i know who's not winning father of the year

and this really is NOT funny. how fucked up does one have to be to give a seven year old a gang tattoo? i really do hope they throw the key away

dad arrested for giving son gang tattoo
It used to be that parents would have to warn their kids about going to school and becoming part of a gang. Now, it looks like the schools will have to warn their kids about their parents getting them into gangs.

A Califorina man was arrested on charges of suspicion of child abuse, mayhem, battery with gang enhancements, false imprisonment, participating in criminal street gang activity and committing a crime for the benefit of a gang, after the found him, his girlfriend and the man's 7-year-old son at a motel. The man, Enrique Gonzalez, 26, and a friend allegedly held the boy down and put a paw print (Awww!) tatoo on his right hip as part of some weird gang thing. The boy's mother (who Gonzalez is not currently married to) was not happy with that and called cops.

Investigators saw Ramirez leaving the room and asked her whether Gonzalez was inside. She confirmed he was there. Following a brief escape attempt through a rear window of the room, Gonzalez surrendered........


dumbass daily

you (the authorities) say nearly 2/3 of the children

of this sect were abused YET YOU RETURNED ALMOST EACH AND EVERY ONE OF THEM? you say 12 girls who are between the ages of 12 and 15 were married (to OLDER MEN of course) and 7 of them gave birth to babies? this sect (i must add, along with many 'mainstream' religions and beliefs)believes women are practically meaningless. they're used to sew and cook and clean and pop out young 'uns (the girl children to be married off to geezers of course). wtf? why did you return the children? why? just because someone f**king bears a child or is the biological father of a child DOES NOT MEAN THEY ARE A PARENT

Texas report: Abuse widespread in polygamist sect
By MICHELLE ROBERTS

SAN ANTONIO (AP) — Nearly two-thirds of the families living at a polygamist group's ranch — targeted in a high-profile raid last spring — had children who were abused or neglected, Texas child welfare officials said in a report released Tuesday.

The Department of Family and Protective Services concluded there was evidence that 12 girls, ages 12 to 15, were "spiritually" married to adult men in the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, which runs the Yearning For Zion Ranch in Eldorado. Seven of them had one or more children, the report says.

Another 262 children were listed as neglected because the agency said their parents knew there was sexual abuse in the household but did not move to protect their children from possible abuse.

The report, which summarizes the investigations done on all 439 children at the West Texas ranch, was issued at the request of the Health and Human Services executive commissioner, a gubernatorial appointee who oversees the protective services agency.

"We received what we believed was a bona fide abuse/neglect report. We were required by law to investigate," said DFPS spokesman Patrick Crimmins.

The report, an unusual step taken to help satisfy expected questions from the state Legislature when it convenes in January, summarized individual investigations and the history of the case. The findings, though shared with law enforcement, are separate from the ongoing criminal cases..........

this shouldn't have happened to anyone

(forced marriage, beatings, rape) much less A TEN YEAR OLD

for her courage and bravery i salute Nujood Ali (and her lawyer shada nasser as well).

man, look at how beautiful those two are!

10-year-old girl's inspiring story opens eyes at Glamour awards

BY SEAN EVANS
DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITER

The most talked about honoree of the 2008 Glamour Women of the Year awards was a small child of 10. Nujood Ali, who flew all the way from her native Yemen for the ritzy Carnegie Hall gala, was married off by impoverished parents to a 30-year-old man who raped and abused her.

Her father, who drew an annual salary equivalent to $900, had 18 children and couldn't afford to clothe and feed Ali so he gave her up for marriage. Though her older husband promised to wait years before becoming intimate with his child bride, he beat her and raped her on their wedding night. Ali had enough.............

Two Voices against Child Marriage and for Education

Nujood Ali, a 10-year girl old from Yemen who courageously escaped from and filed for divorce from a forced marriage, and her lawyer, Shada Nasser, addressed an audience at UNIFEM headquarters today. Both are to receive a Woman of the Year Award from Glamour magazine.

Nujood Ali was married off to a man in his 30s when she was only nine years old. Many little girls in her native Yemen and around the world suffer this kind of fate — but Nujood wouldn't stand for it. After suffering repeated beatings and rape from her husband, she ran away and went directly to the courthouse, asking for a lawyer who could help her. Human rights lawyer and feminist Shada Nasser took on her case free of charge and made history this April by winning Nujood a divorce from her husband, sending a message to the rest of Yemen that marrying girls at such premature ages would not be tolerated. Nujood, now 10, is back at her family's home on the outskirts of Sana'a and has said: "All I want to do now is finish my education. I want to be a lawyer."

