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  This site is dedicated to passing on and reporting the real news.  The real news is  that which is often neglected by mainstream media and  that which you must know to be an informed citizen.  We have organized the news by subject. Links to complete reports are in blue.  Please scroll down to view the stories or choose from the menu below:

 

 

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TEEN LIBERTY/TEEN TORTURE INDUSTRY NEWS

Foster father charged--Man allegedly offered money to teens in exchange for sex--February 5th, 2010--Sex charges have been laid against a former Foster Family of the Year award winner who has cared for up to 55 children over the past two decades.

In June 2009, police received information that Garry Prokopishin, a director for the Calgary and District Foster Parents Association, was allegedly offering troubled teens in his care money for sexual acts.

This has prompted an immediate review by Alberta Children and Youth Services.  For complete story, click here.

 

Lake investigates sex abuse allegations at children's ranch--February 4th, 2010--Lake County officials are investigating a complaint that a juvenile living at the Green Isle Children's Ranch abused another as many as five other kids living at the facility, the Lake County Sheriff's Office said.  For complete story, click here.

 

Home for troubled teens slated to close--February 2nd, 2010--BENNINGTON – A local long-term residential educational facility for at-risk youth, 204 Depot Street, will be closing this week and leaving 10 people without jobs, according to William Bryan, president of the Board of Directors of SEALL Inc.

"The decision was made to cease making referrals. Statewide (the Department of Children and Families,) told us, they have to cut between 12 and 18 beds. We were only filling roughly 10 of those beds so that their other programs will have to feel our pain as well," Bryan said.

204 Depot Street, which will close on Feb. 6, serves older adolescent boys, between the ages of 15 and 17, through a residential educational program that lasts at least a year. It is run by SEALL Inc., a local nonprofit organization with a board of eight people.  For complete story, click here.

 

Troubled Teen Hospital Closing--January 26th, 2010--Tuesday, Newschannel 9 confirmed that Cumberland Hall is shutting it doors at the end of this month.  For complete story, click here.

 

Woman sues Starbucks over underage sex--January 25th, 2010 (Story references Integrity House)--

The relationship came to an end in July 2006, when her mother called Integrity House, a home in Utah for troubled teens. Counselors from Integrity House "abducted" Moore with her parents' consent, shoving her into a car and driving her to their facility, where she lived for the next year.

During her stay, Moore wrote a "come clean letter" — a sort of confession to her parents — in which she listed the men she'd had sex with.

In a deposition, a counselor at Integrity House said that after Moore lost her virginity, she had a "mind-set that she was damaged goods, so it didn't matter what she did."

Moore "thought she loved" Horton, counselor Carol Williams testified. She thought she could "be with him for the rest of her life," Williams said.

Moore's family has sued Starbucks in federal court, claiming the company failed to protect the minor. They asked for $16.8 million in damages, including $10 million in punitive damages, and $200,000 in loss of earnings to date.  For complete story, click here.

 

Trial Under Way For Childcare Workers In Teen’s Death--January 25th, 2010-- The trial for three former childcare workers accused of causing the death of a teenager is getting under way Monday.

The three women worked at Parmadale, a local treatment center for troubled teens in Parma.

Prosecutors said they caused the death of 17-year-old Faith Finley, who suffocated while being restrained on the floor at the facility.  For complete story, click here.

 

School For Troubled Teens Faces Closure--January 18th, 2010--Clarksville's Genesis Learning Center May Close Due To Funding Shortage...  For complete story, click here.

 

Landmark Federal Class-Action Lawsuit Charges Los Angeles County With Failure To Educate Youth In Probation Camps--January 12th, 2010--  LOS ANGELES – An alliance of legal groups including the American Civil Liberties Union and the ACLU of Southern California today filed a ground-breaking class-action lawsuit against the Los Angeles County 
Probation Department and top county education officials for their total failure to provide youth in the county's largest juvenile probation facility with basic and appropriate education. The failure has resulted in children not being adequately prepared to re-enter society and the workforce. 
For complete story, click here.

 

Four Years Later: Martin Lee Anderson Boot Camp Death--January 6th, 2010--By now, the story of Martin Lee Anderson's death has been well-documented. During his first day at the Bay County Juvenile Boot Camp, Anderson collapsed during a fitness run.

Boot camp drill instructors thought he was faking to get out of the exercise, so they pushed Anderson to complete the run. The camp's cameras recorded an agonizing twenty-minute confrontation, which thrust the case into the worldwide spotlight.

Once the guards realized Anderson was truly in distress, they called for help. But, it was too late. The teen died early the next morning, January 6, 2006, in a Pensacola hospital.

The Medical Examiner's initial autopsy found Anderson died as a result of complications from sickle cell trait. Those results, and the results of a second autopsy conducted several months later, became the central evidence in the criminal trial of seven of the drill instructors and the camp nurse. A year and a half after Anderson's death, they were all acquitted of aggravated manslaughter charges.

Since the trial, Anderson family supporters, including the local NAACP chapter, have continued to push for federal civil rights violation charges against the defendants.

Bay County NAACP president Rev. Rufus Wood said, "I want it to be clear that this is not as much about black and white as it is about right and wrong. This is about right and wrong, and it's about wrong. What happened to Martin was wrong."  For complete story, click here.  For more on this story, click here.

 

U.S. says sex abuse high at 13 juvenile centers--January 7th, 2010--WASHINGTON (AP) — A government study issued Thursday finds 13 juvenile detention facilities around the country have high rates of sex abuse and victimization, where nearly 1 out of every 3 inmates reported some type of victimization.  A Justice Department study has found that nationwide, about 12% of youths held in state-run, privately-run, or local facilities reported  some type of sexual victimization — but those rates varied widely  from place to place.  For complete story, click here.
 

 

Schools face accreditation issues--January 5th, 2010--...Smith said the school is applying for accreditation from another body, the Pacific Northwest Association of Independent Schools. And if that body accredits the school, it will satisfy the state's accreditation requirement.

Several other private schools also face advised or warned status. Utah Helicopter Inc., a postsecondary school in Spanish Fork, is being recommended for advised status; Cross Creek Academy, a private residential school in La Verkin for troubled teens, for advised status; Top Flight Academy, also a private residential school in Mt. Pleasant, for warned status; private school Dorius Academy in Layton for warned status.

Attempts to reach Utah Helicopter, Dorius and Top Flight Academy this week for comment were unsuccessful. Karr Farnsworth, administrator at Cross Creek, said he was unaware of the school's recommended advised status and said he doesn't know how it got that status.  For complete story, click here.  For more information on Utah, click here.

 

 

NY Accused of Abusing Troubled Teens--January 6th, 2010--(CN) - The New York State Office of Children and Family Services subjected 500 troubled youths in state detention to violent physical restraint, and routinely denied them legally required mental health care services, nine children and their parents claim in a federal class action.
     Among other wanton acts, state employees regularly employ a dangerous form of control known as prone restraint - having two adults hold the youth face-down on the floor while his hands are held or cuffed behind him. Prone restraint exposes the victim to risk of cardiac and respiratory arrest, back, arm and neck injuries, abrasions, strained muscles and head injuries, according to the complaint.
     Such treatment led to the 2006 death of a Bronx teen at the Tryon Boys' Residential Center in Johnston, and serious mental and physical injuries to scores of others, the complaint states.
     The families claim that OCFS Commissioner Gladys Carrion allowed the behavior to continue despite red flags raised by the U.S. Justice Department and a blue-ribbon panel appointed by Gov. David Patterson.
     The nine named plaintiffs, all of whom are identified by only their initials, said their treatment violated the 14th Amendment, Title II of the Americans with Disabilities Act, and Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act.  For complete story, click here.

 

 

Trapped in a Mormon Gulag--January 5th, 2009 (Rec'd January 5th, 2010)--This story is about Eric Norwood's personal experiences at a place called The Utah Boys Ranch, which models itself as a "tough-love" prep-school, but while Eric was there, he witnessed some unbelievable atrocities. It is a Mormon-funded and staffed facility, and religious indoctrination is a fundamental aspect of the school. There was sexual, physical, and emotional abuse, suicide, staff corruption, and escape. A major Utah political figure, Senator Chris Buttars, was the executive director while Eric was there.  See Video below or click here for more on this story.

 

Former Whittell dean indicted in Georgia--December 6th, 2009 (Rec'd January 2nd, 2010)--A grand jury in Georgia has indicted a former Whittell High School administrator on felony charges of aggravated battery, invasion of privacy, and four counts of first degree cruelty to children.

Richard Darrington, 37, was hired as Whittell's dean of students at the beginning of the school year, but lost the position when the Nevada Department of Education revoked his substitute teaching license after learning of outstanding battery charges facing him in Georgia.

The charges stem from Darrington's time in the southern state, where he operated a private school for teens called Darrington Academy for five years.

The bill of indictment, which lists 23 grand jurors of the Superior Court of Fannin County, alleges that Darrington “did maliciously cause bodily harm” to one of his students “by seriously disfiguring his tooth,” resulting in the aggravated battery charge.

The invasion of privacy charge alleges that Darrington placed a recording device in a girls' room and observed and recorded their activities without consent.

The four counts of cruelty to children allege that Darrington forced students to stand outside in freezing weather with no shirts, shoes or socks on two separate occasions, that he slammed a girl's head into a wall, and that he stood on a boy's ankles while in a “tripod” position and also slammed his head into a wall.

In addition to Darrington, three other teachers at the school were included in the indictment; one for invasion of privacy and six counts of cruelty to children, and the other two for two counts each of cruelty to children.  (For complete story, click here.)

 

 

Treatment of Youths in New York Prisons Spurs Suit--December 30th, 2009--Youths detained in some of New York’s juvenile prisons have  suffered bruises, cuts and a host of other injuries from aggressive  physical restraining practices that violate their legal and  constitutional rights, according to a federal lawsuit filed on  Wednesday.

The class-action suit, filed in federal court in Manhattan on behalf  of roughly 500 youths in 10 of the prisons, also accuses the Office  of Children and Family Services, the state agency that runs the  facilities, of failing to provide adequate mental health services

The legal claim follows two withering reports from the United States  Department of Justice and a state task force that portrayed the  state’s juvenile justice system as so riddled with problems that it  needed a complete overhaul.

The suit seeks an injunction that would sharply limit the use of  force by youth counselors and require the state to provide the youths  with more treatment for mental health problems, which affect a vast  majority of those in custody.  For complete story, click here.

 

Md. official would like to 'blow up' girls' detention center--December 28th, 2009--LAUREL — - As you approach Thomas J.S. Waxter Children's Center, a  sign cautions that you are under camera surveillance. Notices warn 
against bringing in contraband - glass bottles, cigarettes, weapons.

A metal detector sits in the front hall. You pass through a locked  metal door to reach the residential wings.

Down the hallway, the staff supervision room is separated from the  children by a thick metal cage.

On a Wednesday in September, a girl stands shackled in the hall, the  cuffs around her hands and ankles connected by a metal chain.

This is Waxter, the only long-term, secure treatment facility for  female juvenile offenders run by the state.

"Nothing's worse than Waxter, dead serious, nothing's worse," said  Britney McCoy, 19, who has been in and out of Waxter and other  facilities since she was 12. She was most recently in Waxter in 2008.

McCoy is not Waxter's only critic. The Juvenile Justice Monitoring  Unit of the attorney general's office has noted a litany of problems  at Waxter, including: allegations by girls that they are physically  abused by staff members; mingling of girls convicted of serious  crimes with girls held for minor offenses; inadequate physical  facilities; and overcrowding and understaffing, which lead to violence.

"No one should have to live there. No one should have to work there,"  said Claudia Wright, who monitors the facility for the Juvenile  Justice Monitoring Unit.  For complete story, click here.

 

ACLU says youth tortured at state prison--December 17th, 2009--A 17-year-old boy suffering from mental illnesses was so traumatized by his deplorable treatment in the Montana State Prison that he twice attempted to kill himself by biting through the skin on his wrist to puncture a vein, a lawsuit filed Wednesday by the American Civil Liberties Union of Montana alleges.

The lawsuit filed in Lewis and Clark County District Court claims that the boy, “Robert Doe,” has been treated illegally and inhumanely and has been detained for about 10 months in solitary confinement.  Doe was Tasered as part of a “behavior modification plan,” pepper-sprayed and stripped naked in view of other inmates, the complaint states.  For complete story, click here.

 

Poor Children Likelier to Get Antipsychotics--December 12th, 2009--New federally financed drug research reveals a stark disparity: children covered by Medicaid are given powerful antipsychotic medicines at a rate four times higher than children whose parents have private insurance. And the Medicaid children are more likely to receive the drugs for less severe conditions than their middle-class counterparts, the data shows.  For complete story, click here.

 

Saving Troubled Teens: A Greedy Industry?--December 10th, 2009--..."If you're going to do it right, it's going to be costly," said Behar. The biggest expense for these programs is staffing well-trained, qualified people who can make good decisions in an emergency situation. In Behar's 32 years of experience overseeing state-run facilities, she knows it's very difficult to turn a profit. Yet many of these private facilities are making money, hand over fist. "In order to make a profit, they have to cut in some way, and since manpower is the biggest expense, that's where the cuts come," Behar said. The companies are saving money by hiring younger, less experienced people and are providing less expert supervision. Critics argue this cost-cutting measure puts the children at risk.

Dana Blum believes the staff's negligence is to blame for her son's death. "They killed my child when they didn't attend to him. I feel like he was murdered." The Salt Lake City District Attorney took Aspen to court. But ruling there was no "intent" to kill Brendan, a Utah judge dropped the criminal charges filed against the two employees. The state put Youth Care on probation, requiring it to retool its employee training. The facility never faced any fines, and remained open for business.

Devastated and distraught, Dana began looking online into Aspen's public financial statements. She learned that the Cupertino-based company is actually owned by a health care corporate giant, CRC Health. And Bain Capital, a multibillion dollar private equity firm, owns CRC.

Dana has filed a civil suit against the financial goliath, which could settle out of court. Critics believe this is why so few stories of abuse, neglect, and death at these facilities are made public. Aspen has enough money in its war chest to make these allegations go away. "If you look at their daily profit numbers compared to what they charge, it's obscene," Dana said. "It made me very angry that they couldn't provide better emergency services for my son."...  For complete story, click here.

 

Governor Pat Quinn Refusing to Shine Light on Juvenile Prisons--December 10th, 2009--Illinois Governor Pat Quinn is not allowing WBEZ to examine the state's juvenile prisons.  For four months WBEZ has been trying to negotiate some access to the prisons. Last week, Quinn's staff told us there would be none. We said we would report that denial. Later that day, we were offered a single tour of one of the better facilities, an offer WBEZ accepted, but an offer which would not allow the public meaningful insight into the hundred million dollar department that has care of some of the
most troubled and troubling kids in Illinois. Bob Reed is the governor's spokesman. He says they're working on their own review of the facilities.  For complete story, click here.

 

14-Year-Old Accuses Officer Of Assault--December 9th, 2009-- A school resource officer in Rutherford County who helps keep at-risk youth on the right track is accused of assaulting one of the troubled teens.  For complete story, click here.  For more on this story, click here.

 

Duchesne nurse charged with sex abuse of teens--December 8th, 2009--(Cedar Ridge Academy in Utah)--ROOSEVELT — A man who worked as a nurse at a boarding school for troubled teens has been charged with sexually abusing two of the school's teenage residents.

Geary David Oakes, 57, of Cedarview, Duchesne County, is charged in 8th District Court with two counts of forcible sodomy, a first-degree felony, and two counts of forcible sexual abuse, a second-degree felony.

A nurse at Cedar Ridge Academy, Oakes engaged in sex acts with two 15-year-old students from the school, the charges state.

One of the teens told deputies that Oakes gave him pain medication, according to the Duchesne County Sheriff's Office, and that he "provides pain and sleeping medications for the kids at Cedar Ridge and tells them to keep it a secret." Oakes denied that he had supplied anyone with medication that was not prescribed, authorities said.

Cedar Ridge Academy, located north of Roosevelt, is billed as a therapeutic boarding school. Investigators believe Oakes' alleged activities with the teens occurred at the school and at his home during November.  For complete story, click here.  For more on this story, click here and here.

 

Kin sue Harvard over son’s suicide--December 4th, 2009--Harvard sophomore John Edwards was studying to become a doctor and training for the Boston Marathon in June 2007 when he sought help at the university’s Health Services because he could not study for as many hours as some of his friends.

A nurse practitioner prescribed a drug to treat attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, a condition the overachieving Edwards had never been diagnosed with. Later, she prescribed two powerful antidepressants, Prozac and Wellbutrin, when he began complaining of anxiety, depression, and other side effects. Meanwhile, he was taking a fourth drug for acne, Accutane, that has been linked to suicidal thoughts.

 

“The Wellbutrin is having the effect that we were seeking . . . but unfortunately I feel like it has canceled out the anxiety-reducing effects of the fluoxetine [Prozac], as recently I’ve been pretty nervous,’’ Edwards wrote in a Nov. 27, 2007, e-mail to the nurse practitioner, Marianne Cannon. “Let me know if I should schedule to come in and meet with you soon, or if I should change the med plan.’’

 

Cannon replied that she was concerned and told Edwards to schedule an appointment with her. Two days later, Edwards, 19, of Wellesley committed suicide in a bathroom at Harvard Medical School by suffocating himself with a plastic bag.

 

His father, John B. Edwards II of Wellesley, filed a suit Wednesday in Middlesex Superior Court alleging gross negligence by Cannon; Dr. Georgia Ede, who was the doctor who supervised her; and Harvard College, for causing his son’s wrongful death.  For complete story, click here.

 

Outdoor Therapeutic Program to close Dec. 31--December 3rd, 2009--Camp Appalachian Wilderness, a state-subsidized facility north of Cleveland that helps troubled teens, is set to close Dec. 31.

The Georgia Department of Behavioral Health and Developmental Disabilities announced last week that the White County program was no longer financially sustainable.  For complete story, click here.

 

Truancy Officer Preyed on Girls--November 27th, 2009--A Hamilton truancy officer convicted of sexually abusing four female students used a school pilot scheme to identify and groom troubled teens, a court has been told.

Mark Pene, 54, was sentenced yesterday in the Hamilton District Court to six years and three months' jail after pleading guilty to indecent assault, having sexual connection with a girl under 16, doing an indecent act with a girl under 16 and doing an indecent act on a girl under 12.

The charges related to offending against four girls, aged 11 to 17, between 2005 and 2008.

At the time, Pene was employed as a truancy officer in Hamilton, working with troubled teenagers and their families.

Pene gained access to two of his victims by inviting them to take part in a school pilot scheme. The programme included such benefits as free lunches, payment of school fees and money for clothing.

Pene yesterday sat impassively in the dock as details of his offending were revealed, moving only to shield his face from a Waikato Times photographer.  For complete story, click here.

 

Lawsuits raise more questions about troubled youth program in Hastings--November 25th, 2009--Lawsuits against Hastings Youth Academy, a 165-bed facility for troubled teens in St. Johns County, accuse staff members of repeatedly using excessive force and conspiring to cover it up.

G4S Youth Services, which contracts with the Florida Department of Juvenile Justice to run the boys program, is accused in one of the suits of negligence on behalf of a teen whose shoulder was shattered by an employee in February 2008.

That suit, filed this month, claims G4S and the department ignored past problems and didn't properly protect Anthony Vessels, 16. The boy's attorney said surveillance video shows the employee throwing the youth to the ground, then sitting on him as he writhed in pain.

Vessels, now 18, lives in Orlando and is pursuing his GED, his attorney said, but continues to suffer physically and psychologically from the injury.  For complete story, click here.

 

Court upholds ruling against home for troubled teens--November 21st, 2009--YOUNGSTOWN — The 7th District Court of Appeals has upheld a township zoning appeals board ruling that a group home for emotionally and behaviorally troubled teenage boys doesn’t belong in a single-family residential neighborhood.

A three-judge panel of the appeals court unanimously ruled Friday in support of the Ellsworth Township board’s decision that the Redemption House group home, 11780 W. Western Reserve Road, does not constitute a single-family housekeeping unit as defined in the township zoning code.

In making its ruling, the appeals court backed an August 2008 ruling by Judge Timothy E. Franken of Mahoning County Common Pleas Court that affirmed the December 2006 ruling of the Ellsworth Township board.

“This is not the proper location for them to do this type of activity,” said Atty. Scott Cochran, who represented neighbors opposed to the group home’s location.

“There was nothing to indicate to us that this was, in any way, a family environment,” he added.  For complete story, click here.

 

American Youth in the 21st Century: Pathologized, Criminalized and Disposable--November 16th, 2009--Punishment and fear have replaced compassion and social responsibility as the most important modalities mediating the relationship of youth to the larger social order. Youth within the last two decades have come to be seen as a source of trouble rather than as a resource for investing in the future, and in the case of poor black and Hispanic youth are increasingly treated as either a disposable population, cannon fodder for barbaric wars abroad, or the source of most of society’s problems. Hence, young people now constitute a crisis that has less to do with improving the future than with denying it. As Larry Grossberg points out, “It has become common to think of kids as a threat to the existing social order and for kids to be blamed for the problems they experience. We slide from kids in trouble, kids have problems, and kids are threatened, to kids as trouble, kids as problems, and kids as threatening.” This was exemplified when the columnist Bob Herbert reported in the New York Times that “parts of New York City are like a police state for young men, women, and children who happen to be black or Hispanic. They are routinely stopped, searched, harassed, intimidated, humiliated and, in many cases, arrested for no good reason.” No longer “viewed as a privileged sign and embodiment of the future,” youth are now increasingly demonized by the popular media and derided by politicians looking for quick-fix solutions to crime and other social ills. While youth have always had to bear the misplaced fear and distrust of adults, how youth are represented, talked about, and treated has changed dramatically in the last two decades. For complete story, click here.

 

DEATH ROW SERIAL MOLESTER CONNECTED TO CEDU--November 12th, 2009--California Department of Justice (DOJ) investigators are researching the possibility that serial child molester and child murderer, James Lee Crummel, 65 of San Quentin State Prison, had years of free, unsupervised access to the students at the now defunct CEDU School in Running Springs.


   The CEDU schools in Running Springs were founded by Mel Wasserman in 1967 and promoted itself as an emotional growth-boarding school for troubled youths.  Monthly costs to board a student reportedly ran as high as $3,500 dollar a month.   The school closed its doors in 2005 amidst allegations of financial improprieties, allegations of sexual and physical abuse of the students, by other students and staff members and citations issued by the State of California for various violations.  At a non-compliance conference, CEDU officials reportedly admitted that the rights of students under their care were systematically violated.  For complete story, click here.

 

Superjail for youth raises troubling questions--November 9th, 2009--Troubled teens promised cutting-edge treatment at Ontario's new $93 million superjail for youth have instead been deprived of food, denied programming and subjected to questionable body cavity searches, according to a review by a senior provincial official.

Irwin Elman, Ontario's advocate for children and youth, is investigating cases of excessive force used by some staff at Roy McMurtry Youth Centre in Brampton, which holds 102 male and female youths, 90 of whom are still awaiting trial. Police are looking into at least one of these incidents, he said. What's more, despite the centre's much-publicized commitment to "state-of-the-art" programming – a proven tool in preventing young people from becoming repeat offenders – it simply doesn't exist, he said.  For complete story, click here.

 

State finds child abuse and neglect at school--November 4th, 2009--The state of Oregon has shut down a boarding school for troubled teens in Central Oregon after allegedly finding a pattern of child abuse and neglect of its students, forcing parents around the country to scramble to bring home their children.

"Our first priority is to ensure the safety of the students at Mt. Bachelor Academy," Erinn Kelley-Siel, Director of the Children, Adults and Families division of the Department of Human Services, said Wednesday in a statement. "Ultimately, the investigations revealed such serious abuse and widespread violations of Oregon's licensing rules that we decided we needed to take immediate action."

The results of the Oregon Department of Human Services seven-month investigation of the Mount Bachelor Academy outside Prineville, Ore., were given to Crook County authorities to decide whether to pursue criminal charges.

Triggered by a complaint, the investigation found nine cases of alleged abuse and neglect involving five students since 2007.

Most came out of a mandatory treatment program called Lifesteps. At least two students were forced to act out sexual roles in front of staff and other kids during treatment sessions, one had to act out past physical abuse, one was not properly supervised on a trip to Europe, and others were subjected to obscene and degrading comments from staff, the investigators alleged. For complete story, click here.  For more on this story, click here , here, here, here, and here.

 

State suspends license from central Oregon school for troubled teens--November 4th, 2009--State officials have told parents to remove their children from a central Oregon boarding school after investigators found students were subject to inappropriate sexual role-play, public humiliation and physical deprivation.

Following a seven-month investigation, the Oregon Department of Human Services has temporarily suspended Mount Bachelor Academy's license. Investigators found nine substantiated allegations of child abuse and neglect as well as numerous licensing violations.  For complete story, click here.  For more on this story, click here  and here.

 

Group sues Idaho county over teen treatment center--BOISE, Idaho (AP) - A company that pushed to build a residential treatment center for troubled teens in rural western Idaho is suing Boise County in federal court, saying commissioners violated the Fair Housing Act when they scuttled the center's proposal amid staunch local opposition.

Development firm Oaas-Laney sought approval in 2007 to build Alamar Ranch, a 72-bed facility that would have treated teens with behavioral problems or addictions.

But neighbors fought to keep the ranch from being built, citing traffic, fire and safety concerns and even holding a fundraising event featuring a local folk singer, according to the lawsuit.

Boise County eventually approved the project, but under conditions that Alamar Ranch officials said were arbitrary, discriminatory and made the project financially impossible.

Boise County maintains the decision was based on legitimate government interests.  For complete story, click here.

 

Troubled teens on powerful drugs--October 28th, 2009--Has your teen’s best friend just transformed from Taylor Swift to Rosie O’Donnell overnight? 

She might just have ADHD.

A study published today in the Journal of the American Medical Association says second-generation anti-psychotics like Risperdal, Ablify, Zyprexa and Seroquel are being given to teens with common conditions like ADHD, leading to obesity in just 11 weeks.

The side-effects common to these drugs may be worse in kids and teens than adults, the study concludes.  For complete story, click here.

 

Teen’s parents settle abuse case--October 26th, 2009--GONZALES — The parents of a Prairieville teenager who allege he suffered abuse and related temporary kidney failure at a Louisiana National Guard Youth Challenge facility last year have reached a $95,000 out-of-court settlement with the state of Louisiana, the teen’s attorney said.  For complete story, click here.

 

Autopsy: Teen had heat stroke at summer camp, killing him--October 21st, 2009--BEND, Ore. – Preliminary autopsy findings in a summer camp death may lead to criminal charges for staff members. [HEAL Note:  This occurred at an Aspen Education Group program called SageWalk.]  For complete story, click here.  For more on this story, click here.

 

Troubled teens buckle under weight of jibes--October 20th, 2009--Teenagers who are told they are too thin or too fat by their parents - even if the comments are well- intentioned - suffer headaches, feel stress or get depressed more than those who are not, a study has found.  For complete story, click here.

 

Roswell teacher charged in teen contact--October 14th, 2009--[Roswell, NM  Youth ChalleNGe Academy] 

ROSWELL, N.M. (KRQE/KBIM) - A Roswell teacher accused of making sexual advances to a teen he was mentoring is out of jail but not back at work.

James Ogas, 38, faced a judge for the first time Wednesday charged with two counts of criminal sexual contact of a minor. The charges are 3rd-degree felonies.

Investigators say the alleged contact happened inside the automotive shop at Eastern New Mexico University-Roswell where Ogas is a part-time automotive-technician teacher.

According to court documents, twice last month Ogas inappropriately touched the 17-year-old who was part of a program for troubled teens sponsored by the New Mexico National Guard.

Investigators said along with the touching, Ogas frequently wrote the teen letters, which were described as sexually suggestive.  For complete story, click here.

 

Six-year-old Suspended for Bringing Cub Scout Tool to School--October 13th, 2009--

Our authorities may not be able to track down Osama bin laden, but never fear, they’re keeping us safe from budding little terrorists such as first grader Zachary Christie. Caught red-handed, the Newark, Delaware, six-year-old was suspended from his school and may face 45 days in reform school for violating the Christina School District’s “zero tolerance” policy on weapons. His offense?

Bringing a camping utensil set to school.

The “weapon” in question is a “hobo tool” the first grader had received after recently joining the Cub Scouts; it contains a fork, spoon, and knife. Zachary was so excited about his new acquisition — as any normal boy would be — that he brought it to school to use during lunch period. School officials then suspended him, saying they have no choice because the district’s code of conduct prohibits the possession of knives “regardless of the possessor’s intent.”

Unfortunately, little Zachary’s story is a common one today, with well-meaning students being subjected to disproportionate punishment across the nation in the name of zero tolerance. Writing about Zachary’s case in the New York Times, Ian Urbina provides one of these other examples, that of a third-grade girl who “was expelled for a year because her grandmother had sent a birthday cake to school, along with a knife to cut it. The teacher called the principal — but not before using the knife to cut and serve the cake.”  For complete story, click here.

 

Employee of school for troubled teens sentenced for sexual abuse--October 6th, 2009--TOOELE -- A man who was supposed to help troubled teens in Tooele County was sentenced Tuesday for sexual abusing one of them.

A judge sentenced Jonathan Carver to serve 1 to 15 years for each of five counts of forcible sexual abuse of a 17-year-old girl.

Carver pleaded guilty to the charges in August.

He had worked as a house parent at Alpine Academy in Erda, where the girl was being treated. He admitted to a long relationship with her. The relationship was discovered when the girl left the school and her parents became concerned that Carver was still contacting her. They contacted police.  For complete story, click here.

 

Teenage girl left brain-damaged after receiving cervical cancer jab 05 Oct 2009 A teenage girl has been left brain-damaged after suffering epileptic seizures just days after being given the controversial cervical cancer jab. Stacey Jones, 18, suffered her first seizure in March when she was 17, days after she had the Cervarix injection. In the following weeks she had several more fits, causing such severe brain injury that she had to be admitted to a rehabilitation unit, where she is relearning simple tasks.  For complete story, click here.

 

Teen tamers need to get real--October 4th, 2009--

TELEVISION programs claiming to tame toddlers and troubled teens may do more harm than good, parenting experts have warned.

The families of Australian teenagers who appeared in World's Strictest Parents on Channel Seven – in which the teens were sent overseas for a week to learn discipline from strict parents – said the program helped turn their lives around.

But the methods used have been questioned since the final episode, aired last week, revealed how the teens have fared since going home.

Serial runaway Jono Denny, 16, was sent to South Africa to live with Portia Bethe and her family.

After returning to his home at Ballina on the North Coast he re-enrolled in high school and behaved himself for six weeks. Then he was arrested after a night of heavy drinking. He was released after being cautioned.

Psychologist Michael Carr-Gregg said World's Strictest Parents, Brat Camp and Supernanny offered unrealistic solutions to behavioural problems.

"I would prefer to see programs which are more instructive," he said. "Obviously, no one is going to send their teenager off to a different country for a week to teach them a few life lessons. It's just not practical or realistic."

Mr Carr-Gregg said his research showed 80 per cent of parents lack confidence in their ability to raise their children. World's Strictest Parents drew more than 1 million viewers a week.

He said most child psychologists would not recommend the strict discipline promoted on the show.

"What I would like to see from these shows is a focus on authoritative parenting rather than authoritarian parenting," he said.

"The problem is that authoritative parenting – which teaches parents about creating boundaries, negotiating skills and so on – does not make very exciting television.

"Authoritarian parenting, with a focus on strict discipline and punishment, is more likely to create fireworks."

A parenting guide author and chairwoman of Early Childhood Australia's publications committee, Pam Linke, said the programs provided a simplistic view of managing behavioural problems.

"The families being filmed would have to be influenced by the fact that there is a camera on them.

"It's not a realistic approach to solving behavioural problems with children. There is no instruction about how these parenting models would work in real life."  For complete story, click here.  (Webmaster Note:  Abusive programs have regularly been featured and promoted by US television programs.  Including the deadly SageWalk, an Aspen Education Group program that recently voluntarily relinquished their license to Oregon authorities after another death at the program, was used as a setting for "Brat Camp" on ABC.  Dr. Phil McGraw has repeatedly placed children in Aspen Education Group programs as well as Provo Canyon School.  Other talk show icons have placed children in the notoriously abusive and internationally criminalized WWASPS programs.  Turn off your TV and think for yourself, please.)

 

“Out of the Mouths of Babes: False Confessions and the Wrongful Convictions of Youth”--Also see: http://progressillinois.com/node/7229

 

Troubled teens playing it for laughs in comedy class--September 26th, 2009-- — Drugs, violence, teen pregnancy and incarceration — not exactly the stuff of punch lines and laugh tracks. 

Unless it's the teens telling the jokes. And the material is coming from their own experiences.

San Diego County high school students who struggle to cope with these issues are confronting them head-on in an unlikely stand-up-comedy class that also serves as therapy of sorts.

Paid for with $6,500 in federal stimulus money, this new course was designed for students who are interested in the entertainment industry. But it has also helped teenagers face their demons and relate to classmates at the county Office of Education community school in National City.  For complete story, click here.

 

Community meeting tonight on youth home in Craney Island Farms--September 24th, 2009--

Residents in a Hanover County neighborhood are concerned about a home for troubled teens in their subdivision.

A community meeting is scheduled for tonight to address issues raised by those who live near Healthy Solutions, a foster home for four at-risk males ages 12 to 17 that opened this summer on Cudlipp Avenue in the Craney Island Farms community off U.S. 301. The meeting will start at 7 p.m. at Cool Spring Baptist Church.

Craney Island Farms resident David Liggan, who lives off Cudlipp Avenue, said he's concerned about a business operating in a residential area.

"We were never notified . . . or asked our opinion about the facility going into our area," Liggan said, referring to the home that provides 24-hour adult supervision and counseling services to teens who have behavioral issues.

Peggy Nicholls, who lives on Cudlipp Avenue, said the county should have alerted homeowners if a business was going in on their street. "I feel like the wool was pulled over our eyes," she said.  For complete story, click here.

 

Former Boys Ranch resident sues Sedgwick County--September 23rd, 2009--A former Boys Ranch resident has sued Sedgwick County, alleging it failed to protect him from being raped while he lived at the home for troubled teens in late 2004.

The plaintiff — who is 19 now and was 14 at the time he says he was raped — filed a lawsuit in June in state district court that has been moved to federal court in Wichita.  For complete story, click here.

 

Don't forget detainees at home--September 21st, 2009--Torture is wrong. Our nation believes this, and we are concerned about torture tactics used on detainees, as we should be. Shouldn't we also be concerned about abusive tactics used on our own population, particularly our children?

The Aug. 25 Ithaca Journal article headlined, "Staff severely injured youths," describes a U.S. Justice Department report that found staff at two juvenile-detention facilities in Tompkins County used excessive force in controlling some of their residents. Some might argue that the staff behavior is not torture, but if the results are injuries and even death, what name should we give it? We put them in detention centers in the hopes that they will reform themselves and become positive, productive citizens. How can they learn to behave in a peaceful manner when they are treated with violence?

Get-tough, boot-camp programs purport to help troubled teens, but they don't work. A review of the scientific evidence by the National Institutes of Health found that programs using fear and tough treatment are ineffective and may make teen criminal behavior even worse.  For complete story, click here.

 

Redmond wilderness school [SageWalk--Aspen Education Group] suspends operations--September 15th, 2009--A Redmond-based wilderness school said Tuesday it has agreed to suspend operations amid state and Lake County investigations into the death of a 16-year-old Portland boy on his first hike with the school, in a remote area east of Bend late last month.

