Killer of Cecil the Lion Finds Out That He Is a Target Now, of Internet Vigilantism

Two signs posted on the door of a nondescript dental office here asked passers-by to mourn the death of Cecil, a lion who was lured off his sanctuary and killed during a game hunt this month in Zimbabwe.

“WE ARE CECIL,” one read; “#CatLivesMatter,” read another. Nearby was a sign with a darker message for the dentist who said he killed the cat: “ROT IN HELL.”

In the hours since Dr. Walter J. Palmer apologized for killing the lion, he has gone from a dentist and longtime hunting enthusiast to a villain at the center of a firestorm over the ethics of big-game trophy hunting.

“I had no idea that the lion I took was a known, local favorite, was collared and part of a study, until the end of the hunt,” Dr. Palmer said in a statement. “I relied on the expertise of my local professional guides to ensure a legal hunt.”

The outrage and attention surrounding the lion’s death online caused Dr. Palmer to keep his office closed on Wednesday as he joined an ever-expanding group of people who have become targets of Internet vigilantism, facing a seemingly endless shaming until the next issue comes along.

After Zimbabwean officials identified Dr. Palmer as the hunter, activists used search engines to find his contact information and social media to share information about his business and his family, stirring a fever pitch of anger strong enough to effectively dismantle his digital life. Angry people sent a surge of traffic to Dr. Palmer’s website, which was taken offline. Vitriolic reviews flooded his Yelp page. A Facebook page titled “Shame Lion Killer Dr. Walter Palmer and River Bluff Dental” drew thousands of users. Dr. Palmer’s face was scrubbed from industry websites.

Even a local crisis management expert was pulled in to the fray. The specialist, Jon Austin, who operates a Minneapolis-based communications firm, said in an email that he had been asked only to circulate Dr. Palmer’s initial statement.

On Wednesday, Mr. Austin ended his involvement with the matter, but not before his own Yelp page was flooded by angry commenters.

At Dr. Palmer’s office here, a memorial to the lion sprung up with red roses and more than a dozen plush toys, many of them jungle animals, strewn outside the locked front door.

“Murderer! Terrorist!” one protester, Rachel Augusta, screamed into a megaphone.

No one answered repeated knocks and doorbell rings at Dr. Palmer’s large, stucco house in an affluent neighborhood. And his neighbors would not talk.

Trophy hunting, undertaken by wealthy hunters who pay tens of thousands of dollars for licenses to kill protected animals for trophies and sport, has long been a subject of global debate. Hunting advocates and some conservationists argue that, if done responsibly, the selling of expensive licenses to big-game hunters can help pay for efforts to protect endangered species.

A 2009 study by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature estimated that trophy hunters killed around 600 lions a year. Last October, the United States Fish and Wildlife Service proposed to list the African lion as threatened under the Endangered Species Act, a move that would also establish guidelines for permitting the importing of lion trophies. That proposal is under review.

Cecil had been closely studied by researchers at the University of Oxford since 2008 as part of efforts to study a decline in Africa’s lion population and to better understand the threats the animals face. The university’sWildlife Conservation Research Unit said in a statement that Cecil’s adult “brothers” and cubs would probably be killed by other male lions seeking dominance in the community.

Debates over trophy hunting have long been held among conservationists and animal rights activists without reaching the mainstream. When a Texas man reportedly paid $350,000 to hunt and kill a black rhinoceros in Namibia this year, the furor largely stayed within that community. But the death of Cecil, a 13-year-old lion who wandered out of his sanctuary in a national park in Zimbabwe, struck a chord.

Dr. Palmer had paid around $54,000 to hunt the animal, according to news reports, and in 2009, he paid $45,000 at an auction to help preserve an elk habitat in California. He was profiled that year in The New York Times when he shot and killed an elk from 75 yards with a compound bow in pursuit of a bowhunting record.

According to the Zimbabwe Conservation Task Force, the lion was shot with a crossbow after he was lured out of the sanctuary, following the scent of food. Cecil, well known to those who visited Hwange National Park in western Zimbabwe for his jet black mane, was only injured by the arrow. The hunters tracked him for about two days before he was killed with a gun, conservation officials said. He was beheaded and skinned, his corpse left to rot.

Two Zimbabwean men, a farm owner and a professional hunter who are accused of helping Dr. Palmer, appeared in court on Wednesday on poaching charges. Zimbabwean officials said Dr. Palmer was also being sought on poaching charges.

Erin Flior, who specializes in crisis management at the public relations firm Levick, said that frequent cases of widespread social media outrage had made digital crisis and reputation management a growing specialty. She recalled cases in which clients had to move or consider changing their names.

“The fact that it crosses my desk at all means it happens too much, in my opinion,” Ms. Flior said. “It really tends to be instances where a very educated, tech-savvy crowd has jumped on board that those kind of instances get taken to that level where personal information is being released.”

By CHRISTINA CAPECCHI and KATIE ROGERSJULY 29, 2015

 

Graphic humor 240

 

Texas actress gets 18 years for mailing ricin to Obama

A minor actress from Texas was sentenced Wednesday to 18 years in prison for sending ricin-tainted letters to President Obama, former New York mayor Michael Bloomberg and the head of his gun-control group.

Shannon Guess Richardson, 36, was also ordered to pay $367,000 restitution as part of a plea bargain for pleading guilty in December to one count of developing, producing, possessing and transferring a biological agent for use as a weapon. She bought the materials — castor bean seeds and lye — online.

The FBI arrested her in June 2013 after she was indicted by a federal grand jury. She gave bith the next month while in jail.

Richardson mailed three letters in May 2013 from her home in New Boston, near Texarkana, and then drove to a Shreveport, La., police station to implicate her estranged husband, who had filed for divorce. She told the FBI she did not think the letters would be opened because of security measures.

“What’s in this letter is nothing compared to what ive got in store for you mr president,” read the letter to Obama. “You will have to kill me and my family before you get my guns. Anyone wants to come to my house will get shot in the face.”

A former Dallas beauty queen, she had bit parts in TV series and film, including The Vampire Diaries, The Walking Dead, Franklin & Bash, All My Children and The Blind Side.

Richardson apologized Wednesday before being sentenced by U.S. District Judge Michael Schneider.

“I never intended for anybody to be hurt,” she said. “I’m not a bad person. I don’t have it in me to hurt anyone.”

