Arella Mae wrote:Without commenting on the 2 men in question, Arella,I am not reading anything they post. They aren't going to change, firefly.
may I point out that the Ignore feature serves the purpose
that u indicated very well ?
There r several denizens of A2K for whose minds
I lost respect; (i.e., I did not care what thay thought about anything).
I have them on Ignore; some have been gone for several years, so far.
(Most were chronically guilty of persistently angry obscenity.)
U might find it convenient.
David
I choose to vote them down and then voila! They disappear.
Tuesday, November 2, 2010
Richmond High Gets Lesson in Masculinity
In anti-rape crusade, an effort to teach young men positive strength
By: Julia Landau,
Richmond Confidential
It was a year ago yesterday that police say seven men beat and raped a 16-year-old Richmond High School girl for more than two hours before anyone called 911. The victim had just left the school’s Homecoming Dance. Several people reportedly witnessed the crime and took no action to stop it; how many bystanders were there is disputed.
In the days immediately following the crime, rape prevention instructor Rhonda James excoriated the school district for denying her request to teach workshops at the high school. James directs Community Violence Solutions, a nonprofit that offers what’s called “bystander training” in how to intervene to stop a rape. School officials subsequently allowed James’ program into the school.
Community Violence Solutions began holding the workshops at Richmond High last year in the wake of the high-profile case.
News outlets swarmed the school. Many Richmond High students felt the media attention created a distorted label for students, their school, and Richmond overall.
“They even mentioned the school in “Law and Order.” They used it as an example,” said Andy Sanchez, a senior at Richmond High.
James says media attention casting Richmond as a particularly violent place made her work with students a little tougher.
“They say, ‘How dare the world see us as animals?’” says James, “And they’re so focused on that that there isn’t room for compassion.” Instead of talking about what happened and why, she said, people wanted to distance themselves from the crime.
But James said it’s important to shift the focus from blaming the city, to examining the social psychology at work when young men gather.
Community Violence Solutions’ training, called My Strength, was developed by the California Coalition Against Sexual Assault. It recruits young men to analyze the language and images used to represent masculinity. Physical strength—its benefits and abuses—is the focal metaphor. T-shirts emblazoned with “My strength is not for hurting” are given out in the hope that the message will catch on.
“We discuss terms like ‘fronting’ and ‘manning up,’” says training director Jack Schmidt. “And we talk about the consequences of violence. Like jail time.”
The key, James said, is offering a different view of positive masculinity. “There’s not some secret boys school where you learn to be bad to women,” James said. “It happens because of uninterrupted messages rather than something that’s being taught to them.”
James said her her experience and research show that when one person voices his moral instinct it sways others to do the same.
“There is a tendency to agree with the group until a voice of dissension pipes up, breaking the stupor,” said James. “Most of this change happens one-to-one. “I’m not talking about going out and prosthelytizing. I’m talking about saying, ‘Dude, that’s not cool.’ That’s really all it takes sometimes.”
James thinks it’s important to make the distinction between those people who stood by without stopping the incident and those who actively participated.
The witnesses who failed to intervene in the crime were not sociopaths, James suggested. “As human beings it’s hard to move outside of what appears to be the norm,” she said, even if it happens suddenly and is violent. “And the longer you wait the less likely it is that you are going to intervene.”
Community Violence Solutions has an agreement with De Anza and Richmond High to hold workshops this year. James hopes discussions about gender and violence become a fixture in school curriculums.
“It’s not effective to sprinkle schools with information,” she says. “We’re starting earlier and focusing more on boys.”
James says the seeds of prevention can be planted early.
“Before you find yourself in that situation,” she says, “you will already have made the decision” to speak up.
http://www.baycitizen.org/crime/story/richmond-high-gets-lesson-masculinity/print/
Police: Victim In Rape, Child Porn Case Is 2 Years Old
By Shawn Neisteadt
November 1, 2010, 5:52 PM
SIOUX FALLS, SD - Sioux Falls police arrested a registered sex offender, 43-year-old Sandor Czekus, Sunday afternoon and he now faces a list of new sex charges. That includes first-degree rape, having and manufacturing child pornography and having sexual contact with a child younger than 16.
Police say the victim in this case is just two years old.
But this isn't the first time he's been in trouble with the law. Czekus was found guilty of sodomizing a 16-year-old girl in 2002 in Missouri. He moved to Sioux Falls four years later and is now facing more serious charges.
The Sioux Falls Police Department says Czekus took pictures of a naked two-year-old child and also digitally penetrated that child. Czekus was arrested after the child's mother found images on his external hard drive, then brought that device to police, who then obtained a search warrant.