Word of the halt to operations came one day after Lake County sheriff's deputies traveled from Lakeview and executed a search warrant at the Redmond office of SageWalk Wilderness School, as part of its continuing investigation into the death of Sergey Blashchishen.  For complete story, click here.  For more on this story, click here.

 

I'm OK, but you're not.--September 16th, 2009--So you have a troubled or problem teen. Let me guess, they come home from school and virtually lock themselves away in their bedroom. If they do come and join the family, they are plugged into their MP3 player or PSP. You actually have to demand putting the electronics away when at the dinner table; that is if they even join you for dinner. It’s a pretty common problem; I’d venture to say across Western society.  Let’s think back – when I was a teen, I’d plug into the cassette player with earphones on (I’m old enough that CD’s were not around). Once I was driving, I’d not even come home – I’d go driving. I was usually busy enough after school with work and theatre that there were some weeks I’d barely see my parents. Was I a problem or troubled child? My parents probably thought so, but guess who I thought had the problem?  It’s not any different today. Oh, the script may have changed some, the technology and access to information has drastically changed, but how we communicate (or lack of communication) remains the same. I’m curious though, have you ever asked your teen why they stay away from the family so much? Some of this is natural child development for certain, but choosing to stay home to study instead of joining the family for a ‘night out bowling’ is something else.  Yes, our teen can be defiant; sometimes it’s what they do best. But every now and then, we must remember to turn that magnifying glass away from them and onto ourselves. What are we doing to drive wedges into that gap? If we don’t know then we need to ask. So many teens feel they cannot talk to their parents, when in reality that is what everyone, both teens and parents, really want!  For complete story, click here.

 

Real life horrors revealed in Boot Camp--September 5th, 2009--The most disturbing aspect of Christian Duguay's Boot Camp is the fact that places such as that depicted actually exist. Places that promise rehabilitation for troubled youths that are nothing more than entities of torture that do more damage than good.  For complete story, click here.

 

3 charged in Ohio in teen's restraint death--September 2nd, 2009--COLUMBUS, Ohio — Three former employees of a Cleveland residential center for troubled teenagers were indicted Wednesday in the death of a 17-year-old girl who choked on vomit and suffocated after she was restrained face down, a control technique the governor has since banned.

Cynthia King, 32, of Warrensville Heights, Lazarita Menendez, 28, of Bedford Heights and Ebony Ray, 33, of Broadview Heights were indicted in Cuyahoga County on involuntary manslaughter and child-endangering charges in the death of Faith Finley at the Parmadale Family Services center in Parma.  For complete story, click here.

 

Portland teen collapses and dies during wilderness camp hike--September 1, 2009--(Webmater Note:  Aspen Education Group kills another kid) 

The Lake County Sheriff's Office is investigating the death of a Portland teen who collapsed during a hike as part of a wilderness camp exercise, a spokesman said today.

Sergey Blashchishen, 16, died Friday after collapsing about 2:30 p.m., said Deputy Chuck Pore. An autopsy was performed on Sunday but the results are incomplete and a cause of death has not been determined, Pore said.
 

Investigators are trying to find out if Blashchishen, who lived in Northeast Portland, had any medical problems that might have contributed to his death, Pore said. He had passed a physical the day before he died.

Blashchishen was attending the SageWalk wilderness school, a program for troubled teens based in Redmond. He was hiking with a group in northern Lake County between Burns and Bend when he got sick.

"He said he didn't feel good and shortly after that collapsed," Pore said.

The Bureau of Land Management has suspended the permit for SageWalk to operate on BLM land, pending the outcome of the investigation. It could not be confirmed if Blashchishen was on BLM property when he collapsed.  For complete story, click here.  (For more on this story, click here, here, here, and here.

 

Gay reparative therapy isn't advisable, says APA--August 31, 2009--The American Psychological Association has finally confirmed what MySpace Zach and his supporters knew back in 2005 – gay reparative therapies don’t work.


In an update to a 1997 resolution "Appropriate Therapeutic Responses to Sexual Orientation," the APA now advises that mental health professionals should avoid telling clients that they can change their sexual orientation through therapy or other treatments.

"Contrary to claims of sexual orientation change advocates and practitioners, there is insufficient evidence to support the use of psychological interventions to change sexual orientation," said Judith M. Glassgold, PsyD, chair of the task force which examined the efficacy of so-called reparative therapy.”

APA appointed the six-member Task Force on Appropriate Therapeutic Responses to Sexual Orientation in 2007 to review and update APA's 1997 resolution, "Appropriate Therapeutic Responses to Sexual Orientation," and to generate a report. APA was concerned about ongoing efforts to promote the notion that sexual orientation can be changed through psychotherapy or approaches that mischaracterize homosexuality as a mental disorder.

The task force examined the peer-reviewed journal articles in English from 1960 to 2007, which included 83 studies. Most of the studies were conducted before 1978, and only a few had been conducted in the last 10 years. The group also reviewed the recent literature on the psychology of sexual orientation.

"Unfortunately, much of the research in the area of sexual orientation change contains serious design flaws," Glassgold said. "Few studies could be considered methodologically sound and none systematically evaluated potential harms."

Looking back at Zach
Zach Stark was for many the face of the vulnerable, oppressed gay teen.

Stark, then 16 and living in Bartlett, Tenn., chronicled his coming-out story in his MySpace blog.

He detailed his parents unfavorable reaction and wrote, “Today, my mother, father and I had a very long 'talk' in my room, where they let me know I am to apply for a fundamentalist Christian program for gays."

It would take place at Refuge, a youth program of Love in Action International, a Memphis group that runs a religion-based program intended to change the sexual orientation of gay men and women.

As mandated by Refuge, Stark's blog posts stopped the day he entered the facility, but debate and outrage over such programs did not.

A New York Times story published July 17, 2005, shortly after Stark entered Refuge, brought the matter to the forefront of the mainstream media with the headline “Gay Teenager Stirs a Storm.”

In that story, former teacher and GLSEN Executive Director Kevin Jennings told the New York Times, “All reputable health and education professional organizations have clearly and unequivocally denounced this ‘treatment’ as quackery.”

Closer to home, young people from the area organized a protest outside the Love In Action facility soon after the Stark was admitted to the program.

As days passed, the group's numbers swelled as the teens were joined by a wide range of people from the community forming what they called the Queer Action Coalition (QAC), concerned about Stark’s mental health after reading his ominous blog posts.

"It's like boot camp," Stark wrote before entering the facility. "If I do come out straight, I'll be so mentally unstable and depressed it won't matter."  For complete story, click here.

 

Caging Children--August 28th, 2009--Children under the age of 18 can't vote, serve as jurors, or join Blockbuster, but in the U.S. – the only developed nation with such a policy – they can be tried in adult courts and imprisoned in facilities designed for adults. A groundbreaking study from the University of Texas' LBJ School of Public Affairs could kick-start a national discussion about the foolishness of that policy.

The report, "From Time Out to Hard Time: Young Children in the Adult Criminal Justice System," was compiled by Michele Deitch, an adjunct professor at the LBJ School, and her students. Its roots were tragic: Deitch and her group worked with the UT Law School Supreme Court Clinic on the case of Christopher Pittman, who, at age 12, was charged with killing his grandparents. He received a 30-year sentence – the mandatory minimum in South Carolina. After the Supreme Court rejected his appeal, Deitch explained, "we were sitting on a ton of research that we had done, so we thought it was vital to get it out there."  For complete story, click here.

 

Zoning board votes against home for troubled teens--August 26th, 2009--

Jeff Deerr does not want a group home for troubled teens in his neighborhood.

"I am definitely opposed to the idea," he said. "I go to work and I come home after working an eight-hour day and I have a peaceful neighborhood. I don't believe that doing something like this is right."

Deerr was among more than 25 residents from the Vinton Heights subdivision who sat in an Area Board of Zoning Appeals meeting Wednesday night for nearly four hours to speak out against proposed home.

The group home, proposed by Seeds of Hope Community Ministries, was slated to operate out of a residence at 2012 Valdez Drive in Lafayette if approved.

But the Board of Zoning Appeals voted 6-1 against the proposal, which led to a sea of cheers from residents in attendance.  For complete story, click here.
 

'All God's Children:' Exposing the abuses of children of missionaries--August 25th, 2009--Marilyn Shellrude Christman of Seattle was only 7 years old when she was sent to a boarding school for children of missionaries in Guinea, West Africa, in 1961.

For eight years, in the remote, isolated school, she says, she was emotionally and spiritually abused. At times, she was also physically and sexually abused — in some cases by a man who served as a dorm parent there, she said.

It wasn't until decades later that she realized she hadn't been the only abused child at Mamou Alliance Academy, a now-closed boarding school run by the Christian and Missionary Alliance (C&MA), an evangelical Protestant denomination.  For complete story, click here.

 

NY detention system faulted in juveniles' injuries--August 24th, 2009--ALBANY, N.Y. — Workers at four youth detention centers in New York caused dozens of serious injuries, including broken bones and teeth, when they routinely used force as a primary way to restrain juveniles and not just as a last resort, according to federal investigators.

The Justice Department's Civil Rights Division also reported that youths in the state system failed to get needed counseling and mental health treatment, though most have psychological problems. The findings released Monday were the result of a nearly two-year probe.

Gladys Carrion, commissioner of the state Office of Children and Family Services, said they have begun overhauling the troubled system she took over 18 months ago, including a new restraint policy and hiring more mental health workers. "Much more still needs to be done," she said.

Investigators said conditions they found last year at the Lansing and Louis Gossett Jr. residential centers outside Ithaca and the Tryon residential centers for boys and girls in Johnstown violated the teens' constitutional rights as well as department policy.  For complete story, click here.

 

Payout over teen's boot camp tragedy--August 24th, 2009--The parents of a teenager beaten to death by staff at a boot camp in Hubei Province this month have been awarded 350,000 yuan (US$51,000) in compensation.

The money, which will be paid by a local education bureau, comes less than three weeks after Yao Jian, 14, died on an outward-bound training program intended to boost his confidence.

"The money will not ease the agony of losing our son," his father Yao Jun, 37, told China Daily yesterday. "We can only hope this tragedy will ring alarm for parents and the government to avoid such incidents."  For complete story, click here.  (Webmaster Note:  Really?  China is better at swift action than the US?  What's up with that?!  Strengthen and Pass HR 911 already.)

 

NEA Attacks Administration's Education Reform Plan 21 Aug 2009 The nation's largest teachers union sharply attacked President Obama's most significant school improvement initiative on Friday evening, saying that it puts too much emphasis on a "narrow agenda" centered on charter schools and echoes the Bush administration's "top-down approach" to reform. The National Education Association's criticism of Obama's $4.35 billion "Race to the Top" initiative came nearly a month after the president unveiled the competitive grant program...  For complete story, click here.  (No charter schools.  Improve Public Education!!!)

 

Woman sues state over sexual assault--August 18th, 2009--A 19-year-old who was sexually assaulted by a guard at a state juvenile-detention center last year has filed a lawsuit claiming the state failed to properly supervise the guard or protect her from his advances. 

In a lawsuit filed in King County Superior Court last month, the young woman's attorneys claim the state failed to properly train and supervise the on-call temporary guard at Echo Glen Children's Center or to fully investigate previous complaints about him.

The guard, 39-year-old Robert H. Fox, pleaded guilty in February to first-degree custodial sexual misconduct in connection with the assault, according to court documents. He now is serving an eight-month sentence in the King County Jail.  For complete story, click here.

 

One third of all children in jails are 'wrongly imprisoned' 13 Aug 2009 More than a third of children sent to prison last year were wrongly jailed, a report into child custody rates says. The study by Barnardo's found that the Government had breached its own guidance on child custody by allowing so many 12-, 13- and 14-year-olds to be imprisoned for a non-serious offences.  For complete story, click here.

 

DNA database has 300 children added a day 11 Aug 2009 More than 300 children a day are being put on to the DNA database fuelling fresh fears over the growth of the "Big Brother" state. Almost 1.1 million youngsters aged between ten and 17 have had their profiles recorded by the police since 2000, with a large proportion aged under 15, the Daily Telegraph can disclose. And around one in six are likely to have never been convicted of any crime.  For complete story, click here.

 

Teen sent to PEC home--August 10th, 2009--The grandmother of a teenaged boy being housed at a youth residential treatment facility in Prince Edward County. wants to know why he can't be treated closer to home.  The 14-year-old Cole Harbour boy, who was the subject of a recent Supreme Court of Nova Scotia case regarding his care, suffers from attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, and related behavioural problems.   He was recently enrolled at the Bayfield Treatment Centre in Consecon by the Nova Scotia Department of Community Services. His grandmother -- who cannot be named in order to protect the boy's identity -- told The Intelligencer she wanted the boy to get help, but did not expect him to be moved out of the province.  "All we did was ask for help, not for him to be shipped away," she said.  She said she and her husband asked Community Services for help with the boy, whom she admits suffers from considerable behavioural issues, last year. As reported by the Halifax Chronicle-Herald, Community Services originally made arrangements for the boy's treatment at a facility in Utah after the Nova Scotia Supreme Court ruled it was permissible to send him there for treatment unavailable in his home province. However, after arrangements at both Cinnamon Hills Youth Crisis Centre and Provo Canyon School fell through, the boy was moved to Bayfield - a decision Patrick Eagan, the family's lawyer, says shows a definite motive. "It's just somewhere to shove this kid," he said.  For complete story, click here.

 

Former employee admits sex with teen at school for troubled girls (Alpine Academy in UT)--August 5th, 2009--An employee at a live-in treatment school for troubled girls in Tooele County admitted Wednesday to having a sexual relationship with a 17-year-old female student.  Jonathan R. Carver, 29, of Kaysville, pleaded guilty in 3rd District Court to five counts of second-degree felony forcible sexual abuse.  He faces up to 15 years in prison on each count when he is sentenced Oct. 6 by 3rd District Judge Stephen Henriod.  Court documents detailing the original charges -- four counts of rape, two counts of forcible sodomy and one count of witness tampering -- indicate Carver had sex with the girl at least 20 times between October and December of 2008.  Carver and his wife were "house parents," responsible for taking care of eight girls every day as they underwent treatment for emotional and behavioral problems at Alpine Academy in Erda, according to the school's program director Janet Mulitalo.   For complete story, click here.

 

 

Chinese Youth Beaten to Death at "net addiction" "boot camp"--August 4th, 2009-- China's anti-internet addiction industry has claimed another victim, after supervisors at a rehabilitation camp allegedly beat a 16 year old inmate to death.  Deng Senshan had been sent to Guangxi Qihuang Survival Training Camp to "cure" him of his internet addiction, the AFP reports. His parents were paying $1000 for the treatment.  However, the youth ended up in solitary confinement shortly after arriving at the establishment, and was subsequently beaten to death by supervisors for "running too slowly", according to the news agency.  For complete story, click here.

 

Controversial Treatment Center Shuts Down--July 31st, 2009--Some Tri-State teens undergoing drug and alcohol rehabilitation at a controversial treatment facility may be home tonight after the last of the centers closed this week in Indianapolis.

Pathway Family Center had vacated its building earlier but was still housing teens in various homes. Sources tell the I-Team that ended this week with calls to parents to pick up their children. No one from Pathway returned the I-Team’s calls today, and the longtime emergency number for the center has been disconnected.

In the Cincinnati area, the program in Milford originally was called Kids Helping Kids. It used controversial methods that removed teens from their homes for months and sometimes more than a year. Teens spent entire days in classes that included hand motions, toddler's songs and other means some likened to a cult, but others said saved their lives.

After the I-Team’s original report, the program changed names and then shut down in Milford. Those teens were transported to the Indianapolis site instead.
(Pathway Family Center is CLOSED!!!!)  For complete story, click here. (Story does not include the fact that HEAL, ISAC, and other youth advocates fought diligently to expose and close Pathway.)

 

AHCA report cites kicking, spitting on teens, other reported abuses at Devereux House--July 29th, 2009--A Tallahassee group home for troubled teens currently under criminal investigation by law-enforcement officials was shut down by state health-care regulators in May following troubling reports of physical and verbal abuse of residents by center employees.  For complete story, click here.

 

Deadly Restraint & Seclusion--SILENT VICTIMS--July 21st, 2009  Click here for complete article from www.ktnv.com.

 

 

ADHD Drugs Linked to Sudden Death in Kids--Received July 25th, 2009 (Article: June 15th, 2009)--MONDAY, June 15 (HealthDay News) -- Stimulant medications commonly prescribed to treat attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) are associated with an increased risk of sudden death, but those deaths are still rare, new research finds.  For complete story, click here.

 

Report alleges multiple problems at Hinds juvenile facility--July 24th, 2009--Unreported suicide attempts, poor staff relations and failure to provide timely mental health evaluations continue at Hinds County's Henley-Young Juvenile Detention Center, according to a state  inspection report.

The state Juvenile Facilities Monitoring Unit inspected the detention  center on June 23 and gave its report to the county July 22.

Juvenile Facilities Monitoring Unit Director Donald Beard and Henley- Young's detention director Darren Farr did not return calls.

The report, obtained by The Clarion-Ledger, makes 14 recommendations.  It's unclear what could happen to the center if it doesn't follow  them, but county officials say they plan to.

"A crucial step in recognizing problems associated with a juvenile's  behavior is a mental health evaluation," the report states.

The inspection came after Hinds supervisors learned that seven  juveniles have attempted suicide at the center since January.

In one case, a girl was found with several socks tied around her  neck. In another, a boy repeatedly hit his head on the door of his cell.

Detention center staff never reported the cases to the county or  state, which must be done immediately, according to the most recent  report. For complete story, click here. (Webmaster note:  This is what happens at a "regulated" and state-run facility that has safeguards in place to prevent violations and harm to youth.  Now, take away the "regulation" and government oversight and what kind of abuses and violations do you think are probable?  The unimaginable happens to youth every day in behavior modification programs throughout the United States.  Keep your children at home.)

 

Court: Keep cleared juveniles' files--July 23rd, 2009--ALLENTOWN - The Pennsylvania Supreme Court yesterday ordered the preservation of court records of juveniles who are suing a corrupt Luzerne County Court judge.

Previously, when it overturned the convictions of youths who appeared in former Judge Mark Ciavarella's courtroom, the court said the records should be destroyed, prompting complaints from attorneys for the juveniles.

The attorneys said loss of the records could imperil the youths' ability to recover damages from the judge and others implicated in the corruption scandal.  For complete story, click here.  (For an update on this story, click here ,here or here.)

 

The APA's Nuremberg Defense By Scott Horton 20 Jul 2009 ...[T]he disclosures surrounding the waterboarding of Abu Zubaida give further proof that beginning in 2002, healthcare professionals, specifically psychologists, played an essential role at every stage in the development and application of torture techniques. The failure of professional organizations, and specifically the American Psychological Association, to acknowledge this and take appropriate countermeasures is disturbing...Professional oversight bodies have engaged in consistent evasion, and now the APA is focused on the relaxation of its ethics standards to provide defenses for psychologists who joined in the Bush Administration’s torture program.  For complete story, click here.  (Webmaster Note:  Behavior Modification Programs for Teens Are Experiments In Torture.)

 

Detroit Public Schools moves closer to bankruptcy and privatization By Walter Gilberti 16 July 2009 Detroit teachers and schools employees are in danger of having their jobs, wages and benefits sacrificed in the interest of an anti-public schools agenda driven by Emergency Financial Manager Robert Bobb and the Obama administration. In a two-pronged attack on the continued existence of public schools in Detroit, Bobb has hired four private professional education management firms to oversee instruction at 17 Detroit high schools, while, at the same time, ratcheting up his earlier threat to institute bankruptcy proceedings.  For complete story, click here.

 

LDS seminary principal in court, hands over evidence--July 13th, 2009--PROVO — Officers came to court Monday morning prepared to re-arrest a former LDS seminary principal accused of sexual misconduct with a 16-year-old student.

Michael J. Pratt, 37, the former principal at Lone Peak High School's LDS seminary program, was arrested Thursday on numerous allegations, but was bailed out on $20,000 cash-only bail at 3:37 a.m. Saturday.

"Look," an emotional Pratt told the media upon exiting the courtroom. "I am hopeful that the truth will be fully presented at the appropriate time."

Officers from the Utah County Special Victims Task Force came to 4th District Court Monday for Pratt's review of bail hearing to express concern that Pratt may have been tampering with evidence on his laptop computer.

Prosecutor Guy Probert told Judge Steven Hansen that there were some "evidentiary questions" relating to the laptop, which had been sent out of the area with Pratt's family after the allegations surfaced. It is believed that the computer belongs to The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, but Probert could not officially confirm that.

"The laptop is being returned by mail. A copy of the hard drive is being produced today," Probert said.  For complete story, click here.  For story update, click here.  (Webmaster note: Don't send your kid to Utah!)

 

One teen runaway found, two missing--July 9th, 2009--Update on three runaways who escaped abusive wilderness program...A national organization is pleading for information about a 15-year-old girl missing from McDowell for more than a year.  In separate cases, sheriff's deputies have located one of two teenage runaways for whom they've been searching. The other one hasn't been spotted.  As part of its ongoing search, the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children is again asking for the public's help in locating Diana Hernandez Yanez, 15, of Yancey Street in Marion. She was 14 when she left her home on July 21, 2008. Neighbors told police that they saw her get into a red pickup truck that morning. Friends say the truck, a red 2000 Chevrolet S-10 low-rider pickup, belonged to 19-year-old Andres Velasquez Tinoco of Coxes Creek Road, whom Diana reportedly met just a couple of weeks prior to her disappearance.  For complete story, click here.
 

Miss. juvenile detention case near end--June 26th, 2009--A preliminary agreement has been reached in a federal lawsuit that claims youth were abused at a south Mississippi juvenile detention center and forced to live in squalid conditions.  For complete story, click here.

 

Supreme Court Says Child's Rights Violated by Strip Search --But if the student had been suspected of having illegal drugs that could have posed a far greater danger to herself and other students, the strip search might have been justified, the majority said. 26 Jun 2009 In a ruling of interest to educators, parents and students across the country, the Supreme Court ruled, 8 to 1, on Thursday that the strip search of a 13-year-old Arizona girl by school officials who were looking for prescription-strength drugs violated her constitutional rights. The officials in Safford, Ariz., would have been justified in 2003 had they limited their search to the backpack and outer clothing of Savana Redding, who was in the eighth grade at the time, the court ruled. [Needless to say, GOPedophile Clarence Thomas thinks it's a good idea to strip thirteen-year-olds.]   For complete story, click here.

 

Can Wilderness Camps Kill Your Kid?--June 22nd, 2009--It's an industry that preys on desperation.  If your teenager has emotional issues, abuses drugs, or is promiscuous, help is just a phone call away. Wilderness intervention programs promise to "fix" bad behavior by teaching your child life skills and building self-esteem. These facilities offer a beacon of hope for parents like Crystal Manganaro, who sent her son, Matthew, to a wilderness camp outside of Houston. But what Crystal didn't realize was that the camp she entrusted with her son's life would so carelessly take it away. For complete story, click here.

 

 

Are Troubled Teens Tortured?--June 23rd, 2009--Yesterday, we brought you the story of Matthew Meyer, a troubled teen who died at a wilderness camp. Today, we bring you the story of Nick Gaglia.

 

Gina Kaysen Fernandes: Imagine a world where your child is locked away for years, spending days at a time in a windowless room. Communication is shut off and you have no way of knowing about their treatment, which may include being physically restrained for hours on end. This horrifying scenario isn't prison -- it's a voluntary program aimed at treating troubled teenagers.

 

It's a place where Nick Gaglia spent two and a half years, because "my life was spinning out of control." The residential treatment program known as "Kids of North Jersey" in Secaucus, New Jersey, "seemed like a great fit," says Nick, who was abusing drugs and alcohol at the age of 13. Nick's parents saw advertisements for the program on television and soon enrolled their son. They hoped professionals would get Nick clean and sober so he could put his life back on track. But instead of giving Nick the coping skills he'd need in the outside world, he became a prisoner subjected to verbal abuse, psychological torment, and physical restraint. "I would call it torture and abuse," says Nick, who shared his harrowing ordeal with momlogic.  For complete story, click here.

 

ADHD Drugs Linked to Sudden Death--June 15th, 2009--On that morning, the 54-year-old mother of two living in McAllen, Texas, was preparing to take her eldest son to school. She had an early appointment, so her husband, Rick Hohmann, would be dropping off younger son, 14-year-old Matthew, at his school that day.

About a month earlier, Matthew had been diagnosed with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, or ADHD. And like an estimated 2.5 million other children in the United States, he was taking medication for the condition.

It was Ann Hohmann who gave Matthew his Adderall XR pill that morning with a glass of water. But it was her husband who later found him after he had collapsed on the bathroom floor.

"To me, he seemed fine," she recalled. "My husband had seen him walking around, brushing his teeth. Then he walked in and found him flat down on the floor in the bathroom.

"When he turned him over, his lips were blue," Hohmann said.

She said that her husband called her first, and then he called 911. He performed CPR until the ambulance arrived. But it was too late.

"They worked on him for a while, but he was dead," she said.  For complete story, click here.

 

Special Report from VERACARE: How the Pharmaceutical (DRUG) Industry and US Government Promote Chemical Assault of American Children!--June 12th, 2009--This has been a grim week for anyone who cares about the precautionary principle guiding civilized medicine and the welfare of children. 

If anything, the Obama administration seems to be pushing the radical pharmacological envelope even further than the Bush administration----at the very least, nothing has changed for the better in the government-assisted determined push to control / engineer America's children.

On Wednesday, an FDA advisory committee gave the FDA a green light to expand the marketing license of three toxic antipsychotic drugs--Seroquel, Geodon, and Zyprexa--for use in children. Such approval gives manufacturers a shield
from liability--for illegally promoting the drugs for off-label use.  And such approval ensures increased use of these drugs.  Manufacturers and mental health providers will profit while children's physical and mental health will be sacrificed. These drugs pose severely disabling, potentially lethal hazards--including diabetes, metabolic syndrome, cardiovascular disease.

The body of evidence showing these drugs to be harmful is irrefutable: it is documented in FDA's postmarketing database, and in secret internal company documents uncovered during litigation. 

Did the FDA provide the advisory panel members with the evidence ? And if not, why not?

See, Evelyn Pringle's report, "FDA Throws Lifeline to Antipsychotic Pushers"
http://www.counterpunch.org/pringle06122009.html

An article in TIME magazine http://www.time.com/time/specials/packages/article/0,28804,1903873_1903871_1
903857,00.html
gives credence to a not yet released report commissioned under the Bush Administration by a panel convened by the National Academies of Science.
 
The report, "Preventing Mental, Emotional, and Behavioral Disorders Among Young People: Progress and Possibilities" (2009) re-iterates the earlier national mental health policy directive under President Bush: The President's New Freedom Commission on Mental Health (2002)--which promoted universal mental screening and the expanded use of patented psychoactive drugs (those listed in industry-initiated, TMAP algorithm prescription guides).

See the report brief to policymakers issued, March 2009: http://www.bocyf.org/prevention_policymakers_brief.pdf
 
The NAS report also recommends aggressive screening and pharmacologic intervention with toxic psychoactive drugs for children. The provocative, unsubstantiated premise is that mental illness can be detected through genetic screening--a la eugenics rationale--and that they can be prevented.

"Hundreds of studies that have appeared in just the past decade collectively suggest that the brain isn't so different from, say, the arm: it doesn't simply break on its own. In fact, many mental illnesses - even those like schizophrenia that have demonstrable genetic origins - can be stopped or at least contained before they start."

"This isn't wishful thinking but hard science."  If the consequences of psychiatry's delusions weren't so serious, that statement is laughable. As every real medical scientist knows, psychiatry lacks even the rudimentary objective, scientifically verifiable tools of science, much less, "hard science."

The TIME reporter is impressed with NAS report weight in pagination: "a 500-page report, nearly two years in the making, on how to prevent mental, emotional and behavioral disorders."

"The [NAS] report concludes that pre-empting such disorders requires two kinds of interventions: first, because genes play so important a role in mental illness, we need to ensure that close relatives (particularly children) of those with mental disorders have access to rigorous screening programs. Second, we must offer treatment to people who have already shown symptoms of illness (say, a tendency to brood and see the world without optimism) but don't meet the
diagnostic criteria for a full-scale mental illness (in this case, depression)....."

According to TIME, the authors of the NAS report recognize but rationalize the reality that mental screens will mislabel healthy individuals as mentally ill:
 
"Early-detection programs will identify as candidates for mental illness some people  who are merely persnickety or shy or eccentric."

Indeed, a responsible reason NOT to screen is the high false-positive rate of mental screens.  For example, the false-positive rate of TeenScreen, the mental health dragnet of school children, is as high as 84%.

TIME reports that that the invalid screening tools did not deter the NAS authors from recommending mental screening--even acknowledging that those mislabeled may be  prescribed toxic antidepressants and/ or antipsychotics:

"Some prevention programs even prescribe psychiatric medications, including antipsychotics and antidepressants, to people who aren't technically psychotic or depressed....But those who contributed to the National Academies report say preventing the suffering of people with mental illness is worth the risk of some false positives, partly because of the enormous cost of treating mental illness after it's struck."
 
The NAS report is available online in its unedited version--it has not yet been released. http://www.nap.edu/catalog.php?record_id=12480

 

Former teen counselor gets jail time--June 9th, 2009--A former counselor for troubled teens who was accused of having sex with one of her students has accepted a plea negotiation with prosecutors after turning down a similar deal last year.

Cathleen Crowley, 30, of Rye was sent to the Cheshire County jail in Westmoreland for a month as part of the deal that was finalized last week.

Crowley withdrew her first guilty plea connected to the student’s accusations during a hearing last November in Cheshire County Superior Court.

The plea Crowley and her attorney, Gary S. Lenehan of Manchester, first negotiated with prosecutors would have kept her out of jail.

Judge Brian T. Tucker was expected to hand down suspended, one-year jail sentences on misdemeanor charges of sexual assault and giving alcohol to a minor.

But after hearing the case against Crowley — she was accused of giving the student alcohol and engaging in sex acts with him in her van and a hotel in Keene in 2007 — Tucker said he would reject the deal she made with prosecutors and hand down a six-month jail sentence....The state Division for Children, Youth and Families has substantiated an abuse finding tied to the student’s allegations against Crowley, Assistant Cheshire County Attorney John S. Webb said.

The finding appears on Crowley’s permanent state record and
should [but, probably won't] prevent her from working again as a youth counselor or in a similar position, he said.  For complete story, click here.


 

'Orwellian language' in schools turns pupils into 'customers', finds damning report 09 Jun 2009 Schools using the 'Orwellian language of performance management' are undermining teenagers' education by turning them into 'customers' rather than students, a landmark report says today. Teachers who are forced to use phrases such as 'performance indicator' and 'curriculum delivery' lack enthusiasm for the job, the six-year investigation found.  For complete story, click here.

 

Police recruits to be trained at Tranquility Bay--June 4th, 2009--The Tranquility Bay facility at Treasure Beach which was previously used as an offshore reform school for rebellious children, mostly from the United States, will now be used to train police recruits for at least the next two years.

At a meeting Tuesday with Treasure Beach residents and in subsequent response to journalists' questions, Deputy Commissioner of Police in charge of administration, Jevene Bent said training "operations" would begin "somewhere in the middle of the month".

The complex sited on two and a half acres of beach front land, referred to by locals as Old Whard, was controversially used for 12 years by the United States group, World Wide Association of Speciality Programmes and Schools (WWASP) as a 'boot camp' for teenagers. It was closed in January.

The Jamaica Constabulary Force's two-year lease on the privately-owned facility begun on June 1.  For complete story, click here.

 

Juvenile safety feared--June 2nd, 2009--Seven juveniles have attempted suicide at Hinds County's youth detention center since January, according to a report obtained by The Clarion-Ledger.  For complete story, click here.

 

Family: Utah too far [and corrupt and evil] to send troubled teen for treatment--June 1st, 2009--The family of a troubled Cole Harbour boy is going to court today to keep authorities from sending him to a youth facility in Utah.

"He’s gonna come back, we’re all (going to be) distant, we’re all (going to be) strangers here," his grandmother said. "We know we love each other. He knows we’re mom and dad, . . . but it ain’t gonna be the same. There’s a distance there."

The 14-year-old boy, raised by his maternal grandparents since he was four, is at a short-term treatment centre in the temporary care of the Community Services Department. If the family isn’t successful, he will be sent to Cinnamon Hills Youth Crisis Center for an undetermined time.  For complete story, click here.  (To learn more about Cinnamon Hills and abuse, click here.)

 

Brianna Turnbull Pleads No Contest--June 1st, 2009--A North Platte woman pled no contest to charges she helped a teenage boy escape from state custody and hide for three months. Two felonies were reduced to misdemeanors against Brianna Turnbull.  The 23-year-old pled no contest to charges of attempted violation of custody order; attempted juvenile escape, and contributing to the delinquency of a child. Turnbull is the daughter of a Lincoln County Judge. The case is behind handled by a special prosecutor Charles Brewster of...Turnbull worked at the Salvation Army's Quinn Wilcox house in North Platte when she met Kaden Clark-Guthrie of Trenton.  For complete story, click here.  For an update on this story, click here.
 

Congressional Hearing on Death/Abuse in Schools and Programs Using Physical Restraint--May 19th, 2009-- Click here for the online video from C-Span.

 

Teacher's aide in Maryland Heights convicted in sex case--May 21st, 2009--A teacher's aide at a school for troubled teens in Maryland Heights was convicted late Wednesday of having sexual contact with two students.  Bruce Germany, 55, was convicted on 14 felony counts of sexual contact with a student by a teacher between September 2006 and April 2007.  The charges involve two 15-year-old girls who attended Lakeside Center for Troubled Youth at 13044 Marine Drive.  For complete story, click here.

 

Thousands beaten, raped in Irish reform schools--May 20th, 2009--DUBLIN – A fiercely debated, long-delayed investigation into Ireland's Roman Catholic-run institutions says priests and nuns terrorized thousands of boys and girls in workhouse-style schools for decades — and government inspectors failed to stop the chronic beatings, rapes and humiliation.
 
Nine years in the making, Wednesday's 2,600-page report sides almost completely with the horrific reports of abuse from former students sent to more than 250 church-run, mostly residential institutions. But victims' leaders said it didn't go far enough — particularly because none of their abusers were identified by name.
 
The report concluded that church officials always shielded their orders' pedophiles from arrest to protect their own reputations and, according to documents uncovered in the Vatican, knew that many pedophiles were serial attackers.
 
The investigators said overwhelming, consistent testimony from still-traumatized men and women, now in their 50s to 80s, had demonstrated beyond a doubt that the entire system treated children more like prison inmates and slaves than people with legal rights and human potential.  For complete story, click here.  (Webmaster note:  Switch out Irish for American and you will understand America's teen "help" industry.)
 

Feds end 11-year oversight of Ga. juvenile facilities--May 18th, 2009--Georgia’s juvenile justice system has been released from federal oversight, 11 years after the U.S. Justice Department investigated reports of overcrowding and abuse at the state’s youth detention facilities, the governor said Monday.  For complete story, click here.

 

Counselor accused of sex with teen--May 15th, 2009--A man accused of carrying on a monthslong sexual relationship last fall with a teenager in a school for troubled girls is in Tooele County jail facing seven felony charges.