“I do love my country, and I respect my president,” she added.

Schneider said Richardson’s actions “put many lives in danger and threatened public officials at the highest level of government. The defendant claims that she did not intend to harm anyone, but certainly her actions could have had grave consequences.”

Ricin is a biological toxin that can be fatal if inhaled or swallowed. There is no antidote or cure.

 

* Text by USAToday, July 16, 2014

 

Medical marijuana farmers market in L.A. temporarily closed by judge

A Boyle Heights farmers market for medical marijuana users has been temporarily shut down by a Los Angeles County Superior Court judge.

The judge’s ruling Tuesday grants a temporary restraining order sought by Los Angeles City Atty. Mike Feuer to stop the California Heritage Market operations, saying it failed to comply with the city’s voter-approved law regulating marijuana dispensaries.

“The bottom line is that we argued successfully that this so-called farmers market was an attempt to make an end-run around the will of the people,” Feuer said. “The court saw through this subterfuge.”

Los Angeles voters passed Proposition D last year, establishing legal parameters under which marijuana dispensaries could do business in the city.

The court’s ruling, Feuer said, supports the “spirit and the letter of Proposition D.”

The cannabis market opened to a booming business over the Fourth of July weekend, attracting hundreds of customers and an array of growers offering marijuana buds with airy names such as Blue Dream and Banana Kush along with marijuana-infused balms, sunblock, lollipops, tea and even a waffle mix.

Customers, who were required to show their IDs and prove they could legally buy pot, said they appreciated being able to cut the “middleman” out of the equation and buy their product at a discount straight from the growers.

Jamie Brown of First Choice Farms said he found the marketplace to be “absolute genius,” a place where customers could find out about different strains of marijuana.

But the temporary injunction issued Tuesday halts all that for now by restricting the market’s operators from setting up booths and advertising it, according to legal documents. Police and fire officials must also be granted access to the site.

“The court was very clear: There could be no multiple vendors selling at this site, only bona fide employees,” Feuer said.

The market — which attracted both old and young, tattooed and clean-cut — was held over the Fourth of July weekend in a warehouse directly behind the West Coast Collective dispensary in an industrial zone in Boyle Heights.

The following weekend, the market opened again.

Proposition D, Feuer said, does not allow multiple, independent vendors to sell on one site.

“That’s essentially what this business model was,” Feuer said.

But attorney David Welch, who represents the Progressive Horizon collective, said Feuer’s argument doesn’t make sense.

He said a farmers market is no different from a dispensary in that they both sell goods from a variety of vendors.

“Their arguments are basically a misunderstanding on how this business operates,” he said.

The city’s actions, Welch said, were essentially proving that “you can’t actually open a marijuana dispensary” in Los Angeles.

A hearing is scheduled Aug. 6 to determine whether the market will be permanently closed.

 

* Veronica Rocha, latimes, July 15, 2014

 

As tensions rise among D.C. road users, many say police enforcement lags

As an increasing number of Washington-area residents forgo their vehicles and choose to bike or walk to work, tensions between drivers, cyclists and pedestrians have escalated, with reports of terrifying encounters: drivers intimidating cyclists, cyclists antagonizing drivers, pedestrians at the mercy of both bikers and drivers.

The one thing that all three agree on: D.C. police are not doing enough to enforce the rules for any of the groups.

“There hasn’t been much priority to enforce those laws,” said Joe Reiner, a member of the nonprofit organization All Walks DC, which promotes pedestrian safety. “Cars and bikes are speeding through pedestrian crosswalks ignoring that pedestrians have a right of way. This is an issue that we really need to have the police do better with.”

While D.C. Police Chief Cathy L. Lanier has expanded the city’s lucrative traffic-camera program to catch speeders and red-light runners, critics say that has led to the department becoming too dependent on automated enforcement and moving away from officers on the streets monitoring behavior such as distracted driving, bicyclists running red lights and pedestrians obstructing traffic.

“The things that actually kill people is what we should be targeting with enforcement, and that can’t be done with cameras,” said Greg Billing, advocacy coordinator for the Washington Area Bicyclist Association (WABA). “When you have an officer whose job is community policing and responding to dispatch, they don’t get around to traffic enforcement, because it’s not a priority.”

D.C. police deny that there are too few officers out monitoring the roads. They say officers are out ticketing drivers, bicyclists and pedestrians violating traffic laws. Police, however, declined to provide statistics about citations issued to motorists and pedestrians, saying a reporter would need to submit a Freedom of Information Act request.

Earlier this month, police did provide some information on citations issued to bicyclists, and data shows a decline in tickets issued so far this year compared with previous years. The precipitous drop comes even as there are more cyclists on the roads, something that even bike advocates say is an indication of a lack of enforcement.

Police this year have issued 63 tickets to bicyclists and users of other personal modes of transportation, such as Segways. Last year, the department issued 203 citations, less than half the number issued in 2012, when 446 citations were issued.

“We have a higher support of bicycle enforcement than there’s been in a long time,” said Sgt. Terry Thorne of the D.C. police. “We have campaigns that work on education and enforcement of any traffic issue.”

Police conduct stings targeting violations related to pedestrian crosswalks and motorists parking in bike lanes, Thorne said. When cyclists complained about illegal U-turns across the Pennsylvania Avenue bike lane, police spent time at an intersection issuing warnings and citations, he said.

Data on the number of citations issued is not a good measure of enforcement, which often includes verbal warnings, Thorne said. The department recently announced plans to start regular pedestrian safety stings at busy and dangerous intersections. Police will hand out safety tips, warnings and citations to violators, including drivers, bikers and pedestrians.

But it is not just about the number of tickets issued, transportation advocates say — it is about changing the culture on the roads. What they want is enforcement that is equitable among all users to make sure everyone is safe and follows the rules.

 

“There has to be more officers getting out of the cars,” said AAA Mid-Atlantic spokesman John Townsend, adding that D.C. police have to “not just rely on automated enforcement to enforce traffic laws and traffic safety in the city. . . . All of us are violators from time to time, and there should be equity in handing out tickets. That is not only fair for all of us, it will make our roadways safer.”

Looking west

Some advocates say a specialized police division to oversee traffic enforcement would help. D.C. police officials say, however, that a centralized unit dedicated solely to enforcement would not be enough to address traffic safety citywide.

