by Mr Polanski’s detention in Switzerland.

Frederic Mitterrand said he “strongly regrets that a new ordeal is being inflicted on someone who has already experienced so many of them”.

He added that French President Nicolas Sarkozy was “following the case with great attention and shares the minister’s hope that the situation can be quickly resolved”.

The organisers of the Zurich Film Festival said Polanski’s detention had caused “shock and dismay”, but that they would go ahead with a planned retrospective of the director’s work.

A special ceremony is planned for Sunday night “to allow everyone to express their solidarity for Roman Polanski and their admiration for his work”, festival managers said in a statement.

Meanwhile, British author Robert Harris – who had been working with Mr Polanski on a film adaptation of his novel The Ghost – said he was taken aback by the weekend’s events.

“One of the reasons I’m absolutely shocked and stunned by his arrest is that we have worked together extensively in Switzerland, where he has a home,” Harris said.

“If he was such a wanted criminal why did they let him own a house and travel back and forth freely?”

But justice officials in both Switzerland and the US said the difference this time was that a provisional arrest warrant had been sent.

William Sorukas, chief of the US Marshals Service’s domestic investigations branch, told the Associated Press that investigators learned about the trip days in advance and were therefore able to prepare for an arrest.

“There have been other times through the years when we have learned of his potential travel but either those efforts fell through or he didn’t make the trip,” he said.

Source

ADL Quebec Leader indicted for possession of child porn

Jacques Martin — Wed, 05 Aug 2009 08:33:21 +0000

Michael Jackson wore a false nose, and it was missing as he lay in the morgue

EU Times — Sun, 26 Jul 2009 05:10:56 +0000

Michael Jackson has a false nose that was missing as he lay in the morgue, a witness has claimed.

He said that there was simply a small hole where the singer’s nose should have been.

The witness, who claimed to have seen Jackson’s body on an autopsy table, said: ‘The prosthesis he normally attached to his damaged nose was missing, revealing bits of cartilage surrounding a small dark hole.’

It is believed that plastic surgery had so destroyed the 50-year-old’s nose, that it had disappeared completely.

‘Jackson’s face which he had so painfully reworked and concealed from the public for decades now lay out in the open undisguised under the harsh lights,’ the witness added.

The claims, which appeared in U.S. magazine Rolling Stone, were supported by Adrian McManus, a former housekeeper for the star.

Mr McManus claimed that Jackson had kept a number of false noses, and explained how the star had used plasters to cover and support the prostheses.

‘In his closet he had a jar of fake noses and stage glue, which he told me he used for disguises. But some were similar to his real nose, just without the hole,’ he said.

Jackson, who is believed to have had about six operations on his nose, is said to have been obsessed with plastic surgery.

Childhood bullying has been blamed for the singer’s obsession, though friends also suggest that the star was desperate not to resemble his father.

Friend Marcus Phillips said: ‘Michael was elated about the fact that with the second nose job he looked less like his father.

‘If he couldn’t erase Joe from his life at least he could erase him from the reflection in the mirror.’

Source

Evangelist preacher Tony Alamo convicted of sex abuse

EU Times — Sat, 25 Jul 2009 23:00:11 +0000

Jewish Evangelist preacher Tony Alamo, a one-time street preacher who built a multimillion-dollar ministry and became an outfitter of the stars, was convicted Friday of taking girls as young as 9 across state lines for sex.

Alamo stood silently as the verdict was read, a contrast to his occasional mutterings during testimony. His five victims sat looking forward in the gallery. One, a woman he “married” at age 8, wiped away a tear.

“I’m just another one of the prophets that went to jail for the Gospel,” Alamo called to reporters afterward as he was escorted to a waiting U.S. marshal’s vehicle.

Shouts of “Bye, bye, Bernie” — Alamo was born Bernie Lazar Hoffman into a Jewish family from Romania — came from a crowd gathered on the Arkansas side of the courthouse. Some came from Fouke, the nearby town where Alamo’s 15-acre compound sits. Others were former followers of his ministries in Arkansas, California and New York.

As you can clearly see, Jews are the ones who control these loony sects like the Evangelists, Jehova’s Witnesses, etc.

Girl forced to marry Jew pastor Tony Alamo at 8-years-old

The jury of nine men and three women took about 11 hours to consider the charges against Alamo. The 10-count federal indictment accused him of taking his underage “wives” across state lines as early as 1994.

Jury foreman Frank Oller of Texarkana, Ark., said jurors deliberated more than a day only to ensure they considered everything. The testimony convinced them the 74-year-old evangelist kept the girls as sexual partners, not office workers as his defense team claimed.

“That was the evidence. That was proven,” Oller said. “We came up with a full decision that we are quite satisfied with.”

Defense lawyer Don Ervin called the evidence against Alamo “insufficient” and said the preacher would appeal. He also said Alamo’s criminal history — he served four years in prison on tax charges in the 1990s — “will hurt him” at sentencing in six to eight weeks.

Prosecutors said Alamo could face a total of 175 years in prison over violating the nearly century-old Mann Act, a morality law once aimed at stopping women from being sold into prostitution. Each count also carries possible fines of $250,000.

U.S. Assistant Attorney Kyra Jenner said Alamo’s conviction would end his cycle of abuse, as he told his followers God instructed him to marry younger and younger girls.

“We believe he will face the rest of his natural life in prison,” Jenner said.

The five women, now age 17 to 33, told jurors that Alamo “married” them in private ceremonies while they were minors. Each detailed trips beyond Arkansas’ borders for Alamo’s sexual gratification.

Alamo never testified. Though he announced to reporters that he wanted to, his lawyers told him he should not directly challenge their testimony. Defense lawyers said the government targeted Alamo because it doesn’t like his apocalyptic brand of Christianity.

With little physical evidence, prosecutors relied on the women’s stories to paint an emotional portrait of a charismatic religious leader who controlled every aspect of his subjects’ lives. No one obtained food, clothing or transportation without him knowing about it.

In the end, prosecutors convinced jurors in Arkansas’ conservative Christian climate that Alamo’s ministry offered him the opportunity to prey on the young girls of loyal followers who believed him to be a prophet. They described a sect that ran on the fear of drawing the anger of “Papa Tony.”

Alamo, who founded the ministry with his wife Susan in the 1960s, remained defiant during the trial. He blurted out a reference to the Branch Davidian raid at Waco, Texas, muttered expletives during testimony and fell asleep even while alleged victims were testifying.

After Susan Alamo’s death in 1982, Alamo began focusing his tracts on bashing Catholicism and the Vatican. His ministry, built on the backs of followers who worked in various businesses to support the church, designed and sold elaborate denim jackets for celebrities.

Federal agents seized a large portion of his assets in the 1990s to settle tax claims after courts declared his operations a business, not a church. Among items offered for auction were the plans for the studded jacket Michael Jackson wore on his “Bad” album.

Source