Kaysville resident Jonathan Carver, 29, and his wife were both working as live-in counselors at the Alpine Academy in Erda during the man's alleged relationship with a 17-year-old female student starting in October 2008.  For complete story, click here.

 

 

State investigating ab slapping of teen boys--May 12th, 2009--A controversial video appears to show a juvenile justice official in Seminole County striking adolescent detainees in their abdomens.

But although physical contact between officials and detainees is mostly prohibited, the state Department of Juvenile Justice says the boys may have volunteered for the military-style treatment at the Seminole County Juvenile Detention Center.

"There has been speculation that it was used for training purposes," said Frank Penela, a spokesman for the department, who has not yet seen the video.

Nonetheless, the department, which has been stung in recent years by the death of one detainee at a boot-camp-style facility and as well as the discovery of a graveyard containing unidentified graves near another, is investigating the incident.  For complete story,
click here.
 

 

 

Group Home Employee Accused Of Molesting Teens--May 8th, 2009--A Sacramento man who helped troubled teens at a group home is under arrest and accused of molesting girls while on the job.

In a place where people are watching your every move, Sacramento County authorities say Jeffrey Caldwell was able to make major inappropriate moves this past February while working at the Sacramento County Assessment Center. For complete story, click here.

 

 

Government wants the military to run state schools -- Right then, fall into line you 'orrible little pupils! 08 May 2009 The Armed Forces will be drafted in to run state schools under plans to drive up discipline and respect in classrooms. Ministers are in talks with defence chiefs about taking over a handful of schools and turning them into military academies. Alongside daily lessons, pupils would be expected to take part in activities such as drills, uniformed parades, weapons handling and adventure training. For complete story, click here.

 

Gardasil Linked to Nerve Disorder --Cervical Cancer Vaccine May Raise Risk of Guillain-Barre Syndrome 30 Apr 2009 Girls and women who receive the Gardasil [Gardakill] vaccine to prevent cervical cancer may be at increased risk of a rare but serious disorder of the nervous system [Guillain-Barre syndrome (GBS)] in the first few weeks after getting their shots, researchers report.  For complete story, click here.

 

America's Tough Love Habit--May, 2009--We are, famously, blasé about our acts of torture overseas. But why? The laser-like focus on fixing the economy, wanting to avoid more political divisiveness, the diminishment of watchdog journalism—are all part of the explanation. But there's another overlooked reason as well.

Americans tend to valorize tough love—at times, even tough love that verges on torture—in prisons, mental hospitals, drug rehabs, and teen boot camps. We aren't squeamish about the psychological aspects of torture. We might even admire them.

Thousands of troubled children, for instance, now attend tough "wilderness programs" "emotional growth boarding schools" and other "tough love" camps where they face conditions like total isolation, sleep deprivation, food deprivation, and daily emotional attacks.  For complete story, click here.

 

Director at youth camp fired--May 2nd, 2009--SILVER SPRINGS - A program director accused of using older boys to threaten younger ones at a camp for troubled youth was fired Thursday, state officials said Friday.

 
Frank Penela, a spokesman with the Florida Department of Juvenile Justice, said the state agency received a letter from Eckerd Youth Alternatives confirming that Eckerd fired Emeka Virgo, a program director at Camp E-Ke-Etu in the Ocala National Forest off East State Road 40. Eckerd, a private company, runs the camp under a contract with the state.

Eckerd officials did not return phone calls Friday.

Virgo joins two camp counselors - Roscoe Watts, 30, and Dana Valentino, 32 - who were also fired Thursday for unspecified violations of company policies.  For complete story, click here.

 

Broward child's suicide raises questions about medication--April 21st, 2009--

Weeks before his death, Gabriel Myers, the 7-year-old Broward boy who hanged himself in the shower of his foster home, had been prescribed a powerful mind-altering drug linked by federal regulators to an increased risk of suicide in children.

In all, Gabriel had been prescribed four psychiatric drugs, two or three of which he was taking at the time of his death, said Jack Moss, Broward chief of the state Department of Children & Families. Moss said he is not sure which medications the boy was taking because Margate police took the foster home's medication log as part of an investigation into Gabriel's death last week.

Three of the psychotropic drugs carry U.S. Food and Drug Administration ''black box'' label warnings for children's safety, the strongest advisory the federal agency issues. Three of the medications are not approved for use with young children, though they are widely prescribed to youngsters ''off label'' -- meaning doctors can prescribe the drug even if not formally approved for that use.

In 2005 -- reacting to a series of stories in The Miami Herald that as many as one in four foster children were prescribed potentially dangerous mind-altering drugs -- state lawmakers approved a law aimed at curbing their use. Children's advocates now question whether the law is being ignored.  For complete story, click here.

 

Suit claims abuse, filth at juvenile detention center--April 20th, 2009--

CNN) -- Juveniles held in a Mississippi detention center are subject to "horrific physical and mental abuse" at an insect-ridden, filthy facility, alleges a federal lawsuit filed Monday.

The suit, filed by the Mississippi Youth Justice Project and Mississippi Protection and Advocacy Inc., accuses staff at the privately-managed Harrison County Juvenile Detention Center of "punitive shackling, staff-on-youth assaults, 23-hour-a-day lock-down in filthy jail cells, unsanitary conditions resulting in widespread contraction of scabies and staph infections, dangerous overcrowding that forces many youth to sleep on the concrete floor, and inadequate mental health care."

The facility is is operated by Mississippi Security Police, a private security corporation based in Pascagoula, Mississippi. The company is paid $1.6 million yearly by Harrison County to manage the juvenile center, according to the lawsuit, which names the county as a defendant.  For complete story, click here.

 

Do Lap Dances and Humiliation Treat ADHD -- and Should Public Schools Pay?--April 17th, 2009--...

Mount Bachelor is part of Aspen Education -- believed to be the largest chain of teen residential programs in the U.S. Aspen, as part of CRC Health, which is owned by Bain Capital, was seen by advocates as much more sedate and less given to wacky practices than clearly "out there" programs like those associated with the World Wide Association of Specialty Programs and Schools (WWASP or WWASPS). At one WWASP school, for example, teens were kept in outdoor dog cages.

The stories of psychological abuse coming out of Mount Bachelor -- a few of which are included in my Time piece -- are every bit as bad as I have heard from teens and parents at chains of programs that have far worse reputations.  For complete story, click here.

 

An Oregon School for Troubled Teens Is Under Scrutiny--April 17th, 2009--...A spokesperson for the Oregon Department of Human Services (DHS) declined to discuss the details of the ongoing investigations, which include a second inquiry based on possible licensing violations. But according to 10 students, two separate parents and a part-time employee interviewed by TIME — some of whom are involved in the inquiry — Mount Bachelor Academy regularly uses intensely humiliating tactics as treatment. For instance, in required seminars that the school calls Lifesteps, students say staff members of the residential program have instructed girls, some of whom say they have been victims of rape or sexual abuse, to dress in provocative clothing — fishnet stockings, high heels and miniskirts — and perform lap dances for male students as therapy.  For complete story, click here.

 

State conducts two investigations of Mount Bachelor Academy near Prineville--April 6th, 2009--SALEM -- The state is investigating reports of child abuse at a private school for troubled teens in central Oregon.

 Mount Bachelor Academy near Prineville takes in students from around the country. The academy is licensed by the Oregon Department of Human Services, which confirmed it has launched two concurrent investigations.

The first investigation centers on reported abuse and the second on possible licensing violations. State officials would not discuss details of either investigation Monday.

"We cannot comment on the details or timeline of the assessments while they are ongoing. When they are concluded, there may be information that can be shared," Gene Evans, a department spokesman, said in a written statement.

Former students have posted on MySpace and Facebook numerous complaints about the school, ranging from what they characterized as humiliating group therapy sessions to sleep deprivation. Judson DeVries, who left the school in 2007, told The Oregonian he was forced into "very embarrassing" role-playing games.  For complete story, click here.

 

Discerning the difference between sadness and depression and then getting your teen help quickly is key--April 5th, 2009--Parents of teenagers get accustomed to riding the teeter-totter of their offsprings' emotional highs and lows, but sometimes the moodiness signals a deeper problem.

Barbara Deiotte, a social worker at Munster's Wilbur Wright Middle School, has seen an uptick in teenage depression.

"My personal thoughts are that today's lifestyle is more stressful -- everything is kind of fast," Deiotte said, referring to possible reasons for the increase.

"Or maybe we're more aware (of depression)."

With teens, "depression can be a very temporary response" to stress associated with hormones or conflict with parents, she said. "That will come and go. It's normal adolescent angst.  Please read complete story, click here.

 

2 Teens Arrested, County Juvenile Program Under Investigation--March 27th, 2009--The arrest of two teens charged with harassment prompts an investigation at the Allegheny County juvenile probation division.

Two 17-year-old boys were arrested and charged with harassment after allegedly showing up at a Penn Hills house and threatening another 17-year-old boy. The mother of the threatened boy said she believes that her son was threatened because he blew the whistle on alleged extortion going on in the Homewood Community Intervention Supervision Program.

The boy and his mother were not being identified by police with an ongoing investigation into the program.  For complete story, click here.

 

Clean Slates for Youths Sentenced Fraudulently--March 26th, 2009--The Supreme Court of Pennsylvania on Thursday ordered the slate cleaned for hundreds of youths who had been sentenced by a corrupt judge.  For complete story, click here.

 

Michigan 15-year-old dies after police Taser him--March 22nd, 2009--

BAY CITY, Mich. – Police in Michigan say a 15-year-old boy has died after being Tasered by officers who were trying to break up a fight.
 
Police didn't release his name and say state police are investigating.
A Bay City police news release says officers answered a report of an early morning fight on Sunday. The statement says two males were arguing in an apartment, and one of them "attempted to fight the officers."
 
Police say officers Tasered him, and his reaction led them to immediately call for emergency medical help. He was pronounced dead at Bay Regional Medical Center.
Deputy Chief Thomas Pletzke tells WNEM-TV police placed one officer on administrative leave.  For complete story, click here.

 

Hawthorne Cedar Knolls teen accused of sexually abusing another boy on campus--March 16th,2009--HAWTHORNE - A 17-year-old boy at Hawthorne Cedar Knolls was accused of sexually abusing a 15-year-boy in his residence Saturday night, three days after five teens there were accused of assaulting a fellow resident, police said.

Efrain Castillo, who lives at the residential treatment center for troubled youngsters, was charged with sexual misconduct, unlawful imprisonment and endangering the welfare of a child, misdemeanors, Mount Pleasant Police Chief Louis Alagno said. He is being held on $10,000 bail at the Westchester County jail in Valhalla. The victim was treated at the Westchester Medical Center.  For complete story, click here.

 

Darrington closes doors--March 2nd, 2009--Darrington Academy, a private school for troubled teens in Blue Ridge, closed its doors Friday, a move that owner and headmaster Richard Darrington says is due to the current state of the economy.  For complete story, click here.
 

Academy at Ivy Ridge to close this weekend--March 12th, 2009--

The troubled Academy at Ivy Ridge is reportedly closing its doors for good this weekend.

The Ogdensburg private academy, which was geared toward troubled teens will close this weekend and transfer the remaining students to a facility in South Carolina, according to the Daily Courier-Observer this morning.  For complete story, click here.

 

Camp E-Tu-Nake falls victim to state budget cuts--March 10th, 2009--BLAKELY, GA (WALB) - A youth alternative camp in Blakely is closing because of state budget cuts. Camp E-Tu-Nake will close March 27th.  For complete story, click here.

 

Group Home Operates Without License--March 10th, 2009--A group home for foster children in LaVergne is known around town as a hot spot for trouble, and the home has been operating for almost a year without a business license...Police said 43 percent of the trouble calls from LaVergne High School was associated with kids at the Rock of Refuge.

"We did have some pretty rough kids over at LaVergne High," said Usinger.

The LaVergne Records Department said the home's business license expired in June 2008. Usinger denies the home is trying to expand, but issues with the business branching out have been raised.

"A lot of questions have been raised," said Boyd.

In the large neighborhood, it's hard to tell which houses the Rock of Refuge call home, but neighbors have complained since almost the start of the business... For complete story, click here.

 

Troubled teen beaten down by system--March 9th, 2009--

Most people are scared to die. It can't be any worse than living a life like mine. Being dead I think would just suit me fine ...

People say there's nothing wrong with me. Honestly, I think they need to f--- off because they don't know what goes on in my head. When I used to try to hang myself I was just messing around trying to make them care and pay attention. Now it's different ...

I went to court yesterday and I thought he was going to send me to adult! Time is running out. My chances are getting fewer and fewer. F---. I give up! I'm done trying.

– Excerpt from Ashley Smith's journal, Sept. 4, 2006

 

A month later, the 18-year-old was indeed transferred to an adult closed security facility. That's prison, in plain language, despite her youth status.

She would be repeatedly Tasered (seven times in 26 days), pepper sprayed, locked down in solitary for 23 hours a day, forcibly medicated and placed in the hideous WRAP restraint: bound head to toe, unable to budge, hockey helmet jammed over her head lest she topple over or try to bite.

New Brunswick's Ombudsman and Child and Youth Advocate would later write: "I challenge anyone with a sane mind to live in conditions similar to the ones described ... for half the time Ashley had to endure ...'' And: "Surely, there is a better way.''

If so, not in time to save Ashley Smith, who committed suicide – whether she actually meant to die or not – before the review of custodial conditions in N.B., and her own specific case, was completed.

On Oct. 18, 2007 – having been transferred 17 times in the previous 11 1/2 months between three federal penitentiaries, two treatment facilities, two external hospitals and one provincial correctional facility – the teenager tied a ligature around her neck while on suicide watch at Grand Valley Institution for Women, near Kitchener.

Correctional staff, who had been watching, did not intervene for nearly 30 minutes – and "this failure cost Ms. Smith her life,'' as stated in a report released last week, "A Preventable Death," by the Correctional Investigator of Canada.

In the days after the report was publicized, attention and misgivings were focused on systemic problems, the lack of mental health services for youth – Ashley was never sent for a formal psychological evaluation while in federal custody – and poor co-ordination among correctional authorities. But a closer reading of the file, the reviews of her early custodial years in N.B., suggest strongly that, while Ashley was an angry young girl from the age of 12, it was the rigid and punitive correctional system that made her nuts – despairing, endlessly confrontational and ultimately self-destructive, even as she clearly called out for help with acts of self-harm.

In page after page of analysis, she is described as defiant, combative, unyielding to rules, refusing to conform; an obstinate and powerful personality, the proverbial square peg being forced to fit into a round hole, a juvenile iconoclast who fought tooth and nail in hanging on to a personality others deemed "oppositional'' and "narcissistic'' and "disrespectful.''

Ashley would probably have been better off if all those who did intervene, who sought to alter her behaviour, so often in cruel ways, had just left the girl alone, said: Go. Fend for yourself. You've heard of "black while driving'' or "Muslim while flying'' – externally imposed perceptions that pre-emptively stigmatize, even criminalize, behaviour. Ashley was incorrigible while incarcerated.  For complete story, click here.

 

70 Youths Sue Former Judges in Detention Kickback Case--February 27th, 2009--More than 70 juveniles and their families filed a class-action lawsuit Thursday against two former judges who pleaded guilty this month in a scheme that involved their taking kickbacks to put young offenders in privately run detention centers.  For complete story, click here.

 

Luzerne County Courthouse Corruption Probe Expands--March 2nd, 2009--WILKES-BARRE, LUZERNE COUNTY- The federal probe into corruption at the Luzerne County courthouse is widening. The I-Team has learned that federal investigators are expanding their investigation.

Sources close to the case tell the I-Team that "target letters" have been sent to several lawyers in Luzerne and Lackawanna Counties. Those letters reportedly say they will be questioned about information they may have about corruption within the Luzerne County legal system.

The I-Team has also learned that at least one district justice from Luzerne County has been questioned by federal agents.

All of this comes in the aftermath of the arrest of four high ranking Luzerne County officials. Suspended Judges Mark Ciavarella and Michael Conahan pled guilty to taking millions in kickbacks in connection with a juvenile detention center in Pittston Township.

Also busted was former Court Administrator William Sharkey, Sr. He admits to stealing $70,000 in seized gambling money. And Sandy Brulo, a Probation Supervisor, is accused of tampering with public records.

The U.S. Attorney's Office will not comment on our information.  For complete story, click here.

 

Youth boot camps proven to fail--March 3rd, 2009--Clinical psychologists have joined the chorus of disapproval of the Government's planned `boot camps', saying punishment as a deterrent does not work.

The Government is planning to widen the powers of the Youth Court with a range of new sentencing options including sending the worst repeat offenders to military-style camps run by the army.

Principal Youth Court Judge Andrew Becroft has already put the boot in to boot camps for young offenders.

He said last week that sentencing youthful offenders to boot camp was "arguably the least successful sentence in the Western world".  For complete story, click here.

 

What We Lost When We Lost Rocky -- Paper First Exposed Teen Torture--March 3rd, 2009--When people talk in the abstract about what we lose when we lose newspapers, it's often hard to drum up much concern. Yeah, people are losing their jobs--that's what happened to the buggy makers when the car took over. Yeah, news is important--but hey, we've got the web now. And the MSM blew it on Iraq, so who needs them anyway? We've got twitter.

Just last week, Denver lost the Rocky Mountain News and before its website disappears, I wanted to share an example of just how much newspapers matter.

This series--Desperate Measures--was the first to comprehensively take on the multi-million teen abuse empire variously known as WWASP, WWASPS and Teen Help. Please take the time to read it--once you start, it's hard to turn away. (And sadly, though WWASP has lost a few rounds lately, it's still operating).

Expensive to conduct, extensive, well-written and well-reported, this journalism helped inspire a generation of activists, as well as my book, Help at Any Cost: How the Troubled-Teen Industry Cons Parents and Hurts Kids, which is the first book length investigation of the billion dollar business.

In the series, Pulitzer-prize winner Lou Kilzer and photographer Dennis Schroeder make abundantly clear that the programs affiliated with WWASP are harsh, abusive and wildly popular--and they get a top WWASP official to admit that their staff is untrained and its methods completely untested:

"These people are basically a bunch of untrained people who work for this organization," Ken Kay told the Denver Rocky Mountain News in an interview before he rejoined Teen Help as a vice president. "So they don't have credentials of any kind. ...

"We could be leading these kids to long-term problems that we don't have a clue about because we're not going about it in the proper way. ...

"How in the hell can you call yourself a behavior modification program -- and that's one of the ways it's marketed -- when nobody has the expertise to determine: Is this good, is this bad?"

Kilzer shows that WWASP's contract with parents allows the programs to "use handcuffs, mechanical restraints, electrical disabler, Mace or pepper spray in order to restrain the student." Parents could not sue the program for "liability or damages resulting from restraint procedures."  for complete story, click here.

 

Crime of punishment?--March 1st, 2009--

At age 14, the Wilkes-Barre youth had been declared a juvenile delinquent and sent away for treatment, first to a wilderness-style juvenile detention camp and later to a reformatory school.

His crime? He and a friend entered several open cars in Ashley and stole some change, a pre-paid cell phone and a portable music player, he and his mother, Amy, said.

Suddenly the once carefree, basketball-playing teen found himself locked up for 10 months. Each day he struggled to control the rage that was building inside as he worked to earn his release.

What he could not control, he and his mother said, is the sense of helplessness and anger that still haunts him today as he tries to comprehend why he was put away for a misdemeanor crime that, if committed by an adult, likely would have resulted in probation and a fine.

It’s a question thousands of other juveniles and their parents asked during the 12 years now-disgraced Judge Mark A. Ciavarella Jr. presided over Luzerne County’s juvenile court.

People such as Kimberly Bryk of Exeter Township and her daughter, Jamie, who spent more than a year lodged in juvenile detention facilities for a fist fight with another girl, and Sandy Fonzo of Wilkes-Barre and her son, Ed, who bounced in and out of several detention facilities after he violated probation on an initial charge of possession of drug paraphernalia.

Today those parents and their children think they may have an answer:

Ciavarella and Judge Michael Conahan pleaded guilty on Feb. 12 to accepting more than $2.6 million in kickbacks in exchange for rulings that favored the PA Child Care and Western PA Child Care juvenile detention centers formerly co-owned by Butler Township attorney Robert Powell.  For complete story, click here.

 

U.S. House passes wilderness camp restrictions--February 24th, 2009-- The U.S. House signed off on legislation Monday that seeks to end abuse in programs for troubled teens, such as the wilderness camps operating throughout Utah.

The bill passed on a vote of 295 to 102. Utah Democratic Rep. Jim Matheson voted for the bill. Republican Reps. Rob Bishop and Jason Chaffetz voted against it.

Proponents of the legislation say it will help keep kids safe as they participate in boot-camp style activities. The bill prohibits any punishment that denies food, water, clothing, shelter or medical care. It would limit forcible restraints and allow the children access to a telephone.

The legislation also would set up a Web site allowing parents to see which programs have faced substantiated abuse claims. The bill follows a government audit that found more than 1,000 cases of abuse in such programs since the early 1990s, including cases where a child has died in Utah.  For complete story, click here.

 

'Boot camp' closed--February 22nd, 2009--TREASURE BEACH, St Elizabeth - Tranquility Bay, the controversial offshore reform school for rebellious children, mostly from the United States, closed its doors last month as a result of a fallout in business. The last 'inmate' reportedly left the island on January 5.  For complete story, click here.

 

Pennsylvania rocked by 'jailing kids for cash' scandal--February 23rd, 2009--CNN) -- At a friend's sleepover more than a year ago, 14-year-old Phillip Swartley pocketed change from unlocked vehicles in the neighborhood to buy chips and soft drinks. The cops caught him.

There was no need for an attorney, said Phillip's mother, Amy Swartley, who thought at most, the judge would slap her son with a fine or community service.

But she was shocked to find her eighth-grader handcuffed and shackled in the courtroom and sentenced to a youth detention center. Then, he was shipped to a boarding school for troubled teens for nine months.

"Yes, my son made a mistake, but I didn't think he was going to be taken away from me," said Swartley, a 41-year-old single mother raising two boys in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania.

CNN does not usually identify minors accused of crimes. But Swartley and others agreed to be named to bring public attention to the issue.

As scandals from Wall Street to Washington roil the public trust, the justice system in Luzerne County, in the heart of Pennsylvania's struggling coal country, has also fallen prey to corruption. The county has been rocked by a kickback scandal involving two elected judges who essentially jailed kids for cash. Many of the children had appeared before judges without a lawyer.

The nonprofit Juvenile Law Center in Philadelphia said Phillip is one of at least 5,000 children over the past five years who appeared before former Luzerne County President Judge Mark Ciavarella.

Ciavarella pleaded guilty earlier this month to federal criminal charges of fraud and other tax charges, according to the U.S. attorney's office. Former Luzerne County Senior Judge Michael Conahan also pleaded guilty to the same charges. The two secretly received more than $2.6 million, prosecutors said.  For complete story, click here.

 

Kansas shuts down center for troubled teens--February 20th, 2009--ESBON, Kan. | The state is shutting down a northern Kansas treatment center for troubled adolescents after inspectors found emergency exit doors locked on three occasions.

The White Rock Academy in Esbon on Thursday was ordered closed after state officials twice told operators to remove the locks, which violate the state fire and safety code. The academy has until Monday to make other arrangements for its 24 residents.

The state suspended the center's license, citing a need to protect youths at the facility from physical abuse or threats to their safety.  For complete story, click here.

 

Facility For Troubled Teens In Ephrata To Close--February 19th, 2009--Summit Quest, a facility for troubled teens in Ephrata, is in the process of closing.  They still have a small group of teens to place in alternative treatment before they can shut their doors.  For complete story, click here.

 

NYPD okays Velcro handcuffs for use on unruly children 14 Feb 2009 Cops trying to restrain children will have a softer alternative than metal handcuffs under a new program the NYPD is testing in nearly two dozen schools. Starting next month, officers will use Velcro handcuffs instead of the tougher steel model to subdue disturbed or unruly children in 22 schools in northern Queens, according to a draft NYPD operations order obtained by the Daily News.  For complete story, click here.

 

Vision for Youth had multiple problems, managed teen felons--February 15th, 2009--Springfield, Ohio — Vision for Youth, Inc. maintained four facilities in Springfield and at one time had teens from the foster care system and juvenile felons, ages 13 to 18, from as many as ten counties enrolled in its boot-camp-style program.

Vision had a history of problems, according to state records, but by all accounts the home's child-care staff managed a difficult population — children that were hard to place anywhere else because of criminal records and emotional problems, said Brian Harter, a spokesman for Ohio's Department of Job and Family Services.

"You look at these kids' backgrounds...(they) have a lot of issues, and they have situations that require special attention," Harter said. "It's not an easy situation for the staff to deal with on a day-to-day basis. But that's not to condone anything."

Harter said that while state law allows staff at group homes to physically restrain minors, staff are prohibited from administering physical discipline. Punching a juvenile, for instance — which happened at a Vision facility — is grounds for revocation of the home's license.

On at least three occasions, licensing specialists investigating complaints about Vision recommended its license be revoked, but the home was allowed to continue operating.  For complete story, click here.

 

House panel wants to crack down on wilderness camps--February 11th, 2009-- A House panel approved a bill Wednesday that would boost federal regulations on residential programs for troubled teens, including the wilderness therapy camps that have thrived in Utah's deserts.

The bill is in reaction to a two-year federal audit that found thousands of cases of abuse in residential treatment programs nationwide since the early 1990s, along with misleading marketing practices and uneven state oversight.

"It is past time to bring these programs to a level of basic safety," said Rep. Carolyn McCarthy, D-N.Y., one of the sponsors of the legislation. The House Education and Labor Committee approved the bill on a vote of 32 to 10.

The proposal is almost identical to a bill pushed last year. That version passed the full House by a wide margin, but did not come up for a vote in the Senate. With a new Congress, the legislation had to be reintroduced. Rep. Rob Bishop, R-Utah, a member of the committee, opposed it last year and opposed it again Wednesday.  For complete story, click here.  (The problems with HR 911 are the same as with HR 6358, learn more.)

 

 

Report: Abuse Found At Chicago Public Schools, www.wbbm780.com, February 10, 2009--For complete story, click here.

 

Pa. judges accused of jailing kids for cash--February 11th, 2009--WILKES-BARRE, Pa. -- For years, the juvenile court system in Wilkes-Barre operated like a conveyor belt: Youngsters were brought before judges without a lawyer, given hearings that lasted only a minute or two, and then sent off to juvenile prison for months for minor offenses.

The explanation, prosecutors say, was corruption on the bench.

In one of the most shocking cases of courtroom graft on record, two Pennsylvania judges have been charged with taking millions of dollars in kickbacks to send teenagers to two privately run youth detention centers.  For complete story, click here.

 

SJC: Juvenile offenders cannot be held beyond 18--February 10th, 2009--The state's highest court today struck down a law that allowed the state to keep juvenile offenders in custody for three years after they turned 18, if officials believed they would be "physically dangerous to the public."

The Supreme Judicial Court ruled that the law, which was challenged by three juvenile offenders who had been ordered held until they were 21, "does not comport with substantive due process requirements and is constitutionally infirm."  For complete story, click here.

 

Juvenile Justice System Failing Ohio's Children, Investigation Finds--February 10th, 2009--COLUMBUS, OH – The Ohio juvenile justice system is failing the state's children by permitting children to be routinely shackled, mandating that children accused of certain crimes be charged as  adults and by not ensuring that all children accused of crimes get  lawyers.  The findings, detailed in a report card released today, are the result of an investigation by the American Civil Liberties Union, the  ACLU of Ohio, the Children's Law Center, Inc. and the Office of the Ohio Public Defender. The investigation has also revealed that Ohio  detains and incarcerates a greater percentage of its children than 
most other states in the nation and that a disproportionate number of  those incarcerated are children of color. 
"Rushing to criminalize and unnecessarily incarcerate kids is just  bad policy," said Robin Dahlberg, a senior staff attorney with the  ACLU Racial Justice Program. "It has a scarring impact on our children and only serves to push them deeper into the criminal  justice system and inhibit their ability to become healthy,  productive adults."  For complete story, click here.

 

3 fired from Parmadale in teen's death--February 7th, 2009--Tom Mullen, the president of the Catholic Charities of the Diocese of Cleveland, says the three were fired Friday following the release of a state agency report that said the workers didn't follow the center's own policies on how to restrain unruly youngsters.

Faith Finley, 17, of Barberton, died Dec. 13 at Parmadale Family Services in suburban Cleveland while being restrained in a face-down position.   

The Cuyahoga County coroner's office ruled Finley's death a homicide last month, saying she choked on vomit and suffocated.  For complete story, click here.

 

Father: Son mistreated at rehab center--February 6th, 2009--INDIANAPOLIS (WISH) - I-Team 8 has learned a formal complaint has been filed with the state attorney general against an Indianapolis teen rehab center. At issue: a father who claims his son is being mistreated inside Pathway Family Center in Castleton.

In his complaint, Mark West states what happened to his 17-year-old son inside Pathway has him "gravely concerned for his son's welfare both physically and emotionally."

What West calls isolation, other parents call lifesaving for their drug-addicted teenagers. Pathway allowed 24-Hour News 8 inside the facility and provided a group of parents for I-Team 8 to speak with.

The complaint, filed late Friday afternoon with the Indiana Attorney General?s Office, alleges "substandard housing and care" including kids sleeping in locked rooms with windows bolted shut and no lights. One allegation is that at least one 17-year-old missed a complete year of school.

The complaint goes on to allege continual sleep deprivation and isolation. It alleges kids are not allowed privacy at any time and that other kids who've been in the program longer are then assigned to go with them while bathing or using the bathroom.

The complaint also says kids are cut off from family, no phone calls or letters allowed, so there is no way to address grievances or mistreatment.

Two other Pathway facilities have closed in recent months in Detroit and Cincinnati, Ohio amid protests from parents and former students. But director Terri Nissley said they closed due to the bad economy and that the Pathway program is being confused with another program that was shut down two years ago in Ohio.  For complete story, click here.

 

Outcry Over Drug Center Closing--February 5th, 2009--When Kids Helping Kids, also known as Pathway Family Center, closed its doors in suburban Milford in Clermont County, a group of parents and former clients cheered, saying the program's controversial methods scarred them for life.  For complete story, click here.
 

NICK GAGLIA STANDS UP FOR TROUBLED TEENS--February 5th, 2009--Independent filmmaker Nick Gaglia is a man on a mission: using the power of cinema to expose those who prey on troubled young adults. His critically-acclaimed 2007 feature film debut, “Over the GW,” was based on his own experiences as a drug-addicted teen who underwent physical and psychological abuse at a cult-like, tough love rehab center. His next film, currently in post-production, is the biopic “Aaron Bacon,” which details the tragic 1994 death of a troubled 16-year-old who died as a result of blatant malpractice in a tough love drug rehab camp.

Film Threat caught up with Gaglia at his New York office to talk about his cinematic crusade to expose the exploiters of troubled teenagers.  For complete story, click here.

 

Covenant House folding its operation here--February 5th, 2009--STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. -- Covenant House thrived from humble beginnings and later rose from the ashes of scandal, but it's no match for the putrid economy.

The charity that specifically serves at-risk youth and had been scouting new quarters after it was priced out of its longtime home at 70 Bay St. in St. George, has elected to abandon the borough altogether amid a decrease in donations and worries about future revenue, a spokesman confirmed yesterday.  For complete story, click here.

 

Juvenile Cases May Get New Look Following Kickback Charges Against Former Judges--February 3rd, 2009--

The Pennsylvania Supreme Court appears ready to reconsider a request to review hundreds of Luzerne County juvenile court cases in the wake of charges that two former judges accepted kickbacks from the owners of a private juvenile detention center.

The court, on Jan. 8, denied a petition by the Philadelphia-based Juvenile Law Center to look at more than 250 cases in which juvenile offenders were allegedly adjudicated and sent to detention centers without lawyers.

On Monday, the justices issued a one-line order vacating their previous denial of that petition, pending further action by the court.

"We see this as a very positive sign that the court is going to take a fresh look at our application for relief," said Bob Schwartz, JLC's executive director. "Beyond that, it's hard to read into this. It's pretty clear that they want to go deeper. There's no reason to do this if they're not going to grant relief down the line or at least figure out a way to provide relief to the kids of Luzerne County."

The U.S. Attorney's Office for the Middle District of Pennsylvania announced Jan. 22 that former President Judge Mark A. Ciavarella and Senior Judge Michael T. Conahan had conditionally agreed to plead guilty to honest service wire fraud charges.  For complete story, click here.

 

Good News: Bad Economy Killing Abusive Teen Programs--January 30th, 2009--

There is a silver lining to this bleak economy: Abusive and ineffective "tough love" programs for teens are failing right and left.

In just the last few weeks, the notorious Tranquility Bay program in Jamaica, Spring Creek Lodge in Montana, and Pathway Family Center in Detroit and Ohio have all been shuttered.

Tranquility Bay was known for making kids kneel on concrete for days and using "restraint" so harsh that it broke bones. Both Tranquility Bay and Spring Creek Lodge were part of a network called the World Wide Association of Specialty Programs and Schools (WWASP or WWASPS)--and the group's philosophy involves constant use of emotional attacks and humiliation in a rigid, structured day in order to break teens' spirits.

Spring Creek was notorious for a frigid, small isolation room called "the Hobbit"--sometimes teens were left there for months.

From Pathway--which was descended from the infamously abusive Straight Inc.--I received two separate accounts of suicide attempts by girls which were not reported to their parents, and many stories of the usual attack therapy and humiliation. Unfortunately, neither WWASP nor Pathway is completely dead yet: WWASP still has centers operating in the US and abroad, and Pathway has sites in Indiana: Porter and Indianapolis.

The media tends to present these closures as sad examples of needed services being cut--but in fact, teens are better off with no treatment than with treatment that often divides families and has characteristics known to produce post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Family support tends to be crucial to long term recovery--and PTSD doubles the odds that a drug problem will become a lasting addiction.

Troubled teen programs were yet another sign of the bubble economy. Many were financed by mortgage and home equity loans because they cost thousands of dollars a month and because insurers, quite correctly, don't usually pay for programs that aren't proven to help.

Since there are proven alternatives for teens with drug and other problems that do not carry the risks of "tough love," we should greet the closings of these centers with glee.  For complete story, click here.

 

Three Rivers Montana to close--January 31st, 2009--Three Rivers Montana, a Belgrade-based wilderness program for troubled teens, plans to close Feb. 28, laying off its 37 employees, executive director Marylis Filipovich said Thursday.

“Normally, January is a very big admissions month for us and we didn’t get any admissions,” she said.

Three Rivers opened five years ago and has served more than 400 kids from across the nation. Teens experiencing difficulties at home or school could stay at the mental-health facility for a few weeks or months, earning high-school credits and receive treatment.

The nonprofit depended on admission fees, often funded by health-insurance reimbursements, donations and fundraising. Discounts were offered for low-income families.

“In this economy, many of our potential families cannot afford the cost of outdoor behavioral healthcare,” Mark Parlett, director of programs and development for Three Rivers, wrote in an e-mail to the Chronicle.

Families often took out loans to send their kids to Three Rivers and the tightened credit market has hurt enrollment, Filipovich said.

“Our families tended to be middle-class, and with the economy like it is, they can’t get loans,” she said.  For complete story, click here.
 

Connecticut Junior Republic to close campus for troubled teens--January 31, 2009--LITCHFIELD — Connecticut Junior Republic will end a 105-year tradition of sheltering and educating troubled teens here in April.

On Friday, 107 teachers, counselors, and support staff were told they will not have a job when the campus, except for the administration building, shuts down April 2.