Other cities such as Portland, Ore., have such units. That enforcement strategy, along with other city initiatives, are viewed as instrumental in making Portland one of the most bike-friendly cities in the United States. In general, officials there say, pedestrians, cyclists and drivers have learned to coexist peacefully; pedestrian and cyclist fatalities are down, and behavior has changed. Studies suggest that 94 percent of Portland cyclists now stop at red lights, for example.

“It is reasonable to expect that you are going to have some continued stress,” said Rob Sadowsky, executive director of the Portland-based Bicycle Transportation Alliance. “But the more people biking, the safer it gets, the more cars will get used to seeing them.”

Portland began installing bike lanes about two decades ago, and since then the city has adopted a series of policies that have made the transition easier, officials said. The city has installed separate traffic signals for bikes and invested in signage that is more visible to drivers, cyclists and pedestrians.

There also are special green “bike boxes” where bicyclists wait during red lights. Bicyclists stop inside the green box, while drivers stop at the white line behind the box. (The District has begun adding them, as well.)

“There is always a learning curve when you introduce something new. People do learn by seeing all the people bicycling. They figure it out over time,” said Roger Geller, bicycle coordinator with the Portland Bureau of Transportation. “The challenge really is to create conditions so that motorists become aware of people bicycling.”

Officials with the District Department of Transportation, which oversees the city’s road infrastructure, say they work closely with police and groups such as WABA as they plan bike lanes and changes in road patterns. DDOT’s long-range transportation plan envisions 200 miles of on-street bicycle facilities, greater transit use and more pedestrian access, but it also emphasizes that its success depends on having a clear education campaign and enforcement strategies.

Bicycle boom

Because the District is still a young bike city, confusion and frustration are to be expected, transportation officials say. It has been only in the past five years that biking has taken off as a popular mode of transportation. The first protected bike lane opened on 15th Street NW in 2009, and there are now about 60 miles of bike lanes. Capital Bikeshare, which launched in 2010, puts more than 2,500 bikes on District and suburban streets.

The growth corresponds with an increase in the number of crashes involving cyclists and pedestrians, AAA’s Townsend said. The city recorded nearly 600 crashes involving bicyclists and 988 involving pedestrians last year, according to data from the region’s Street Smart campaign, which promotes road safety and awareness. Those numbers were up slightly from 2012 but have increased steadily over the past five years; in 2009, there were 312 crashes involving cyclists and 657 involving pedestrians.

Last year, the city recorded 12 pedestrian and two cyclist fatalities, up from eight pedestrian fatalities in 2012. No cyclists were killed in 2012, according to Street Smart.

Residents say more needs to be done to discourage bad behavior, such as pedestrians who are so distracted by their cellphones that they do not pay attention to what is going on around them and drivers who fail to keep a safe distance — at least three feet — when overtaking or passing cyclists.

“People are genuinely ignorant of the rules,” said Elizabeth Lyttleton, 37, a stay-at-home mother in Northeast Washington who rides her bike daily with her 22-month-old daughter in tow. She said she regularly has to remind drivers of the three-foot rule. “They often tell me, ‘How am I supposed to know that?’ I say, ‘I don’t know how you are supposed to know that, but you should.’ We need a lot more education and enforcement across the board. A civility campaign would be nice.”

Tyler Lopez, a Dupont Circle resident who walks to work at Georgetown University, said the sudden spike of bike traffic has created new challenges for pedestrians.

“I have seen plenty of cyclists that do follow the rules, but I think there is a significant minority of cyclists who feel that they are entitled to do whatever they want on the road or the sidewalk,” he said.

Motorists and cyclists say that nothing prepared them for the new hazards on the roads they now share.

“This is really about a culture shift for all users of the road,” said Sam Zimbabwe, a director of policy and planning at DDOT.

“We are a city where people are in a hurry and people are trying to get from place to place as quickly as they can, and that sort of is at odds with being respectful and following the rules,” Zimbabwe said. “Enforcement needs to be targeting those who are causing a problem. If 99 percent of the people are obeying the laws, we don’t want to vilify those people or make them feel persecuted. We want to address the 1 percent.”

 

By Luz Lazo , July 15, 2014

Luz Lazo writes about transportation and development. She has recently written about the challenges of bus commuting, Metro’s dark stations, and the impact of sequestration on air travel.

 

 

Who is the prostitute who allegedly drank wine over the dead body of a Google exec she’s accused of murdering?

The details uncovered by investigators portray Alix Catherine Tichelman as a callous, calculating killer. Her mugshot reveals piercing, haunting eyes. And her social media trail portrays a troubled soul who battled addiction and body image issues.

The 26-year-old California call girl was indicted yesterday for allegedly leaving a Google executive for dead on his yacht after injecting him with a fatal dose of heroin.

Alix Tichelman of Folsom, Calif., confers with public defender Diane August during her arraignment in Santa Cruz Superior Courton July 9, 2014, in Santa Cruz, Calif. (Shmuel Thaler/Santa Cruz Sentinel via AP)

Shortly before Thanksgiving last year, police found Forrest Timothy Hayes, 51, dead on his yacht — named “Escape” — in the Santa Cruz Small Craft Harbor. The yacht’s security cameras show Tichelman injecting Hayes with heroin. He slips into unconsciousness, but she doesn’t call 911. She did, however, collect her belongings — the heroin and needles— casually sidestepping Hayes’s body. “At one point, she steps over the body to finish a glass of wine,” police said, adding that Tichelman did one last thing before fleeing the boat: She closed the blinds, ensuring that no one would see the body from the outside.

“She showed no regard for him,” Deputy Police Chief Steve Clark told the Santa Cruz Sentinel on Tuesday. “She was just trying to cover her tracks.”

Hayes and Tichelman met, according to investigators, through the Web site “Seeking Arrangement,” which promises to help “Sugar Babies and Sugar Daddies or Mommas both get what they want, when they want it.”

According to news reports, Hayes worked at Google’s innovation lab, where “moon shot” projects like self-driving cars and Google glass are dreamed up. An obituary written by his family describes Hayes as a beloved husband and father of five who enjoyed spending time with his family and on his boat. On a Web site that has since been taken down, friends and family shared fond memories of him, the Associated Press reported.

Tichelman’s life online tells a different story, not of a loving family but of destruction and an intense self-loathing disguised as bravado with a bustier and sultry makeup (check out her YouTube makeup tutorial at the end of the story).

