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Advocates, survivors say stigmas keep male victims from reporting sexual assaults — Social stigmas and a lack of understanding fuels the underreporting of sexual assaults among male victims, police and victim advocates said at a campus forum Thursday. Zac Palmer told about a dozen people at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln he didn’t realize what his longtime partner did to him was sexual assault. He only later came to terms with it, and then last summer, he was sexually assaulted by someone else while at a party with friends, he said.

Chicago Archdiocese pays $3.15 million to settle abuse suits — The Archdiocese of Chicago will pay $3.15 million to settle lawsuits brought by three men who allege they were sexually abused by a notorious former pastor of a West Side Catholic church more than a decade ago, the plaintiffs’ attorney said Wednesday. The accusers, all identified in court papers as John Doe, said former priest and convicted sex offender Daniel McCormack sexually abused them more than once during their participation in an after-school program called S.A.F.E. at Our Lady of the Westside Catholic School.

Court hears boy got himself expelled from seminary so that sex abuse by priest would stop — A catholic priest repeatedly sexually abused a young boy in his care “breaching that trust in a spectacular and horrific way,” a court heard. The boy was just 13 and 14 years old when Father Michael Higginbottom allegedly began seriously abusing him at a seminary in West Lancashire, according to prosecutors.

The Red Pill: A Review

After years of waiting, I finally got the chance to watch Cassie Jaye’s documentary The Red Pill. Jaye’s documentary began as her examination of the men’s rights movement, and grew into her journey out of feminism.

The film received a great deal of backlash during its filming, post production, and initial release. All of the negative response, from people contacting Jaye’s financiers to cut her funding to people backing out of interviews to protests against the film, came from feminists. Most notably, they came from feminists who never saw the bulk of the footage or the completed film.

The reaction has been so overblown that it has likely increased people’s desire to see this horribly misogynistic film that gives a platform to rape apologists. Or something to that affect.

Is that Jaye’s film? Is it a love letter to women haters? Is it an attack on feminism? Does it excuse male violence against women?

Lawmakers award boy for raising awareness about child abuse

This is a positive sign:

Often it’s sports teams or students who exhibit academic excellence. Sometimes it’s someone who has shown leadership in improving their community.

Such was the case Thursday when Sen. Page Cortez, D-Lafayette, and Rep. Stuart Bishop, R-Lafayette, got the Senate and House to pause long enough to recognize 16-year-old Elijah Evans, of Youngsville, a sophomore at Ovey Comeaux High School. Members of each body listened to resolutions honoring him as one of two Louisiana high school and middle school students to be selected to receive awards in the Prudential Spirit of Community Awards program.

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Athens event aims to raise awareness of male childhood sexual abuse — To help spread awareness about childhood sexual abuse suffered by men, The Cottage Sexual Assault and Children’s Advocacy Center will host its inaugural 1BlueString event Friday at Nuci’s Space. During the awareness event, guests will here acoustic sets from local musicians and guitarists who have switched out the low E string on their guitars with a blue string as a show of solidarity with the victims.

Barbara Kay: ‘Rape culture’ fanatics don’t know what a culture is — In today’s edition of the Post, there is a very thoughtful and serious discussion of whether the phenomena of “rape culture” even exists. It will no doubt receive the usual stream of invective — accusations of trivializing rape, denying that sexual assaults occur, implying that women who drank too much deserved to be raped. Hardly real criticisms in any intellectual sense, but they will come.

College Men Aren’t Closet Rapists — I don’t know which talking point from this administration is more insulting: the myth that discrimination keeps women from achieving parity with men, or the claim that male rapists lurk on every campus corner waiting to pounce on innocent, unsuspecting young women. The latter assertion is particularly dangerous. Not only does it lack substance, it serves to broaden the chasm that already exists between women and men.

Peter Truong sentenced to 30 years

I wrote about the case of Peter Truong last year. Truong and his partner adopted a boy and groomed him for abuse. They intended him to be their sex slave and set about training him. They even allowed other men to abuse the boy.