The nonprofit organization, founded with a 1904 bequest from landowner Mary Buel but funded primarily by taxpayers, has suffered in recent years from changes in how the state treats juveniles in trouble. Over the past decade, CJR expanded and updated its campus, with a $5 million education center in 1997 and a $1.4 million family and student services center that opened in 2003.

But in 2008, CJR's number of beds was cut from 84 to 60 in response to shrinking demand; only 38 teenage boys, most referred from the court system, live on campus today.

"That does provide a sense of how quickly things have changed," said Director of Development Hedy L. Barton.

Increasingly, the state refers troubled teens to community and home-based programs rather than residential facilities now reserved only for those teens who demonstrate the highest risk behavior.  For complete story, click here.

 

Dyller eyes potential lawsuits--January 28th, 2009--WILKES-BARRE – A local attorney who specializes in civil rights cases said he believes some of the juveniles who were incarcerated under juvenile Judge Mark Ciavarella’s tenure have a strong basis to file a lawsuit seeking compensation for emotional and financial harm. I’m looking at this and see so many civil claims based on so many potential civil rights violations, it’s shocking,” said Barry Dyller of Wilkes-Barre.  For complete story, click here.

 

Pathway Family Center Loses Michigan and Ohio Locations!--

Kids Helping Kids presented itself as the treatment of last resort when the I-Team got an unprecedented look inside four years ago. No cameras had been allowed before. The treatment the I-Team saw called for complete isolation of newcomers, who don't go to their home or to school for months, sometimes longer. They aren't allowed to listen to music or TV. They can't talk to each other, and must get permission to speak at all.

The executive director of the facility in Milford, Ohio told us in 2005, there's a reason for this tough love. Penny Walker said, "We deal with difficult kids and sometimes difficult families, and we're not going to please everybody." Walker no longer works for Kids Helping Kids.

The I-Team investigated the program after former clients and some parents called it a brainwashing cult. They cited day-long rap sessions in which teens were forced to repeating gestures and words in order to advance in the program and win a chance to go to their homes at night.

But some parents of clients in treatment at the time strongly supported the tactics. Parent Martha Logan told the I-Team she believes the program saved her son's life. She said, "There was no place else to turn."

After our report, protesters picketed regularly outside the center in Milford. This continued even after the center became affiliated with a chain called Pathway Family Center.

Now the Ohio Department of Alcohol and Drug Addiction Services confirms that Pathway has turned in its state certificate allowing it to operate.

A property search shows Pathway still owns the building. It still lists its address on Branch Hill Guinea Road on its paperwork, and the local phone number still leads to voice mail. But a visit to the building found no one there in the middle of business hours. The facility looks deserted, but files and keys still sit on desks. Inside, the rooms once full of troubled teens sit empty and silent.

Mark West says he knows what happened to the roughly two dozen kids who were here when the place shut its doors to treatment. He says they were moved to other Pathway facilities, including Indianapolis, where his son is enrolled. He opposes the program, but his ex-wife, who has custody, supports it.

West says the Milford location closed because of, "Bad publicity, not just bad publicity but actually the truth started getting out. I think community pressure closed it down."

The I-Team tried to reach Pathway through calls and e-mails not only to its Milford location, but also its other treatment centers in Michigan and Indianapolis. The day of this report, a spokeswoman finally called back. She said it wasn't community pressure, but economic realities that shut the center in Ohio. As of Thursday, January 29, 2009, she says the Michigan facility in the Detroit suburb of Southfield also has shut its doors. For complete story, click here.

 

Troubled Miami-Dade reform school may be forced to close main campus--January 24th, 2009--A Miami-Dade reform school for troubled teens, once considered a national model, could be forced to shut its 16-year-old main campus. State administrators have yanked the school's contract, citing escapes, allegations of abuse and neglect, and other chronic problems.

In a letter dated Jan. 7, the Department of Juvenile Justice's South Florida chief said Bay Point Schools in South Dade will lose state funding March 1, and that admissions to the 157-bed campus have been frozen. Youths already are being transferred to similar programs or being released.

Budget problems triggered the decision -- the department has to cut $5 million this year and will save $2 million by closing Bay Point's Kennedy campus -- but the school has been beset by critical lapses, said agency Assistant Secretary Darryl Olson.

''They have consistently failed to comply with DJJ standards,'' Olson said. ``We haven't been getting the kind of return on investment we would like.''

Added DJJ spokesman Frank Penela: ``In the budget times we're in, we can't afford to do that anymore.''  For complete story, click here.

 

Civil suit filed in camp death--January 23rd, 2009--SALT LAKE CITY — The mother of Utah teen Caleb Jensen filed suit Thursday against those she believes were responsible for his untimely death at 15.

Caleb was attending an Alternative Youth Adventures outing for at-risk youth in rural Montrose County in 2007. He died of a staph infection May 2 of that year.

The state acted quickly, suspending AYA’s license for residential and therapeutical childcare. AYA later surrendered the license, which it had originally hoped to renew.

In July 2007 came the indictments against AYA, its former parent company Community Education Centers of New Jersey; camp director James Omer; camp EMT Ben Askins and Utah physician Keith Hooker.

The criminal complaints alleged the infection that claimed Jensen’s life produced visible signs, which the defendants failed to act on. Charges included manslaughter and child abuse resulting in death, but by last December, only CEC remained as a criminal defendant.  For complete story, click here.  For more info, click here.

 

Trainer charged with abusing teen girls--January 23rd, 2009--A Colorado horse trainer has been charged with sexually abusing teenage girls, including one that he took to Alabama for marriage.

Donald Lane Betts, 33, was arrested in December when he returned to Kiowa with his 16-year-old bride, the Rocky Mountain News reported. Investigators say he lied about her age in Alabama because minors must have parental permission to marry.

Mark Wilson, an investigator with the Elbert County Sheriff's Office, said Betts may have victimized other teens. Wilson charged that Betts targeted troubled girls, including three runaways.

We have a strong belief that there are other victims out there, Wilson said. We stand ready to get them the help that they need.

Betts faces a long list of charges, including second-degree kidnapping, sexual assault on a child, harboring a minor and contributing to the delinquency of a minor. He is also charged with obstruction of a peace officer for locking himself in his house when police arrived to arrest him.  For complete story, click here.

 

Teachers in Martinique sentenced for abusing teens--January 22nd, 2009--A judge in Martinique has prohibited seven teachers from working with minors again after they were found guilty of physically abusing juvenile delinquents.

The teachers also have received suspended sentences ranging from 14 to 24 months.

Prosecutors had alleged that eight teachers made 16- and 17-year-old students kneel on rocks and hold cinder blocks in outstretched arms during work trips to Haiti and Brazil. The juveniles were part of a program funded by the Paris-based Groupe SOS that works with troubled teens, drug addicts and homeless people.

The nine victims will receive between $2,000 to $9,000 in damages, along with $1,300 each for attorney fees.

The teachers were sentenced late Wednesday.  For complete story, click here.

 

DEA, Florida 'Honor' Abusive Rehab Founder, Wife of Republican Financier--January 16th, 2009--Imagine if Wall Street were to honor Bernie Madoff for his skills as an investor ten years from now. The equivalent just happened in Florida, where Betty Sembler--co-founder of the abusive Straight, Inc. rehab chain--has been named by Governor Charlie Crist to its "Women's Hall of Fame" for her work fighting drugs. Last year, the DEA gave her a lifetime achievement award.

You may know Betty Sembler as wife of mall magnate Mel Sembler (another co-founder of Straight). He's the guy who headed the Scooter Libby Defense Fund, chaired finances for the Republicans during the first election of the second Bush, and served as ambassador to Italy, naming a building he acquired for the embassy for himself, in the process.

Straight--which at its peak had centers in seven states and claims to have treated 50,000 teens--has long been discredited for not only being ineffective, but harmful. Its policy of using confrontation, humiliation and physical punishment led to dozens of lawsuits, with plaintiffs winning hundreds of thousands of dollars for kidnapping, unlawful imprisonment and emotional abuse.

Some of the more notorious cases involved kids being gagged with Kotex, being restrained by fellow students until they wet or even soiled themselves, and frequent use of sexually degrading and homophobic slurs. Many survivors have since been diagnosed with PTSD; there have also been numerous suicides.

Research conducted on confrontation has found that the more it is used, the more likely patients are to drink or take drugs and drop out of treatment.

"With all the available evidence-based treatments with proven effects, it's hard to understand a desire to support things that fly in the face of evidence," says addiction expert Tom McLellan, PhD, who is CEO of the Treatment Research Institute and a professor of psychology in psychiatry at the University of Pennsylvania.

Regarding Straight's tactics, McLellan says, "They're counterproductive. It's hard to even conceive of a therapeutic relationship based on confrontation, bullying and frankly, meanness."  For complete story, click here.

 

Report Reveals Severe Cases of Abuse and Neglect of Schoolchildren--January 13th, 2009--WASHINGTON, D.C. – Schoolchildren around the country have been subject to abusive – and in some cases fatal – uses of seclusion and restraint by school administrators, teachers and staff, according to a new report released today by the National Disability Rights Network. The report, the first national effort to examine these practices in both public and private schools identified hundreds of cases where the abusive and negligent use of seclusion and restraint injured or traumatized students, many of whom were disabled. In several cases, students died.

In light of this report, U.S. Rep. George Miller, the chairman of the House Education and Labor Committee, announced the committee will hold a hearing on these abuses.

“These abuses are a shocking and disturbing betrayal of the trust that families and communities place in our schools. School administrators and teachers are tasked with providing not just productive and encouraging learning environments for students, but with keeping them safe. It is wholly unacceptable for children to be locked up in closets or for any staff member to use overwhelming – and in some cases deadly – force against their students.

“This report raises serious questions about the treatment of schoolchildren, the qualifications and training of staff, and what actions have been taken to address these unconscionable practices. No child should be at risk or in danger while at school, no matter what the circumstances. Our committee will hold a hearing to look at how we can address and hopefully end these horrific acts."

The report, “School is not supposed to hurt: An investigative report on abusive seclusion and restraint in schools,” provides an unprecedented look at the tactics used to isolate or restrain students. In one case, a seven-year old girl was killed in a special day program when four adult staff pinned her small body face down. The student had been blowing bubbles in her milk and would not follow directions to sit still.  In another example, a thirteen year old boy committed suicide in a locked concrete seclusion room, hanging himself with a cord provided by staff to hold up his pants, after pleading with his teachers that he could not withstand the isolation in the small room for hours at a time.  For complete story, click here.
 

Senator Chris Dodd Reports on Restraint and Seclusion , See Video:

 

 

Eugene, Ore., high-school students' good intentions misunderstood--December 20th, 2008--EUGENE, Ore. — All they wanted to do was change the world, one random act of kindness at a time. Instead, they were met with furrowed brows, questioned by Eugene police and ousted by Valley River Center security officers.

"People can't accept the fact that there are other people who just want to be nice," says Sheldon High School senior Kelsey Hertel, who founded the school's new Random Acts of Kindness Club. "People don't trust each other. They think everyone's out to get them."

Ironically, that's exactly why Hertel founded the club in the first place. "Our community isn't giving enough," she says. "So we thought by doing random acts of kindness, we could totally change someone's day or life. And they could pay it forward to someone else. And one person at a time, we could make the world better."  For complete story, click here.

 

Gay kids' health: Family role cited--December 29th, 2008--SAN FRANCISCO — Young gay people whose parents or guardians responded negatively when they revealed their sexual orientation were more likely to attempt suicide, experience severe depression and use drugs than those whose families accepted the news, according to a new study.

The way in which parents or guardians respond to a youth's sexual orientation profoundly influences the child's mental health as an adult, say researchers at San Francisco State University, whose findings appear in today's journal of the American Academy of Pediatrics.

"Parents love their children and want the best for them," said lead researcher Caitlin Ryan, a social worker who directs the university's Family Acceptance Project. "Now that we have measured all these behaviors, we can see that some of them put youth at extremely high risk and others are wellness-promoting."

Among other findings, the study showed that teens who experienced negative feedback were more than eight times as likely to have attempted suicide, nearly six times as vulnerable to severe depression and more than three times at risk of drug use.

More significantly, Ryan said, ongoing work at San Francisco State suggests parents who take even baby steps to respond with equanimity instead of rejection can dramatically improve a gay youth's mental-health outlook.

One of the most startling findings was that being forbidden to associate with gay peers was as damaging as being physically beaten or verbally abused by their parents in terms of negative feedback, Ryan said.  For complete story, click here.

 

Ruling expands legal rights of truant students--January 13th, 2009--Juveniles accused of chronically cutting class in public schools are entitled to a lawyer in their first court hearing, a unanimous three-judge panel of the Washington Court of Appeals has ruled.

Reversing a King County Superior Court ruling and an earlier Court of Appeals finding on different issues, the panel found Monday that denying a juvenile the right to a lawyer from the outset violated constitutional requirements.

In her opinion, Judge Anne Ellington wrote the decision was the first to consider due-process rights of juveniles in initial proceedings under the truancy law enacted in 1995.  For complete story, click here.

 

Some Civil Rights Groups Mark Today as 3rd Anniversary in Teen Bootcamp Death--January 6th, 2009--

Three years ago Monday marks the death of Martin Lee Anderson.

The 14-year-old Bay County Teenager was admitted to Bay Medical Center, and then transferred to the ICU in Pensacola Hospital where he died.

That death set off a chain of events that in no way has come to an end.

Some civil rights groups will mark the third anniversary of Martin Lee Anderson’s death Monday, in a graveside ceremony.

The case is still a divisive issue in the community and the nation.

If you remember-- the teen collapsed during a physical assessment in his first day at the old Bay County Juvenile Boot Camp.

Drill instructors initially believe Anderson was faking an illness and used what some considered to be physical abuse to make him complete the work-out.

In the first autopsy, then-medical examiner Dr. Charles Siebert found Anderson died as a result of sickle cell trait.

A second autopsy found the drill instructors suffocated the teen.

Two state entities settled with Anderson’s family for a combined 7-million dollars.

But when the 7-drill instructors and the camp nurse were acquitted of aggravated manslaughter during the criminal trial, Anderson supporters called for a u-s justice department investigation.

More than a year later that investigation is still underway.  For complete story, click here.

 

Teen's death in Parma is ruled homicide-- January 6th, 2009--The death of a Barberton teenager at a Parma treatment facility last month has been ruled a homicide, the Cuyahoga County coroner said Monday.

Faith Finley, 17, suffocated and choked to death on her own vomit while being restrained by staff members, the coroner determined.

Finley died Dec. 13 at Parmadale Family Services, a Catholic Charities-run facility that treats youths with severe behavioral health and developmental problems. She was in the custody of Summit County Children Services at the time and had been placed there by the agency.

''For this kind of an outcome to occur is deeply, deeply concerning and frankly painful,'' Children Services Executive Director John Saros said after learning about the ruling. ''This was a beautiful young woman who was sent there to receive treatment services.  For complete story, click hereClick here for more info.

 

 

PRISON NEWS

Defender, prosecutor in feud over evidence--January 15th, 2010--Broward's public defender has leveled a broadside against State Attorney Mike Satz's office, saying his prosecutors systematically sit on evidence favorable to defendants, cover up for bad cops and use a double standard of justice that favors the wealthy and influential.  For complete story, click here.
 

 

Fake DNA prompts change in criminal forensics--January 13th, 2010--America’s fascination with the use of forensic science to solve crimes is best proven by the explosion of TV shows dealing with the topic, from dramas like CSI and Cold Case to reality shows like Forensic Files and The Bureau.


During the past two decades, advances in forensics — the use of 
science and technology to investigate and establish facts in courts 
of law — have led to a seismic change in how police work is conducted 
and what jurors expect when hearing a case.

Although forensic evidence is available only in 10 to 20 percent of 
all criminal cases, the public places great weight on its inclusion, 
a fact that’s keenly aware to prosecutors and defense attorneys. 
Perhaps the main reason is improvements made in DNA profiling, or the 
analysis of human material like blood, semen, skin tissue or hair 
that can be used to precisely identify an individual.

The best-known example of DNA profiling’s impact is the Innocence 
Project, a nationwide non-profit group that uses testing to determine 
if a prisoner has been wrongfully convicted. Since the group began in 
1992, more than 240 people in the United States have been exonerated, 
including 17 who were waiting to be executed on Death Row.

Just last month, the longest-incarcerated victim of a wrongful 
conviction was freed due to the Innocence Project’s work. James Bain 
— who had been imprisoned for 35 years for kidnapping, rape and 
burglary — was exonerated by DNA testing. Before the project’s 
involvement, his appeal was denied four times by the courts.

But forensics came under fire last summer when scientists in Israel 
were able to create DNA evidence capable of identifying the wrong 
person, causing profiling’s supposed infallibility to become suspect. 
The same bio-tech firm that did the research, however, has developed 
a system to detect the difference between natural and manufactured 
DNA, based on the lack of methylation — a chemical reaction — in the 
artificial sample.  For complete story, click here.

 

JUDGING THE JUDGES--December 30th, 2009--Just 12 chief federal judges wield almost exclusive power over secret 
misconduct investigations of more than 2,000 fellow jurists — though  some have themselves been accused of botching reviews or committing  ethical blunders, according to a Houston Chronicle review.


At least four current or former chief circuit judges have been the  subject of recent high-profile complaints about their behavior; one  posted photos of naked women painted to look like cows and other  graphic images on his publicly accessible Web site; another  manipulated the outcome of a vote in a death penalty case.


Not one faced formal discipline.


Nationwide, the integrity of the federal judicial misconduct system  relies heavily on chief judges. Each oversees complaints — more than  6,000 in the last 10 years — against all circuit, district, senior,  bankruptcy and magistrate judges in multi-state regions called circuits.  Third Circuit Chief Judge Anthony Scirica, who is also chairman of 
the executive committee of the Judicial Conference of the United  States, told the Chronicle, “The federal judiciary takes its ethical  responsibilities with the utmost seriousness. Every misconduct  complaint is carefully reviewed.”


He was the only chief circuit judge who directly responded to  Chronicle requests for comment, though other circuits' staff replied.  In seven circuits, according to the Chronicle analysis, supervising  judges took no public disciplinary action at all in the last decade,  meaning not a single federal judge faced any sanctions in 29 states  with more than 875 full-time federal judges, despite thousands of  complaints.  For complete story, click here.
 

 

Dallas County jail guard quits after inmate's 'lap dance'--December 30th, 2009--A Dallas County jail guard has resigned while under investigation for  allowing a 20-year-old male inmate to perform a sexually suggestive 
dance for her to music earlier this month, according to Sheriff’s  Department reports.

The “lap dance” occurred in the county’s new direct supervision jail,  where guards supervise inmates from inside the housing pods — a  growing trend in corrections.  For complete story, click here.

 

Jails to limit inmate mail to postcards only--December 29th, 2009--Heidi Boghosian receives hundreds of letters each week from inmates across the country. Most are looking for someone to help them or just to hear their stories.

"The quality of the letters are so touching because they're looking to establish relationships with anyone who will listen to them," said Boghosian, the executive director of the New York-based National Lawyer's Guild, which publishes the Jailhouse Lawyers Handbook.

Boghosian, and other civil rights advocates, are concerned about a policy that 12 Oregon counties, including Washington and Clackamas, will implement next month restricting inmates' outgoing social mail to postcards. By spring, incoming mail will also be limited to postcards.  For complete story, click here.
 

Inquiry Condemns Oversight at State Police Crime Lab --Analyst, undetected for 15 years, falsified test results and compromised nearly one-third of his 322 cases 18 Dec 2009 The New York State Police’s supervision of a crime laboratory was so poor that it overlooked evidence of pervasively shoddy forensics work, allowing an analyst to go undetected for 15 years as he falsified test results and compromised nearly one-third of his 322 cases, an investigation by the state’s inspector general has found. The analyst’s training was so substandard that at one point last year, investigators discovered he did not know how to operate a microscope essential to performing his job, a report released Thursday by the inspector general said.  For complete story, click here.

 

Former guard at halfway house sentenced--December 15th, 2009--A former contract guard at a Houston halfway house has been sentenced to five months in federal prison for sexual abuse of a person in detention.  U.S. Attorney Tim Johnson said 30-year-old Nathan Jones of Houston was sentenced to prison on Tuesday. He will serve five months in home confinement after completing the prison sentence.  Jones was convicted over the summer of the federal felony offense. He admitted that in 2007, while employed at Leidel Comprehensive Sanction Center, he engaged in a sexual act with a female federal prisoner in his office.  For complete story, click here.
 

 

Court: 'Faith-based' substance abuse programs unconstitutional--December 15th, 2009--

TALLAHASSEE - Advocates for the separation of church and state scored a victory today when the 1st District Court of Appeal reversed the dismissal of their claim that state-funded, "faith-based" rehabilitation of ex-prisoners is unconstitutional.

The Council for Secular Humanism, a New York-based organization with membership in Florida, had appealed a Leon County circuit court judge's 2008 dismissal of the group's complaint that the state's contract with Prisoners of Christ and Lamb of God Ministries is unconstitutional.

Specifically, the appellant complained that the contracts violate the "no-aid" provision of the Florida Constitution, which bars the state from spending taxpayer money "directly or indirectly in aid of any church, sect, or religious denomination or in aid of any sectarian institution."  For complete story, click here.

 

HPD fingerprinting trouble not unique--Incorrect results at labs across the nation produce doubts about a discipline once thought of as an exact science--December 13th, 2009--For years fingerprinting has been viewed by the public as a  practically infallible crime-fighting tool with accuracy rates  approaching 100 percent.  But revelations like those in the Houston Police Department, where a recent audit showed analysts failing to analyze or missing 
fingerprints completely, are exposing hard truths about a discipline  that's not as exact as it appears.

Problems at fingerprint labs have often been traced back to common  themes such as inadequate supervision or training and a lack of  standards for analyzing fingerprints. Houston, in fact, didn't even  have a manual outlining standard procedures for analyzing prints,  according to an audit that was released last week.

But some experts say the situation in Houston is just an example of  fingerprinting's deep-rooted woes, which extend across the country.

“Everything needs to change,” said Jennifer Mnookin, a law professor  at UCLA who has studied fingerprint issues.

In fact, large fingerprint units have been repeatedly accused of  botching their work over the last few years.

Examples include:

Last year the Los Angeles Police Department acknowledged that its  fingerprint analysis unit was a sloppy operation where files were  left lying around, prints sometimes lost and at least two people had  been wrongly identified as criminal suspects because of botched  fingerprint analysis.

In 2007, the Seminole County Sheriff's Office in Florida disciplined  multiple employees after it discovered analysts cutting corners and  pegging fingerprints to the wrong suspects.

Experts say fingerprinting is far from an exact science. Unlike many  other forensic disciplines, there are few standards for confirming  fingerprints.

That means an analyst in Houston could conceivably come to different  conclusions from an analyst in Dallas about whether prints are  usable, or even whether they belong to the same person.  Lack of regulation...  For complete story, click here.
 

 

Six more inmate sex abuse suits filed in Oregon--December 7th, 2009--SALEM, Ore. (AP) — Six more current or former inmates at Oregon's prison for women have sued the state claiming they were sexually abused and harassed by male prison employees.

That makes a total of 11 such suits alleging sexual abuse at the Coffee Creek Correctional Facility in Wilsonville. It houses about 1,100 inmates.

The Salem Statesman Journal reports that among the allegations in the latest suits is that a corrections officer forced inmates to perform sex acts, and and that he demanded sex in exchange for letting women out of their cells or letting them off the hook for violating rules.  For complete story, click here.

 

Illinois inmates fight soy sentence in lawsuit--November 19th, 2009--Some Illinois inmates filed a suit against the soy diet they are served in prison, but the debate on soy originated outside prison walls. The argument is centered on the fact that most soy in America is genetically modified.

Genetically modified organisms are plants, animals, or bacteria, in which the genetic material, or DNA, has been altered in such a way that does not occur naturally, according to the World Health Organization. The genetic makeup of these organisms is altered using a special set of technologies.
 

“Genetically engineered soy now constitutes 90 percent of all soy growing in the United States,” said Jeffrey Smith, executive director of the Institute for Responsible Technology, Fairfield, Iowa. The organization’s purpose is to educate people about the health risks of genetically modified organisms.

Immune system problems, gastrointestinal problems, organ damage, deregulation of insulin, and accelerated aging have been linked to genetically modified feed in animal feeding studies, according to the American Academy of Environmental Medicine in Wichita, Kan. In May, the academy issued a statement calling on all doctors to prescribe a non-genetically modified diet to all patients.  For complete story, click here.  For more on this story, click here.

 

Lawsuit: Inmate died after water denied--November 17th, 2009--A federal lawsuit claims an inmate who died while on a work detail in Quitman County in June was denied water while picking up trash in the summer heat.  For complete story, click here.

 

KC crime lab urged to correct 13 essential deficiencies--November 9th, 2009--The Kansas City Police Crime Lab must correct 13 essential shortcomings or risk losing its accreditation, according to an inspection report.

Auditors found instances in which the lab failed to handle criminal evidence according to standards set by the American Society of Crime Laboratory Directors.  For complete story, click here.

 

Hartford Police Investigating Three Of Their Own In Beating Of Prisoner--November 8th, 2009--HARTFORD - Police are investigating three of their own after a prisoner was beaten Nov. 1.  Police Chief Daryl K. Roberts said that the investigation began Thursday, shortly after police commanders learned of the assault, which was captured on the department's video monitoring system.  For complete story, click here.

 

Prison worker: Riot started over food quality--November 6th, 2009--FRANKFORT, Ky. — A Northpoint Training Center corrections officer testified Friday that inmates rioted at the prison in August because they weren’t being fed enough and the food they did receive was of poor quality.  For complete story, click here.

 

Justice Dept. to Review Bush Policy on DNA Test Waivers--October 11th, 2009--

Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. has ordered a review of a little-known Bush administration policy requiring some defendants to waive their right to DNA testing even though that right is guaranteed in a landmark federal law, officials said. 
The practice of using DNA waivers began several years ago as a response to the Innocence Protection Act of 2004, which allowed federal inmates to seek post-conviction DNA tests to prove their innocence. More than 240 wrongly convicted people have been exonerated by such tests, including 17 on death row.  For complete story, click here.

 

Federal Appeals Court Condemns Shackling Of Pregnant Prisoners In Labor --October 2nd, 2009--NEW YORK – Ruling in the case of an Arkansas woman who was shackled  to her hospital bed while in labor in 2003, a federal appeals court  today said that constitutional protections against shackling pregnant  women during labor had been clearly established by decisions of the  Supreme Court and the lower courts. This is the first time a circuit  court has made such a determination. The full Eighth Circuit Court of  Appeals made the ruling today in the case of ACLU client Shawanna  Nelson.

"This is a historic decision by a U.S. Court of Appeals that affirms  the dignity of all women and mothers in America," said Elizabeth  Alexander, Director of the American Civil Liberties Union"s National  Prison Project. "Correctional officials across the country are now on  notice that they can no longer engage in this widespread practice."  For complete story, click here.
 

DNA test error leads to wrongful conviction--October 2nd, 2009--

NSW Health has given its full backing to its criminal DNA testing, despite it leading to the wrongful conviction of a man for break and enter in 2008.

NSW Health commenced an exhaustive review of its DNA "cold links", where DNA evidence is matched to a person on a state DNA database.  For complete story, click here.

 

With little oversight in Texas, autopsies often careless--September 26th, 2009--

The man almost took the dirty secret of his death to his grave. The Tarrant County medical examiner’s office said injuries from a pickup wreck killed him. But after a funeral director hundreds of miles away found a bullet in the man’s head, authorities realized a killer was on the loose.

Worse has happened in the autopsy suites of Texas medical examiners.

A child molester faked his own death and almost got away with it after the Travis County medical examiner mistook the burned body of an 81-year-old woman for the 23-year-old man.  For complete story, click here.

 

Prisoners’ Rights--September 23rd, 2009--

In 1996, Congress passed a law that made it much harder for inmates to challenge abusive treatment. It has contributed significantly to the bad conditions — including the desperate overcrowding — that prevail today. The law must be fixed.  For complete story, click here.

 

Making Forensic Science Scientific--September 21st, 2009--With the busiest death chamber in the nation, it was only a matter of time before Texas positioned itself to become the first state to admit that it executed a person who was wrongfully convicted. And now that day is at hand.

According to a nationally respected fire engineer, the so-called scientific evidence used to convict Cameron Todd Willingham of setting a blaze that killed his three daughters in 1995 was not scientific at all. In his scathing report to the Texas Forensic Science Commission, Craig Beyler found that the arson investigators on the case had a poor understanding of fire dynamics and based their conclusions on erroneous assumptions, sloppy research and a dash of mysticism. For example, one investigator determined that, because the house fire burned "hot and fast," an accelerant such as gasoline had been used to set it. But that theory -- still given credence in some investigatory circles -- is not factual. Gasoline fires are not significantly hotter than those started with wood, Beyler reported.  For complete story, click here.
 

 

Click Here for Case Exposing Abusive/Torturous Behavior Modification in US Prisons!

 

Forensics Under Fire--September 18th, 2009--There has been much nail-biting in courthouse crowds across the country since the February release of the National Acade­my of Sciences report on the state of forensic science. The report, to put it mildly, was not flattering. Forensic labs are underfunded, and many of the areas in which forensic scientists toil – including handwriting, ballistics, and fingerprint analysis, just to name a few – are unsupported by rigorous empirical scientific testing, the report concluded. Of existing "forensic methods, only nuclear DNA analysis has been rigorously shown to have the capacity to consistently, and with a high degree of certainty, demonstrate a connection between an evidentiary sample and a specific individual or source," reads the report.That conclusion has, frankly, freaked out a lot of folks – including many prosecutors who are often the "end consumers" of forensic science, as Matthew Redle, Wyoming state director of the National District Attorneys Associ­a­tion, recently put it. In an effort to figure out what should be done, now that the forensic cat has been let out of the bag, Vermont Sen. Patrick Leahy, the Democratic chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee, convened a hearing Sept. 9 to discuss with experts how to proceed. "Much important work is done through forensics," but that is certainly not always so, Leahy noted, singling out Texas' execution of Cameron Todd Willingham for an arson-murder based on junk fire science as a disturbing recent example.  For complete story, click here.

 

Ohio ACLU against Strickland-endorsed reform bill--September 8th, 2009--A justice reform bill endorsed by Gov. Ted Strickland and passed by  the Senate designed to prevent wrongful convictions also includes a  controversial measure to expand the collection of DNA samples to  those arrested on felony charges.  Currently, Ohio takes DNA only from people convicted of felonies and  violent misdemeanors.  Law enforcement groups support the expansion, saying it gets violent  offenders off the street quicker and prevents future crimes.  But others say DNA collection before conviction crosses the line,  especially because the bill does not address what happens if a person  isn't convicted. 
The American Civil Liberties Union of Ohio opposes the measure,  saying it poses a "myriad of civil liberty risks" including violating  a person's constitutional protections against illegal search and  seizure, is ripe for abuse and is an invasion of privacy.  For complete story, click here.
 

 

Officers allegedly used inmate as prison fighter--September 16th, 2009--A prison sergeant and two former officers used an inmate known as `Monster' to beat up troublesome inmates at Dade Correctional Institution, a federal indictment alleges.  For complete story, click here.

 

Harris County criminal court judge indicted--August 27th, 2009--A Harris County Criminal Court-at-Law judge was indicted this morning for misdemeanor official oppression, officials said.  Few details were immediately available regarding the charge against Don Jackson, a 17-year judge, said Joe Stinebaker, spokesman for Harris County Judge Ed Emmett.  For complete story, click here.

 

Prisoners moved after riot controlled, officials brief media--August 22nd, 2009--BURGIN, Ky. — Rioting inmates started several fires at a central Ky. prison, and damage to several buildings was so extensive that officials have to bus some of the facility's 1,200 prisoners elsewhere, police said Saturday.  For complete story, click here.

 

 

Drug-test suit alleges false imprisonment--August 21st, 2009--Five former probationers allege in a lawsuit filed Thursday that they were falsely charged and imprisoned in 2008 after drug tests that Treatment Associates conducted showed false-positive results.  The plaintiffs are suing Treatment Associates owner Jeff Warner, as well as two Bexar County supervisors, for unspecified damages. The Bexar supervisors named in the suit are Bill Fitzgerald, chief of the county's Community Supervision and Corrections Department, and Kathleen Cline, the probation department's director of operations.  According to the suit, filed in the county's 408th District Court, former probationers Michelle Archer, Rosa M. Rocha, Frank Viesca, Raymond Anthony and Jimmie Martinez were jailed after faulty drug tests showed their urine was positive for illegal substances.  “Jailing these individuals who had been successfully serving probation ... was devastating to the integrity of the criminal justice system and destructive to the ability of the system to protect the safety of the public,” said their attorney, David Van Os.  For complete story, click here.

 

 

Inmates grow, gather veggies, make soup for hungry--August 18th, 2009--COLUMBUS, Ohio -- The nation's food banks, struggling to meet demand in hard times, are turning to prison inmates for free labor to help feed the hungry.

Several states are sending inmates into already harvested fields to scavenge millions of pounds of leftover potatoes, berries and other crops that otherwise would go to waste. Others are using prisoners to plant and harvest vegetables.

"We're in a situation where, without their help, the food banks absolutely could not accomplish all that they do," said Ross Fraser, a spokesman for Feeding America, a national association of food banks.  For complete story, click here.  (Webmaster Note:  Isn't it wonderful that when financial times get tough, we can always return to slave labor?  And, with indefinite detentions and no criminal convictions as the current standard minimum for being held prisoner in the US, you too may get to be a slave.  Where do you draw the line?  If you do not stand up for others now, there will be no one left to take a stand.)
 

DNA Evidence Can Be Fabricated, Scientists Show--August 17th, 2009--Scientists in Israel have demonstrated that it is possible to fabricate DNA evidence, undermining the credibility of what has been considered the gold standard of proof in criminal cases.  For complete story, click here.

 

Scalia says there's nothing unconstitutional about executing the innocent. By Ian Millhiser 17 Aug 2009 In light of the very real evidence that Davis could be innocent of the crime that placed him on death row, the Supreme Court today invoked a rarely used procedure giving [Troy Anthony] Davis an opportunity to challenge his conviction. Joined by Justice Clarence Thomas in dissent, however, Justice Antonin Scalia criticized his colleagues for thinking that mere innocence is grounds to overturn a conviction: This Court has never held that the Constitution forbids the execution of a convicted defendant who has had a full and fair trial but is later able to convince a habeas court that he is "actually" innocent. Quite to the contrary, we have repeatedly left that question unresolved, while expressing considerable doubt that any claim based on alleged "actual innocence" is constitutionally cognizable.  For complete story, click here.

 

Judge scolds parole officials over sex offender classification--August 7th, 2009--

A federal judge on Thursday issued a stern rebuke to state corrections officials for the way they classify some parolees as sex offenders even though the defendants have never been convicted of sex crimes.

U.S. District Judge Sam Sparks also voiced frustration with state parole officials for ignoring earlier court decisions and a previous directive by him and ordered the state Board of Pardons and Paroles to review whether to leave parolee Ray Curtis Graham on sex offender restrictions.

"It's time for the parole division and the Board of Pardons and Paroles to stop being defensive and start trying not to use technical defenses," Sparks said, in ruling that the restrictions were not imposed on Graham legally and that parole officials ignored a subsequent court warning about the deficiency.

"The undisputed evidence established no official involved in the ... process has ever made the necessary finding that Mr. Graham constituted a threat to society by his lack of sexual control."