"Detectives just did an initial preview on that external hard drive and confirmed there was child pornography, that these images were of this two-year-old girl on there," Officer Sam Clemens said.
Officers have also searched his home, where prosecutors said in court Monday afternoon that police have seized his computers.
"We have to remember that people commit these crimes, and as horrible as they are, they happen time and time again. We do what we can to try and prevent that and try to find the people that are responsible for this," Clemens said.
In an initial appearance in court, prosecutors called Czekus “a very, very dangerous man who can't control his urges.” Now, the police department says highly trained detectives will search for all evidence they can and are glad the mother acted quickly when she found the images.
"The sooner a report is made to the police department, the better it is. If you see images and you wait a period of time, if you wait a month or two months, those images may be gone," Clemens said.
While the judge was setting bond for Czekus at $25,000 cash only, another jailhouse inmate awaiting his hearing erupted and shouted at Czekus over the nature of his charges. That prompted Czekus to ask for protection in jail.
Czekus faces up to 40 years in prison if found guilty.
http://www.keloland.com/News/NewsDetail6371.cfm?Id=106611
Sex offender accused of rape
November 2, 2010
A 44-year-old registered sexual offender was arrested Friday morning in the rape of a mentally retarded 17-year-old, police said.
Police said Vincent Hunter, of the 1800 block of 18th Street Court East, sexually assaulted the girl four times and molested her on other occasions. The girl has a mental age of 8 due to developmental disabilities, according to an arrest report.
Hunter was previously convicted of raping a 16-year-old in Texas
http://www.heraldtribune.com/article/20101102/ARTICLE/101109974/2055/NEWS?Title=Sex-offender-accused-of-rape
Convicted rapist active on Facebook
Eric Mansfield
11/2/2010
CUYAHOGA FALLS -- Rick Sikula isn't where he is supposed to be, even without leaving his home. As a convicted rapist and sex offender, he's not supposed to be on Facebook.
A Channel 3 News viewer knew of Sikula's 1987 convictions for rape and kidnapping, for which he served 12 years in prison.
She became concerned when she saw Sikula sending virtual roses to women on Facebook. She feared that those women didn't know that Sikula is listed as an habitual sex offender.
Facebook's policies prohibit sex offenders from having profiles, and local law enforcement monitor offenders' activities on-line.
"We have our sex offender unit, which is very vigilant in their duties and Facebook, and they work very well with law enforcement," said Inspector Bill Holland, of the Summit County Sheriff's Office.
Court records show Sikula was also convicted of a felony for failing to register his address as a sex offender in 2006. He received two years community control in lieu of one year in jail.
http://www.wkyc.com/news/local/news_article.aspx?storyid=156263&catid=3
Rick Sikula isn't where he is supposed to be, even without leaving his home. As a convicted rapist and sex offender, he's not supposed to be on Facebook.
Private Practice takes on dark subject of rape
Tue Nov 2 2010
As last week’s episode of Private Practice, drew to a close, a key character — Dr. Charlotte King — was attacked in her office by a deranged patient. When the drama resumes on ABC and A on Thursday, viewers will learn that, like millions of real-life women, Charlotte is a victim of rape.
The follow-up episode, which carries a warning for “violent images,” opens with a brief depiction of the assault. It then veers from the television norm by devoting an entire hour to the immediate aftermath of the incident, as told from the victim’s point of view.
“You experience her version of the story, as opposed to how the police are dealing with it, or some other outside source,” says KaDee Strickland, the actress who plays Charlotte. “You see the horror, but you also see the humanity.”
Private Practice is the latest in a long line of prime-time television shows that have used rape, and its related issues as a fodder for dramatic storytelling. The teen series, 90210, for example, currently features a character played by AnnaLynne McCord who has fallen into a downward spiral after being raped in a high-school classroom by a teacher. Meanwhile, two gritty cable series — Dexter and Sons of Anarchy — contain plot lines pegged to female characters who are victims of gang rape.
And then there’s the popular NBC drama, Law & Order: SVU, which examines sexually based crimes on a routine basis and features a main character — Mariska Hargitay’s Olivia Benson — who is a child of rape, and a victim of sexual assault.
“Clearly, this subject matter still draws audiences,” says Lisa M. Cuklanz, a Boston College professor and author of Rape on Prime Time: Television, Masculinity and Sexual Violence. “It’s dramatic, emotionally challenging, and potentially controversial without touching on elements of party politics, as an issue such as abortion does.”
Rape on TV, of course, is nothing new. One of the earliest and most controversial depictions in a recurring series aired on All in the Family in the 1970s when Edith Bunker narrowly escaped a serial rapist. And the original Beverly Hills 90210 explored the subject long before its contemporary spinoff. Daytime TV also has a long tradition of examining the issue.