A judge sentenced Mark Newton, Truong’s partner and an U.S. citizen, to 40 years in prison. Truong, a New Zealander, was sentenced to 30 years in December:

Queensland paedophile Peter Truong, who bought a newborn boy for US$8,000 and then allowed men around the world to abuse the child, has been sentenced in a US court to 30 years’ jail.

Truong, 36, faced a maximum 40-year sentence, while the plea deal he struck with prosecutors could have allowed a minimum of 24 years.

US district court judge Sarah Evans Barker, in announcing the sentence on Monday in Indianapolis, took note of Truong’s willingness to work with authorities to lead them to other paedophiles and his own history as a childhood abuse victim.

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43 year old woman, 6 teenagers arrested for confinement, abuse of 15 year old boy — A 43-year-old woman in Amagasaki, Hyogo Prefecture has been arrested, together with six teenagers aged 14-18, for allegedly confining a 15-year-old high school student in her apartment and committing sexually abusive acts on the boy. All of the suspects admitted to the crime and prefectural police are now preparing charges in accordance with the Child Welfare Law.

Calls for more support for male survivors of child sex abuse — Jay was just ten years old when it started. First, it was a stranger who abused him. Then the stranger became a family friend, and others followed. Terrified and wracked with shame, Jay didn’t breathe a word of what happened to anyone for over 25 years. Even today, after years of counselling, he hesitates to say the words. “I was [a victim of] a paedophile network in the 80s and I was offended by at least ten offenders that I can remember,” he says.

Hayward school aide charged with sexually abusing boy — A female after-school program coordinator at a Hayward Catholic school has been arrested on suspicion of sexually abusing a male student beginning when he was 12, police said Monday. Police said they began their investigation on Nov. 18 after they were informed of a possible incident of child sexual abuse. They said they learned that the victim, who is now 14, has allegedly been in a sexual relationship with the suspect, 29-year-old Mia Cummings of Oakland, since he was 12.

Indictments detail even more abuse endured by boy found with dead chicken around neck — Grand jury indictments against a Union County DSS worker and her boyfriend show the alleged abuse against a boy in their guardianship is worse than initially uncovered. Those indictments now say Wanda Sue Larson, a since-fired Union County DSS Child Protective Services supervisor over investigations, not only handcuffed a boy under her guardianship to a porch with a dead chicken around his neck, but also restrained him to a piece of railroad track, permanently injured the boy’s pinkie finger and failed to get him medical attention for a broken wrist, cut on his face and burn near his eye.

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Are men oppressed? Male rights activists maligned as ‘sexists’ fight to have movement recognized on campus — At the latest battle in the emerging campus war over men’s rights, as a man in a pink keffiyeh, with a pink hammer and sickle on his chest, shouted slogans through a pink megaphone at a group of men’s rights activists who marched on the Ontario legislature to denounce the oppressive effects of feminism, it was tempting to invoke Henry Kissinger’s quip about the Iran-Iraq War: “It’s a pity they both can’t lose.” Neither side made an articulate case through their mutual loathing.

Do men need a place to call their own? Experts make the case for men’s centres in campus, community life — A U.S. professor specializing in studying the psychology of boys and men, masculinity and manhood will make the case for creating men’s centres on campus during an address in Toronto. The speech by Miles Groth is slated to take place Friday evening at an event organized by the Canadian Association for Equality (CAFE), which is working to raise funds to create the Canadian Centre for Men and Families. Advocates on both sides of the border are seeking to fill what they view as a void at schools and within communities — programs dedicated to studying, serving and supporting male interests and needs.

The facts and figures on male rape and sexual abuse in Ireland — The recently released Dublin Rape Crisis Centre’s Annual Report for 2012 laid out the facts of rape and sexual abuse in Ireland. The figures are astonishing and disturbing. Over 9,000 genuine contacts were made with the National 24-Hour Helpline in 2012, over 25 a day, and almost half of those were making their first ever contact with the service. Men made up over 17 per cent of those who contacted the Helpline in 2012, highlighting just how big sexual abuse and rape issues are for Irish men.