Sparks also declared a mistrial in the case after a week of testimony when attorneys for the state objected to comments he made to the jury about a witness' testimony.

Graham filed suit against parole officials after they officially listed him as a sex offender in December 2007 — without allowing him to see the results of a psychiatric evaluation they ordered him to undergo or to appear with his attorneys at a hearing at which the decision was made. Graham, who served time in prison for burglary and attempted murder, was never convicted of a sex crime. He was arrested for aggravated rape in 1982, but was never convicted.  (Web Assistant Note: Sex offender status without a conviction in secretive parole officer circles?  Titles given without proof, sounds like troubled teen diagnosis. Who needs science or due process when we have (so-called) professionals making shit up?  (Sarcasm))  For complete story, click here.
 

 

Attorney: Further charges likely against Mobile judge accused of paddling prisoners--August 7th, 2009--

MOBILE, Ala. -- Herman Thomas' attorney, Bob Clark, said Thursday that he was "reasonably certain" that more indictments against the ex-judge soon would emerge from a special Mobile County grand jury.

The 48-year-old Thomas, who left the Circuit Court bench in October 2007 under pressure, was indicted in March on charges that included kidnapping, extortion and sodomy in connection with criminal court defendants.  For complete story, click here.

 

CSI Myths: The Shaky Science Behind Forensics--August, 2009--Forensic science was not developed by scientists. It was mostly created by cops, who were guided by little more than common sense. And as hundreds of criminal cases begin to unravel, many established forensic practices are coming under fire. PM takes an in-depth look at the shaky science that has put innocent people behind bars.  For complete story, click here.

 

Prisons ban inmates from having pen pal ads--July 29th, 2009--

In her online profile, Paula Jones says she is 42, "nonjudgmental" and likes fishing, gardening and cuddling. There's a catch, though. Jones' picture shows her in her blue Florida prison uniform. She won't be out until at least 2010.

Her listing is posted on a Web site called WriteAPrisoner.com. She's looking for a pen pal.

"If you're looking for someone genuine and true, I'm looking for you," her profile says. "I'm just a stamp away."

By posting her profile, however, Jones is breaking a rule. Florida officials have banned inmates from having the Match.com-style listings, saying prisoners just create problems for their outside-the-pen pals.

Other states - Missouri, Montana, Indiana and Pennsylvania - have similar restrictions. Now lawsuits in Florida and elsewhere say the bans are unfair and violate First Amendment rights.

"The public knows when they're writing to these people that they're prisoners," said Randall Berg Jr., a lawyer representing two pen pal groups - including Florida-based WriteAPrisoner.com - that have sued in the state. "Nobody is being duped here."

WriteAPrisoner.com president and owner Adam Lovell says the bulk of the people who use his site to write to inmates are from religious groups, military people stationed overseas and others affected by the prison. Fraud isn't as widespread as Florida corrections officials suggest, he said.  For complete story, click here.

 

Losing The Moral High Ground--July 23rd, 2009--The US military has, understandably and correctly, condemned the coerced video of a US soldier taken hostage by Taliban in Afghanistan. But I fear that the argument that the public humiliation of prisoners is against international law won't take the US very far after 8 years of Bush-Cheney.

After the evidence surfaced that the US military took all those humiliating pictures of prisoners at Abu Ghraib to blackmail them by threatening to make them public, the US assertion of support for this principle of the Geneva Conventions will be met with, well, let us say substantial skepticism.

In fact, as I was reminded by a former ambassador, the Bush-Cheney-Yoo-Addison gutting of US conformance with the Geneva Conventions really makes it difficult for Washington credibly to complain about the treatment of any of our captured soldiers. The Taliban could hold the soldier hostage forever if they follow the principle put forward by Sen. Lindsey Graham. They could (God forbid) put him in stress positions naked and threaten to release the pictures to his family, and they would have done nothing that Rumsfeld's Pentagon had not done routinely and on a vast scale. For complete story, click here.

 

Beyond Attica: The Untold Story of Women's Resistance Behind Bars--July 22nd, 2009--

"When I was 15, my friends started going to jail," says Victoria Law, a native New Yorker. "Chinatown's gangs were recruiting in the high schools in Queens and, faced with the choice of stultifying days learning nothing in overcrowded classrooms or easy money, many of my friends had dropped out to join a gang."
 

"One by one," Law recalls, "they landed in Rikers Island, an entire island in New York City devoted to pretrial detainment for those who can not afford bail."
 

Law shares this and other recollections in her new book, Resistance Behind Bars: The Struggles of Incarcerated Women (PM Press). At 16, she herself decided to join a gang, but was arrested for the armed robbery that she committed for her initiation into the gang. "Because it was my first arrest -- and probably because 16-year-old Chinese girls who get straight As in school did not seem particularly menacing -- I was eventually let off with probation," she writes.
 

Before her release from jail, Law was held in the "Tombs" awaiting arraignment. While the adult women she met there had all been arrested for prostitution, she also met three teenagers arrested for unarmed assault. "Two of the girls were black lesbian lovers. In a scenario that would be repeated 13 years later in the case of the New Jersey Four, they had been out with friends when they encountered a cab driver who had tried to grab one of them. Her friends intervened, the cab driver called the police and the girls were arrested for assault." Law notes that "both of my cellmates were subsequently sent to Rikers Island."  For complete story, click here.
 

Anti-Supermax activist's records archived--July 20th, 2009--

PUEBLO, Colo.—Documents and videotapes made by an opponent of the federal Supermax prison are being archived at Colorado State University-Pueblo.

Archivists at the university's Southern Colorado Ethnic Heritage and Diversity collection are reviewing the papers of Mitchell Kaufman, who died in 1998.

Kaufman's brother Joel says Mitchell Kaufman initially opposed Supermax because he believed the prison system was inherently racist, citing its disproportionate numbers of Hispanic and black inmates.

Joel Kaufman says his brother also opposed Supermax for its small cells where inmates might be confined for all but a half-hour each day.

Supermax, built in 1994, houses the nation's most dangerous prisoners.

Mitchell Kaufman died at age 54 from a reaction to medication.  For complete story, click here.

 

State investigating abuse reports at private prison--July 16th, 2009--FRANKFORT, Ky. — The state Department of Corrections is investigating allegations of sexual abuse against as many as 16 Kentucky women housed at the privately run Otter Creek Correctional Center in Wheelwright.  For complete story, click here.

 

Lab Analyst Decision Complicates Prosecutions--High Court Requires Scientists to Testify--July 15th, 2009--The predictions are dire. In New York, murderers could walk free. In Fairfax County, drunken driving cases could be dismissed. And nationwide, thousands of drug cases might have to be thrown out of court annually.

Legal experts and prosecutors are concerned about the results of last month's U.S. Supreme Court ruling that requires lab analysts to be in court to testify about their tests. Lab sheets that identify a substance as a narcotic or breath-test printouts describing a suspect's blood-alcohol level are no longer sufficient evidence, the court ruled. A person must be in court to talk about the test results.

The opinion, written by Justice Antonin Scalia, has prosecutors and judges shaking their heads in disgust and defense lawyers nodding with satisfaction at the notion that the Constitution's Sixth Amendment guarantee that defendants "shall enjoy the right . . . to be confronted with the witnesses against him" is not satisfied by a sheet of paper.

"This is the biggest case for the defense since Miranda," said Fairfax defense lawyer Paul L. McGlone, referring to the Supreme Court ruling that required police to inform defendants of their Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination. He said judges "are no longer going to assume certain facts are true without requiring the prosecution to actually put on their evidence."  For complete story, click here.
 

 

Supermax prison blocked Obama books requested by detainee --Officials at the Florence, Colorado supermax prison deemed the bestsellers 'potentially detrimental to national security' 10 Jul 2009 He has been president of the United States for 172 days, yet it appears that Barack Obama is still deemed capable of producing writing that is "potentially detrimental to national security". That peculiar judgement was made following a request by a high-security prisoner to read Obama's two bestselling books, Dreams from My Father and The Audacity of Hope. The plea was made by Ahmed Omar Abu Ali, who is being held at a supermax prison in Florence, Colorado. Abu Ali, a US citizen, was found guilty on 25 November of helping al-Qaida and plotting to assassinate the then US president [sic] George Bush.  For complete story, click here.

 

ACLU Seeks End To Censorship Of Religious Material By Virginia Jail--July 9th, 2009--STAFFORD, VA – The American Civil Liberties Union and the ACLU of  Virginia today demanded that officials at the Rappahannock Regional 
Jail immediately end their illegal practice of censoring religious  material sent to detainees.

In a letter sent today to the jail's superintendent, Joseph Higgs,  Jr., the ACLU asks for jail officials to guarantee in writing that  the jail will no longer censor biblical passages from letters written  to detainees and to revise the jail's written inmate mail policy to  state that letters will not be censored simply because they contain  religious material.

"It is nothing short of stunning that a jail would think it okay to  censor the Bible and other religious material for no reason other  than its religious nature," said David Shapiro, staff attorney with  the ACLU National Prison Project. "Such censorship violates both the  rights of detainees to practice religion freely and the free speech  rights of those wanting to communicate with detainees."  For complete story, click here.
 

 

Minority Report (Not the Movie starring Tom Cruise, the Real Deal)--Program helps identify likely violent parolees--July 8th, 2009--As part of an attempt to fight crime, Philadelphia is now the subject of an experiment never tried in another city: A computer is forecasting who among the city's 49,000 parolees is likeliest to rob, assault, or kill someone.

Since March, the city's Adult Probation and Parole Department has been using the system to reshuffle the way it assigns cases. Each time someone new comes through intake, a clerk enters his or her name and the computer takes just seconds to fish through a database for relevant information and deliver a verdict of high, medium, or low risk.

"It's a complete paradigm shift for the department," said chief probation and parole officer Robert Malvestuto. "Science has made this available to us. We'd be foolish not to use it."

Criminologists say the system works - it can identify those most likely to commit violent crimes. But whether Philadelphia can use that to intervene and change people's behavior is still not known. A full evaluation won't be done until the end of the year.  For complete story, click here.

 

Ex-guard attests to alleged inmate abuse at Westmoreland County Prison--July 4th, 2009--A Westmoreland County Prison inmate was taken out of his cell, punched, choked, kicked and threatened with death as punishment for talking back to a guard, according to a statement given by a corrections officer who said he witnessed the incident.  For complete story, click here.

 

Innocents Lost--June 21st, 2009--A MAJORITY OF the Supreme Court ruled last week that prisoners do not have a constitutional right to post-conviction DNA testing. The decision was based in large part on the assertion that federal judicial intervention was unnecessary because the great majority of state legislatures already had passed laws to give prisoners adequate access to the revolutionary technology. The majority's argument has merit, but the decision in District Attorney's Office v. Osborne was nonetheless wrong.

 
The decision sprang from the case of William G. Osborne, who was convicted of the brutal 1993 kidnapping, rape and assault of an Alaska woman. A rudimentary DNA test performed on semen found at the crime scene excluded two suspects but not Mr. Osborne. Mr. Osborne's trial lawyer declined a more advanced DNA test for fear that the results could definitively implicate her client.

On appeal, Alaskan courts denied Mr. Osborne's request for further DNA testing, concluding that eyewitness accounts and other evidence against him were so strong that DNA tests would likely not be dispositive. A federal appeals court ultimately ruled that Mr. Osborne was entitled to further testing; the Supreme Court by a 5 to 4 majority overturned this decision last week.  For complete story, click here.

 

Keystone Cops at the Police Lab--June 18th, 2009--When CSI became the most popular drama on television earlier this  decade, forensic scientists employed by police departments emerged  from anonymity. Discerning viewers seemed to understand that real- life police laboratory personnel (filling a job description  officially known as "criminalist") do not solve murders and rapes  within an hour. Still, the glamorization generated by television  drama had begun, increasing exponentially with the spinoff shows CSI:  Miami and CSI: New York.

Many criminalists indeed serve justice well, conscientiously  analyzing evidence found at crime scenes, including blood,  fingerprints, scrapings from beneath fingernails, hair, dirt, shoe  impressions, tire tracks, hard copy documents, computer messages and  more. The good ones keep up with new forensic techniques, write  objective reports, consult openly with defense attorneys as well as  prosecutors, testify truthfully in court and never lose sight of the 
ultimate goal — convicting the guilty while excluding the innocent  from the pool of suspects.

But as it becomes increasingly evident that wrongful convictions  constitute a cancer within the criminal justice system, it becomes  simultaneously obvious that numerous criminalists are part of the  problem. One incompetent or dishonest criminalist can infect hundreds  of cases in a crime laboratory, with some of those cases mutating 
into wrongful convictions.  For complete story, click here.

 

Elusive Justice Overdue In the Case of Political Prisoner Paul Minor--June 18th, 2009--It is time for the Obama Justice Department to reverse one of the most egregiously political persecutions of the Bush era - Paul Minor's bogus conviction on trumped up charges of public corruption "bribery" despite a total lack of evidence that his role as the top
funder of Democratic candidates in Mississippi netted him anything other than misery and a harsh prison sentence.

Attorney General Eric Holder stated recently that "elections have consequences." That premise should apply not just to President Obama's pick for the Supreme Court and appointment of new U.S. Attorneys, as Holder mentioned. It should compel a swift review of the unjust prosecutions of prominent Democrats targeted by the Bush Justice Department.

Paul Minor's case is Exhibit A.

Paul Minor's attorneys recently filed a straightforward, compelling brief with the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals outlining the multiple errors the prosecution made in convicting Minor for bribery despite the government not being required to prove a quid pro quo. In such cases, crystal clear case law requires the presiding judge to instruct the jury that they can only convict a campaign fundraiser of bribing public officials if clear "this for that" evidence exists of a quid pro quo agreement leading to a specific official act by the recipient in exchange for the campaign contributions.  For complete story, click here.
 

 

ACLU suit to challenge isolation prisons--June 18th, 2009--Civil rights activists plan to file a lawsuit today contesting the transfer of a Tunisian American prisoner to a federal prison facility that some inmates have dubbed "Little Guantanamo."  The suit by the American Civil Liberties Union on behalf of Sabri Benkahla could be the first of many challenging the secretive units, which drastically restrict outside contact.  For complete story, click here.

 

In Light Of New Report, ACLU Calls On Congress To Restore Courts As Check On Prisoner Abuse-June 17th, 2009--WASHINGTON – In light of a new report showing that a law intended to reduce so-called “frivolous lawsuits” by prisoners has resulted in barring serious prison abuse cases from reaching the courts, the American Civil Liberties Union today called on Congress to amend parts of the Prison Litigation Reform Act of 1996 (PLRA). The law 
requires prisoners to exhaust the internal grievance process of their facilities and allege a physical injury due to mistreatment in order to seek redress in the courts.  The troubling consequences of the PLRA are made clear in a Human Rights Watch report released today which finds that the exhaustion and physical injury requirements of the law have been particularly problematic for juveniles who are at higher risk of sexual assault and other violence. The American Civil Liberties Union has long fought to amend parts of the PLRA known as the exhaustion provision, 
the physical injury provision and the Act’s application to juveniles.  For complete story, click here.

 

Grumbling behind bars: Prisons cut back meals to save, critics say hungry inmates turn violent--June 5th, 2009--

ATLANTA (AP) — The recession is hitting home for inmates, too: Some cash-strapped states are taking aim at prison menus.

Georgia prisoners already didn't get lunch on the weekends, and the Department of Corrections recently eliminated the midday meal on Fridays, too. Ohio may drop weekend breakfasts and offer brunch instead. Other states are cutting back on milk and fresh fruit.

 
Officials say prisoners are still getting enough calories, but family members and critics say the changes could make prisoners irritable and food a valuable commodity, increasing the possibility of violence.  For complete story, click here.

 

Prosecutors, judge accused of misconduct--June 2nd, 2009--Attorneys with the Louisville public defender's office are accusing two prosecutors of withholding crucial information and then lying in court about making a deal with a jailhouse informant in a capital murder case.  For complete story, click here.

 

Arizona: Halt to a Detention Practice--May 30th, 2009--The director of Arizona state prisons suspended the use of unshaded outdoor holding cells after an inmate’s death. The inmate, Marcia Powell, 48, was left in an unshaded enclosure for nearly four hours on May 19 as temperatures topped 100. The corrections director, Charles L. Ryan, said Ms. Powell, serving a sentence for prostitution, should not have been left in the cell for so long. Mr. Ryan placed three officers on administrative leave pending a criminal investigation. The outdoor cells hold inmates when they are being transferred from one area in a prison to another.  For complete story, click here.

 

Guard charged in hospital beating in Lancaster--May 28th, 2009--A Lancaster County Prison guard last August severely beat a prison inmate who had been shackled to a hospital bed, according to criminal
and civil complaints.  Silvestre Villarreal, a longtime prison guard who weighs about 200 pounds, climbed on a bed at Lancaster General Hospital and straddled the inmate, according to the complaint of a civil lawsuit filed a
week ago.  The correctional officer repeatedly hit the inmate, Vance Laughman, until nurses intervened. He struck him so hard that he broke his own hand, according to the complaint.  For complete story, click here.
 

 

Wyandotte County jail inmates barred from sending personal letters in envelopes--May 27th, 2009--

The Wyandotte County jail is following Johnson County’s example and preventing inmates from sending personal letters in envelopes. 

The Wyandotte County Sheriff’s Office announced Wednesday that inmates would have to limit all of their personal correspondence to postcards no larger than 5 by 7 inches. The new policy does not apply to “official” correspondence — privileged or governmental mail.

A release from the office said the move was made to reduce the workload of the jail’s mail-handling services and to reduce contraband.  For complete story, click here.

 

A Standard for Fair Trials--May 17th, 2009--When dismissing the charges against former Alaska senator Ted Stevens recently, the trial judge noted that the prosecutorial failures to turn over exculpatory evidence in that case were symptomatic of a larger problem within the Justice Department. Indeed, such failures are happening across our criminal justice system. Three weeks ago, the Supreme Court reversed the death sentence of a Vietnam veteran because a Tennessee prosecutor withheld witness statements that directly contradicted the state's version of the case.  For complete story, click here.
 

Cell phone nets TDCJ inmate 60 more years--May 14th, 2009--A Coffield Unit inmate was sentenced to 60 years in prison Tuesday after an Anderson County jury found him guilty of possessing a cell phone in a correctional facility.

A seven woman, five man jury found Derrick Ross, 38, of the Texas Department of Criminal Justice’s Coffield Unit guilty of having a prohibited item in a correctional facility.  For complete story, click here.
 

 

Plugging Holes in the Science of Forensics--May 12th, 2009--

A report in February by a committee of the National Academy of Sciences found “serious problems” with much of the work performed by crime laboratories in the United States. Recent incidents of faulty evidence analysis — including the case of an Oregon lawyer who was arrested by the F.B.I. after the 2004 Madrid terrorist bombings based on fingerprint identification that turned out to be wrong — were just high-profile examples of wider deficiencies, the committee said. Crime labs were overworked, there were few certification programs for investigators and technicians, and the entire field suffered from a lack of oversight.

But perhaps the most damning conclusion was that many forensic disciplines — including analysis of fingerprints, bite marks and the striations and indentations left by a pry bar or a gun’s firing mechanism — were not grounded in the kind of rigorous, peer-reviewed research that is the hallmark of classic science. DNA analysis was an exception, the report noted, in that it had been studied extensively. But many other investigative tests, the report said, “have never been exposed to stringent scientific scrutiny.”  For complete story, click here.

 

Florida expanding faith-based prisons--May 11th, 2009--

PALM BEACH, Fla., May 11 (UPI) -- Advocates for the separation of church and state say they're closely watching Florida's expansion of non-denominational faith-based prisons.

While 21 other states have faith-based dormitories, Florida is the only one with entire prisons focused on faith and character, the South Florida Sun-Sentinel reported Monday.

Glade Correctional in Palm Beach County this week becomes the fifth faith-based prison in Florida under a program begun in 2003, said Kathy Connor, a state corrections spokeswoman.

Constitutional issues arise, however, when prisons start linking where inmates live to religious programs, said Alex Luchenitser, a lawyer with Americans United for Separation of Church and State.  For complete story, click here.

 

Ritter gets bill requiring DNA tests on arrest--May 7th, 2009--A bill that supporters say will save "our daughters' and our wives' " lives is on the way to Gov. Bill Ritter's desk after lawmakers approved taking DNA samples upon arrest.

Senate Bill 241 has been dubbed "Katie's Law" and is named for the New Mexico college student whose murder spurred her parents to push for DNA testing upon arrest.

The bill was amended to allow police to take DNA tests upon arrest but for the sample not to be processed unless a person is charged. The sample will be destroyed if no charges are filed.  For complete story, click here.
 

 

Lawsuit filed over Florida prisons' pen pal ban--May 6th, 2009--The Fort Lauderdale owner of a Christian pen pal service filed a federal lawsuit Tuesday charging the Florida Department of Corrections with violating the First Amendment by blocking her from putting churches in touch with Florida inmates.

Joy Perry runs Prison Pen Pals and the Freedom Through Christ Ministry, which gives prisoners' contact information to churches that want to send them Bibles and other religious materials. She filed suit in U.S. District Court in Jacksonville along with Adam Lovell of Edgewater, president of WriteAPrisoner.Com.  For complete story, click here.
 

Judge OKs inmate suit over routine strip searches--March 31st, 2009--PHILADELPHIA—Prisons cannot routinely strip search drunk drivers and other non-drug, non-violent arrestees without reason to think they are hiding contraband, a federal judge ruled in a potential class-action suit.

The ruling in Pennsylvania follows those in nine other federal circuits, although the 11th U.S. Circuit recently disagreed in a case involving a prison in Fulton County, Ga.

Senior U.S. District Judge Jan E. DuBois, though, rejected that court's reasoning and said in a 49-page opinion that plaintiffs strip searched at the Delaware County Prison can proceed with their suit against the Geo Group.

The Boca Raton, Fla.-based company, which operates dozens of prisons around the country, ran the nearly 1,900-bed Delaware County Prison until ending the contract last year.  For complete story, click here.

 

 

Former Alabama judge indicted on inmate sex charges--March 31st, 2009--CNN) -- A former south Alabama judge is accused of checking male inmates out of jail and forcing them to engage in sexual activity including paddling, according to officials and court documents.

Former Mobile County Circuit Judge Herman Thomas was arrested Friday after a grand jury returned the indictments against him. He was released on $287,500 bond later Friday.

The indictments total 57 counts, and the charges range from ethics violations to kidnapping, extortion, sex abuse and sodomy. If convicted on the most serious charge -- kidnapping, a Class A felony -- Thomas faces a prison sentence of 10 to 99 years in prison, Mobile County District Attorney John Tyson Jr. said Monday.  For complete story, click here.

 

Inmate Dies After Being Placed In Same Cell As Man He Testified Against--March 15th, 2009--Miami, FL (AHN) - An inmate in the Oklahoma State penitentiary was sound beaten to death after being put in a cell with the man he had testified against in a murder trial.

Prison officials said the two should not have been placed in the same cell together, and there will be an investigation.

Corrections officers found 23-year-old Paul Duran unresponsive in the cell Wednesday night, the McAlester News-Capital reported.

This was less than an hour after he was placed in the cell that was already housing 32-year-old Jesse James Dalton, who is serving a sentence of life in prison without parole, in part because of testimony given by Duran about a 2003 murder.  For complete story, click here.

 

Lawsuit claims abuse in La. jail; attorney likens prison to Abu Ghraib--March 6th, 2009--ST. TAMMANY, La. — A contractor and former law enforcement officer has filed a federal lawsuit accusing St. Tammany Parish deputies of holding him in jail for four months in conditions his attorney likened to Abu Ghraib, the notorious prison in Iraq.

Norman J. Manton Jr. of Covington was arrested in January 2008 during an investigation into the disappearance of Albert Bloch, 61, of Jefferson Parish. Charges against Manton, a former Covington police officer and deputy, were later dropped.

Bloch has not been found.

Manton's suit, which seeks $3.25 million in compensatory and punitive damages, alleges that deputies coerced a witness into connecting Manton to the case. In jail, he was denied medical treatment, held in isolation and beaten by other inmates, according to the suit.  For complete story, click here.

 

Dukakis: Texas model in prison rehab--Michael Dukakis knows the deadly spiral of addiction well.

His wife, Kitty, beat a highly publicized, years-long addiction to diet pills and anti-depressants.

As governor of Massachusetts in the 1980s, Dukakis championed cutting-edge treatment programs for imprisoned drunk drivers in his state, which were among the first in the nation. He launched programs to curb teenage drinking and drug abuse.

As the Democratic nominee for president in 1988, he challenged Americans to kick their habit of drink and drugs.

On Tuesday, Dukakis, 75, brought his rehab message to Austin, in meetings with state leaders to urge them to grow Texas’ treatment programs — even expand some to cover Medicaid recipients.

And he brought congratulations: Texas is a national model, by greatly expanding its prison treatment and rehabilitation programs two years ago in a move that was criticized.  (Please see the other articles on our site exposing the Texas model as torture.  For complete story, click here.  For more info, click here.)

 

Cost of locking up Americans too high: Pew study--March 2nd, 2009--

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - One in every 31 U.S. adults is in the corrections system, which includes jail, prison, probation and supervision, more than double the rate of a quarter century ago, according to a report released on Monday by the Pew Center on the States.

The study, which said the current rate compares to one in 77 in 1982, concluded that with declining resources, more emphasis should be put on community supervision, not jail or prison.

"Violent and career criminals need to be locked up, and for a long time. But our research shows that prisons are housing too many people who can be managed safely and held accountable in the community at far lower cost," said Adam Gelb, director of the Center's Public Safety Performance Project, which produced the report.  For complete story, click here.

 

Orange County sheriff lets jail gangs control bail bond referrals, claim alleges--February 28th, 2009--Three veteran bail bond agents have filed a legal claim against Orange County alleging that the Sheriff's Department allows gangs inside the jails to steer inmates to certain bail companies in exchange for kickbacks to the gangs.


In their claim, typically a first step to a lawsuit, the agents estimate that their businesses are losing $100 million a year because of the scheme, which is known in law enforcement circles as "capping."

 
"It's impacting my business and there's illegal activities going on inside the jails . . . to the detriment to the people who are playing by the rules," Bob Drake, one of the bondsmen who filed the claim, said Friday. "We suspect several companies. I don't know the exact number. That's not as important as the Sheriff's Department not going after and stopping the activity from occurring in the jails."

According to the bondsmen's attorney, Richard P. Herman, former Sheriff Michael S. Carona allowed his top lieutenant, former Assistant Sheriff George Jaramillo, to initiate the scheme, and current Sheriff Sandra Hutchens has allowed it to continue.  For complete story, click here.
 

 

Texas: Ex-Sheriff and Jailers Indicted--February 27th, 2009--Seventeen people, including a former sheriff, are accused in a 106-count indictment of sex and drug crimes at a jail in Montague County. The former sheriff, Bill Keating, was charged with official oppression and having sex with inmates. Mr. Keating was defeated in a primary election last spring, and has pleaded guilty to a federal civil rights violation in an unrelated case involving the sexual assault of a woman. In the new case, several female jailers were charged with having sex with inmates and bringing them drugs, cellphones and cigarettes, while several male jailers were charged with drug possession and bringing inmates banned items. Several inmates were also charged with drug possession. The jail, northwest of Fort Worth, has been closed.  For complete story, click here.

 

A LOOK INSIDE ILLINOIS' ONLY SUPER-MAX PRISON--February 27th, 2009--TAMMS, Ill. — Every once in a while, Joseph Dole stands in a back corner of the walled-in outdoor recreation area at Tamms Correctional Center straining to catch a ray of sunlight.

"About 4 square feet gets sun," said Dole, a rail-thin convicted murderer who is serving a life sentence. "You can stand there. ... You feel refreshed. But you can only get it if they call yard between 11 and 1."

Another murderer, Adolfo Rosario, said he hasn't shaken anyone's hand since he was transferred to Tamms 11 years ago. "There is no contact at all, none," he said.

Tyrone Dorn, serving time for carjacking, hasn't had a visitor or made a phone call in five years at Tamms. "The hardest part is the isolation," he said. "It's like being buried alive."  For complete story, click here.

 

America's Outsourced Immigration Prisons a Booming Business--February 25th, 2009--Imprisoned immigrants in the large prison complex outside the small West Texas town of Pecos have rioted twice over the past few months complaining about inadequate medical care. Their complaints, sparked by the death of a sick inmate in solitary confinement, echo a chorus of similar complaints around the country about medical care in immigrant prisons.

Medical care, like most aspects of imprisonment in America, is outsourced at the Reeves County Detention Center. As a result, imprisoned immigrants don't know who exactly is imprisoning them, who is responsible for their medical care, and who they should petition when they have grievances.  For complete story, click here.

 

Wrongfully convicted--February 24th, 2009--"I always believed in the system but the system failed me," Steve
Barnes told a panel of New York State Bar Association members.  For nineteen years he sat in New York prisons for a rape and murder that he did not commit. Barnes' case is one of dozens of defendants in New York who were convicted and later exonerated.  On Tuesday, the New York State Bar Association held a hearing to explore wrongful convictions, what causes them and what can be done to prevent them.  For complete story, click here.
 

 

Santa Clara County public defender to launch massive search for the wrongfully convicted--February 24th, 2009--As part of a criminal justice review unprecedented in county history, the Santa Clara County public defender's has launched a massive project to revisit 1,500 or more sexual assault convictions dating back two decades to determine whether innocent people may have been put behind bars.  A Mercury News report disclosed late last year that members of Valley Medical Center's Sexual Assault Response Team have been videotaping examinations of patients since 1991, but prosecutors failed to inform defense attorneys in cases involving those patients that such critical evidence existed. Under pressure to answer for the failure, District Attorney Dolores Carr has since revealed there are 3,300 such tapes in existence, and this week she vowed to inform defense attorneys of each case involving a medical-exam videotape where a defendant was convicted.  (Unable to locate at time of archiving.  Source: Mercury News.  www.mercurynews.com )
 

 

Your Valentine, Made in Prison--February 12th, 2009--With Valentine's Day approaching, perhaps you're planning a trip to Victoria's Secret. If you're a conscientious shopper, chances are you want to know about the origins of the clothes you buy: whether they're sweatshop free or fairly traded or made in the USA. One label you won't find attached to your lingerie, however, is "Made in the USA: By Prisoners."  For complete story, click here.

 

Inmate raped by cellmates can sue prison guards--February 11th, 2009--The state Supreme Court allowed a transgender former prison inmate on Wednesday to proceed with a lawsuit accusing prison guards of failing to protect her from being raped and beaten by her cellmates.

In her suit, Alexis Giraldo said she was being held at Folsom State Prison for shoplifting and a parole violation in January 2006 when a cellmate began assaulting and raping her on a daily basis. She said prison staff ignored her complaints until March 2006, when she was transferred to segregated housing after a second cellmate attacked her with a box-cutter. She was paroled in July 2007.
Prison officials denied failing to protect Giraldo, who was housed at the all-male prison because she had not undergone surgery. A San Francisco jury rejected her emotional-distress claim against six prison employees in August 2007 after the trial judge dismissed her claim of negligence, ruling that guards have no legal duty to protect inmates from harm.

The First District Court of Appeal in San Francisco overturned the judge's ruling last November, saying a jailer who takes a prisoner into custody must take reasonable steps to protect that prisoner from foreseeable injuries. California's high court denied review of the state's appeal Wednesday, allowing Giraldo to pursue her claim that negligence by prison employees was a cause of the assaults.  For complete story, click here.

Crime lab deficiencies noted by audit--February 7th, 2009--Baltimore's crime lab suffers from inadequate funding, spotty recordkeeping and broken equipment, according to an independent audit of the embattled facility released by the Police Department yesterday.

The report, which the Police Department initially refused to release to the public, found that the lab was inadequately staffed, equipment to analyze narcotics had long been out of order, faulty paperwork sometimes made it difficult to establish a chain of custody for evidence, and evidence was stored in rooms that were too warm, which could cause it to degrade.

In an interview, the lab's new director, Francis Chiafari, said the audit is guiding a host of reforms and upgrades, including repairs to equipment and a door that wouldn't close. He said he made a request yesterday for 12 more employees to collect evidence at crime scenes.

Patrick Kent, chief of the public defender's forensics unit, said the audit exposes serious deficiencies in the lab's resources and procedures.  For complete story, click here.
 

 

PRISONERS' RIGHTS, RELIGION & BELIEF--February 6th, 2009--Warden Cain, the head of Louisiana State Penitentiary, more commonly known as Angola, is famous for promoting what he calls "moral rehabilitation."

 
Although the ACLU strongly supports anyone's efforts to encourage prisoners to look forward toward changing their lives for the better, we also expect those efforts to be done in a way that will not endorse one religion over another, or religion over nonreligion.

Unfortunately, that is not happening at Angola.

Just under two years ago we had to file a lawsuit on behalf of a Norman Sanders, a Mormon prisoner who simply wanted access to publications from sellers of Mormon materials, including the bookstore at Brigham Young  University. Unfortunately Warden Cain repeatedly denied Norman's requests, so we had to file a lawsuit. We eventually settled, allowing Norman access to simple religious materials.

Today we filed lawsuits on behalf of a Catholic and a Muslim prisoner, each being denied the right to practice his religion freely. As Yogi Berra would say, it's déjà vu all over again.

Donald Leger is a practicing Catholic on Louisiana's death row. He's devout, often praying the novenas. Starting in April 2007, the prison began locking the televisions on death row to a particular station on Sunday mornings. The televisions, located directly outside death row prisoners' cells, are locked to predominately Baptist programming on Sunday mornings. The images of the religious programming pour into the prisoners' cells and can't be escaped. In some tiers, the televisions blare.

From April 2007 until December 31, 2007 and from mid-2008 until December 31, 2008, Donald didn't have the opportunity to watch a single Catholic Mass, although scores of Baptist services were shown. Donald and the other death row prisoners are told that they will be written up and tossed in lockdown if they try to have anyone change the television station.

Donald has no problem with religion, it's just that he is a Catholic, and he simply wants the ability to turn from the mandated Baptist programming to a Catholic Mass that also airs on Sunday morning. Donald's written the Warden for almost two years now, and has filed complaint forms with the prison. His requests have gone unanswered. Worse yet, he's suffered retaliation because he's complained, and he fears for his safety. For complete story, click here.

 

Science Found Wanting in Nation’s Crime Labs--February 4th, 2009--Forensic evidence that has helped convict thousands of defendants for nearly a century is often the product of shoddy scientific practices that should be upgraded and standardized, according to accounts of a draft report by the nation’s pre-eminent scientific research group.

The report by the National Academy of Sciences is to be released this month. People who have seen it say it is a sweeping critique of many forensic methods that the police and prosecutors rely on, including fingerprinting, firearms identification and analysis of bite marks, blood spatter, hair and handwriting.

The report says such analyses are often handled by poorly trained technicians who then exaggerate the accuracy of their methods in court. It concludes that Congress should create a federal agency to guarantee the independence of the field, which has been dominated by law enforcement agencies, say forensic professionals, scholars and scientists who have seen review copies of the study. Early reviewers said the report was still subject to change.  For complete story, click here.

 

Those cleared by DNA tests struggle to be free--January 27th, 2009--ST. LOUIS — Johnny Briscoe thought his nightmare was over in the summer of 2006 when, after 23 years of proclaiming his innocence, he finally walked out of a Missouri prison.