 “Selling my soul would be a lot easier if i could find it,” she wrote on Twitter in July 2012. “I have always been attracted to the darker side,” she said in an interview with fetish magazine fiXE, according to news.com.au. “My parents said by the time I was there I was an intense child, and already liked horror movies.”

She appears to have struggled with addiction for years. On her Instagram account, she posted a photo in May, 2013 with the tagline: “My eyes are red red red … combination of the glitter eyeliner and the medical grade I’ve been smokin on.” And in a note titled “heroin” posted on her Facebook page almost exactly a year before the alleged murder she wrote:

this private downward spiral-this suffocating blackhole
makes you feel so warm inside,
yet makes your heart so cold.
each day takes it’s toll,
your thoughts become emotionless,
your soul feels too old.
the demons whispers to me ever so lightly,
he never let’s go of his hold,
taking everything from me,
I’ll end up dying alone.

In another note titled “Thinspiration,” she revealed a struggle with body image and possibly child sex abuse: “I will be thin and pure like a glass cup. Empty. Pure as light. Music. I move my hands over my body – my shoulders, my collarbone, my rib cage, my hip bones like part of an animal skull, my small thighs. In the mirror my face is pale and my eyes look bruised. My hair is pale and thin and the light comes through. I could be a lot younger than twenty four. I could be a child still, untouched.”

In photos posted on her Facebook page in 2012, Tichelman vacillates between skinny and emaciated. In one of them she boasts “size zero … no more size two for me.” She idolized Kate Moss, who also appears several times in her timeline photos. Her Facebook and Instagram photos, a combination of provocative professional model shots and sexy selfies, reveal a scantily clad split personality: a goth in fishnet thigh highs, a pinup girl in panties, heroin chic.

Tichelman doesn’t say much about her family. The notes section of her Facebook page includes a novel-in-progress about a girl named Kat (her middle name is Catherine). It’s not clear whether it’s autobiographical, but the tale tells of an alienated teenager who turns to heroin to escape a broken home where an alcoholic mother entertains “random men.”

According to USA Today, Tichelman’s parents now live in Folsom, Calif., where her father Bart is the chief executive of a tech company, SynapSense Corp. He took the job in November 2012, a year before the alleged murder, after working with Renewvia Energy Corp., a solar power project developer in Atlanta. Tichelman was living in Folsom at the time of her arrest but previously lived in Atlanta, according to her social media accounts.

Two years ago, she posted often about a boyfriend named Dean, who gave her a black and white diamond ‘promise ring’ on June 22, 2012. There are pictures of the them together playing with baby monkeys.

In her last post on Jan. 11, 2013, she counted among her blessings “a great boyfriend, nice house, monkeys, loving family … doesn’t get any better than this I don’t think.”

USA Today identified the boyfriend as Dean Riopelle, 53, who died Sept. 24, 2013, after a heart attack, according to a newspaper obituary. Riopelle owned a nightclub called “Masquerade” and was known as “Monkey Man” because he raised monkeys on his property, according to an Atlanta indie weekly

The details of Tichelman’s tale continue to unravel. Investigators suspect she was involved in an incident in another state similar to Hayes’s alleged murder on the yacht. Santa Cruz police arrested Tichelman on the Fourth of July after an officer posed as a potential client willing to pay $1,000 for her sexual services. She appeared in Santa Cruz Superior Court on Wednesday on eight felony and misdemeanor charges including manslaughter and prostitution. Her arraignment has been postponed until July 16. Assistant District Attorney Rafael Vazquez said the investigation is ongoing and more serious charges may be filed, the AP reported.

 

Graphic Humor 228

 

This section of Graphic Humor in political-economic, national or international issues, are very ingenious in describing what happened, is happening or will happen. It also extends to various other local issues or passing around the world.

There are also other non-political humor that ranges from reflective or just to get us a smile when we see them.

Anyone with basic education and to stay informed of important news happening in our local and global world may understand and enjoy them.

Farewell!.

CTsT

 

 

Graphic Humor 226

 

This section of Graphic Humor in political-economic, national or international issues, are very ingenious in describing what happened, is happening or will happen. It also extends to various other local issues or passing around the world.

There are also other non-political humor that ranges from reflective or just to get us a smile when we see them.

Anyone with basic education and to stay informed of important news happening in our local and global world may understand and enjoy them.

Farewell!.

CTsT

 

 

Graphic Humor 225

 

This section of Graphic Humor in political-economic, national or international issues, are very ingenious in describing what happened, is happening or will happen. It also extends to various other local issues or passing around the world.

There are also other non-political humor that ranges from reflective or just to get us a smile when we see them.

Anyone with basic education and to stay informed of important news happening in our local and global world may understand and enjoy them.

Farewell.

CTsT

 

 

Rep. Trey Radel charged with cocaine possession

Rep. Trey Radel, a Florida Republican elected in 2012, will be in court Wednesday on charges that he possessed cocaine.

Radel, 37, was charged with misdemeanor possession of cocaine in D.C. Superior Court on Tuesday.

He faces a maximum of 180 days in jail, as well as a fine of up to $1,000. Several sources with direct knowledge say it was the FBI and Drug Enforcement Administration who were involved in the charges.

Radel has missed all four votes in the House this week.

Radel, in a statement released by his office, made no mention of resigning from the House. He said he struggles “with the disease of alcoholism, and this led to an extremely irresponsible choice. As the father of a young son and a husband to a loving wife, I need to get help so I can be a better man for both of them.”

A spokesman for Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) said, “Members of Congress should be held to the highest standards, and the alleged crime will be handled by the courts. Beyond that, this is between Rep. Radel, his family, and his constituents.”

The U.S. Attorney’s office for the District of Columbia declined to comment on Radel’s arrest and case.

The Associated Press, citing an unnamed DEA official, said Radel allegedly bought cocaine from a dealer in the Dupont Circle area who had been previously arrested as part of a federal probe. “Later that night, federal authorities went to his apartment and informed him that he would be facing criminal charges related to his purchase of cocaine,” the AP said.

The Florida Republican, who holds a district on the western coast of Florida that includes the tony Marco Island, is a former journalist, TV anchor and radio talk-show host. He never held elective office before winning his House seat last November. His district was vacated by former Rep. Connie Mack (R-Fla.), who ran for the Senate.