Most experts say education is crucial in eradicating the cultural practice of child marriage. The Girls World Communication Center (GWCC) was founded by volunteers in 1998 to help promote female schooling in Yemen, where 65 percent of women are illiterate. ........

picture: DeCrow/AP

Nujood Ali, a 10-year old Yemeni girl, and her lawyer Shada Nasser leave the stage after being honored at the Glamour Women of the Year awards.

ms hamilton gets it right

(in a way that is). of course we could stop a LOT of this shite if we (canada included) PROSECUTED polygamists. it's against AMERICAN LAW AND CANADIAN LAW. when one knows 13 and 14 and 15 year old girls are FORCED into 'marriage' and raped and FORCED to have children and young teen aged boys are FORCED to leave the only world they know and one does nothing, one deserves to be publicly flogged (figuratively, that is). f**k 'religious' rights. when you're torturing children, THEIR rights take precedence. ms hamilton is wrong in her thinking we actually WILL start prosecuting more of these cases. hell, our politicians are committing THE most heinous crimes and we're letting THEM get away with it. why should we make another bunch of old white guys pay for THEIR crimes? (my anger is not only directed at THIS religious sect but ALL religious sects who abuse children - or even adults - in the name of THEIR god)

Prosecuting Polygamy
By Marci Hamilton, Huffington Post
There is nothing so dangerous for a child as an insular, patriarchal religious organization, and the Fundamentalist Latter Day Saints, whose compound in El Dorado, Texas, is now under control of the Texas authorities, is one of the scariest examples. It took the extraordinary bravery of a 16-year-old girl to set in motion a chain of events that should have happened long ago.
She reported that she had been "married" to a 50-year-old man, forced to have sex, get pregnant, and have a baby. Because of her, Texas authorities have taken hundreds of children and women to safety. From all reports, they have yet to find her.
I give the Texas law enforcement and child protective agency officials a great deal of credit for moving in on the compound. They bucked the three trends in our culture that have kept these children at risk for far too long.
First, authorities in general are too fearful of intervening in religious enclaves, even when the harm is so awful and apparent. Yet, there is no right of religious liberty to engage in child and spousal abuse, or polygamy for that matter. The taboo against holding religious entities accountable is simply foolhardy.
In fact, enforcement of the polygamy laws could have stemmed many of these abuses. Yet, it is the rare prosecutor who will prosecute on the basis of the polygamy laws, despite the fact those laws are utterly clear and repeatedly have been upheld against constitutional attack. The largest enclave of FLDS resides in Bountiful, British Columbia. A misguided Canadian public official announced just yesterday that the government cannot go forward with a prosecution of polygamy against the FLDS (where the accounts of abuse are legendary), because of concerns about religious liberty. If Canadian law, though, protects polygamy, it also protects the child and spousal abuse that inevitably follow. That is not religious liberty, but rather religious licentiousness. American prosecutors have been marginally better, though there are many more cases out there that they ignore on daily basis..........

person of the month:

Nojoud Muhammed Nasser. who is she? she is an EIGHT YEAR OLD GIRL in yeman. why is she the person of the month? because she had the courage to bring her father to court for forcing her to marry a 30 year old man. even better, the judge (IN YEMAN) actually prosecuted her father AND her husband.
8-year-old girl asks for divorce in court
SANA’A, April 9 - An eight-year-old girl decided last week to go the Sana’a West Court to prosecute her father, who forced her to marry a 30-year-old man.Nojoud Muhammed Nasser arrived at court by herself on Wednesday, April 2, looking for a judge to handle her case against her father, Muhammed Nasser, who forced her two months ago to marry Faez Ali Thamer, a man 22 years her senior. The child also asked for a divorce, accusing her husband of sexual and domestic abuse. According to Yemeni law, Nojoud cannot prosecute, as she is underage. However, court judge Muhammed Al-Qathi heard her complaint and subsequently ordered the arrests of both her father and husband.“My father beat me and told me that I must marry this man, and if I did not, I would be raped and no law and no sheikh in this country would help me. I refused but I couldn’t stop the marriage,” Nojoud Nasser told the Yemen Times. “I asked and begged my mother, father, and aunt to help me to get divorced. They answered, ‘We can do nothing. If you want you can go to court by yourself.’ So this is what I have done,” she said. ..............

..............Thamer is in jail now. “Yes I was intimate with her, but I have done nothing wrong, as she is my wife and I have the right and no one can stop me," he said.................
(shout out to feministing)

can you imagine being so uneducated

you couldn't spell your own last name? you didn't know your bithdate? can you imagine at the age or 13 or 14 being forced into a plural 'marriage' (or even a SINGLE marriage), being forced to bear babies? being beaten?

there is a reason most of the children removed were girls. why? because the leaders get rid of the boys and young men. competition you know. they find some excuse and boot them out or excommunicate them.

my question is, WHY DID IT TAKE SO LONG TO RESCUE THESE CHILDREN (and women)? why? they've crossed state lines.

it's ok, they're only women and children. that's why. who gives a flying yoo hoo about THEM?