DNA evidence lifted from a cigarette butt should have stripped away any doubt that another man — not Briscoe — had raped and robbed a woman in her suburban St. Louis apartment on Oct. 21, 1982. Yet Briscoe's exoneration, featured by national news organizations, did notfully free him from the persistent doubts of acquaintances and family members about his innocence, or from the emotional scars seared by more than two decades in prison.

"Rape," says Briscoe, 54. "Now, that's a provocative word. When I try to explain it, it's a bitter pill."

Nearly 90% of the 227 people cleared by DNA evidence since 1989 were convicted of some of the most heinous sex crimes, according to the Innocence Project, which helps inmates prove their innocence through DNA testing. DNA — present in blood, semen and body cells — can be particularly useful in solving sex crimes and often is the most definitive way of determining innocence.

Yet not even DNA washes away the lasting stigma that shadows once-convicted sex offenders who are cleared by genetic testing, and the criminal justice system that wrongly jailed them offers little help. Briscoe's plight is part of a silent struggle for a rising number of exonerees. After high-profile releases from prison, they often fend for themselves.  For complete story, click here.

 

Torture at a Louisiana Prison--January 27th, 2009--The torture of prisoners in US custody is not only found in military prisons in Iraq, Afghanistan and Guantanamo. If President Obama is serious about ending US support for torture, he can start here in Louisiana.

The Louisiana State Penitentiary at Angola is already notorious for a range of offenses, including keeping former Black Panthers Herman Wallace and Albert Woodfox, in solitary for over 36 years. Now a death penalty trial in St. Francisville, Louisiana has exposed widespread and systemic abuse at the prison. Even in the context of eight years of the Bush administration, the behavior documented at the Louisiana State Penitentiary at Angola stands out both for its brutality and for the significant evidence that it was condoned and encouraged from the very top of the chain of command.

In a remarkable hearing that explored torture practices at Angola, twenty-five inmates testified last summer to facing overwhelming violence in the aftermath of an escape attempt at the prison nearly a decade ago. These twenty-five inmates - who were not involved in the escape attempt - testified to being kicked, punched, beaten with batons and with fists, stepped on, left naked in a freezing cell, and threatened that they would be killed. They were threatened by guards that they would be sexually assaulted with batons. They were forced to urinate and defecate on themselves. They were bloodied, had teeth knocked out, were beaten until they lost control of bodily functions, and beaten until they signed statements or confessions presented to them by prison officials. One inmate had a broken jaw, and another was placed in solitary confinement for eight years.

While prison officials deny the policy of abuse, the range of prisoners who gave statements, in addition to medical records and other evidence introduced at the trial, present a powerful argument that abuse is a standard policy at the prison. Several of the prisoners received $7,000 when the state agreed to settle, without admitting liability, two civil rights lawsuits filed by 13 inmates. The inmates will have to spend that money behind bars –more than 90% of Angola's prisoners are expected to die behind its walls.  For complete story, click here.

 

Prison guard guilty of pouring scalding water on inmate--January 21st, 2009--A Jacksonville jury found a former Florida State Prison guard guilty of pouring scalding water on an inmate to discipline him for feigning an injury.

 

Paul Tillis of Lake Butler faces up to 10 years in federal prison and a $250,000 fine for violating the inmate’s civil rights in August 2005. Prosecutors said he also failed to arrange medical treatment for the inmate, who suffered second-degree burns on his chest.

A sentencing date hasn’t been scheduled.  For complete story, click here.

 

Report: Calif. keeps inmates isolated too long--January 15th, 2009--SACRAMENTO—The inspector general of the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation says the department could save nearly $11 million annually if it followed its own rules.

Inspector General David Shaw said in a report released Thursday the department keeps some inmates in disciplinary segregation units longer than required under prison policies. He estimates the lengthy stays, on average, cost taxpayers an extra $14,600 annually for each inmate kept in segregation instead of the general prison population. That's mostly because extra guards are needed.

The state can be sued if it violates the inmate's rights or keeps the inmate isolated too long.  For complete story, click here.

 

 

Mistakes in fingerprint analysis trigger review of nearly 1,000 LAPD cases--January 15th, 2009--Los Angeles Police Department fingerprint examiners who falsely implicated at least two people in crimes have been linked to nearly 1,000 other criminal cases that authorities say must now be reviewed to ensure that similar errors weren't made.

Nearly two dozen of those cases are awaiting trial in the Los Angeles court system, said Sandi Gibbons, a spokeswoman for Dist. Atty Steve Cooley.  For complete story, click here.
 

Double Victory for Criminal Defendants at the Supreme Court--January 14th, 2009--The Supreme Court issued two opinions Tuesday morning, both of them striking down lower court opinions that had favored prosecutors. Over at the Sentencing Law and Policy blog, professor Doug Berman is already proclaiming that the decisions offer further proof that the Court is the "most pro-defendant appellate court in the nation on sentencing issues."

 

In Chambers v. United States, with Justice Stephen Breyer writing for a unanimous Court, the justices agreed that a conviction on the charge of "failure to report" to prison is not the kind of prior "violent felony" conviction that triggers a 15-year mandatory prison sentence for someone found guilty of illegal possession of a firearm.

"Conceptually speaking, the crime amounts to a form of inaction, a far cry from the purposeful, violent and aggressive conduct" associated with violent crimes under the Armed Career Criminal Act, Breyer wrote. The Justice Department had argued that "failure to report" should be treated the same way a prison escape would be.

Justice Samuel Alito Jr., joined by Justice Clarence Thomas, wrote a concurrence urging Congress to reduce confusion about the law by amending it with addition of a list of specific crimes that trigger an enhanced sentence.

The other decision, Jimenez v. Quarterman, is a Texas case authored by Justice Thomas for a unanimous Court. Thomas ruled that because Texas allows defendants to file untimely appeals of state convictions, the clock for the one-year deadline for filing a federal habeas appeal under the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act should not start ticking until after that out-of-time appeal is completed.  For complete story, click here.

 

Gassing mentally ill inmates is out--January 14th, 2009--Two mentally ill inmates suffered unconstitutional cruel and unusual punishment at the hands of Florida State Prison officials who disciplined them with pepper spray, tear gas and other chemical agents, a judge has ruled.

 

But the same punishment was appropriate for four other prisoners who sued the Department of Corrections on similar grounds, U.S. District Judge Timothy Corrigan of Jacksonville wrote in a lengthy order finalized Monday after a five-day bench trial in September.

Corrigan made the distinction based on the mental condition of the individual inmates at the time they were disciplined. The order means the department can no longer use chemical agents on prisoners who lack the capacity to follow orders or control their behavior, said Jacksonville attorney Buddy Schulz, who represented the inmates.

"It's significant because it's the first time a federal judge has found this type of use of force unconstitutional as it relates to seriously mentally ill inmates who are incapable of conforming to the rules of the prisons," Schulz said.  For complete story, click here.

 

Va. cases shed light on false convictions--January 12, 2009---- No one ever claimed the criminal-justice system was perfect. But until 20 years ago, it was difficult to prove otherwise.

 

Since then, 225 innocent people -- 10 in Virginia -- have been exonerated of crimes by DNA testing. However, DNA is not a factor in most cases, and the rate of wrongful convictions remains unclear.

That could change, in part, because of a large, groundbreaking and sometimes hotly contested review of old cases under way in Virginia.

The U.S. Justice Department recently awarded $300,000 to the Urban Institute to use the results of the Virginia effort and a smaller one in Arizona to try to determine the rate of error in convictions for such crimes as murder, rape and robbery. The Urban Institute plans to report its results in the summer of 2010.

The ultimate goal is to minimize the future risk of convicting innocent people.

"It's certainly time for this study to happen," said John Roman, a senior researcher for the Urban Institute, a 40-year-old organization that studies social and economic issues to promote sound public policy and effective government.

"We [may] be able to answer the question: [In] what percentage of cases from 1973 through 1988 were people wrongfully convicted?" he said.

The hope then is to answer another question: "What is it about cases that made them more likely to have somebody wrongfully convicted?"

However, Brandon L. Garrett, an expert on DNA exoneration who teaches at the University of Virginia law school, is cautious.

"Careful researchers always have to be very cautious about generalizing beyond the sample that they are studying," he said.

The criminal-justice system keeps spotty case data, loses or destroys data, and selects and treats cases differently. "And those are general challenges -- wrongful-conviction cases are harder to study, much less generalize about," he said.  For complete story, click here.

 

As His Inmates Grew Thinner, a Sheriff’s Wallet Grew Fatter--January 8th, 2008--DECATUR, Ala. — The prisoners in the Morgan County jail here were always hungry. The sheriff, meanwhile, was getting a little richer. Alabama law allowed it: the chief lawman could go light on prisoners’ meals and pocket the leftover change.

 

And that is just what the sheriff, Greg Bartlett, did, to the tune of $212,000 over the last three years, despite a state food allowance of only $1.75 per prisoner per day.

In the view of a federal judge, who heard testimony from the hungry inmates, the sheriff was in “blatant” violation of past agreements that his prisoners be properly cared for.

“There was undisputed evidence that most of the inmates had lost significant weight,” the judge, U. W. Clemon of Federal District Court in Birmingham, said Thursday in an interview. “I could not ignore them.”

So this week, Judge Clemon ordered Sheriff Bartlett himself jailed until he came up with a plan to adequately feed prisoners more, anyway, than a few spoonfuls of grits, part of an egg and a piece of toast at breakfast, and bits of undercooked, bloody chicken at supper. For complete story, click here.

 

 

HUMAN RIGHTS NEWS

US waves white flag in disastrous 'war on drugs'--After 40 years, Washington is quietly giving up on a futile battle that has spread corruption and destroyed thousands of lives--January 17th, 2010-- After 40 years of defeat and failure, America's "war on drugs" is  being buried in the same fashion as it was born – amid bloodshed,  confusion, corruption and scandal. US agents are being pulled from  South America; Washington is putting its narcotics policy under  review, and a newly confident region is no longer prepared to swallow  its fatal Prohibition error. Indeed, after the expenditure of  billions of dollars and the violent deaths of tens of thousands of  people, a suitable epitaph for America's longest "war" may well be  the plan, in Bolivia, for every family to be given the right to grow 
coca in its own backyard.

The "war", declared unilaterally throughout the world by Richard  Nixon in 1969, is expiring as its strategists start discarding plans  that have proved futile over four decades: they are preparing to  withdraw their agents from narcotics battlefields from Colombia to  Afghanistan and beginning to coach them in the art of trumpeting  victory and melting away into anonymous defeat. Not surprisingly, the  new strategy is being gingerly aired in the media of the US 
establishment, from The Wall Street Journal to the Miami Herald.  For complete story, click here.

 

Supreme Court drops key case on limits of immunity for prosecutors--January 4th, 2010--The US Supreme Court on Monday dismissed a case over whether prosecutors who knowingly procure false testimony that leads to a 
wrongful conviction can later be sued for damages.

Lawyers announced that the parties in the underlying lawsuit had agreed to end the case in a $12 million settlement.
The two innocent men, Terry Harrington and Curtis McGhee, had spent  nearly 26 years in prison for a murder they didn’t commit. After the  truth was discovered and they were released, they sued the  prosecutors in Pottawattamie County, Iowa.

An investigation revealed that the prosecutors helped assemble and  present false testimony that led to their convictions. Messrs.  Harrington and McGhee had been sentenced to life in prison at hard  labor with no possibility of parole.  For complete story, click here.

 

Drug giant General Electric uses libel law to gag doctor 20 Dec 2009 General Electric, one of the world’s biggest corporations, is using the London libel courts to gag a senior radiologist after he raised the alarm over the potentially fatal risks of one of its drugs. The multinational [GE Healthcare, a British subsidiary of General Electric] is suing Henrik Thomsen, a Danish academic, after he described his experiences of one of the company’s drugs as a medical "nightmare". He said some kidney patients at his hospital contracted a potentially deadly condition after being administered the drug Omniscan.  For complete story, click here.

 

Black leaders urge census to change how it counts inmates--December 17th, 2009--A coalition of African American leaders concerned about minorities being undercounted in the 2010 Census called Wednesday for inmates at
federal and state prisons to be tallied in their home communities instead of the towns where they are incarcerated.

Marc H. Morial, president of the National Urban League and chairman of a census advisory committee, said the practice now shortchanges communities in money and democratic representation. Census statistics are used to calculate the allocation of more than $478 billion in federal funds and to draw political boundaries.

Noting that about 1.2 million of the nation's 40 million African Americans are in prison, Morial said, "What we have in the prison population issue is a built-in undercount."

Morial and about a dozen other black leaders brought up the prison count during a meeting with Commerce Secretary Gary Locke to discuss how to make the census more accurate, a perennial problem. In 2000, about 1.3 million people were overcounted, mostly because of duplicate counts of whites with multiple homes. In contrast, about 4.5 million people, mostly black and Hispanic, were not counted.  For complete story, click here.

 

Yahoo, Verizon: Our Spy Capabilities Would 'Shock', 'Confuse' Consumers By Kim Zetter 01 Dec 2009 Want to know how much phone companies and internet service providers charge to funnel your private communications or records to U.S. law enforcement and spy agencies? That’s the question muckraker and Indiana University graduate student Christopher Soghoian asked all agencies within the Department of Justice, under a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request filed a few months ago. But before the agencies could provide the data, Verizon and Yahoo intervened and filed an objection on grounds that, among other things, they would be ridiculed and publicly shamed were their surveillance price sheets made public. Yahoo writes in its 12-page objection letter, that if its pricing information were disclosed to Soghoian, he would use it "to 'shame' Yahoo! and other companies -- and to 'shock' their customers." For complete story, click here.

 

Pfizer Broke the Law by Promoting Drugs for Unapproved Uses--November 9th, 2009--

Nov. 9 (Bloomberg) -- Prosecutor Michael Loucks remembers clearly when lawyers for Pfizer Inc., the world’s largest drug company, looked across the table and promised it wouldn’t break the law again.

It was January 2004, and the attorneys were negotiating in a conference room on the ninth floor of the federal courthouse in Boston, where Loucks was head of the health-care fraud unit of the U.S. Attorney’s Office. One of Pfizer’s units had been pushing doctors to prescribe an epilepsy drug called Neurontin for uses the Food and Drug Administration had never approved.

In the agreement the lawyers eventually hammered out, the Pfizer unit, Warner-Lambert, pleaded guilty to two felony counts of marketing a drug for unapproved uses.  For complete story, click here.

 

New US vaccine production techniques: Genetically modified insect cells, E. coli, caterpillar ovaries 24 Nov 2009 Spurred by $487 million in federal funding, a sprawling new vaccine factory is opening in North Carolina Tuesday that will produce shots using dog cells instead of chicken eggs. A Connecticut biotech company has also applied to sell a vaccine employing a radically different approach involving a genetically engineered virus infecting insect cells... Baxter International won approval last month to sell an H1N1 vaccine in Europe that uses a decades-old line of African green monkey kidney cells, and it is working on a vaccine for the United States. Protein Sciences of Meriden, Conn., has applied to the FDA for approval to sell a vaccine made by genetically engineering flu genes into a worm virus, which then infects cells from caterpillar ovaries to produce the necessary proteins to make vaccine. VaxInnate of Cranbury, N.J., for example, produced an experimental H1N1 vaccine using genetically engineered E.coli bacteria, and Vical of San Diego just won a $1.25 million contract from the Navy to develop an H1N1 vaccine that involves injecting DNA sequences from the virus directly into people.  For complete story, click here.

 

Students who question murder convictions under investigation--November 6th, 2009--

(CNN) -- It was two-and-a-half days before Illinois Gov. George Ryan was to leave office in 2003. I sat in a crowded auditorium in Northwestern University's Law School in Chicago, where Ryan was expected to make a major announcement on capital punishment.

"Half, if you will, of the nearly 300 capital cases in Illinois have been reversed for a new trial or for some re-sentencing." he said, his voice tired but clear.

Wrongful convictions had been all over the papers around that time -- the Anthony Porter case, the Ford Heights Four, Rolando Cruz.

"How in God's name does that happen? In America, how does it happen?" Ryan continued. "How many more cases of wrongful conviction have to occur before we can all agree that this system in Illinois is broken?"

On that day, the governor commuted the sentences of all death row inmates in the state and credited an unlikely source for helping him make his decision: Professor David Protess' undergraduate Investigative Journalism class at Northwestern University's Medill School.

In the previous decade, Medill students had uncovered some of the most high-profile wrongful convictions in the city. The class had worked to secure the release of 11 innocent prisoners, five of whom were scheduled to be executed.

As a wide-eyed journalism student at Northwestern, I remember feeling proud of my classmates, proud of my school and proud of the profession I was entering.

Today, six years later, Protess' class is far from the center of the same praise. Presented with evidence in a new case, the state attorney's office is questioning the motivations of the messenger -- the class itself. For complete story, click here.

 

Can Prosecutors Be Sued By People They Framed?--November 4th, 2009--Do prosecutors have total immunity from lawsuits for anything they do, including framing someone for murder? That is the question the justices of the Supreme Court face Wednesday.

On one side of the case being argued are Iowa prosecutors who contend "there is no freestanding right not to be framed." They are backed by the Obama administration, 28 states and every major prosecutors organization in the country.

On the other side are two black men — Terry Harrington and Curtis McGhee — men who served 25 years in prison before evidence long hidden in police files resulted in them being freed.  For complete story, click here.

 

9yr-old boy tortured, says former Guantanamo detainee --'I was interrogated hundreds of times by the FBI, CIA and even MI5, beaten, and subjected to continuous torture, sexual degradation, forced drugging and religious persecution.' 30 Oct 2009 A British Muslim detained for three years at the controversial Guantanamo Bay prison manned by the United States, revealed that the youngest detainee he knew of was a nine-year-old boy who was also tortured like the rest. Ruhal Ahmed’s story was among more accounts of atrocities committed against the detainees at Guantanamo, told before an open commission hearing which began Friday on the sidelines of an international conference to criminalise war. The testimonies before the Kuala Lumpur War Crimes Commission Hearings will be submitted to a tribunal in conjunction with the Criminalise War Conference and War Crimes Tribunal 2009 spearheaded by former Malaysian prime minister Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad. Dr Mahathir said that the tribunal’s decision would be forwarded to the United Nations for further action. For complete story, click here.

 

California gives the poor a new legal right--October 17th, 2009--California is embarking on an unprecedented civil court experiment to pay for attorneys to represent poor litigants who find themselves battling powerful adversaries in vital matters affecting their livelihoods and families.

The program is the first in the nation to recognize a right to representation in key civil cases and provide it for people fighting eviction, loss of child custody, domestic abuse or neglect of the elderly or disabled.

Advocates for the poor say the law, which Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger signed this week, levels the legal playing field and gives underprivileged litigants a better shot at attaining justice against unscrupulous landlords, abusive spouses, predatory lenders and other foes.

Although some analysts worry that it could swell state court dockets or eat up resources better spent on other needs of the poor, the pilot project that won bipartisan endorsement in the state Assembly will be financed by a $10 increase in court fees for prevailing parties.

Anybody confronted with criminal charges has a constitutional right to an attorney, as set out in the landmark Supreme Court decision in Gideon vs. Wainwright in 1963. But such a right does not apply in civil court, and the majority of citizens fighting what can be life- altering civil actions now attempt to handle their cases without professional guidance.

An estimated 4 million people seek to represent themselves in California in civil matters each year, the state Judicial Council estimates, not because they want to but because they can't afford to hire a lawyer.  For complete story, click here.

 

Mystery 'Police' Force Has Small Montana City on Edge--October 8th, 2009--When two brand new, shiny black Mercedes SUVs bearing a "Hardin Police Department" logo drove through the main thoroughfare of Hardin, Mont., last week, people took notice.

“How many police forces have Mercedes?” said Charlene Warren, a local business owner who has lived in Hardin for more than half a century. “That threw up a red flag.”

And speaking of flags, it did not go unnoticed that the emblem on the sides of the SUVs bore a strong resemblance to the Serbian national flag.

Furthermore, those "police department" cars were rolling through Hardin, a small southeastern Montana town of 3,600 that just happens not to have a police department.

Click here for a video.

The luxury vehicles that rolled through town belonged to the American Police Force (APF), a California-based security firm that is drafting a contract that will give it control over a $27 million medium-security prison that was built in Hardin more than two years ago, but has never held any prisoners.

But that contract is now on hold as the Montana State Attorney General’s Office investigates APF and the Big Horn County Sheriff's Department enters preliminary talks about incorporating a real police department in Hardin so a similar episode doesn’t occur in the future.  For complete story, click here.

 

Schoolgirl dies after GlaxoSmithKline HPV vaccination --HPV vaccine batch quarantined as 'precautionary measure' --Vaccination part of [insane] national immunisation programme 29 Sep 2009 An urgent investigation has been launched after a 14-year-old girl died shortly after receiving a cervical cancer vaccination at her school. Natalie Morton was a pupil at the Blue Coat Church of England School in Coventry, where she was given the human papilloma virus (HPV) jab yesterday. She was taken to Coventry University hospital, where she died at lunchtime. Three other girls from the school are reported to have experienced possible side effects of dizziness and nausea after receiving the Cervarix jab, which was given to female pupils as part of a national immunisation programme against HPV.  For complete story, click here.

 

American Police Force Corporation Takes Over Small Town Police Force and Prisoner-Less Jail 29 Sep 2009 (MT) This is the strange story of how American Police Force, a little known company which claims to specialize in training military and security forces overseas, has seemingly taken control of a $27 million, never-used jail, and a rural Montana town's nonexistent police force. After arriving in this tiny city with three Mercedes SUVs marked with the logo of a police department that has never existed, representatives of the obscure California security company said preparations were under way to take over Hardin's jail, which has no prisoners.  For complete story, click here.

 

Lawyers, judges find Web can entangle--September 13th, 2009--

Sean Conway was steamed at a Fort Lauderdale judge, so he did what millions of angry people do these days: he blogged about her, saying she was an “Evil, Unfair Witch.”
Scott Dalton for The New York Times

Judge Susan Criss said a Facebook page said a lawyer was drinking, not grieving, after a funeral.

 

“When you become an officer of the court, you lose the full ability to criticize the court,” said Michael Downey, who teaches legal ethics at the Washington University law   For complete story, click here.

 

Military Develops Arsenal of Non-Lethal Weapons 08 Sep 2009 Over the past 20 years, the U.S. military, as well NATO and UN troops, have had to defend a variety of locations, stop approaching vehicles, or disperse crowds without using deadly force or endangering themselves. But the weapons at their disposal have historically been designed to maim or kill. To give military leaders more options, the U.S. Defense Dept. established the Joint Non-Lethal Weapons Program (JNLWP) in 1996. Based at the Marine Corps Base Quantico and under the direction of the Commandant of the Marine Corps, the program develops, evaluates, and deploys nonlethal devices. Here are some of the weapons coming out of their laboratories and field testing...  For complete story, click here.

 

White House Backs Controversial Domestic Surveillance Provisions 16 Sep 2009 The Obama administration is urging lawmakers to extend three provisions of the controversial domestic surveillance law known as the USA Patriot Act. The U.S. Justice Department issued a letter Tuesday asking Congress to renew provisions of the law that allow authorities to conduct roving electronic eavesdropping, or wiretaps, access business records and track so-called "lone wolf" suspects with no known links to foreign powers or terrorist groups. The roving wiretaps would let agents track the communications of suspects who change their cell phones or other devices. The provisions are due to expire on December 31.  For complete story, click here.

 

"Capitalism is evil," says new Michael Moore film Capitalism is evil. 06 Sep 2009 That is the conclusion U.S. documentary maker Michael Moore comes to in his latest movie "Capitalism: A Love Story," which premieres at the Venice film festival Sunday. Blending his trademark humor with tragic individual stories, archive footage and publicity stunts, Moore launches an all out attack on the capitalist system, arguing that it benefits the rich and condemns millions to poverty.  For complete story, click here.

 

Pfizer to pay record $2.3B penalty for drug promos--September 2nd, 2009--WASHINGTON – Federal prosecutors hit Pfizer Inc. with a record-breaking $2.3 billion in fines Wednesday and called the world's largest drugmaker a repeating corporate cheat for illegal drug promotions that plied doctors with free golf, massages, and resort junkets.

Announcing the penalty as a warning to all drug manufacturers, Justice Department officials said the overall settlement is the largest ever paid by a drug company for alleged violations of federal drug rules, and the $1.2 billion criminal fine is the largest ever in any U.S. criminal case. The total includes $1 billion in civil penalties and a $100 million criminal forfeiture.

Authorities called Pfizer a repeat offender, noting it is the company's fourth such settlement of government charges in the last decade. The allegations surround the marketing of 13 different drugs, including big sellers such as Viagra, Zoloft, and Lipitor.

As part of its illegal marketing, Pfizer invited doctors to consultant meetings at resort locations, paying their expenses and providing perks, prosecutors said.  For complete story, click here.

 

Proposed bill would allow state authorities to forcefully quarantine people during pandemic 04 Sep 2009 (MA) A new proposed bill designed to combat the threat of the H1N1 virus would allow the state to forcefully quarantine people in the event of a pandemic. Anyone who refuses to comply with the quarantine order could face jail time or a $1000 per day fine. The "Pandemic Response Bill" would also force health providers to vaccinate people, authorize forcible entry into private homes, and impose fines or prison sentences on anyone not complying with isolation or quarantine orders.  For complete story, click here.

 

Aiding Torture: Health Professionals' Ethics and Human Rights Violations Demonstrated in the May 2004 CIA Inspector General's Report (PHR) 31 Aug 2009 This 6-page white paper, published August 31, 2009, after the new release of the May 2004 CIA Inspector General's report, shows that the extent to which American doctors and psychologists violated human rights and betrayed the ethical standards of their professions by designing, implementing, and legitimizing a worldwide torture program is worse than previously known. A team of PHR doctors authored the white paper, which details how the CIA relied on medical expertise to rationalize and carry out abusive and unlawful interrogations. It also refers to aggregate collection of data on detainees’ reaction to interrogation methods. Physicians for Human Rights is concerned that this data collection and analysis may amount to human experimentation and calls for more investigation on this point. If confirmed, the development of a research protocol to assess and refine the use of the waterboard or other techniques would likely constitute a new, previously unknown category of ethical violations committed by CIA physicians and psychologists.  For complete story, click here.

 

CIA in human experimentation row --Watchdog says US interrogation doctors may have committed unlawful experimentation 02 Sep 2009 Doctors and psychologists the CIA employed to monitor its "enhanced interrogation" of terror suspects came close to, and may even have committed, unlawful human experimentation, a medical ethics watchdog has alleged. Physicians for Human Rights (PHR), a not-for-profit group that has investigated the role of medical personnel in alleged incidents of torture at Guantánamo, Abu Ghraib, Bagram and other US detention sites, accuses doctors of being far more involved than hitherto understood. PHR says health professionals participated at every stage in the development, implementation and legal justification of what it calls the CIA's secret "torture programme".  For complete story, click here.

 

Doctors' role in CIA abuse 'approaches unlawful human experimentation' - rights group --Doctors had 'central role' in CIA abuse 31 Aug 2009 A US-based medical rights advocacy group on Monday blasted health experts for playing a "central role" in advising and implementing the CIA's abusive interrogation techniques used on terrorism suspects. Physicians for Human Rights (PHR) issued its six-page white paper after shocking details about the range of techniques used by interrogators, including waterboarding, came to light one week ago with release of a 2004 CIA inspector general's report. "Health professionals played a central role in developing, implementing and providing justification for torture," PHR said in its report... PHR warned that such spy agency techniques -- and monitoring by doctors to gauge their effectiveness -- "approaches unlawful experimentation" on human subjects. The report's lead author, PHR medical advisor Scott Allen, said in a statement on the organization's website, "medical doctors and psychologists colluded with the CIA to keep observational records about waterboarding, which approaches unethical and unlawful human experimentation."  For complete story, click here.

 

The Secret History of Hurricane Katrina By James Ridgeway 28 Aug 2009 The Blackwater operators described their mission in New Orleans as "securing neighborhoods," as if they were talking about Sadr City. When National Guard troops descended on the city, the Army Times described their role as fighting "the insurgency in the city." Brigadier Gen. Gary Jones, who commanded the Louisiana National Guard's Joint Task Force, told the paper, "This place is going to look like Little Somalia. We're going to go out and take this city back. This will be a combat operation to get this city under control." ...And while the government couldn't seem to keep people from dying on rooftops or abandoned highways, it wasted no time building a temporary jail in New Orleans.  For complete story, click here.

 

Health-care workers steer clear of swine flu vaccine --Many health-care workers have made it obvious that they are unwilling to be vaccinated. 26 Aug 2009 A new study finds that the majority of health-care workers refuse to take the swine flu vaccine due to its possible side effects. According to a study published in British Medical Journal, more than half of health-care workers around the world are worried about the side effects of the new vaccine. Doubts about the effectiveness of the vaccine are also reported as another main reason for them declining the vaccine.  For complete story, click here.

 

Exposed: The Swine Flu Hoax By Andrew Bosworth, Ph.D. 24 Aug 2009 If the current H1N1 swine flu virus does become abnormally lethal, there would be three leading explanations: first, that the virus was accidentally released, or escaped, from a laboratory; second, that a disgruntled lab employee unleashed the virus (as happened, according to the official version of events, with the 2001 anthrax attack); or third, that a group, corporation or government agency intentionally released the virus in the interests of profit and power. Each of the three scenarios represents a plausible explanation should the swine virus become lethal. The 1918 flu virus was dead and buried -- until, that is, scientists unearthed a lead coffin to obtain a biopsy of the corpse it contained. For complete story, click here.

 

Rendition of Terror Suspects Will Continue Under Obama 25 Aug 2009 The Obama administration will continue the Bush regime’s practice of sending terror suspects to third countries for detention and interrogation, but will monitor their treatment to insure they are not tortured, administration officials said on Monday. The administration officials, who announced the changes on condition that they not be identified, said that unlike the Bush administration, they would give the State Department a larger role in assuring that transferred detainees prisoners would not be abused. [See: Barack Obama: Change We Can Deceive In --A critique from the Left By Lori Price 19 Aug 2009.]  For complete story, click here.

 

Common Sense 2009 By Larry Flynt 20 Aug 2009 The American government -- which we once called our government -- has been taken over by Wall Street, the mega-corporations and the super-rich. They are the ones who decide our fate. It is this group of powerful elites, the people President Franklin D. Roosevelt called "economic royalists," who choose our elected officials -- indeed, our very form of government. Both Democrats and Republicans dance to the tune of their corporate masters. In America, corporations do not control the government. In America, corporations are the government. This was never more obvious than with the Wall Street bailout, whereby the very corporations that caused the collapse of our economy were rewarded with taxpayer dollars.  For complete story, click here.

 

'The guard called a Homeland Security Officer who asked Thomas what he was filming.' Homeland Security cop arrests man for filming FBI building in NYC By Carlos Miller 20 Aug 2009 A 43-year-old man was jailed for six hours – and had his camera and memory card confiscated by a judge - after filming an FBI building from across the street in New York City Monday. Randall Thomas, a professional photographer, said he was standing on the corner of Duane Street and Broadway in downtown Manhattan when he used his video camera to pan up and down on the 42-story building at 26 Federal Plaza. He was immediately accosted by a security guard in a brown uniform who told him he was not allowed to film the building. For complete story, click here.

Police Taser use 'up nearly a third' 17 Aug 2009 Police use of Taser stun guns has increased by nearly a third, figures revealed today. Officers fired the electro-shock weapons 226 times in the first three months of this year - up from 174 in the last three months of 2008. For complete story, click here.

 

Second 9/11 Investigation Petition Moves Toward NYC November Ballot By Barbara G. Ellis for Portland 9/11 Legislative Alliance 20 Aug 2009 A second 9/11 investigation about the destruction of the World Trade Center and attack on the Pentagon--this one independent of the U.S. government--may start late this year if legal debris is cleared away for approval as a referendum issue on November 3 in New York City.   For complete story, click here.

 

Government's Tamiflu advice is wrong, says WHO 22 Aug 2009 Only seriously ill and vulnerable patients should be prescribed antiviral drugs to help them to get over swine flu, the World Health Organisation said yesterday, in advice which conflicts with the decision taken by the British Government to prescribe Tamiflu to everyone with swine flu. Most people will recover from swine flu within a week, just as they would from seasonal forms of influenza, the WHO said.  For complete story, click here.

 

Caregiver who raped disabled woman gets 8 years in prison--August 15th, 2009--A Kent man who raped a severely disabled woman in his care last year was sentenced Friday to 8 ½ years to life in prison for second-degree rape.

Joseph Thurura, 32, was arrested in June 2008 and charged with the rape of a 44-year-old patient at Integrated Living Services, where he was a caregiver.

The woman was impregnated but had a miscarriage.  For complete story, click here.

 

Mexico Legalizes Drug Possession--August 21st, 2009--MEXICO CITY (AP) — Mexico enacted a controversial law on Thursday decriminalizing possession of small amounts of marijuana, cocaine, heroin and other drugs while encouraging government-financed treatment for drug dependency free of charge.  The law sets out maximum “personal use” amounts for drugs, also including LSD and methamphetamine. People detained with those quantities will no longer face criminal prosecution; the law goes into effect on Friday.  For complete story, click here.

 

Swine flu jab link to killer nerve disease: Leaked letter reveals concern of neurologists over 25 deaths in America 15 Aug 2009 A warning that the new swine flu jab is linked to a deadly nerve disease has been sent by the Government to senior neurologists in a confidential letter. The letter from the Health Protection Agency, the official body that oversees public health, has been leaked to The Mail on Sunday, leading to demands to know why the information has not been given to the public before the vaccination of millions of people, including children, begins. It tells the neurologists that they must be alert for an increase in a brain disorder called Guillain-Barre Syndrome (GBS), which could be triggered by the vaccine. The letter, sent to about 600 neurologists on July 29, is the first sign that there is concern at the highest levels that the vaccine itself could cause serious complications.  For complete story, click here.

 

Sheriff's Office defies judge on order for system password--August 15th, 2009--A Maricopa County Superior Court judge on Friday ordered that the Sheriff's Office divulge the password it forcefully installed on a county computer system linked to sensitive state and federal criminal- justice data.

But Chief Deputy David Hendershott later said he will refuse to share the password - even if it means he goes to jail.

During the Friday hearing, Judge Joseph Heilman said that if the Sheriff's Office doesn't divulge the password by Wednesday, he will "hold someone in contempt of court."

"I assume it's going to be someone seated at this table," he added, referring to Hendershott.

Hendershott said he could not reveal the password under federal law. And if he goes to jail: "I bet I get a pretty decent place. Something with a view of the dump."

Heilman would not comment on the remark.  (Webmaster Note:  Hiding something, are we?)  For complete story, click here.

 

 

Antidepressant use doubles in U.S., study finds--August 3rd, 2009--WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Use of antidepressant drugs in the United States doubled between 1996 and 2005, probably because of a mix of factors, researchers reported on Monday.

About 6 percent of people were prescribed an antidepressant in 1996 -- 13 million people. This rose to more than 10 percent or 27 million people by 2005, the researchers found.

"Significant increases in antidepressant use were evident across all sociodemographic groups examined, except African Americans," Dr. Mark Olfson of Columbia University in New York and Steven Marcus of the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia wrote in the Archives of General Psychiatry.  For complete story, click here.  (Webmaster Note:  Drugs are not the answer!)