In the statement, Radel said he realizes “the disappointment my family, friends and constituents must feel. Believe me, I am disappointed in myself, and I stand ready to face the consequences of my actions.”

The arrest, he said, has a “positive side.”

“It offers me an opportunity to seek treatment and counseling,” he said. “I know I have a problem and will do whatever is necessary to overcome it, hopefully setting an example for others struggling with this disease.”

Text by John Bresnahan and Jake Sherman (Politico), 11/19/2013

 

Why Rape Is Much More Common In Alaska

While researching a story on how Americans commit crime, we came across a disturbing fact. There’s a significantly higher number of rape reports in Alaska than most other states.

Alaska has nearly 80 rapes per 100,000 residents, and South Dakota is a close second at about 70 rape reports per 100,000, according to the FBI’s 2012 crime report. The next-highest is Michigan with 46 per 100,000.

 

Rape often goes unreported, so these statistics may be less reliable than other crime statistics. However, Alaska had a reputation for having a problem with rape before the FBI’s recent crime report came out. In 2010 a poll of nearly 900 Alaskan women found that 37% had experienced sexual violence. This chart also shows how much Alaska has struggled with rape over the years.

How did Alaska get to be such a dangerous place for women?

Two possible causes are its high population of Native Americans — nearly 15% compared to the 1.2% national average — and its remoteness. South Dakota is also a rural state with a a high Native American population of nearly 9%.

Native Alaskans make up 61% of rape victims in the state, and Native Americans make up 40% of sex assault victims in South Dakota, The New York Times has reported. One in three Native American women has said she’s been raped in her lifetime, according to a frequently cited Justice Department report from 2000. Native women are 2.5 times more likely to be raped than women of other races, that report found.

Nobody knows for sure why Native American women are so vulnerable to rape. Some experts blame alcoholism and the breakdown of the Native American family, The Times has reported. In the past, Native American tribes have not been allowed to prosecute non-Native Americans for raping members of their tribes, which also could have compounded the problem. (Obama recently signed a lawthat gives tribes more power to protect Native women, though.)

In very rural areas, like Alaska, women simply can’t rely on police to come help them if they’re raped. One 19-year-old Native Alaska woman who lived in a village of 800 called the police after a stranger broke into her home and raped her in the middle of the night, the Times reported in 2012. The police didn’t answer, so she left a message. They never returned her call.

One study found that just 11% of rapes reported to the Anchorage Police Department between 2000 and 2003 led to a conviction. This lack of culpability could be another reason for the prevalence of sexual assault in Alaska. As one blogger in the state wrote, “Why is Alaska the rape capital of the U.S.? Because we allow it.”

ERIN FUCHS SEP. 26, 2013

 

From the Streets to the ‘World’s Best Mom’

WHEN men paid Shelia Faye Simpkins for sex, they presumably thought she was just a happy hooker engaging in a transaction among consenting adults.

It was actually more complicated than that, as it usually is. Simpkins says that her teenage mom, an alcoholic and drug addict, taught her at age 6 how to perform oral sex on men. “Like a lollipop,” she remembers her mom explaining.

Simpkins finally ran away from home at 14 and into the arms of a pimp.

“I thought he was my boyfriend,” Simpkins remembers. “I didn’t realize I was being pimped.”

When her pimp was shot dead, she was recruited by another, Kenny, who ran a “stable” of four women and assigned each of them a daily quota of $1,000. Anyone who didn’t earn that risked a beating.

There’s a common belief that pimps are business partners of prostitutes, but that’s a complete misunderstanding of the classic relationship. Typically, every dollar earned by the women goes to the pimp, who then doles out drugs, alcohol, clothing and food.

“He gets every penny,” Simpkins explains. “If you get caught with money, you get beat.”

Simpkins periodically ran away from Kenny, but each time he found her — and beat her up with sticks or iron rods. On average, she figures that Kenny beat her up about once a week, and she still carries the scars.

“I was his property,” Simpkins says bluntly.

I met Simpkins here in Nashville, where my wife, Sheryl WuDunn, and I have been filming a segment about sex trafficking as part of a PBS documentary accompanying our next book. We were filming with Ashley Judd, the actress, who lives in the Nashville area and is no neophyte about these issues. Judd has traveled all around the world to understand sexual exploitation — and she was devastated by what we found virtually in her backyard.

“It’s freaking me out,” she told me one day after some particularly harrowing interviews. It’s easier to be numbed by child prostitution abroad, but we came across online prostitution ads in Nashville for “Michelle,” who looked like a young teenager. Judd had trouble sleeping that night, thinking of Michelle being raped in cheap hotels right in her hometown.

In this respect, Nashville is Everytown U.S.A. Sex trafficking is an American universal: The Tennessee Bureau of Investigation reported in 2011 that over a two-year period, trafficking occurred in 85 percent of Tennessee’s counties, including rural areas. Most are homegrown girls like Simpkins who flee troubled homes and end up controlled by pimps.

Of course, there are also women (and men) selling sex voluntarily. But the notion that the sex industry is a playground of freely consenting adults who find pleasure in their work is delusional self-flattery by johns.

Sex trafficking is one of the most severe human rights violations in America today. In some cases, it amounts to a modern form of slavery.

One reason we as a society don’t try harder to uproot it is that it seems hopeless. Yet Simpkins herself is a reminder that we needn’t surrender.

Simpkins says that she would be dead by now if it weren’t for a remarkable initiative by the Rev. Becca Stevens, the Episcopal priest at Vanderbilt University here, to help women escape trafficking and prostitution.

Rev. Stevens had been searching for a way for her congregation to address social justice issues, and she felt a bond with sex trafficking survivors. Rev. Stevens herself had been abused as a girl — by a family friend in her church, beginning when she was 6 years old — and she shared with so many trafficked women the feelings of vulnerability, injustice and anger that go with having been molested.

With donations and volunteers, Rev. Stevens founded a two-year residential program called Magdalene for prostitution survivors who want to overcome addictions and start new lives. To help the women earn a living, Rev. Stevens then started a business, Thistle Farms, which employs dozens of women making products sold on the Internet and in stores like Whole Foods. This year, Thistle Farms has also opened a cafe, employing former prostitutes as baristas.