In recent years, Cuklanz says, television has brought more nuance to its depictions of rape, and expanded its scope by examining subjects such as date and acquaintance rape. Mad Men, for example, generated talk two seasons ago when Joan (Christina Hendricks) was raped by her fiancé during an office party.
Television, Cuklanz, adds, has the ability to trump the movies when it comes to plots involving rape because it can follow up on a character or case long after the initial crime — as Private Practice plans to do this season with the Charlotte plot line.
“This offers the potential for subtlety, changes of point-of-view, and character growth over time that are not easily accomplished in film,” she says.
With its substantial audiences, television also has the ability to raise awareness and educate the masses about issues pertaining to sexual abuse, according to Katherine Hull, a spokesperson for RAINN, the Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network. She cites an episode of the teen series DeGrassi last year that triggered a “500 per cent increase” in calls to the organization’s help hot lines.
“It just goes to show the power that the entertainment media can wield,” says Hull, who cites statistics that one in six women will be sexually assaulted in their lifetime. “TV plot lines can trigger memories and inspire somebody to take that first step toward getting help.”
Earlier, this season, Law & Order: SVU brought attention to the backlog of untested rape kits—a problem that plagues many big-city police departments. In an episode guest-starring Jennifer Love Hewitt, police struggle to bring a serial rapist to justice largely because evidence had been tainted or lost.
SVU executive producer Neal Baer says he was inspired to do the episode after hearing a grim true-life tale of a woman whose life had been “dominated” by a serial rapist.
“Hopefully,” he says, “it will galvanize people to go to their city councils and police departments to do something about the rape-kit problem.”
In portraying rape, Baer says SVU strives to avoid showing the acts of violence on camera and instead focus on the “psychological aspect and complex issues” tied to a case. He says the subject will continue to be a major story thread this season. This week’s episode focused on a rape-and-murder case that will have “terrible repercussions” for Hargitay’s Olivia.
Hargitay is a prime example of how a show’s subject matter can impact one of its stars in a positive way. In 2004, she launched the Joyful Heart Foundation, a group dedicated to empowering victims of assault and abuse. In a message on the foundation’s website, Hargitay writes that her “eyes were opened” not just by the show’s scripts, but by the many emails she received from viewers “disclosing their stories of abuse, many for the first time.”
Says Baer, “Mariska is a very empathetic person on camera and in real life. She walks the walk.”
Likewise, Strickland says she has been deeply affected by the rape story line on Private Practice. While preparing for the role, she worked closely with RAINN, which put her in touch with two rape survivors.
“We did our homework. We tried to be as truthful and respectful as we could,” she says of the episode written by executive producer Shonda Rhimes. “I believe survivors are going to be very pleased that they’re going to be heard.”
Strickland is also “thrilled” that television is dealing with issues surrounding rape and sexual assault (“It’s getting out there more. It’s a positive sea change.”). And she vows that Private Practice won’t step gingerly” around the subject.
“Unfortunately, there continues to be a stigma attached to it. Some people don’t even want to talk about it,” she says. “But this is stuff we need to hear. If we can help open a dialogue, or prompt people to go to the phone and get help, that would be awesome.”
http://www.thestar.com/entertainment/television/article/884782--private-practice-takes-on-dark-subject-of-rape
With its substantial audiences, television also has the ability to raise awareness and educate the masses about issues pertaining to sexual abuse, according to Katherine Hull, a spokesperson for RAINN, the Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network. She cites an episode of the teen series DeGrassi last year that triggered a “500 per cent increase” in calls to the organization’s help hot lines.
TV can be a great tool
Liverpool city centre rape victim speaks out about her ordeal
Nov 3 2010
by Susan Lee
Liverpool Echo
WILLING him to turn around, Karen* stared straight at the back of her attacker’s head as the judge passed sentence on him for her rape.
“He knew I was there and wouldn’t look at me, couldn’t look me and that was my victory,” says Karen, recalling that day only a couple of months ago in Liverpool Crown Court.
“It was my opportunity to face down my demon.
“My friends told me I didn’t have to go to court but I needed to do it for me.
“Every part of me had been on show either literally or figuratively as a result of the attack.
“My body had been given over to forensics, my mind and opinions and recollections had been taken. This was a way of reclaiming something.
“When he wouldn’t look at me I knew I’d finally won.”
Karen, a 27-year-old office worker, speaks with remarkable fluency about her ordeal which took place in January this year as she walked to work.
But her apparent calmness can’t hide the raw hurt which still endures – and the anger she admits she feels towards herself about her loss of control over what was an uncontrollable situation.