Late-Night Call Revealed Secret World
Sect Had Moved to Compound After Fleeing Utah, Colorado



By Sylvia Moreno and Adam Kilgore Washington Post Staff Writers
SAN ANGELO, Tex., April 8 -- The cry for help came late at night -- at 11:32 p.m. -- and it came in a whisper. Speaking in a low voice to avoid being overheard, the 16-year-old girl -- mother of an 8-month-old baby and pregnant with a second child -- sketched out chilling tales. She spoke of teenage girls, some as young as 13, being forced to have sex with older men for the purpose of bearing their children. She said she was the seventh "spiritual" wife of a 49-year-old man. She described beatings by him as so vicious that one time several of her ribs had been broken.
The March 29 phone call, and one the next day from the compound run by an insular and secretive splinter sect of the Mormon Church, prompted raids by authorities; they took 416 children into protective custody, the largest child removal in Texas history. The children, mostly girls, ranged in age from infants to 17. Several have babies or are pregnant. ..........

i have a new hero

and her name is jill campbell.

jill and her husband gary worked very hard to document CHILD ABUSE at a swiss run orphanage in ethiopia. terre des hommes-lausanne was it's name. not only did they PROVE the abuse but the orphanage eventually ADMITTED the abuse. however, the campbells were then sued by the 'charity' for defamation (i couldn't believe it either) AND THE 'CHARITY' WON. they demanded an apology from the campbells (or ms campbell would have to serve six months jail time). gary apologized (he said they both couldn't go to jail. one of them needed to care for their children). jill WAS NOT GOING TO APOLOGIZE and she was ready to do the time. at the last minute the 'charity' withdrew it's suit. after exiting court, ms campbell had this to say

"The charity has wasted seven years pursuing us through the courts and chasing and intimidating us. "These would have been much better spent supporting the victims and apologising to them and seeking compensation for them."

here's the bbc article UK teacher escapes Ethiopia jail

why is it we let SOME child abusers off

and we prosecute others? you know what? i could give two shites about people practicing polygamy (of course it IS against the law). i really don't care if it is THEIR choice and EVERYONE is comfortable with it (in the deep recesses of my cold black heart, i don't really think EVERYONE who is in a polygamous relationship IS happy with it). if you're doing it to 'get into heaven' well then you're not living in reality. i'm also not quite sure everyone who is a fundamentalist mormon who practices polygamy does it for PURE reasons......

that is neither here nor there. i AM concerned when 14 year olds (grrrls) get raped by their brothers and fathers and uncles. i AM concerned when 14 year old grrrls (when i say 14, i mean thereabouts a little older, a little younger) get MARRIED OFF. i am concerned when 14 year old boys are kicked out of their communities and their families so the male geezers in the sect get to rape the 14 year old grrrls (see of course they drive all of the boys out). what the f**k kind of society are we living in anyway?

Girl, 14, fled abuse, 'mind control' of polygamy
From Amanda Townsend and Agnes Pawlowski

CNN) -- Sara Hammon saw some of her sisters pulled out of school to be married to men they didn't know. She dreaded a similar fate. And so, she ran away from home before she was old enough to drive legally.
She left behind 19 mothers, 74 siblings, and a father she says could never remember her name, even though he repeatedly molested her.
And, she left behind a culture she says was oppressive for young women.
Hammon recently gave CNN a deeply disturbing account of her life inside the polygamous sect whose leader, Warren Jeffs, goes on trial this week in Utah.
Jeffs is accused of being an accomplice to rape. The charge stems from his alleged practice of arranging polygamous marriages between child brides and older male followers.
Hammon is not directly involved in the charges against Jeffs, which concern an arranged marriage between a girl, 14 and her 19-year-old cousin. She left the sect before she could be placed in an arranged marriage. But she is one of its most outspoken former members. Watch Hammon describe her escape from a closed world »
"Probably the worst part of the whole theology," she said, " is the treatment of women and teaching women that they are not equal to men." ..............




old postings: sara

an update to

my posting of the other day on a..............shocking find....

24 Emaciated Boys Found At Baghdad Orphanage
Iraqi Official Denies Allegations of Abuse

By John Ward Anderson and Dahlia Farooq Washington Post Foreign Service

but get THIS excuse: (it's a good one!!!)

............."The American forces attacked the house about 2 a.m. and broke the doors and caused a huge mess everywhere in the house," she said. "The kids were naked because there was no electricity and the weather is very hot, so we wanted to reduce the heat, and the workers took off the kids' clothes."................

a shocking find in iraq

but it's happened elsewhere. it's even happened here. not so much in orphanages but in private or semi-private residences

anyone that can do this to a child .......... well i think you can guess how i feel

a special shout out to the troops (both us and iraqi) who rescued these boys (but i have to wonder, what the heck will become of them now???)

Iraqi Orphanage Nightmare
Exclusive: U.S. And Iraqi Troops Discover And Rescue Orphan Boys Left Starving, Chained To Beds

(CBS) It was a scene that shocked battle-hardened soldiers, captured in photographs obtained exclusively by CBS News.

On a daytime patrol in central Baghdad just over than a week ago, a U.S. military advisory team and Iraqi soldiers happened to look over a wall and found something horrific.

"They saw multiple bodies laying on the floor of the facility," Staff Sgt. Mitchell Gibson of the 82nd Airborne Division told CBS News chief foreign correspondent Lara Logan. "They thought they were all dead, so they threw a basketball (to) try and get some attention, and actually one of the kids lifted up their head, tilted it over and just looked and then went back down. And they said, 'oh, they're alive' and so they went into the building."

...........