Shelia Simpkins went through the Magdalene program and overcame her addictions. In December, she will earn her bachelor’s degree in psychology, and then she plans to earn a master’s in social work.

She regularly brings in women off the street who want to follow her in starting over. I met several of Simpkins’ recruits, including a woman who had been prostituted since she was 8 years old and is now bubbling with hope for a new future. Another has left drugs, started a sales job and found a doctor who agreed not to charge her to remove 16 tattoos designating her as her pimp’s property. And a teenage prostitute told me that she’s trying to start over because, “the only person who visited me in jail was Miss Shelia.”

Magdalene and Thistle Farms fill part of what’s needed: residential and work programs for women trying to flee pimps. We also need to see a much greater crackdown on pimps and johns.

Simpkins figures she was arrested about 200 times — and her pimps, never. As for johns, by my back-of-envelope calculations, a john in Nashville has less than a 0.5 percent chance of being arrested. If there were more risk, fewer men would buy sex, and falling demand would force some pimps to find a new line of work.

In short, there are steps we can take that begin to chip away at the problem, but a starting point is greater empathy for women like Simpkins who were propelled into the vortex of the sex trade — and a recognition that the problem isn’t hopeless. To me, Simpkins encapsulates not hopelessness but the remarkable human capacity for resilience.

She has married and has two children, ages 4 and 6. The older one has just been accepted in a gifted program at school, and Simpkins couldn’t be more proud.

“I haven’t done a lot of things right in my life, but this is one thing I’m going to do right,” she said. “I’m going to be the world’s best mom.”

By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF , October 12, 2013

 

McDonald’s Employee And Single Mother Detained For Confronting Company President About Worker Pay

A single mother who has been working at McDonald’s for 10 years was detained by police last week after she interrupted the company president’s speech in Chicago to confront him about low worker pay.

Crain’s Chicago Business reports that 26-year-old Nancy Salgado was part of a group protesting the event, asking company officials to raise worker wages to $15 an hour and allow employees to form a union without fear of retaliation.

Protestors were detained for an hour, threatened with arrest, and ticketed, according to Chicagoist.

The Real News posted a video to YouTube that contains a clip of Salgado’s outburst as well as an interview with her:

Here’s what Salgado said to McDonald’s USA President Jeff Stratton: “I’m a single mother of two. It’s really hard for me to feed my two kids and struggle day to day. Do you think this is fair that I have to be making $8.25 when I’ve been working at McDonald’s for 10 years?”

Stratton’s response: “I’ve been there [at McDonald’s] 40 years.”

Salgado told The Real News that she still works at McDonald’s (although they cut her hours back) and she loves her job, but she wanted to speak out because she thought her voice needed to be heard.

“It gets harder and harder,” she said. “Sometimes I can’t provide a gallon of milk in the refrigerator.”

 

* Pamela Engel (BI, October 9,2013)

 

Workers Find Survivor in Bangladesh Rubble

DHAKA, Bangladesh—Rescue workers Friday pulled a female garment worker from the rubble of Rana Plaza after more than 16 days buried alive—among the longest periods anyone has survived such an ordeal.

The eight-story building, which housed five garment factories, collapsed April 24, killing more than 1,000 people, one of the worst-ever factory accidents.

Agence France-Presse/Getty ImagesBangladeshi rescuers retrieve garment worker Reshma Begum from the rubble of a collapsed building on May 10.

Long after hope of finding anyone alive had faded, army rescuers said they had broken through the mass of concrete and steel to a woman in her 20s.

She had fallen from the third floor into a Muslim prayer room into an air pocket in the basement, and remained alive by forcing a broken pipe up through a crack in the debris for ventilation, rescuers said.

Reshma Begum, who identified herself as a seamstress who worked on the third floor of Rana Plaza, had been banging the pipe against concrete to attract attention, after bulldozers had removed loose rubble that had been covering the area.

“I heard the sound and rushed towards the spot,” Abdur Razzaq, an army sergeant who was involved in the rescue, said in an interview. “I knelt down and heard a faint voice. ‘Sir, please help me,’ she cried.”

The rescue was broadcast live on national television. As she was lifted from the rubble, crowds that had gathered broke into cheers of “God is great!” Rescue workers wiped away tears.

“It’s a miraculous event,” Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina said after visiting Ms. Begum in the hospital and congratulating the rescue teams.

Ms. Begum told rescuers she was unhurt and had survived by scavenging for food and bottled water in the backpacks of dead colleagues. She had been buried for 16 days and about seven hours during one of the hottest times of the year in Bangladesh, with temperatures reaching 95 degrees (35 degrees Celsius) and 80% humidity.

Her hair and face were covered in dirt as she carried out, wearing a purple and pink salwar-kameeze, and her scalp was showing where she had apparently lost big clumps of hair.

Doctors who attended her at a nearby military hospital said she was suffering from dehydration but otherwise appeared to have no major injuries.

At the hospital, a woman who identified herself as Ayesha Begum said Reshma was her sister.

“We’ve been waiting outside the building for two weeks,” said Ayesha Begum, flanked by another woman who identified herself as Reshma’s aunt. “We’d given up hope. God has brought her back for the sake of her little son.”

Reshma Begum came from the northern district of Dinajpur, according to Ayesha Begum. She said her sister had come to Dhaka four years ago to work in a garment factory so as to become more independent.

Reshma recently had separated from her husband and was bringing up her 5-year-old son, working as a seamstress in the New Wave Bottoms factory in Rana Plaza, she said.

The crowds around the disaster site had thinned in recent days, but on Friday evening, families clutching photos of missing loved ones were once again thronging the area hoping to see their relatives brought out alive.

“God is merciful,” said Afsar Ali, who said he was looking for his daughter. “We still have hope.”

There has been controversy in Bangladesh over the pace of the rescue operations. Right after the disaster, the Bangladesh government turned down an offer of help from the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, a spokesman for the office said.

In the first few days, volunteers were heavily involved, some using their bare hands. People held up handwritten signs asking for donations of oxygen cylinders, drills and water bottles.

Some relatives of those missing, angered by the lack of heavy-lifting equipment, clashed with police at the site.

Later, the army, which now is coordinating efforts, moved in with bulldozers and other heavy machinery. They have defended the pace of the rescue efforts, saying they were careful not to go too quickly and kill possible survivors.

