Survivors News and Reviews

Two different murderers that used Facebook to track down their victims, one of whom pretended to be a different person to kidnap and murder a 17 year old girl, received life sentences of 35 and 22 years this week in British Courts.

The stories are at the BBC here and here respectively. The first case has now moved on to analysing the police handling of the case due to the admission of murder which sped up the legal process.

We have not written an entry about Jon Venables, one of the 1993 murderers of two year old James Bulger in Liverpool, England. A Facebook group calling for him to be named before any trial on his as-yet-unconfirmed new criminal charges, slandered an innocent man who had been mistaken for the killer as an adult on previous occasions (despite clearly having a different hair colour to the offender and being on the outside whilst Venables is back in prison). The group in the course of being shut down but as with the Baby P campaign, it continues through text messaging.

The UK media is now listing every possible crime it can think of to try to get Jack Straw, the Justice Secretary, to name the correct charge through a process of elimination. Therefore, it’s the newspapers that must take responsibility for David Calvert’s persecution.

We will report on any such formal charge when it actually happens and write about the case properly when it is over, later this year or early next year.

Following the revelation of child abuse allegations at Jesuit schools in Germany, now similar charges were levelled at Catholic Schools in the country, with one survivor testifying to his experiences.

The Associated Press report is located here.

- CBG

It’s been a week since a former high school student who used Facebook to blackmail several of his classmates aged 15-17 into sexual acts – after being previously in contact with the police after threatening to blow up his own school.

Though you can Google or Wiki Anthony Stancl’s name for the extended details, there has been an interesting debate springing up in the comments at CNet News, and you can read them here. If you head to the Huffington Post news aggregation link, its own glossary will lead you to video at CBS news about the case. The second video is in a separate link that pre-dates the sentencing, but it re-iterates basic advice about Facebook in general which is repeated in the CNet comments.

- CBG.

Nathan from DadWagon sent me a note today to let me know about an interview they did on the site with Joel Johnson. Joel is a gadget geek, and has worked on such well-known blogs as Gizmodo, and BoingBoing. Recently, he posted on his personal site about having grown up a victim of sexual abuse and how that has affected him into adulthood. You can read the interview over at DadWagon, and here’s the link to his original piece, which may be a bit graphic for some.

With all of the celebrity suicides in the news recently, John Grohol took advantage of the uptick in people looking for information about suicide and untreated depression to give a brief glimpse into the risk among young adults, and some of the warning signs to look for in this post today. I’m copying the important bullet points under how you can help, but read the whole thing to truly get all the information:

Every single day, another 11 young adults will choose death by suicide.

What You Can Do To Help

It’s important to recognize the warning signs of a teen or young adult who may be thinking about suicide:

• Talking about suicide or death or “going away”
• Talking about feeling hopeless or guilty
• Pulling away from friends or family
• Losing the desire to take part in normal activities
• Having trouble concentrating or thinking clearly
• Exhibiting lots of self-destructive behavior (drinking alcohol, driving too fast)
• Giving away prized possessions or their stuff
• Big changes in their eating or sleeping habits

Experts recommend that, if you’re an adult in a teen’s or young adult’s life, to stay involved:

• Watch and listen for warning signs
• Keep lines of communication open and express your concern, support and love
• If your teen doesn’t want to talk, suggest a more neutral person such as a relative, clergy member, counselor or doctor
• Ask questions, even tough ones, such as if he or she has had thoughts of suicide
• Get psychological help if your child is thinking about suicide
• If your teen is in a crisis situation, your emergency room can conduct an evaluation and refer you to resources
• Make sure you keep an appointment with a mental health professional — even if your teen says he or she is feeling better

William Goad is Britain’s worst paedophile to be caught and convicted, having attacked 3000 children and having kept score year on year like it was sport and having boasted about attacking 282 kids in one year at his peak of offending.

A petition has been raised online which is viewed by the staff of British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, in an attempt to keep him behind bars and help support the grown up surviving victims who will be forced to re-live the abuse via statements to keep him incarcerated otherwise.

The petition is here if you wish to sign it.

- CBG

CNN broke a story today about a doctor arrested for abusing 102 girls and a boy on his patient lists. The video report is here and being a new story, we’re not sure how much of it will remain online so catch it quickly.

It’s more shocking that one single disclosure after a decade was the only element granting probable cause to the authorities trying to nail the alleged offender and that there are three more states where he was licensed to practice with the wider list potentially reaching 7000 patients across all four states. The sole miniscule upside was the creation of the child pornography evidence needed to ensure that the pre-verbal toddler victims would be counted without the need for testifying.

- CBG

The Irish version of the Sunday Independent, which is a different newspaper to the British version, published an editorial yesterday questioning the effectiveness of the recent resignation of several Catholic Bishops.

Read it here.

- CBG

Oprah Winfrey’s female abusers special has yet to air. In between the two specials grouping male and female abusers separately in double episode specials, Gregg Mulligan was interviewed, as a survivor of physical abuse, rape, and being sold into child prostitution by his mother. It’s presented as a complete story in the one episode this time.

At the end the Rape Abuse and Incest National Network (RAINN) receives a mention, and you can access that site here.

View the complete episode here which went online as of 9am today (16th) but as normal with hosted video outside of Youtube, we recommend that you see it as soon as possible. If the direct link doesn’t work then go straight to Oprah.com and search the main section or right hand column.

- CBG

In addition to the op-ed piece in The Heights today, The Pope also met with Irish bishops following the publication of the archdiocese report into the child abuse scandal in Ireland.

As usual for a BBC report the collected stories are in the right-hand column, and you can view the story here.

- CBG