“I feel like I should have been able to do something about it. I have always been an independent woman. I was used to being in control.
“But that was taken from me when I was attacked.”
The day that changed her life began, as usual, with a morning walk to work.
Employed in a busy office near the city centre she was usually at her desk early so would set out from the home she shared with her husband to walk through the Edge Hill district.
“It was cold and I was on Tunnel Road walking towards Upper Parliament Street. I remember spotting a dog in the road, a Staffordshire bull terrier. It put me on edge because I don’t like dogs,” she says.
“Then I saw a man but, to be honest, I was more concerned about the animal so didn’t take much notice.”
She hurried on, then heard shouting behind her and felt a hand on her shoulder.
“He demanded my ‘phone and purse. I was very frightened but handed what I had over and just kept on walking, hoping that would be enough.”
But the man pursued her.
“He said he would set the dog on me if I didn’t do what he wanted. Then he pulled me off to one side of the road.
“They say it’s every woman’s worst nightmare and it is.”
Her attacker, later revealed in court as 26-year-old Sean Seerey, sexually assaulted and raped her.
Afterwards she gathered herself and, she says, simply ‘kept on walking’.
“I knew there was a police station nearby and I knew I had to get there.
“I felt totally dissociated from what had happened; almost as if I was outside myself. In circumstances like that you shut down and your brain over-rides everything. Your brain makes the decision that it will keep you alive and takes over.”
The police, she says, were ‘fantastic’ and, thanks to CCTV film from the area, quickly found her assailant, discovering her mobile ‘phone during a search of his house.
Seerey was in custody within hours.
“And that added to the disbelief. It was all so quick. I found myself thinking: ‘did that really happen?’”
She decided to return to work within days. “I never denied what had happened to me and I wanted to try to be as normal as possible. I didn’t want to focus on him. I wouldn’t let it break me.
“My family and friends and husband were fantastic. It made me realise how lucky I was.”
Still, she admits she could never have envisaged how much she lost on the day of the attack.
“You lose belief in yourself. I still ask ‘am I making the right decision?’ about all sorts of things. I wasn’t like that before.”
She says the court case, which saw Sean Seerey plead guilty was, in some ways, an anti-climax.
“I thought it would be another door that would close and help me move on but when it was over I didn’t have it to focus on anymore. I thought ‘where now?’”
Seerey will serve a minimum of four years behind bars but the judge in the case, Judge Adrian Lyon. warned he may well spend the rest of his life in custody.
Karen was offered, and is still using, a counselling service courtesy of Merseyside RASA, an independent voluntary organisation and registered charity started in 1986 by a group of local women.
It offers advocacy, support and advice, as well as a telephone helpline, to anyone who has been a victim of rape or sexual abuse.
“It’s been fantastic but I think I’ve only just scratched the surface of my feelings and that makes me frustrated in myself. I’m impatient and feel it’s gone on far too long but I know healing can’t be rushed.
“I’ve had to realise there’s a big difference between getting better and being better; there will always be a part of me that is raw.”
Inspired by the help and support she received from RASA she is now determined to “give something back” and is organising fundraising events for the charity.
“I have had so much from them but it’s a charity. Every penny is precious. Even if we can raise enough to keep the telephone line running, maybe expand it to be a 24 hour line, then that would be great.”
She is also aiming to do some volunteering herself to help other women. "That's my focus now."
“You know, sometimes what happened feels like a hundred years ago and sometimes like yesterday."
http://www.liverpoolecho.co.uk/liverpool-news/local-news/2010/11/03/susan-lee-talks-to-a-rape-victim-about-her-ordeal-and-how-she-is-using-it-to-help-others-100252-27589515/
Serial rapist gets three life sentences after telling judge to 'rot in hell'
November 03, 2010
Gwen Filosa
The Times-Picayune
A New Orleans man recently convicted of raping two women in the 1990s received three consecutive life sentences Wednesday, after a courtroom outburst in which he told the judge to "rot in hell and suffer."
Judge Robin Pittman replied that maybe he can do that instead.
Then, Pittman sentenced Herbert Nicholson Jr., 58, to serve three life sentences -- one right after the other -- plus decades of even more prison time for his attacks on two women, one in 1991 and the other in 1994.
The New Orleans rapes, in which the victims were attacked at knifepoint while walking alone, went nowhere at Criminal District Court until 2007, when a DNA analyst reported a "direct hit" to Nicholson from the medical evidence stored in both rape kits.
Nicholson, once sentenced to death row for a girl's rape, was defiant throughout his trial both inside and outside the courtroom. In March, the public defender's program dropped him as a client after an "incident" witnessed by several staff members.