Maj. Gen. Hasan Suhrawardy, who is leading the army’s salvage operation, said the pace would now slow again, since Ms. Begum’s survival had raised hopes, however slight, that other survivors could be in the wreckage.

Bulldozers stopped plowing the debris for a few hours after Ms. Begum was discovered, before starting operations again gingerly under flashlights.

Briefing reporters at the building collapse site, Gen. Suhrawardy said: “Reshma is totally OK. She worked hard to keep herself alive. That is a very strong woman.”

The last known survivor before Friday was killed on April 28 by a fire set off inadvertently by rescuers who were trying to cut through to free her.

The tragedy has shocked Bangladesh and the world, putting pressure on the government and foreign brands to improve safety conditions in the country’s 5,000 factories.

Bangladesh is one of the world’s largest producers of garments, supplying major U.S. and European retailers. The industry produces some of the world’s cheapest clothes, paying workers monthly wage rates as low as $40, a quarter those of China’s.

The government this week has begun an inspection of the country’s factories. On Wednesday, the government forced 18 factories to shut while they carried out safety improvements, including three owned by the country’s largest exporter of garments.

There have been few instances of people surviving longer than 10 days after disasters like earthquakes, according to academic studies. In 2010, after the Haiti earthquake, a teenage girl was rescued 15 days after the disaster.

The United Nations, which coordinates disaster relief, normally calls of search and rescue operations after a week or so and shifts its focus to tending to survivors.

In the past 10 days, focus has shifted to recovering hundreds of bodies that lay under rubble. The death toll has jumped by about 100 each day since Saturday, as salvage workers found huge numbers of bodies on the ground floor and basement.

On Friday, the toll rose to 1,050 people.

 

By SYED ZAIN AL-MAHMOOD (May 10, 2013)

—Joe Lauria in New York contributed to this article. 

 

Knight’s name removed from FBI missing persons’ list just 15 months after disappearance

Michelle Knight, the longest-held captive in the Ohio hell house, was removed from the FBI’s missing persons’ database just 15 months after her disappearance, according to a new report.

Cleveland spokeswoman Maureen Harper claimed the cops did the right thing by taking Knight’s name off the list in November 2003, The Cleveland Plain-Dealerreported.

Harper said cops were unable to contact Michelle’s mother Barbara to verify her daughter was still missing.

However, the paper reports that decision conflicts with the department’s written policy, where an officer must confirm a missing person has been found and then contact the FBI within two hours before the name is removed.

 

Knight was found more alive more than 10 years after her Aug. 23, 2002 disappearance, along with Amanda Berry, 27, and Gina DeJesus, 23, after allegedly being kept as sex slaves by Ariel Castro in Cleveland. Knight, now 32, was reportedly pregnant several times but Castro allegedly beat her until she miscarried The Post previously reported.

Having Knight’s name in the National Crime Information Center, called by the FBI as the “lifeline of law enforcement,” would have been the only way law enforcement agencies and victims’ groups could have helped in the search, the newspaper reports.

Harper said cops continued to work Knight’s case, confirming with Barbara that her daughter was still missing through May 2003.

After that, cops were unable to reach the estranged mother by phone, with a detective noting Michelle’s case “will remain invalid until new leads develop.”

Missing adult advocate Kym Pasqualini said if Michelle’s mom had called them for help “we would have had to say no” without an NCIC number to go with Knight’s name.

Knight is still in the hospital recovering from her ordeal.

Yesterday Knight’s twin brother recalled his shock at seeing her alive for the first time in more than a decade.

“When I saw her, she was white as a ghost,” Freddie Knight, 32, told The Post. “But she told me, ‘Come over here and give me a hug. It’s been ages!’ ”

“She was happy to see me. It was emotional. She even recognized me — even though it had been 11 years.”

Freddie, who is estranged from their mom, Barbara, was the first family member to see Michelle after her escape.

Michelle was raped as a teen, became pregnant and lost the baby to social services just before she vanished in 2002. She was impregnated in the attack and had a child, which she then lost to state custody.

“We didn’t talk about that bad stuff. She’s been through a lot, so she’s not ready to talk about that,” Freddie added.

“I’m glad he’s in jail,” he said of Castro.

“I wish he was dead. He should have a death sentence; all those miscarriages. It’s crazy.”

Additional reporting by Lorena Mongelli  (May 10, 2013)

******************************************************************************************************************************************************

‘Daddy’ is a ‘monster’: Ariel Castro’s daughter blasts fiend after women freed from Ohio hell house

Even with her demonic father in all likelihood gone forever, Gregg lives with a living reminder of the troubles that have plagued her family — she takes care of sister Emily Castro’s 5-year-old daughter.

The little girl was taken away from Emily after she slashed her then 11-month-old daughter’s throat in April of 2008.

Things were not always as dark as they are now for the Castro family, although sources told The Post Ariel Castro spent years delivering severe beatings to his late-wife Grimilda Figueroa.

Gregg recalling nothing out of the ordinary going on in her childhood home where Ariel Castro kidnapped and held captive three women for about a decade.

However, the shocking revelations about her father have now put his peculiar habits in a whole new light for Gregg.

“All these weird thing I noticed over the years like how he kept his house locked down so tight in certain areas, how if we’d be out at my grandma’s having dinner he would disappear for an hour or so and then come back and there would be no explanation where he went, everything is making sense now, it’s all adding up,” Gregg said.

At the time, however, Gregg did not think her father’s behavior was anything beyond strange.

For example, one time when she went to visit her father she asked if she could go upstairs to see her childhood bedroom but Castro talked her out of it saying, “Oh, honey, there’s so much junk up there. You don’t want to go up there,” she said.

Gregg thought nothing of the incident when it happened, saying that she just thought of Castro as “being a pack rat.”

While the upstairs was off limits later in life, the basement was a complete no-go zone of the house, even when Gregg was a child, seeing as it was always locked with a “cheap Masterlock.”

One time Gregg did pick the locks, however, and made her way downstairs, “I remember there being a fish tank down there which was odd because there was nobody down there to look at the fish.”

There were no signs that women were being held captive or that there might have been a small girl living in the house, according to Gregg.

That doesn’t mean that Gregg didn’t know the girl existed. About two months ago Castro showed Gregg a picture of a little girl on his phone but he insisted it was his girlfriend’s child by another man.

