I have been rather busy lately, so I missed last week’s edition. This edition includes articles and posts from both last week and this week.
African Men Sacrificing to Support Their Families — It is rare that the mainstream media shows us the myriad ways in which African men sacrifice to support and feed their families–usually all we hear about African men is negative, and is displayed through the lens of the problems faced by African women. (One exception would be that during the international protests against South African apartheid during the 1970s and 1980s, we learned of the struggles of the South African miners, who were terribly exploited by the South African mining companies).
Coming forward — Editor’s note: The following story is 21-year-old Portsmouth resident Robert Arnold’s account of sexual abuse he suffered as a child in the early 1990s. Proper names were omitted by Arnold.
CSA Victims To Get Justice (??) (USA) — Michael Dolce, a lawyer in Palm Beach Gardens, is a survivor of abuse. It happened a long time ago. He was 7. The “perpetrators,” as he calls them, were two men in his Baltimore neighborhood, a father and his teenaged son. They threatened the 7-year-old boy with a gun if he told anyone anything about what they did to him. He didn’t tell.
Fifth of all domestic violence victims are men — MORE than a fifth of all victims of domestic violence in North Yorkshire are men, The Press can reveal. New figures show 420 – or 21 percent – of the 1,992 incidents of domestic violence reported between April 2006 and January this year, the victims were male. The number of male victims appears to be on the increase – with 425 incidents against men reported all year during 2005 and 344 in 2004.
Gay male parents get dedicated fertility program — A Los Angeles fertility clinic has launched what it says is the first dedicated program for gay men wanting to become parents. The Fertility Institutes, already a pioneer in the controversial area of gender selection, said it was responding to huge demand from gay male couples around the world who want their own biological children but are often thwarted by prejudice and bureaucracy.
Groundbreaking study shows need for unbiased domestic violence services — The study describes 190 male callers to a domestic violence hotline, men from all walks of life who found that resources for males seeking help with an abusive female partner are virtually nonexistent. It appears to be common for abusive wives to use controlling behaviors, and they are especially prone to using their children as pawns to control their husbands. And federally funded shelters and hotlines commonly deny services to men, and ignore Congress’ stated intent that services are to be provided to victims regardless of gender.
Hoax-tress Exercising Her Fifth Amendment Rights? Or not… — Despite having met twice with the special prosecutors who have replaced Durham County District Attorney Mike Nifong at the helm of the Hoax, [the accuser*] remains uncooperative while evasively answering questions about the imagined assault that has been through several rewrites since its inception, according to an exclusive report from Lara Setrakian of ABC News’ Law and Justice Unit. The office of North Carolina Attorney General Roy Cooper, however, quickly denied Setrakian’s report, three quarters of which was contorted to give a Nifongian impression that lack of cooperation by the complaining witness was indicative of continued trauma. *edited to remove the accuser’s name.
I Guess Things for American Women Are Better Than I Thought — I guess things for American women are better than I thought. Feminist Fox News/NPR commentator Lis Wiehl’s new book The 51% Minority: How Women Still Are Not Equal and What You Can Do About It informs us that “Women make up 51% of the American population, yet still aren’t treated equally to men.” She highlights the following complaints.
Out CNN journalist recalls priest’s abuse — CNN news reporter Thomas Roberts, who came out to a national journalism convention in September, has talked publicly about his sexual abuse by a Catholic priest. In a interview on news show “Anderson Cooper 360,” Roberts described how the abuse began when he was 14, following his parents’ divorce, and lasted for three years.
RADAR ALERT: Tell Senator Lugar: “Don’t Export Family Break-up. Say ‘No’ to I-VAWA.” — Senate Foreign Relations Committee chairman and presidential-hopeful Joseph Biden plans on asking the U.S. Congress to legislate for the entire world! Author of the well-intentioned but deeply flawed Violence Against Women Act, Biden will soon be introducing an international version, dubbed “I-VAWA.” This would be accomplished by awarding grants to other countries to implement VAWA-like initiatives.
Registered sex offender turns up as TYC officer — Law enforcement officers who earlier this week moved into Texas Youth Commission facilities to protect inmates from sex predators on Wednesday discovered a registered sex offender working as a correctional officer in a halfway house for juveniles. The sex offender had been allowed to stay on the job despite an alert that had been sent months ago to TYC administrators in Austin.
Texas youth prison board resigns — The entire board of directors for the state‘s troubled youth prisons resigned Friday following weeks of criticism sparked by reports that agency workers covered up sex abuse of inmates. The board met briefly by conference call to hand over its power to acting executive director Ed Owens, who was hired to overhaul the agency dogged by accusations that inmates were sexually and physically abused in youth facilities around the state.
Toy Soldiers 