Bulletin Board v167

Aversion to Therapy: Why Won’t Men Get Help? — Twenty years ago, Bob Smith’s wife questioned his commitment as a father. She demanded he see a psychiatrist. Smith (not his real name) grudgingly obliged. He went. Once. “The idea of paying some guy $300 an hour to massage your issues,” says Smith, a Los Angeles-area attorney in his early 60s, “is ridiculous.” In fact, the psychiatrist Smith talked to found plenty of issues to massage. His 45-minute assessment suggested that Smith was toting a veritable luggage store full of psychological baggage that needed unpacking.

The Boy Scouts of America kept secret sex abuse files hidden for decades — For decades, the Boy Scouts of America (BSA) kept secret files of accused pedophiles, a process meant to identify and ban molesters from working with children. But, an ABC15 Investigation found that didn’t always happen. The BSA tracked thousands of allegations from around the country, involving scout masters molesting boy scouts. But our investigation discovered, few cases were reported to authorities.

Central Africa: Invisible Victims – Sexual Violence Against Men in the Great Lakes — According to recent studies, 48 women are raped every hour in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) and the country has been ranked as the second most dangerous to be a woman in the world. Gender-based violence in the region has become widespread and there has been a proliferation of non-governmental organisations and donor efforts to aid the plight of female victims. Much less attention is being paid, however, to male victims of rape. Like women, men are also targeted and suffer sexual violence.

Emaciated, 85-pound teenage boy found in burning Deerfield Beach home — When Broward Sheriff’s Office investigators found the emaciated 14-year-old boy, he weighed 85 pounds. He had also overdosed on cocaine, marijuana and a cocktail of other drugs. His father, Darin MacDannald, 47, was charged with cruelty toward a child and infliction of physical/mental injury. The Deerfield Beach man was being held on a $7,500 bond Thursday in Broward County jail.

Kansas military school for boys faces lawsuit over abuse allegations — Jesse Mactagone lived in a sea of camouflage, with handcrafted model tanks and planes adorning his bedroom. He left home in Auburn, Calif., last August, energized to attend St. John’s Military School for Boys in Kansas. He lasted four days. During Mactagone’s short time behind the school’s brick walls, he and his family claim that students pushed him, trampled him, dragged him, threw him and kicked him, breaking both his legs and displacing his right femur several inches below the knee.

No One Saw a Thing — There’s always one kid in the neighborhood everybody loves to torment; in Windsor Heights it was me. My short list of therapy-inducing childhood memories includes being stuffed into a sleeping bag and tied to a tree branch, being locked in a garage and pelted with bottle rockets, and being excluded from everything potentially fun, competitive, or criminal. I would laugh about it later, of course, when I managed to reach adulthood. But now I have a son of my own.

Physical Signs of Horrible Abuse Gone, Boy’s Internal Scars Remain — Hunter Ciampa’s oldest friend is a yellow bird named Ducky. Ducky is a stuffed animal, void of stuffing. He resembles a novelty slipper matted with dirt. He has disappeared many times and, over the years, lost a wing and a tongue, both since replaced. Boy and bird have gone through a lot together. Hunter, who is 6, explains their relationship from his grandparents’ back patio in Homosassa.

Researchers See Decline in Child Sexual Abuse Rate — Anyone reading the headlines in recent weeks has come away with an unsettling message: Sexual predators seem to lurk everywhere. In a single day last week, juries deliberating 200 miles apart in Pennsylvania delivered guilty verdicts against Jerry Sandusky, a former assistant football coach at Penn State, for sexually molesting boys, and against Msgr. William J. Lynn, a clergy secretary, for shielding predatory priests.

Swedish Man Cleared of Rape Charges Because Victim Was Transgender — A Swedish man was cleared of rape charges after a court ruled that the crime could not occur because the victim was male, the Swedish website the Local reported. It was reported that the perpetrator, a 61-year-old man, was not aware that the person he was intending to rape was really a transgender person. “The intended crime never had the possibility of being fulfilled,” Judge Dan Sjöstedt of the Örebro District Court told the media.

UK won’t extradite sex offender accused of raping, molesting girls in US — Minnesota prosecutors’ efforts to have a convicted sexual predator brought to trial in the United States were thwarted on Thursday when Britain’s High Court dropped extradition proceedings, saying the U.S. hadn’t guaranteed the suspect would be kept out a program some deem draconian. Shawn Sullivan, 43, is accused of molesting two girls and raping a third in the 1990s in Minnesota.