 

Gulags we can believe in: AP sources: Military-civilian terror prison eyed --The facility would operate as a hybrid prison system jointly operated by the Justice Department, the military and the Department of Homeland Security. 02 Aug 2009 The Obama administration is looking at creating a courtroom-within-a-prison complex in the U.S. to house suspected terrorists, combining military and civilian detention facilities at a single maximum-security prison. Several senior U.S. officials said the administration is eyeing a soon-to-be-shuttered state maximum security prison in Michigan and the 134-year-old military penitentiary at Fort Leavenworth, Kan., as possible locations for a heavily guarded site to hold the 229 prisoners now jailed at the Guantanamo Bay detention camp in Cuba. The administration's plan, according to three government officials, calls for: long-term holding cells for undetermined number of prisoners who will never face trial; building detention cells for prisoners ordered released by courts but still held behind bars.  For complete story, click here.

 

New Rule: Not Everything in America Has to Make a Profit--July 24th, 2009--by Bill Maher--

How about this for a New Rule: Not everything in America has to make a profit. It used to be that there were some services and institutions so vital to our nation that they were exempt from market pressures. Some things we just didn't do for money. The United States always defined capitalism, but it didn't used to define us. But now it's becoming all that we are.

 

Did you know, for example, that there was a time when being called a "war profiteer" was a bad thing? But now our war zones are dominated by private contractors and mercenaries who work for corporations. There are more private contractors in Iraq than American troops, and we pay them generous salaries to do jobs the troops used to do for themselves ­-- like laundry. War is not supposed to turn a profit, but our wars have become boondoggles for weapons manufacturers and connected civilian contractors.

Prisons used to be a non-profit business, too. And for good reason --­ who the hell wants to own a prison? By definition you're going to have trouble with the tenants. But now prisons are big business. A company called the Corrections Corporation of America is on the New York Stock Exchange, which is convenient since that's where all the real crime is happening anyway. The CCA and similar corporations actually lobby Congress for stiffer sentencing laws so they can lock more people up and make more money. That's why America has the world;s largest prison population ­-- because actually rehabilitating people would have a negative impact on the bottom line.

Television news is another area that used to be roped off from the profit motive. When Walter Cronkite died last week, it was odd to see news anchor after news anchor talking about how much better the news coverage was back in Cronkite's day. I thought, "Gee, if only you were in a position to do something about it."

But maybe they aren't. Because unlike in Cronkite's day, today's news has to make a profit like all the other divisions in a media conglomerate. That's why it wasn't surprising to see the CBS Evening News broadcast live from the Staples Center for two nights this month, just in case Michael Jackson came back to life and sold Iran nuclear weapons. In Uncle Walter's time, the news division was a loss leader. Making money was the job of The Beverly Hillbillies. And now that we have reporters moving to Alaska to hang out with the Palin family, the news is The Beverly Hillbillies.

And finally, there's health care. It wasn't that long ago that when a kid broke his leg playing stickball, his parents took him to the local Catholic hospital, the nun put a thermometer in his mouth, the doctor slapped some plaster on his ankle and you were done. The bill was $1.50, plus you got to keep the thermometer.

But like everything else that's good and noble in life, some Wall Street wizard decided that hospitals could be big business, so now they're run by some bean counters in a corporate plaza in Charlotte. In the U.S. today, three giant for-profit conglomerates own close to 600 hospitals and other health care facilities. They're not hospitals anymore; they're Jiffy Lubes with bedpans. America's largest hospital chain, HCA, was founded by the family of Bill Frist, who perfectly represents the Republican attitude toward health care: it's not a right, it's a racket. The more people who get sick and need medicine, the higher their profit margins. Which is why they're always pushing the Jell-O.

Because medicine is now for-profit we have things like "recision," where insurance companies hire people to figure out ways to deny you coverage when you get sick, even though you've been paying into your plan for years. For complete story, click here.

 

Whistleblower tells of America's hidden nightmare for its sick poor --When an insurance firm boss saw a field hospital for the poor in Virginia, he knew he had to speak out. By Paul Harris 26 Jul 2009 Wendell Potter can remember exactly when he took the first steps on his journey to becoming a whistleblower and turning against one of the most powerful industries in America. It was July 2007 and Potter, a senior executive at giant US healthcare firm Cigna, was visiting relatives in the poverty-ridden mountain districts of northeast Tennessee. He saw an advert in a local paper for a touring free medical clinic at a fairground just across the state border in Wise County, Virginia. Potter, who had worked at Cigna for 15 years, decided to check it out. What he saw appalled him. Hundreds of desperate people, most without any medical insurance, descended on the clinic from out of the hills... Potter took pictures of patients lying on trolleys on rain-soaked pavements. For complete story, click here.

 

Jimmy Carter Leaves Church Over Treatment of Women--July 20th, 2009--After more than 60 years together, Jimmy Carter has announced himself at odds with the Southern Baptist Church -- and he's decided it's time they go their separate ways. Via Feministing, the former president called the decision "unavoidable" after church leaders prohibited women from being ordained and insisted women be "subservient to their husbands." Said Carter in an essay in The Age:

At its most repugnant, the belief that women must be subjugated to the wishes of men excuses slavery, violence, forced prostitution, genital mutilation and national laws that omit rape as a crime. But it also costs many millions of girls and women control over their own bodies and lives, and continues to deny them fair access to education, health, employment and influence within their own communities.
 

For complete story, click here.

 

More bodies go unclaimed as families can't afford funeral costs 21 Jul 2009 The poor economy is taking a toll even on the dead, with an increasing number of bodies in Los Angeles County going unclaimed by families who cannot afford to bury or cremate their loved ones. At the county coroner's office -- which handles homicides and other suspicious deaths -- 36% more cremations were done at taxpayers' expense in the last fiscal year over the previous year, from 525 to 712.  For complete story, click here.

 

Executives, other highly compensated employees receive more than one-third of all pay in U.S. 21 Jul 2009 The nation's wealth gap is widening amid an uproar about lofty pay packages in the financial world. Executives and other highly compensated employees now receive more than one-third of all pay in the U.S., according to a Wall Street Journal analysis of Social Security Administration data -- without counting billions of dollars more in pay that remains off federal radar screens that measure wages and salaries. Highly paid employees received nearly $2.1 trillion of the $6.4 trillion in total U.S. pay in 2007, the latest figures available. The compensation numbers don't include incentive stock options, unexercised stock options, unvested restricted stock units and certain benefits.  For complete story, click here.

 

CIA Supervisor Claimed He Used Fire Ants On Detainee By Aram Roston 16 Jul 2009 A recently released legal memo describing interrogation techniques showed that Bush Administration lawyers had approved the use of "insects" in interrogations. "You would like to place [Abu] Zubaydeh in a cramped confinement box with an insect," Jay Bybee, then a Justice Department lawyer and now a federal judge, wrote in 2002... A CIA supervisor involved in the "enhanced interrogation" program bragged to other CIA employees about using fire ants while during questioning of a top terror suspect, according to several sources formerly with the Agency. The official claimed to other Agency employees, the sources say, to have put the stinging ants on a detainee's head to help break him. The CIA insists, however, that no matter what the man said, it never took place.  For complete story, click here.

 

317 cars burned ahead of Bastille Day --Disaffected youths frustrated with high unemployment rates and their view of France's failure to integrate ethnic minorities 14 Jul 2009 French youths burned 317 cars and wounded 13 police officers overnight on the eve of the Bastille Day national holiday, police said Tuesday. By 6:00 am (0400 GMT), police headquarters in Paris had recorded 317 burnt out cars -- up 6.7 percent on 2008 -- and 240 arrests, almost double the total for the same period last year. These numbers were expected to increase as fresh reports came in.  For details, click here.

 

Some Guantanamo Bay Prisoners May Be Held Indefinitely --DoD lawyer: Any detainee, even if acquitted, could be held indefinitely 10 Jul 2009 An Obama administration official told Senators Tuesday that some detainees at the Guantanamo Bay detention facility will most likely be held indefinitely if they pose a threat. The official spoke at a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing... At a Senate hearing, Defense Department lawyer Jeh Johnson described one group of prisoners that will remain behind bars. "There will be at the end of the review a category of people that we in the administration believe must be retained for reasons of public safety and national security, and they're not necessarily people that we'll prosecute," Johnson said. Johnson also said any detainee, even if acquitted, could be held indefinitely. "And we've gone through our review period and we've made through the assessment the person is a security threat....I think it's our view that we would have the ability to detain that person," Johnson said.  For complete story, click here.

 

Swearing Makes Pain More Tolerable--July 12th, 2009--

That muttered curse word that reflexively comes out when you stub your toe could actually make it easier to bear the throbbing pain, a new study suggests.

Swearing is a common response to pain, but no previous research has connected the uttering of an expletive to the actual physical experience of pain.

"Swearing has been around for centuries and is an almost universal human linguistic phenomenon," said Richard Stephens of Keele University in England and one of the authors of the new study. "It taps into emotional brain centers and appears to arise in the right brain, whereas most language production occurs in the left cerebral hemisphere of the brain."

Stephens and his fellow Keele researchers John Atkins and Andrew Kingston sought to test how swearing would affect an individual's tolerance to pain. Because swearing often has an exaggerating effect that can overstate the severity of pain, the team thought that swearing would lessen a person's tolerance.

As it turned out, the opposite seems to be true.

The researchers enlisted 64 undergraduate volunteers and had them submerge their hand in a tub of ice water for as long as possible while repeating a swear word of their choice. The experiment was then repeated with the volunteer repeating a more common word that they would use to describe a table.

Contrary to what the researcher expected, the volunteers kept their hands submerged longer while repeating the swear word. For complete story, click here.  (Webmaster note:  Swearing is good for you.)

 

The Truth about the Flu Shot By Infowars 10 Jul 2009 If the government mandates a series of flu shots this fall -- so far they are only "recommending” the shots -- you can expect to get a dose of thimerosal (mercury), formaldehyde, detergent, MF-59 (an oil-based adjuvant), and other toxins. Incidentally, if you believe the government will not kidnap you at gunpoint and lock you in a concentration camp and possibly force you to take these toxins, check out Executive Order 13295 of April 4, 2003. It states that the government has the authority to establish "regulations providing for the apprehension, detention, or conditional release of individuals to prevent the introduction, transmission, or spread of suspected communicable diseases," including diseases at that time "not yet isolated or named." Of course, the government will decide if you have a deadly disease or not.  For complete story, click here.

 

Philadelphia opens Mental Health Court--July 8th, 2009--

When Philadelphia police shot and killed a homeless man brandishing a utility knife Friday in the concourse near City Hall, it had special meaning for state Supreme Court Justice Seamus P. McCaffery.

Twenty years ago, McCaffery told an audience of Philadelphia court and municipal officials, he was a police sergeant with the subway unit.

"I know what those officers are going through down there dealing with the homeless," McCaffery said. "That's the kind of tragedy that we don't want to happen. These are human beings that we as a society need to step up to the plate and help."

Yesterday McCaffery got that chance, joining Philadelphia court officials to announce the creation of the city's first Mental Health Court.

The court, which begins today with a pilot group of 15 individuals, is to take a group of nonviolent inmates about to complete their jail terms and make sure they have the necessary therapy and supervision lined up to successfully live in the community.  For complete story, click here.  (Webmaster Note:  The "therapy" utilized to modify behavior in and out of prison is not based on science and actually causes severe psychological distress and trauma.  Let's not jump from the frying pan (current prison/sentencing system) into the fire (pseudo-science and cult-like brainwashing of "offenders" aka our fellow citizens.)

 

Abu Ghraib Crucifixion Death Demonstrates Need for Independent Criminal Investigation into U.S. Torture Program--June 29th, 2009--Washington, DC -- A report published in the June 22nd issue of The New Yorker magazine that a prisoner had been crucified by the CIA at the Abu Ghraib prison highlighted the need to apply the rule of law to the U.S. torture program. This issue will be discussed at a press conference at 9:30 on Monday morning at the National Press Club in Washington, DC.

 

Lawsuit accuses Xe contractors of murder, kidnapping, child prostitution 02 Jul 2009 A just-amended lawsuit alleges six additional instances of unprovoked attacks on Iraqi civilians by Blackwater mercenaries. Three people, including a 9-year-old boy, are said to have died. Also added to the suit is a racketeering count accusing Blackwater founder Erik Prince of running an ongoing criminal enterprise involved in, among other things, kidnapping and child prostitution. The latest charges, filed this week in U.S. District Court in Alexandria, bring to more than 60 the number of Iraqis allegedly killed or wounded since 2005 by armed Blackwater mercenaries guarding U.S. diplomatic personnel in Iraq. The Moyock, N.C.-based security company, since renamed Xe, earned more than $1 billion under that contract before the State Department, under pressure from the Iraqi government, let it lapse in May. For complete story, click here.

 

Former Marine Claims Illness From Mystery Vaccine --Military Source Believes Experimental Shots May Have Been Given 08 May 2007 (Received July 2nd, 2009)  Clermont County, OH) Target 5 has discovered that an alarming number of U.S. troops are having severe reactions to some of the vaccines they receive in preparation for going overseas. "This is the worst cover-up in the history of the military," said an unidentified military health officer who fears for his job. A shot from a syringe is leaving some U.S. servicemen and women on the brink of death. "When the issue, I believe, of the use of the vaccine comes out, I believe it will make the Walter Reed scandal pale in comparison," said the health officer. For complete story, click here.

 

ACLU Says Government Used False Confessions 02 Jul 2009 The American Civil Liberties Union yesterday accused the Obama administration of using statements elicited through torture to justify the confinement of a detainee it represents at the U.S. military prison in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. The ACLU is asking a federal judge to throw out those statements and others made by Mohammed Jawad, an Afghan who may have been as young as 12 when he was captured. His attorney argued that Jawad was abused in U.S. custody, threatened and subjected to intense sleep deprivation. "The government's continued reliance on evidence gained by torture and other abuse violates centuries of U.S. law and suggests the current administration is not really serious about breaking with the past," said ACLU lawyer Jonathan Hafetz, who is representing Jawad in a lawsuit challenging his detention.  For complete story, click here.

 

White House Drafts Executive Order to Allow Indefinite Detention of Terror Suspects --Friday 26 Jun 2009 5:18 PM The Obama administration, fearing a battle with Congress that could stall plans to close Guantanamo, has drafted an executive order that would reassert presidential authority to incarcerate terrorism suspects indefinitely, according to three senior government officials with knowledge of White House deliberations. Such an order would embrace claims by former president [sic] George W. Bush that certain people can be detained without trial for long periods under the laws of war. Under one White House draft that was being discussed earlier this month, according to administration officials, detainees would be imprisoned at a military facility on U.S. soil but their ongoing detention would be subject to annual presidential review. U.S. citizens would not be held in the system.  For complete story, click here.

 

Agents say DEA is forcing them illegally to work in Afghanistan 21 Jun 2009 As the Obama administration ramps up the Drug Enforcement Administration's presence in Afghanistan, some special-agent pilots contend that they're being illegally forced to go to a combat zone, while others who've volunteered say they're not being properly equipped. In interviews with McClatchy, more than a dozen DEA agents describe a badly managed system in which some pilots have been sent to Afghanistan under duress or as punishment for bucking their superiors.  For complete story, click here.

 

Lilly Sold Drug for Dementia Knowing It Didn't Help, Files Show 12 Jun 2009 Eli Lilly & Co. urged doctors to prescribe Zyprexa for elderly patients with dementia, an unapproved use for the antipsychotic, even though the drugmaker had evidence the medicine didn’t work for such patients, according to unsealed internal company documents.  For complete story, click here.

 

Neo-Nazis are in the Army now --Why the U.S. military is ignoring its own regulations and permitting white supremacists to join its ranks. By Matt Kennard 14 Jun 2009 As the conflicts have dragged on, the military has loosened regulations, issuing "moral waivers" in many cases, allowing even those with criminal records to join up... The lax regulations have also opened the military's doors to neo-Nazis, white supremacists and gang members -- with drastic consequences. Some neo-Nazis have been charged with crimes inside the military, and others have been linked to recruitment efforts for the white right... Many white supremacists join the Army to secure training for, as they see it, a future domestic race war. Others claim to be shooting Iraqis not to pursue the military's strategic goals but because killing "hajjis" is their duty as white militants... Tom Metzger is the former grand wizard of the Ku Klux Klan and current leader of the White Aryan Resistance. He tells me the military has never been more tolerant of racial extremists. "Now they are letting everybody in," he says.  (Unable to locate story at time of archiving.)

 

Shooting Highlights Growth of [Rightwing] Hate Groups --Suspect James Von Brunn Railed Against Blacks, Jews, Found Allies On White Supremacist Web Sites 10 Jun 2009 Federal investigators in Washington, D.C. are scouring the troubled history of 88 year-old shooting suspect James Von Brunn - an anti-Semite with a lifelong grievance against the government who found allies on white supremacist Web sites. The Holocaust Museum shootings came 11 days after another hate crime, the murder of Kansas abortion doctor George Tiller. The suspect in that shooting, Scott Roeder, is described as an anti-abortion rights radical terrorist.  For complete story, click here.

 

Readying Americans for Dangerous, Mandatory Vaccinations --Around $6 billion or more will be spent to develop, produce, and stockpile vaccines and other drugs to counteract claimed bioterror agents. By Stephen Lendman 10 Jun 2009 At least three US federal laws should concern all Americans and suggest what may be coming - mandatory vaccinations for hyped, non-existent threats, like H1N1 (Swine Flu). Vaccines and drugs like Tamiflu endanger human health but are hugely profitable to drug company manufacturers. The Project BioShield Act of 2004 (S. 15) became law on July 21, 2004...The Public Readiness and Emergency Preparedness (PREP) Act slipped under the radar when George Bush signed it into law as part of the 2006 Defense Appropriations Act (HR 2863). It lets the HHS Secretary declare any disease an epidemic or national emergency requiring mandatory vaccinations. [See: DoD to carry out 'military missions' during pandemic, WMD attack and DoD to 'augment civilian law' during pandemic or bioterror attack.]  For complete story, click here.

 

Ruling allowing Taser use to get DNA may be nation's first 04 Jun 2009 It is legally permissible for police to zap a suspect with a Taser to obtain a DNA sample, as long as it’s not done "maliciously, or to an excessive extent, or with resulting injury," a county judge has ruled in the first case of its kind in New York State, and possibly the nation. Niagara County Judge Sara Sheldon Sperrazza decided that the DNA sample obtained Sept. 29 from Ryan S. Smith of Niagara Falls is legally valid and can be used at his trial.  For complete story, click here.

 

Marines Train "Civilians" to Accept Coming Martial Law (Infowars) 01 Jun 2009 On May 23, the Staten Island Real-Time News reported on "mock raids at the public park to give civilians a feel for how soldiers operate in battle." Or maybe that should be "mock raids" to give civilians a taste of things to come and, of course, get them acclimated to the presence of uniformed and armed soldiers in their midst. It is interesting the Marines characterized Flushing Meadows Park as "enemy territory." In fact, according to our rulers and their military functionaries, the entire United States is "enemy territory" in need of martial law.  For complete story, click here.

 

Abu Ghraib abuse photos 'show rape' --Photographs of alleged prisoner abuse which Barack Obama is attempting to censor include images of apparent rape and sexual abuse, it has emerged. 28 May 2009 At least one picture shows an American soldier apparently raping a female prisoner while another is said to show a male translator raping a male detainee. Further photographs are said to depict sexual assaults on prisoners with objects including a truncheon, wire and a phosphorescent tube... Detail of the content emerged from Major General Antonio Taguba, the former army officer who conducted an inquiry into the Abu Ghraib jail in Iraq. Allegations of rape and abuse were included in his 2004 report but the fact there were photographs was never revealed. He has now confirmed their existence in an interview with the Daily Telegraph. [See: 'I saw ___ fucking a kid...' Source: The "Taguba Report" On Treatment Of Abu Ghraib Prisoners In Iraq, statement by Kasim Mehaddi Hilas, Detainee #151108, 1300/18 Jan 2004.]  For complete story, click here.

 

 

Court: Suspects Can Be Interrogated Without Lawyer--May 26th, 2009--WASHINGTON -- The Supreme Court on Tuesday overturned a long-standing ruling that stopped police from initiating questions unless a defendant's lawyer was present, a move that will make it easier for prosecutors to interrogate suspects.

The high court, in a 5-4 ruling, overturned the 1986 Michigan v. Jackson ruling, which said police may not initiate questioning of a defendant who has a lawyer or has asked for one unless the attorney is present. The Michigan ruling applied even to defendants who agreed to talk to the authorities without their lawyers.   For complete story, click here.
 

 

Obama Is Said to Consider Preventive Detention For Suspects Deemed 'National Security Threat' --'The idea that we might find ourselves fighting with the Obama administration over these powers is really stunning.' 21 May 2009 President Bush Obama told human rights advocates at the White House on Wednesday that he was mulling the need for a "preventive detention" system that would establish a legal basis for the United States to incarcerate terrorism suspects who are deemed a threat to national security but cannot be tried, two participants in the private session said. One participant said Mr. Obama did not seem to be thinking about preventive detention for terrorism suspects now held at Guantánamo Bay, but rather for those captured in the future, in settings other than a legitimate [?] battlefield like Afghanistan.  For complete story, click here.

 

 

"Minnesota mental  health patient Ray Sandford forced into electro-shock therapy"--May 20th, 2009--Ray Sandford doesn't want to do this.  On a sunny yet cool mid-April morning, the pear-shaped 54-year-old  emerges from the front door of his ranch-style group home in Columbia  Heights. Wearing a black windbreaker and gray sweatpants, he grips the  handle of his four-pronged cane and plods begrudgingly toward the 
street. One of Sandford's caretakers, a large woman wearing all  purple, follows perfunctorily behind to see him to his destination.  He's told them repeatedly he doesn't want to do this.  He ambles forward. There's nothing he can do now. No sense in fighting  it. Not now.  A 20-passenger Anoka transit bus idles along the curb awaiting his  arrival. A short, swarthy driver assists Sandford. The bus slowly  pulls away and embarks on the 12-mile ride to Mercy Medical Clinic in 
Coon Rapids.  Upon arrival, Sandford walks through the automatic sliding doors and  assumes his position in a wheelchair. He's whisked to a room on the 
fifth floor where nurses poke an IV through his fleshy forearm. He's  given a muscle relaxant and general anesthesia. Within 30 seconds, the  room dissolves. He's out cold.  Assistants lay him out on his back. A doctor places electrodes on  either side of Sandford's cranium. Cords extend from the electrodes,  connecting to what appears to be an antiquated stereo set. A couple of  dials protrude from the machine's display. A physician flips an  unassuming switch.  A three-second burst of 140 volts blasts through Sandford's brain.  While he's totally unconscious, Sandford's torso jerks up and down.  His arms and legs writhe only slightly, steadied by muscle relaxants  coursing through his veins. Sandford's toes curl downward, as if his  feet were trying ball up into fists. He's experiencing a grand mal  seizure.  Two minutes later, it's over. Sandford will feel a bit woozy the rest  of the day, but there'll be no lasting pain. His short-term memory is  the only thing that will suffer.  But he'll still remember quite clearly that he never wanted to do this.  "They can literally tie me up, put me in ambulance, and bring me in to  get shock treatments," he says. "I don't fight it, because there's  nothing I can do by that time. You want to know how I feel? I don't  like it at all."  For complete story, click here.
 

 

KBR, Halliburton Accused in Investor Suit of 'Reign of Terror' 15 Mar 2009 KBR Inc. and Halliburton Co., two of the largest contractors to the U.S. military, were accused by a pension-fund shareholder of paying bribes, making false claims and operating as criminal enterprises. Executives of both companies engaged in a "reign of terror" that involved paying bribes in Nigeria, overcharging the U.S. government for services, accepting kickbacks, engaging in human trafficking and concealing a rape of an employee, according to the complaint filed yesterday by a pension fund. [Let us not forget what US troops had to endure from Cheney's KBR terrorists: Poisonings, electrocutions, spoiled food and pathogen-laden water.]  For complete story, click here.

 

 

 

Wisconsin court upholds GPS tracking by police 07 May 2009 Wisconsin police can attach GPS to cars to secretly track anybody's movements without obtaining search warrants, an appeals court ruled Thursday. However, the District 4 Court of Appeals said it was "more than a little troubled" by that conclusion and asked Wisconsin lawmakers to regulate GPS use to protect against abuse by police and private individuals.  For complete story, click here.

 

'A prisoner who started to drift off to sleep would tilt over and be caught by his chains. At one point, the agency was allowed to keep prisoners awake for as long as 11 days.' Memos shed light on CIA use of sleep deprivation --Though widely perceived as more effective and less objectionable than other torture methods, memos show it's harsher and more controversial than most realize. And it could be brought back. 10 May 2009 From the beginning, sleep deprivation had been one of the most important elements in the CIA's interrogation torture program, used to help break dozens of suspected terrorists, far more than the most violent approaches. And it is among the methods the agency fought hardest to keep. The technique is now prohibited by President Obama's ban in January on torture methods, although a task force is reviewing its use along with other interrogation methods the agency might employ in the future. For complete story, click here.

 

G20 police 'used undercover men to incite crowds'--May 10th, 2009--

An MP who was involved in last month's G20 protests in London is to call for an investigation into whether the police used agents provocateurs to incite the crowds.

Liberal Democrat Tom Brake says he saw what he believed to be two plain-clothes police officers go through a police cordon after presenting their ID cards.

Brake, who along with hundreds of others was corralled behind police lines near Bank tube station in the City of London on the day of the protests, says he was informed by people in the crowd that the men had been seen to throw bottles at the police and had encouraged others to do the same shortly before they passed through the cordon.

Brake, a member of the influential home affairs select committee, will raise the allegations when he gives evidence before parliament's joint committee on human rights on Tuesday.

"When I was in the middle of the crowd, two people came over to me and said, 'There are people over there who we believe are policemen and who have been encouraging the crowd to throw things at the police,'" Brake said. But when the crowd became suspicious of the men and accused them of being police officers, the pair approached the police line and passed through after showing some form of identification.

Brake has produced a draft report of his experiences for the human rights committee, having received written statements from people in the crowd. These include Tony Amos, a photographer who was standing with protesters in the Royal Exchange between 5pm and 6pm. "He [one of the alleged officers] was egging protesters on. It was very noticeable," Amos said. "Then suddenly a protester seemed to identify him as a policeman and turned on him. He ­legged it towards the police line, flashed some ID and they just let him through, no questions asked."

Amos added: "He was pretty much inciting the crowd. He could not be called an observer. I don't believe in conspiracy theories but this really struck me. Hopefully, a review of video evidence will clear this up."

The Independent Police Complaints Commission has received 256 complaints relating to the G20 protests. Of these, 121 have been made about the use of force by police officers, while 75 relate to police tactics. The IPCC said it had no record of complaints involving the use of police agents provocateurs. A Metropolitan Police spokesman said: "We would never deploy officers in this way or condone such behaviour."

The use of plain-clothes officers in crowd situations is considered a vital tactic for gathering evidence. It has been used effectively to combat football hooliganism in the UK and was employed during the May Day protests in 2001.

Brake said he intends to raise the allegations with the Met's commissioner, Sir Paul Stephenson, when he next appears before the home affairs select committee. "There is a logic having plain-clothes officers in the crowd, but no logic if the officers are actively encouraging violence, which would be a source of great concern," Brake said.

The MP said that given only a few people were allowed out of the corralled crowd for the five hours he was held inside it, there should be no problem in investigating the allegation by examining video footage.  For complete story, click here.

 

Dole sued over links to Colombian death squads 07 May 2009 Dole Food Company is being sued by the families of 57 people allegedly murdered by paramilitaries hired by the US firm at its banana plantations in Colombia. A lawsuit filed in Los Angeles alleges that Dole hired the United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia (AUC) despite the fact that the group had been designated as a foreign terrorist organization by the US State Department.  For complete story, click here.

 

Prison Awaiting Hostile Bloggers --The methods of communication where hostile speech is banned include e-mail, instant messaging, blogs, websites, telephones and text messages. --15 lawmakers signed on to H.R. 1966. By David Kravets 05 May 2009 Proposed congressional legislation would demand up to two years in prison for those whose electronic speech is meant to "coerce, intimidate, harass, or cause substantial emotional distress to a person." Instead of prison, perhaps we should say gulag. The proposal by Rep. Linda Sanchez, D-Los Angeles, would never pass First Amendment muster, unless the U.S. Constitution was altered without us knowing. Sanchez’s bill goes way beyond cyberbullying and comes close to making it a federal offense to log onto the internet or use the telephone. [We are so screwed that the *light* from screwed is going to take ten billion years to reach the earth.]  For complete story, click here.

 

Obama administration spearheads wage cuts for American workers --Chrysler, GM set the pace By Patrick Martin 05 May 2009 The wage cuts imposed on auto workers at Chrysler and General Motors at the insistence of the Obama administration demonstrate the class strategy that American big business as a whole is carrying out: to impose a reduction in the living standards of American workers on a scale unprecedented since the Great Depression. The White House has given the green light for nationwide wage-cutting with its demands on Chrysler and GM workers, who have seen wages for new-hires slashed by 50 percent, along with the abolition of cost-of-living raises and cuts in vacation pay.  For complete story, click here.

 

Thought police muscle up in Britain Hal G. P. Colebatch 21 April 2009 Britain appears to be evolving into the first modern soft totalitarian state. As a sometime teacher of political science and international law, I do not use the term totalitarian loosely. There are no concentration camps or gulags but there are thought police with unprecedented powers to dictate ways of thinking and sniff out heresy, and there can be harsh punishments for dissent... In the past 10 years I have collected reports of many instances of draconian punishments, including the arrest and criminal prosecution of children, for thought-crimes and offences against political correctness.  For complete story, click here.

 

Report: Two Psychologists Responsible for Devising CIA Torture Methods --Former military officers were paid by the CIA to oversee the waterboarding techniques used against high-profile prisoners 30 Apr 2009 Two psychologists are responsible for designing the CIA's program of waterboarding suspected terrorists and for assuring the government the program was safe, according to an ABC News report. Former military officers Bruce Jessen and Jim Mitchell had an "important role in developing what became the CIA's torture program," Jameel Jaffer, an attorney with the ACLU, told ABC News... Associates say Jessen and Mitchell were paid up to $1,000 a day by the CIA to oversee the techniques used against high-profile prisoners to extract information in the aftermath of the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks.  For complete story, click here.

 

Involuntary quarantine an option if swine flu explodes into epidemic 28 Apr 2009 Quarantine may seem the stuff of mediocre melodramas, but if the swine flu explodes into an epidemic, involuntary isolation could become a reality for more than a few unlucky Americans... The federal government can declare a state of emergency. But the power to isolate or quarantine citizens, rests in the hands of the states, or in some cases, local governments. In a health emergency, people can be forced into isolation or quarantine without the government getting a court order first. [See CLG items: DoD to carry out 'military missions' during pandemic, WMD attack 08 Mar 2009 and DoD to 'augment civilian law' during pandemic or bioterror attack 11 May 2007.]  Click here for full story.

 

 

 

'Israel treated its soldiers as guinea pigs' --Experiments carried out in light of what was defined as 'strategic threat of a surprise biological attack facing Israel' 25 Mar 2009 Israel has admitted to developing an anthrax vaccine through a secret research project involving tests on unaware army soldiers. The Israeli Defense Ministry revealed on Wednesday that the vaccine was tested on 716 soldiers while they had not been fully informed about the study, Ynet reported.  For complete story, click here.

 

Pentagon exploring robot killers that can fire on their own --DoD financing studies of self-governing, armed robots that could find and destroy targets on their own 25 Mar 2009 The unmanned bombers that frequently cause unintended civilian casualties in Pakistan are a step toward an even more lethal generation of robotic hunters-killers that operate with limited, if any, human control. The Defense Department is financing studies of autonomous, or self-governing, armed robots that could find and destroy targets on their own. On-board computer programs, not flesh-and-blood people, would decide whether to fire their weapons. [Yeah, but one good hack and they could be re-programmed to fire upon themselves.]  For complete story, click here.

 

Ex-Bush admin official: Many at Gitmo are innocent 19 Mar 2009 Many prisoners locked up at Guantanamo were innocent men swept up by U.S. forces unable to distinguish enemies from noncombatants, a former Bush regime official said Thursday. "There are still innocent people there," Lawrence B. Wilkerson, a Republican who was chief of staff to then-Secretary of State Colin Powell, told The Associated Press. "Some have been there six or seven years." Wilkerson told the AP he learned from briefings and by communicating with military commanders that the U.S. soon realized many Guantanamo prisoners were innocent but nevertheless held them in hopes they could provide information for a "mosaic" of intelligence.  For complete story, click here.

 

Obama quietly gave Blackwater (Xe) $70M in February: Blackwater still works for U.S. in Iraq 17 Mar 2009 The U.S. State Department re-signed the security mercenary firm formerly known as Blackwater despite Iraq saying it didn't want the company there, records show. The State Department said $22.2 million deal signed with Blackwater, since renamed Xe, in February was a contract modification concerning aviation work, The Washington Times first reported. The contract expires in September, months after its contract for work in Baghdad was to have run out.  For complete story, click here.

 

Ten Wasted Years: UN Drug Strategy A Failure, Reveals Damning Report--March 11th, 2009--The UN strategy on drugs over the past decade has been a failure, a European commission report claimed yesterday on the eve of the international conference in Vienna that will set future policy for the next 10 years.

The report came amid growing dissent among delegates arriving at the meeting to finalise a UN declaration of intent.

Referring to the UN's existing strategy, the authors declared that they had found "no evidence that the global drug problem was reduced". They wrote: "Broadly speaking, the situation has improved a little in some of the richer countries while for others it worsened, and for some it worsened sharply and substantially, among them a few large developing or transitional countries."

The policy had merely shifted the problem geographically, they said. "Production and trafficking controls only redistributed activities. Enforcement against local markets failed in most countries."  For complete story, click here.

 

 

Some wounded soldiers 'punished for injuries' --Authorities hold sick, disabled troops to same standards as the able-bodied 10 Mar 2009 About 10,000 soldiers have been assigned to the Army's Warrior Transition units, created for troops recovering from injuries. Instead of gingerly nursing them back to health, however, commanders at Fort Bragg's transition unit readily acknowledge holding them to the same standards as able-bodied soldiers in combat units, often assigning chores as punishment for minor infractions.  For complete story, click here.

 

This Revolting Trade In Human Lives Is An Incentive To Lock People Up--March 3rd, 2009--

It's a staggering case; more staggering still that it has scarcely been mentioned on this side of the ocean. Last week two judges in Pennsylvania were convicted of jailing some 2,000 children in exchange for bribes from private prison companies.

Mark Ciavarella and Michael Conahan sent children to jail for offences so trivial that some of them weren't even crimes. A 15-year-old called Hillary Transue got three months for creating a spoof web page ridiculing her school's assistant principal. Ciavarella sent Shane Bly, then 13, to boot camp for trespassing in a vacant building. He gave a 14-year-old, Jamie Quinn, 11 months in prison for slapping a friend during an argument, after the friend slapped her. The judges were paid $2.6m by companies belonging to the Mid-Atlantic Youth Services Corp for helping to fill its jails. This is what happens when public services are run for profit.

It's an extreme example, but it hints at the wider consequences of the trade in human lives created by private prisons. In the US and the UK they have a powerful incentive to ensure that the number of prisoners keeps rising.  For complete story, click here.