“I figured at the most he had an illegitimate child out there, you know, and I would find out eventually,” Gregg said.

Gregg now knows the origins of her 6-year-old sister and hopes that she and the other women held captive by her father can get the treatment that they need.

She also hopes that they will come to understand that her father’s actions are not a reflection of her and her family.

“We don’t have monster in our blood,” she said.

 

Police facing questions in Cleveland rescue

One neighbor says a naked woman was seen crawling on her hands and knees in the backyard of the house a few years ago. Another heard pounding on the home’s doors and noticed plastic bags over the windows.

Both times, police showed up but never went inside, neighbors say. Police also paid a visit to the house in 2004, but no one answered the door.

Now, after three women who vanished a decade ago were found captive Monday at the peeling, rundown house, Cleveland police are facing questions for the second time in four years about their handling of missing-person cases and are conducting an internal review to see if they overlooked anything.

City Safety Director Martin Flask said Tuesday that investigators had no record of anyone calling about criminal activity at the house but were still checking police, fire and emergency databases.

The three women were rescued after one of them kicked out the bottom portion of a locked screen door and used a neighbor’s telephone to call 911.

“Help me. I’m Amanda Berry,” she breathlessly told a dispatcher in a call that exhilarated and astonished much of the city. “I’ve been kidnapped and I’ve been missing for 10 years and I’m, I’m here, I’m free now.”

Berry, 27, Michelle Knight, 32, and Gina DeJesus, about 23, had apparently been held captive in the house since their teens or early 20s, said Police Chief Michael McGrath.

Three brothers, ages 50 to 54, were arrested. One of them, former school bus driver Ariel Castro, owned the home, situated in a poor neighborhood dotted with boarded-up houses just south of downtown Cleveland. No immediate charges were filed.

A 6-year-old girl believed to be Berry’s daughter was also found in the home, said Deputy Police Chief Ed Tomba. He would not say who the father was.

The women were reported by police to be in good health and were reunited with joyous family members but remained in seclusion.

“Prayers have finally been answered. The nightmare is over,” said Stephen Anthony, head of the FBI in Cleveland. “These three young ladies have provided us with the ultimate definition of survival and perseverance. The healing can now begin.”

He added: “Words can’t describe the emotions being felt by all. Yes, law enforcement professionals do cry.”

Police would not say how the women were taken captive or how they were hidden in the same neighborhood where they vanished. Investigators also would not say whether they were kept in restraints inside the house or sexually assaulted.

Four years ago, in another poverty-stricken part of town, Cleveland’s police force was heavily criticized following the discovery of 11 women’s bodies in the home and backyard of Anthony Sowell, who was later convicted of murder and sentenced to death.

The families of Sowell’s victims accused police of failing to properly investigate the disappearances because most of the women were addicted to drugs and poor. For months, the stench of death hung over the house, but it was blamed on a sausage factory next door.

In the wake of public outrage over the killings, a panel formed by the mayor recommended an overhaul of the city’s handling of missing-person and sex crime investigations.

This time, two neighbors said they called police to the Castro house on separate occasions.

Elsie Cintron, who lives three houses away, said her daughter once saw a naked woman crawling in the backyard several years ago and called police. “But they didn’t take it seriously,” she said.

Another neighbor, Israel Lugo, said he heard pounding on some of the doors of the house in November 2011. Lugo said officers knocked on the front door, but no one answered. “They walked to side of the house and then left,” he said.

“Everyone in the neighborhood did what they had to do,” said Lupe Collins, who is close to relatives of the women. “The police didn’t do their job.”

Police did go to the house twice in the past 15 years, but not in connection with the women’s disappearance, officials said.

In 2000, before the women vanished, Castro reported a fight in the street, but no arrests were made, Flask said.

In 2004, officers went to the home after child welfare officials alerted them that Castro had apparently left a child unattended on a bus, Flask said. No one answered the door, according to Flask. Ultimately, police determined there was no criminal intent on his part, he said.

Castro, 52, was well known in the mainly Puerto Rican neighborhood. He played bass guitar in salsa and merengue bands. He gave children rides on his motorcycle and joined others at a candlelight vigil to remember two of the missing girls, neighbors said. They also said they would sometimes see him walking a little girl to a neighborhood playground.

Tito DeJesus, an uncle of Gina DeJesus, played in bands with Castro over the last 20 years. He recalled visiting Castro’s house but never noticed anything out of the ordinary, saying it had very little furniture and was filled with musical instruments.

“I had no clue, no clue whatsoever that this happened,” he said.

Also arrested were Castro’s brothers Pedro, 54, and Onil, 50.

On Tuesday, a sign hung on a fence decorated with dozens of balloons outside the home of DeJesus’ parents read “Welcome Home Gina.” Her aunt Sandra Ruiz said her niece had an emotional reunion with family members.

“Those girls, those women are so strong,” Ruiz said. “What we’ve done in 10 years is nothing compared to what those women have done in 10 years to survive.”

Many of the women’s loved ones and friends had held out hope of seeing them again,

For years, Berry’s mother kept her room exactly as it was, said Tina Miller, a cousin. When magazines addressed to Berry arrived, they were piled in the room alongside presents for birthdays and Christmases she missed. Berry’s mother died in 2006.

Just over a month ago, Miller attended a vigil marking the 10th anniversary of Berry’s disappearance.

Over the past decade or so, investigators twice dug up backyards looking for Berry and continued to receive tips about her and DeJesus every few months, even in recent years. The disappearance of the two girls was profiled on TV’s “America’s Most Wanted” in 2005. Few leads ever came in about Knight.

Knight vanished at age 20 in 2002. Berry disappeared at 16 in 2003, when she called her sister to say she was getting a ride home from her job at a Burger King. About a year later, DeJesus vanished at 14 on her way home from school.

Jessica Aponce, 24, said she walked home with DeJesus the day the teenager disappeared.

“She called her mom and told her mom she was on her way home and that’s the last time I seen her,” Aponce said. “I just can’t wait to see her. I’m just so happy she’s alive. It’s been so many years that everybody thinking she was dead.”

Elizabeth Smart and Jaycee Dugard, who were held captive by abductors at a young age, said they were elated by the women’s rescue.

“We need to have constant vigilance, constantly keep our eyes open and ears open because miracles do happen,” Smart said on ABC’s “Good Morning America.”

* AP,  May 7, 2013