Chief public defender Derwyn Bunton said he couldn't describe the incident, but that it made it difficult for his office to continue representing Nicholson, who was appointed new counsel in attorneys Craig Mordock and John Clayton Butler.
DA recommends castration
District Attorney Leon Cannizzaro's office, which secured six guilty-as-charged verdicts against Nicholson at a three-day trial last month, on Wednesday filed a motion to have Nicholson undergo chemical castration should he ever leave prison.
Mordock said he will oppose the state's motion, which arrived without warning Wednesday.
The castration law, signed into law by Gov. Bobby Jindal in June 2008, requires that a court-appointed medical expert first determine if an offender is an appropriate candidate for the process.
Pittman scheduled a hearing about the DA's castration motion for Dec. 3. It's a first for Orleans Parish, according to the DA's office.
"We're simply reminding the court of the law," said Christopher Bowman, a spokesman for Cannizzaro. "The law says it's mandatory for a second offender to be subjected to chemical castration."
Convicted of rape, kidnapping
On Oct. 21, a jury convicted Nicholson of aggravated rape and two counts of aggravated kidnapping, crimes that carry mandatory life sentences. The jury also found him guilty of attempted aggravated rape, sexual battery and aggravated oral sexual battery.
Prosecutors Margaret Parker and Bridgid Collins built a case out of the aging evidence from four separate crimes and presented four women who testified about rapes suffered at the hands of Nicholson.
The only issue at trial was identification of the rapist, who prosecutors linked to the 1990s crimes with DNA samples. Nicholson didn't testify, but his defense was that the DNA couldn't prove beyond a reasonable doubt that he was the rapist.
In addition to the two women raped on the streets of New Orleans in the 1990s, the jury also heard from two women who testified about their assaults in the 1970s.
Nicholson had pleaded guilty to both cases. In 1973, he admitted to carnal knowledge of a juvenile. In 1976, he pleaded guilty to attempted aggravated rape of a child.
The 1976 guilty plea came after Nicholson had been sentenced to death row for raping an 11-year-old friend of his niece in a car parked beneath a bridge.
The jury had unanimously sentenced Nicholson to death for that rape. But the Louisiana Supreme Court in 1975 overturned the verdict, finding that the trial judge had unfairly given further instructions to the jurors when they announced after five hours of deliberations that they were at an impasse.
At issue in the appeal was the late Judge Bernard Bagert's decision to instruct the jury that it was "important and desirable" for them to return a unanimous verdict to resolve the case, in violation of Nicholson's rights, the high court said.
Nicholson eventually pleaded guilty to the lesser charge, and by 1988 had been released from prison, his defense lawyer said.
http://www.nola.com/crime/index.ssf/2010/11/serial_rapist_gets_three_life.html
News Canada
Girl hid abuse so brother wouldn't lose dad
By Kevin Martin, QMI Agency
October 25, 2010
CALGARY - The daughter of an incestuous Calgary man kept her abuse secret so her little brother wouldn't lose his dad, a Calgary court heard Monday.
Crown prosecutor Martha O'Connor said the victim finally revealed the truth when her mom and stepdad forced her to write a letter of apology to her grandfather for misbehaving.
O'Connor, reading from an agreed statement of facts, said the girl, then 11, wrote; "I no longer respect myself or my body for what I have done.
"I'm guilty and I have sinned over and over again," court heard.
When asked to explain she said "dad has been sexually abusing me," O'Connor told Justice Peter Clark.
"(She) said she did not tell her mother earlier because she did not want to deprive her little brother ... of his father," O'Connor said.
"She thought, 'He doesn't really know his dad much cause he's not really as old and so I didn't want him not to have a dad at all,'" the prosecutor said.
The girl also feared she was pregnant.
O'Connor said she and defence counsel Allan Low will be proposing a joint submission for a sentence of six years in a federal penitentiary when the man is sentenced in January.
She said she would have sought a term of eight years or more on the incest charge had the father not pleaded guilty and spared his victim having to tell her story.
"(She) did not have to come to court today and testify about all of these awful events," O'Connor noted.
The father, who was separated and then divorced from the girl's mother, began regularly sexually abusing her during alternate weekend visits beginning when she was seven or eight.
O'Connor said the abuse involved multiple sexual acts including rape and sodomy and the father also forced his victim to watch DVDs of adult pornography.
"When (she) closed her eyes or had a chance to turn her head away the accused forced her head back to the television," she said.
At Low's request, the father will undergo a psychiatric evaluation and risk assessment prior to his sentencing hearing.
http://www.torontosun.com/news/canada/2010/10/25/15827691.html