 

'Theory of presidential dictatorship' Bush administration memos on presidential powers stun legal experts --Congress had prohibited the use of torture by U.S. agents, and said "no citizen shall be imprisoned" in this country without legal charges. The memos said neither law could stand in the way of the president's power as commander in chief. 03 Mar 2009 Legal experts said Tuesday that they were taken aback by the claim in the latest batch of secret Bush-era memos that the president alone had the power to set the rules during the war on of terrorism. Yale law professor Jack Balkin called this a "theory of presidential dictatorship. They say the battlefield is everywhere. And the president can do anything he wants, so long as it involves the military and the enemy."  For complete story, click here.

 

FDA ignored debris in syringes --Complaints of filth came in 2005; plant's microbiologist was a teenage dropout 25 Feb 2009 (NC) Months before an Angier company shipped deadly bacteria-tainted drugs, the federal Food and Drug Administration received numerous complaints about sediment and debris in the medicine. The FDA received reports about AM2PAT as early as 2005, but not until December 2007 did the agency issue recall notices to pull the drugs off the market. AM2PAT, which is now the subject of a criminal investigation, sold tainted syringes of heparin and saline that have been linked to five deaths.  For complete story, click here.

 

Lawyer says Guantanamo abuse worse since Obama 25 Feb 2009 Abuse of prisoners at Guantanamo Bay has worsened sharply since President Barack Obama took office as prison guards "get their kicks in" before the camp is closed, according to a lawyer who represents prisoners. Abuses began to pick up in December after Obama was elected, human rights lawyer Ahmed Ghappour told Reuters. He cited beatings, the dislocation of limbs, spraying of pepper spray into closed cells, applying pepper spray to toilet paper and over-forcefeeding detainees who are on hunger strike.  For complete story, click here.

 

AP: Army charity hoards millions 22 Feb 2009 The biggest charity inside the U.S. military has been hoarding tens of millions of dollars meant to help put fighters returning from Iraq and Afghanistan back on their feet. An Associated Press investigation shows that between 2003 and 2007, the Army Emergency Relief grew into a $345 million behemoth. During those years, the charity packed away $117 million into its own reserves while spending just $64 million on direct aid.  For complete story, click here.

 

NYU Students Revoke the Property Destruction Clause By FluxRostrum 19 Feb 2009 Last night at 10 pm, NYU students barricaded themselves into a cafeteria in the student center and refused to leave until the administration met their demands. The students are seeking much more transparency, stabilized tuition and socially responsible investment among other things (details at takebacknyu.com). Although NYPD took up positions inside and outside the building, the NYU administration up until now declined to force the students to leave.  For complete story, click here.

 

Contractors, guardsmen say KBR knew of chemical exposure in Iraq 18 Feb 2009 Ten contractors hired by Houston-based KBR to make repairs at an Iraqi water plant in early 2003 say the company knowingly allowed them and dozens of National Guardsmen to be exposed to cancer-causing chemicals. The allegations from the workers, six of whom live in or near Houston, are documented in a federal arbitration complaint pending in Houston and a related federal lawsuit filed in December by the guardsmen in Indiana, the Houston Chronicle reported Sunday.  For complete story, click here.

 

Contractor Under Criminal Probe for Negligent Electrocution Deaths of U.S. Troops Should Be Denied Future Pentagon Contracts --McCollum (D) Urges DoD to Rescind Contract to KBR 18 Feb 2009 Amid reports that the Department of Defense has recently awarded a multimillion dollar contract to a company under investigation for the electrocution deaths of soldiers, Rep. Betty McCollum (MN-04) today joined Congressional colleagues in sending a letter to Secretary Robert Gates requesting an explanation for the latest award to Kellogg Brown and Root, Inc (KBR), in light of the existing criminal probes against them for the fatality of several U.S. soldiers in Iraq due to faulty electrical work.  For complete story, click here.

 

Judges: Torture, Abuses Undermine Values in U.S., U.K. 17 Feb 2009 An international group of judges and lawyers is warning that systemic torture and other abuses in the global "war on terror" have "undermined cherished values" of civil rights in the United States, Britain and other nations. "We have been shocked by the damage done over the past seven years by excessive or abusive counterterrorism measures in a wide range of countries around the world," said Arthur Chaskalson, a member of the International Commission of Jurists, in a statement announcing results of a three-year study of counterterrorism measures since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.  For complete story, click here.

 

Kan. suspends income tax refunds, may miss payroll 16 Feb 2009 Kansas has suspended income tax refunds and may not be able to pay employees on time, the state's budget director said Monday. The state doesn't have enough money in its main bank account to pay its bills, prompting Democratic Gov. Kathleen Sebelius to suggest transferring $225 million from other accounts throughout state government. But the move required approval from legislative leaders, and the GOP [sociopaths] refused Monday.  For complete story, click here.

 

Obama administration seeks to block lawsuit over illegal wiretapping By John Burton and Marge Holland 16 Feb 2009 For the second time in less than a week, lawyers from the Justice Department headed by Obama administration Attorney General Eric Holder have embraced the Bush administration's pseudo-legal argument that the "state secrets" doctrine bars civil lawsuits challenging the methods used in its so-called "war on terror..." The most recent intervention also occurred in San Francisco, with the filing of papers February 11 to block an order by United States District Judge Vaughn R. Walker reinstating the claim of the Al-Haramain Islamic Foundation that it was the target of government wiretapping.  For complete story, click here.

 

Report: U.S. "war on terror" seriously damages human rights --Report illustrated consequences of notorious counter-terrorism practices such as torture, disappearances, arbitrary and secret detention as well as unfair trials. 17 Feb 2009 The so-called "war on terror" launched by the United States following the 9/11 terror attacks has resulted in serious damage to the world's respect for human rights, according to a report released on Monday. The United States "has adopted measures to counter terrorism that are inconsistent with established principles of international humanitarian law and human rights law," said the report, which was released by an independent panel of eminent jurists. It warned that excessive or abusive counter-terrorism measures adopted by the United States were having influence on other countries and causing them to follow suit.  for complete story, click here.

 

A fraud bigger than Madoff --Senior US soldiers investigated over missing Iraq 'reconstruction' billions 16 Feb 2009 In what could turn out to be the greatest fraud in US history, American authorities have started to investigate the alleged role of senior military officers in the misuse of $125bn (£88bn) in a US -directed effort to 'reconstruct' Iraq after the fall of Saddam Hussein. The exact sum missing may never be clear, but a report by the US Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction (SIGIR) suggests it may exceed $50bn, making it an even bigger theft than Bernard Madoff's notorious Ponzi scheme. In one case, auditors working for SIGIR discovered that $57.8m was sent in "pallet upon pallet of hundred-dollar bills" to the US comptroller for south-central Iraq, Robert J Stein Jr, who had himself photographed standing with the mound of money.  Unable to locate at time of archiving.  Source: www.independent.co.uk  

 

VA clinic warns of possible contaminant exposure 13 Feb 2009 Thousands of patients at a Veterans Administration clinic [Alvin C. York VA Medical Center in Murfreesboro] in Tennessee may have been exposed to the infectious body fluids of other patients when they had colonoscopies in recent years, and now VA medical facilities all over the U.S. are reviewing their own procedures.  For complete story, click here.

 

Blackwater Changes Its Name to Xe 14 Feb 2009 Blackwater Worldwide is abandoning the brand name that has been tarnished by its work terrorism in Iraq, settling on Xe (pronounced zee) as the new name for its family of two dozen businesses. Blackwater Lodge and Training Center, the subsidiary that conducts much of the company’s overseas operations and domestic training, has been renamed U.S. Training Center Inc., the company said Friday. The company’s rebranding effort grew more urgent after Blackwater guards in Baghdad were involved in a shooting episode in September 2007 that left 17 Iraqi civilians dead.  For complete story, click here.

 

Missing civil liberties: Top Obama Aides Embrace Bush's War on Terror Rhetoric and Enemy Combatant Policy By Jonathan Turley 11 Feb 2009 This has been a uniquely bad week for civil libertarians. The Obama Administration appears to be rushing to dispel any notions that Obama will fight for civil liberties or war crimes investigations. After Eric Holder allegedly assured a senator that there would be no war crimes investigation and seemed to defend Bush policies, Harvard Law Dean Elena Kagan, Obama’s Solicitor General nominee, reportedly told a Republican senator that the Administration agreed with Bush that we are "at war" and therefore can hold enemy combatants indefinitely. In the meantime, Obama himself seemed to tie himself in knots when asked about investigating war crimes and leading democrats are again pushing for a symbolic "truth commission."  For complete story, click here.

 

Fraud 'Directly Related' to Financial Crisis Probed --FBI Agents Could be Reassigned from National Security Due to Booming Caseload 11 Feb 2009 The FBI has opened investigations into more than 500 cases of alleged corporate fraud, including 38 that involve major firms and are "directly related" to the national economic crisis, FBI Deputy Director John Pistole told Congress today. The surge in white-collar investigations is putting such a strain on the FBI that Pistole said the bureau is considering reassigning agents from national security, which has been the bureau's priority since the [Bush] 9/11 attacks.  For complete story, click here.

 

Oops! Another (Fox) GOPedophile bites the dust. Fox Newser In Kiddie Porn Bust 10 Feb 2009 A Fox News producer who covered Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign for the cable network is facing child porn charges after federal agents discovered photos and videos on his computer depicting "children under the age of ten being sexually abused by adult men and women." Aaron Bruns, 29, was apparently nabbed after a Pennsylvania state police investigator conducting "pro-active undercover investigations" on an unnamed peer-to-peer network determined that Bruns's computer contained illicit images.  For complete story, click here.

 

Judge deals blow to families suing Blackwater 10 Feb 2009 The survivors of four Blackwater Worldwide mercenaries killed in a grisly ambush in Iraq five years ago have suffered yet another setback in their legal battle with the company. A federal administrative law judge ruled last week the children of one of the slain contractors should receive compensation through a government insurance program known as the Defense Base Act. It prohibits those eligible for benefits from filing lawsuits against companies covered by the insurance.  For complete story, click here.

 

"I believe that the probability that there are additional vials of BSAT [biological select agents and toxins] not captured in our … database is high." Fort Detrick Freezes Research on Dangerous Pathogens As Lab Can't Account For Them 07 Feb 2009 The U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases (USAMRIID) has suspended research activities involving biological select agents and toxins. Army officials took the step on Friday after discovering apparent problems with the system of accounting for high-risk microbes and biomaterials at the Fort Detrick, Maryland, facility. The decision was announced by institute commander Col. John Skvorak in a 4 February memo to employees. The memo, which ScienceInsider has obtained, says the standard of accountability that USAMRIID had been applying to its select agents and toxins was not in line with the standard required by the Army and the Department of Defense. For complete story, click here.

 

Plague-Infested Mice Missing From New Jersey Research Lab 07 Feb 2009 The frozen remains of two mice infected with the bubonic plague are missing from a New Jersey bioterror research facility, and the facility waited seven weeks to report the incident to federal and state authorities. This is the same facility [University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey in Newark] where three live plague-inflected mice went missing in September 2005.  For complete story, click here.

 

KBR Gets Huge Contract Despite Electrocutions --KBR Inc., linked to soldiers' electrocutions, wins $35 million defense contract from Pentagon 07 Feb 2009 Defense contractor KBR Inc., which is under criminal investigation in the electrocution deaths of at least two U.S. soldiers in Iraq, has been awarded a $35 million contract by the Pentagon to build an electrical distribution center and other projects there.  For complete story, click here.

 

A Hero Protects America's Children from Psychiatric Abuse--February 5th, 2009--Alaska attorney Jim Gottstein has taken the bull by the horns. It's a bull of many terrifying shapes and forms. First and foremost, it is the raging bull of the Psychopharmaceutical Complex that is goring America's children. It's also the rampaging state government bull that everywhere runs roughshod over the children in its custody and care. And then it's the "bull" handed out by drug companies and organized psychiatry to justify using drugs to suppress the behavior of children.  For complete story, click here.

 

HUMAN RIGHTS, IMMIGRANTS' RIGHTS, RACIAL JUSTICE--February 5th, 2009--Sheriff Joe’s one-man circus has made headlines again in Arizona’s Maricopa County.

His latest taxpayer-financed media stunt involved the "forced march" of undocumented inmates who are serving out their criminal sentences. Sheriff Arpaio closed down the city streets so that everyone could witness their public humiliation as they walked in chain gangs from a "hard" jail to the infamous Tent City, where they will be forced to endure unsafe conditions including summer months with temperatures of upwards of 120 degrees.

Not only was this inhumane, but violated international human rights principles — not to mention American values — that require us to treat people who are incarcerated with dignity and respect. But Sheriff Arpaio has absolute contempt for the dignity of the people in his custody and demonstrates this by treating people like circus animals.

Though he claims otherwise, Arpaio wasn’t motivated by budgetary or security concerns to march shackled immigrants to the Tent City; he was motivated by the opportunity of self-aggrandizement and the promotion his anti-immigrant agenda. For those reasons, and for those reasons alone, he chose to re-route traffic and waste dwindling law enforcement resources.

Almost all of the people in the forced march were Latino and their humiliation struck one more blow to fairness and human decency in our community. And although the sheriff blatantly continues with his racial profiling practices in so-called "crime suppression sweeps" in Latino neighborhoods, the absence of significant protest from white officials in Arizona and from any federal agency allows the racial targeting to continue unabated.  For complete story, click here.

 

Proposed legislation in Congress would set up camps for US citizens By mcarl 31 Jan 2009 A bill proposed by Florida Democrat Alcee Hastings would set up a series of emergency centres on U. S. military installations. House Resolution 645 provides that no fewer than six such centres will be built and would give emergency aid, housing and relief services for citizens during a time of disaster or national emergency... Writing on this legislation, Rep. Ron Paul (R-TX) says that the bill would supplement other 'emergency powers' granted to the federal government since 9/11 and be the mechanism for imposing martial law.  For complete story, click here.

 

Obama lets CIA keep controversial renditions tool 31 Jan 2009 Under executive orders issued by President Obama last week, the CIA still has authority to carry out what are known as renditions, or the secret abductions and transfers of prisoners to countries that cooperate with the U.S. The rendition kidnapping program became a source of embarrassment for the CIA, and a target of international scorn, as details emerged in recent years of botched captures, mistaken identities and allegations that prisoners were turned over to countries where they were tortured. For complete story, click here.

 

Buckling Europe fears protests may spark a new revolution 29 Jan 2009 The French are revolting. Teachers, television employees, postal workers, students and masses of other public-sector workers will today be united in a hugely popular strike with car workers, supermarket staff, journalists and thousands of others in the private sector. One poll said that 75 per cent of the public supported the action, which has the backing of the large union groups and opposition socialists. It will be a big test for President Nicolas Sarkozy but, more importantly, the strike will mark the biggest protest so far in one of the world's largest economies against the grief and distress being caused by the catastrophic global downturn. A depression triggered in America is being played out in Europe with increasing violence, and other forms of social unrest are spreading.  For complete story, click here.

 

US Special Forces Unconventional Warfare Operations: overthrowing governments, sabotage, subversion, intelligence and abduction, FM 3-05.201, Apr 2003 (Wikileaks) 27 Jan 2009 FM 3-05.201: Special Forces Unconventional Warfare Operations is current US military doctrine (policy) on the use of indigenous or surrogate forces to overthrow a foreign government and the use of sabotage, subversion, intelligence, extra-territorial abductions and similar activities, the most well known example of which is the US involvement in Nicaragua. There is also a section on legalities, including abductions ("The United States reserves the right to engage in nonconsensual abductions for three specific reasons..."). The 296-page manual was made doctrine in April 2003 by Army Headquarters, Washington DC. For complete story, click here.

 

NATO High Commander Issues Illegitimate Order to Kill 28 Jan 2009 A dispute has emerged among NATO High Command in Afghanistan regarding the conditions under which alliance troops can use deadly violence against those identified as insurgents. In a classified document, which SPIEGEL has obtained, NATO's top commander, US General John Craddock, has issued a "guidance" providing NATO troops with the authority "to attack directly drug producers and facilities throughout Afghanistan." According to the document, deadly force is to be used even in those cases where there is no proof that suspects are actively engaged in the armed resistance against the Afghanistan government or against Western troops. The directive was sent on Jan. 5 to Egon Ramms, the German leader at NATO Command in Brunssum, Netherlands, which is currently in charge of the NATO ISAF mission, as well as David McKiernan, the commander of the ISAF peacekeeping force in Afghanistan. Neither want to follow it. Both consider the order to be illegitimate and believe it violates both ISAF rules of engagement and international law, the "Law of Armed Conflict."  For complete story, click here.

 

Lax and corrupt – Indian Dr assesses clinical trials--January 21, 2009--An Indian doctor has slammed the nation’s clinical trials, claiming they use the vulnerable, the system is corrupt and that the country lacks high quality scientists.

The criticisms were made by Dr Amar Jesani in a short-film produced by Dutch non-governmental organisation Wemos. Jesani is a founding member of journals and research centres focused on medical ethics in India and has contributed in government committees on health.

India’s clinical trials came under increasing pressure last year following reports of infant deaths and Jesani’s comments show that some are still deeply uneasy about the current system.

The view held by Jesani, which echoes many who spoke out last year about the infant deaths, is that some drug companies are “compromising science and ethics in the pursuit of profit” and that flaws in the Indian system allow this.

Jesani said: “Unfortunately in my country there are laws but they are not very well implemented so the regulation over the trials, the oversight mechanism, the functioning of the ethics committee and the Drug Controller General of India all of them are so lax that it makes India a big destination for clinical trials.

 

They don’t have good scientists; they don’t have enough inspectors to go all over the county. The worst thing in every developing country is corruption. There is too much corruption.”

One consequence of this is that clinical trials use the “desperate” and “most vulnerable” members if Indian society, according to Jesani. This alleged exploitation of India’s poor is what Jesani cites as bothering him most about the current system.

Jesani is a founder member of the Indian Journal of Medical Ethics (IJME), the Centre for Studies in Ethics and Rights (CSER) and the Centre for Enquiry into Health and Allied Themes (CEHAT).

The short-film can be viewed here. For complete story, click here.

 

KBR Awarded Convoy Support Center Contract by U.S. Army Corps of Engineers 28 Jan 2009 KBR today announced it has been awarded a $35.4 million contract by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE), Transatlantic Programs Center, Winchester, Va., for the Phase II design and construction of a convoy support center at Camp Adder in Iraq. The KBR team will design and construct a power plant, electrical distribution center, water purification and distribution system, waste water collection system, and associated information systems, along with paved roads at this site. Work on the project is expected to begin in February 2009. [OMG! After KBR just electrocuted a bunch of US soldiers? See: KBR must be accountable for Iraq deaths-US senators 27 Jan 2009 U.S. lawmakers on Tuesday raised concerns about the U.S. military's increased use of private contractors mercenaries in Iraq and Afghanistan, and said KBR and other companies should be held accountable for the electrocution deaths of U.S. soldiers and other mistakes crimes. Investigator: Soldier's electrocution 'negligent homicide' 22 Jan 2009. Halliburton Will Settle KBR Suit for $559 Million 27 Jan 2009 Halliburton, the huge oil services company in Houston, said yesterday that it has agreed to pay $559 million to settle corruption charges with the U.S. government linked to its former subsidiary KBR.]  For complete story, click here.

 

 

CIA chief in Algeria accused of drugging and raping Muslim women 28 Jan 2009 The CIA station chief in Algiers is under investigation after claims that he drugged and raped two Algerian women at his official residence, according to a report. Law enforcement sources told ABC News that the 41-year-old officer had been sent home in October. He could face charges as early as next month. Investigators from the Justice Department allegedly found more than a dozen secretly recorded videotapes of the officer performing sex acts with other women. An official said one woman appeared to be in a "semi-conscious state".   For complete story, click here.

 

Bill Will Establish 'National Emergency Centers' On Military Installations --FEMA Camps Mandated in H.R. 645 22 Jan 2009 A Bill to direct the Secretary of Homeland Security to establish national emergency centers on military installations. SECTION 1. This Act may be cited as the 'National Emergency Centers Establishment Act'. SECTION 2. ESTABLISHMENT OF NATIONAL EMERGENCY CENTERS. (a) In General - In accordance with the requirements of this Act, the Secretary of Homeland Security shall establish not fewer than 6 national emergency centers on military installations... (b) Purpose of National Emergency Centers... (3) to provide centralized locations to improve the coordination of preparedness, response, and recovery efforts of government, private, and not-for-profit entities and faith-based organizations; and (4) to meet other appropriate needs, as determined by the Secretary of Homeland Security. For complete story, click here.

 

Halliburton Will Settle KBR Suit for $559 Million 27 Jan 2009 Halliburton, the huge oil services company in Houston, said yesterday that it has agreed to pay $559 million to settle corruption charges with the U.S. government linked to its former subsidiary KBR. Halliburton said it will pay $382 million on behalf of KBR over the next two years to the Department of Justice and will pay another $177 million to the Securities and Exchange Commission. For complete story, click here.

 

A Loophole In the Rules --In a national-security crisis, Obama could deviate from his own rules. 24 Jan 2009 A day before President Obama signed executive orders closing Guantánamo Bay and banning torture, the White House's top lawyer privately indicated to Congress that the new president reserved the right to ignore his own (and any other president's) executive orders. In a closed-door appearance before the Senate intelligence committee, White House counsel Gregory Craig was asked whether the president was required by law to follow executive orders. According to people familiar with his remarks, who asked for anonymity when discussing a private meeting, Craig answered that the administration did not believe he was.  For complete story, click here.

 

Obama CIA choice won't call waterboarding torture 22 Jan 2009 President Barack Obama's choice to head the CIA declined on Thursday to call waterboarding "torture," only days after his attorney general nominee condemned the interrogation practice as precisely that. Retired Adm. Dennis Blair replied cautiously when pressed on the waterboarding question at a hearing on his nomination to be director of national intelligence. Torture is banned by U.S. and international laws. "There will be no waterboarding on my watch. There will be no torture on my watch," Blair said, refusing to go further. For complete story, click here.

 

Whistleblower: NSA Targeted Journalists, Snooped on All U.S. Communications --NSA analyzed metadata to determine which communications would be collected 22 Jan 2009 Just one day after George W. Bush left office, an NSA whistleblower has revealed that the National Security Agency's warrantless surveillance program targeted U.S. journalists, and vacuumed in all domestic communications of Americans, including, faxes, phone calls and network traffic. Russell Tice, a former NSA analyst, spoke on Wednesday to MSNBC host Keith Olbermann. "The National Security Agency had access to all Americans' communications," he said. "Faxes, phone calls and their computer communications. ...They monitored all communications." For complete story, click here.

 

Plague kills 40 al-Qaeda operatives --Security source: "This is the deadliest weapon yet in the war against terror. Most of the terrorists do not have the basic medical supplies needed to treat the disease." 19 Jan 2009 'Anti'-terror bosses last night hailed their latest ally in the war on of terror -- the Black Death. At least 40 al-Qaeda members died horribly after being struck down with the disease that devastated Europe in the Middle Ages. The killer bug, also known as the plague, swept through insurgents training at a forest camp in Algeria, North Africa. [Let's see... who has the technology to develop and disseminate plague as a bioweapon? See: Three genes can turn normal flu into a killer, University of Wisconsin-Madison researchers find 30 Dec 2008 and Killer flu recreated in the lab 07 Oct 2004, etc.]  For complete story, click here.

 

'In some places, Washington will look like an occupied city.' High-tech security bubble wraps Washington --The military, supporting civilian authorities, is using sophisticated new surveillance systems developed for Iraq and Afghanistan wars 18 Jan 2009 As the multitudes arrive for the historic inauguration of Barack Obama, the most high-tech security bubble ever created is in place to protect the incoming president from any foreseeable act of God, nature or man [or Bush]. At least 150 multi-agency "intel teams" will deploy throughout the region so that undercover FBI agents and other behavior-analysis specialists can look for trouble. In some places, Washington will look like an occupied city. Sharpshooters will be on virtually every building. Law-enforcement and intelligence nerve centers and mobile command posts are sprouting. The FBI is deploying an armored assault vehicle and a weapons-of-mass-destruction response truck. The military, supporting civilian authorities, is using sophisticated new surveillance systems developed for the Iraq and Afghanistan wars to monitor the mall...  For complete story, click here.

 

Democratic chairman to reintroduce military draft measure 14 Jan 2009 Rep. Charles Rangel (D-N.Y.) likely will introduce his controversial legislation to reinstate the draft again this year, but he will wait until after the economic stimulus package is passed. Asked if he plans to introduce the legislation again in 2009, Rangel last week said, "Probably … yes. I don’t want to do anything this early to distract from the issue of the economic stimulus."  For complete story, click here.

 

Supreme Court loosens law on illegal searches--January 15, 2009--Reporting from Washington -- The Supreme Court pulled back on the "exclusionary rule" Wednesday and ruled that evidence from an illegal search can be used if a police officer made an innocent mistake.

The 5-4 opinion signals that the court is ready to rethink this key rule in criminal law and restrict its reach. It will also give prosecutors and judges nationwide more leeway to make use of evidence that may have been seen as questionable before.  For complete story, click here.
 

 

'His treatment met the legal definition of torture. And that's why I did not refer the case for prosecution.' Detainee Tortured, Says U.S. Official 14 Jan 2009 The top Bush administration official in charge of deciding whether to bring Guantanamo Bay prisoners to trial has concluded that the U.S. military tortured a Saudi national who allegedly planned to participate in the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, interrogating him with techniques that included sustained isolation, sleep deprivation, nudity and prolonged exposure to cold, leaving him in a "life-threatening condition." "We tortured [Mohammed al-]Qahtani," said Susan J. Crawford, in her first interview since being named convening authority of military commissions by Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates in February 2007. "His treatment met the legal definition of torture. And that's why I did not refer the case" for prosecution.  For complete story, click here.

 

A Record Year for the Pharmaceutical Lobby in '07--June 24, 2008 (Received January 11th, 2009)--Washington, June 24, 2008 – Washington's largest lobby, the pharmaceutical industry, racked up another banner year on Capitol Hill in 2007, backed by a record $168 million lobbying effort, according to a Center for Public Integrity analysis of federal lobbying data. Among the industry's successes: getting two controversial laws extended and thwarting congressional efforts to restrict media ads for prescription drugs.

 

The spending represents a 32 percent jump over 2006. Driven in part by a busy legislative calendar dominated by issues critical to the industry, the effort raised the amount spent by drug interests on federal lobbying in the past decade to more than $1 billion. Pharmaceutical, medical device, and other health product manufacturers, together, spent more than $189 million on lobbying last year, another record and nearly three times the $67 million they spent in 1998, the first full year for which complete records and totals are available.

More than 90 percent of the total was spent by 40 companies and three trade groups: the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America (PhRMA), the Biotechnology Industry Organization, and the Advanced Medical Technology Association.  For complete story, click here.

 

Israel May Face Charges for War Crimes 07 Jan 2009 Israel has committed war crimes and should be prosecuted in an international court, says Raji Sourani, head of the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights (PCHR) in Gaza. "The repeated bombing of clearly marked civilian buildings, where civilians were sheltering, crosses several red lines in regard to international law," Sourani told IPS. Palestinian Authority (PA) delegate to Britain Professor Manuel Hassassian has said the PA will launch legal proceedings against Israeli leaders it says are responsible for war crimes in Gaza, according to a Palestinian news report.  For complete story, click here.

 

 

ENVIRONMENTAL NEWS

Mysterious Tubular Clouds Defy Explanation 24 Aug 2009 These long, crazy-looking clouds can grow to be 600 miles long and can move at up to 35 miles per hour, causing problems for aircraft even on windless days. Known as Morning Glory clouds, they appear every fall over Burketown, Queensland, Australia, a remote town with fewer than 200 residents. Similar tubular shaped clouds called roll clouds appear in various places around the globe.  For complete story, click here.

 

Scientists: Global warming has already changed oceans 09 Jun 2009 Researchers, scientists and Jacques Cousteau's granddaughter painted a bleak picture Tuesday of the future of oceans and the "blue economy" of the nation's coastal states. The hearing before the oceans subcommittee of the Senate Commerce Committee was expected to focus on how the degradation of the oceans was affecting marine businesses and coastal communities. Instead, much of the testimony focused on how the waters that cover 70 percent of the planet are already changing because of global warming.  For complete story, click here.

 

Recycled radioactive metal contaminates consumer products --No federal agency is responsible for oversight. 03 Jun 2009 Thousands of everyday products and materials containing radioactive metals are surfacing across the United States and around the world. Common kitchen cheese graters, reclining chairs, women's handbags and tableware manufactured with contaminated metals have been identified, some after having been in circulation for as long as a decade... A Scripps Howard News Service investigation has found that -- because of haphazard screening, an absence of oversight and substantial disincentives for businesses to report contamination -- no one knows how many tainted goods are in circulation in the United States.  For complete story, click here.

 

ANIMAL RIGHTS NEWS

Monsanto in Illinois: Homeland Security and USDA Plan Attacks Against Animals By Linn Cohen-Cole 13 Feb 2009 Below is a letter to livestock producers in Illinois asking them and others to contact the Governor’s office to ask to be allowed to be present at a meeting between Homeland Security and the USDA which involves NAIS and "surge capacity" under Homeland Security to attack and seize and destroy - "depopulate" an area of - animals. This meeting is about what will be done TO THEM but they are shut out. Many of you already know about Monsanto’s "rural cleansing" in southern Illinois of 200 - 400 farmers for using Steve Hixon as their seed cleaner. One is being sued for $400,000. In 2006, Monsanto made $160,000,000 in this Mafia-like extortion. For complete story, click here.

 

 

MISCELLANEOUS NEWS

Blackwater founder says he aided secret programs --CIA asset Erik Prince carried out secret missions as recently as two months ago 03 Dec 2009 The founder of Blackwater Worldwide acknowledged in an interview published Wednesday that he had helped the CIA with secret programs targeting top al-Qaeda leaders, a role he says was intended to give the agency "unattributable capability" in sensitive missions. Erik Prince, owner of the military contractor now known as Xe Services, told Vanity Fair magazine that he performed numerous "very risky missions" for the spy agency, some of which were improperly exposed in leaks to the news media. The magazine... said the former Navy SEAL had served a dual role for the CIA as both a contractor and an "asset," or spy, who carried out secret missions as recently as two months ago, when the Obama administration terminated his contract.  For complete story, click here.

 

Man killed in church after stone altar falls on him--September 10th, 2009--

Link, 45, died instantly as he was crushed under the ancient 860lb monument in the Weinhaus Church in Vienna, Austria.

Roman Hahslinger, a police spokesman, said: "He was a very religious man and had been scared when he was trapped in the lift and had prayed for release.

"A short while later he was pulled out of the elevator and he went straight to the church to thank God.

"He seems to have embraced a stone pillar on which the stone altar was perched and it fell on him, killing him instantly.  For complete story, click here.

 

Israel Makes Waves by Simulating an Earthquake --Experiment financed by DoD 25 Aug 2009 The Seismologic Division of the Ministry of National Infrastructure's Geophysical Institute will attempt to simulate an earthquake in the southern Negev on Thursday. The experiment, financed by the U.S. Defense Department, is a joint project with the University of Hawaii and is part of a scientific project intended to improve seismological and acoustic readings in Israel and its environs, up to a 1,000 km/621 mile radius.  For complete story, click here.

 

Records of Virginia Tech Gunman Discovered --Criminal investigation is underway to determine how the employee was able to take the records and why the documents were not uncovered during state investigations following the shooting 22 Jul 2009 Virginia Tech gunman Seung Hui Cho had been treated at the college's counseling center before the shooting rampage in which he killed 32 students, contradicting earlier accounts of his psychiatric history, according to newly discovered mental health records located in the home of the center's former director. According to a memo written by a university lawyer and obtained by The Washington Post, the former director, Robert Miller, had moved the records into his home more than a year before the April 16, 2007, massacre, during which Cho also took his own life. Word the records had been found first came from Virginia Gov. Timothy M. Kaine during a Wednesday morning news conference. [See: Virginia Tech Shooting 'Oddities' --Seung-Hui Cho in U.S. Marines uniform, pulled from Wikipedia By Lori Price Iraq link to campus killer Cho 19 Apr 2007 The sister of the gunman responsible for the deadliest shooting rampage in modern US history works as a contractor for a State Department office that oversees billions of dollars in American aid for Iraq.]  For complete story, click here.

 

Audit Finds U.S. Overpaid Blackwater By $55 Million 17 Jun 2009 A government audit found that the State Department overpaid the contract-security firm once known as Blackwater Worldwide by tens of millions of dollars because the company failed to properly staff its teams in Iraq. The report said the State Department should have withheld at least $55 million in payments to the company because of the shortfalls.  For complete story, click here.

 

Bats recognize individual voices: Study 08 Jun 2009 Scientists have found that bats are able to distinguish between different individuals by their echolocation calls or biological sonar. According to the study published in the journal PLoS Computational Biology, bats recognize the voice of other bats through the ultrasonic 'echolocation' calls that they make as they navigate.  For complete story, click here.

 

DARPA, Army fund 'telepathy' research --Goals include "user-to-user communication on the battlefield without the use of vocalized speech through analysis of neural signals." By Steve Hammons 17 May 2009 A research program to develop mind-to-mind communication among U.S. military personnel will receive $4 million from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), according to published reports. The "Silent Talk" project seeks to create technologies that can read the "pre-speech" brain waves of individuals, interpret them and communicate them to other individuals. The new DARPA funding is in addition to a previous $4 million the Army provided to the University of California for what they call "computer-mediated telepathy."   For complete story, click here.

 

Governor Huntsman to resign and accept Obama appointment--May 16th, 2009--SALT LAKE CITY (ABC  4 News) - Governor Jon M. Huntsman Jr. will resign and accept an appointment as ambassador to China, ABC 4 has confirmed.  For complete story, click here.  (Webmaster Note:  The only way this appointment makes sense is that Gov. Huntsman being an advocate of brainwashing and POW-style torture for America's youth can relate very well to the Chinese authorities and their disregard for basic human rights.) 

 

Stanford 'was informant for US anti-drug agents' --Authorities accused of turning a blind eye to financier's banking business 11 May 2009 Sir Allen Stanford, the Texan billionaire who ploughed millions of pounds into English cricket, may have been working as an informant for American anti-drug agents in return for official protection which gave him free rein to run his [illegal] banking empire, it emerged yesterday.  For complete story, click here.

 

The Army's Remote-Controlled Beetle--January 29, 2009--A giant flower beetle with implanted electrodes and a radio receiver on its back can be wirelessly controlled, according to research presented this week. Scientists at the University of California developed a tiny rig that receives control signals from a nearby computer. Electrical signals delivered via the electrodes command the insect to take off, turn left or right, or hover in midflight. The research, funded by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), could one day be used for surveillance purposes or for search-and-rescue missions.   For complete story, click here.

 

Drought 'Oddities' By Lori Price 01 Mar 2009 Suddenly, almost inexplicably and overnight - there's a newly discovered big water shortage in the US! Keep your eyes on the GOP prize. Under cover of the Bush Depression and (global warming-induced) drought, corpora-terrorist trolls may present a 'solution:' Privatize part of the US water supply. First, the inevitable state of emergency is declared.  For complete story, click here.

 

Fed indictments tell how H-1B visas were used to undercut wages 13 Feb 2009 Federal agents on Thursday said they arrested 11 people in six states in a crackdown on H-1B visa fraud and unsealed documents that detail how the visa process was used to undercut the salaries of U.S. workers. Federal authorities allege that in some cases, H-1B workers were paid the prevailing wages of low-cost regions and not necessarily the higher salaries paid in the locations where they worked. By doing this, the companies were "displacing qualified American workers and violating prevailing wage laws," said federal authorities in a statement announcing the indictments.  For complete story, click here.

 

 

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