Asia Argento, victim blaming, and #metoo

The plot thickens with the Asia Argento situation. As I mentioned in my last post, former child actor James Bennett accused Argento of raping him just two months after he turned 17. Argento and Bennett now 22, settled out of court. The settlement occurred while Argento made news when she accused Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein of rape.

Argento initially denied the allegations against her. However, within a few hours the media reported that Argento claimed her late husband Anthony Bourdain pushed her to settle the case with the alleged victim.

How unfortunate that Baourdain is no longer here to respond to such a claim. Granted, it is possible that he made such a suggestion and it is common for celebrities to pay out settlements rather than risk unwanted criminal cases and negative press. It does seem unlikely, however, that Bourdain would make such a suggestion if Argento could prove she did nothing wrong.

If it only ended there, Argento would merely look scuzzy for tarnishing the reputation of her late husband. TMZ, however, published texts allegedly from Argento about the incident. According to the texts, Argento is the victim:

Asia Argento has her own #MeToo moment

Catholic Church Had a “Playbook for Concealing the Truth”

Shortly after I posted my last article, news broke concerning a Pennsylvania grand jury’s findings on the Catholic dioceses in that state. According to the report, the Catholic Church had an established policy of covering up the sexual abuse of thousands of children. This was not merely shifting abusers for one parish to another, but also using deceptive language to obscure the nature of what happened. From the New York Times:

Special agents from the F.B.I.’s National Center for the Analysis of Violent Crime reviewed evidence collected by the grand jury, the report says, and identified a series of practices that were regularly used by the six dioceses to cover up reports of abuse.

“While each church district had its idiosyncrasies, the pattern was pretty much the same,” the report says. “The main thing was not to help children, but to avoid ‘scandal.’ That is not our word, but theirs; it appears over and over again in the documents we recovered.”

That the Church kept detailed records like this is astounding on its own. Yet the scale of the nature, the language used, and the clear lack of concern for the victims is unreal. I will post section from the report used in the NYT article in full:

The sex abuse cover-ups continue at the Vatican

It appears that one of my predictions about sexual abuse within the Catholic Church came true. I stated years ago that victims of clergy abuse usually take 15 to 20 years to come forward. I based this on the date ranges for the abuse as victims came forward. Those who came forward during the 1990s reported that the abuse occurred in the 1970s and early 1980s. Those who came forward during the early 2000s reported abuse from the 1980s an early 1990s.

While the Catholic Church tried to address the hundreds of thousands of accusations, they were adamant that the abuse was essentially over. Their position was that the rampant abuse of the 1960s and 1970s stemmed from the sexual revolution.

I did not believe this. My assumption was that victims of more recent abuse would simply hold to the same pattern as older victims. It would take those people at least 10 years, if not 20, before coming forward, and this was despite the greater news coverage and social concern.

A recent article appears to confirm my suspicion:

Bulletin Board v307

Boys — the silent victims of sex trafficking — The silence nearly killed Tom Jones. As a child, Jones was raped, abused and sold to men for sex. The brutality ended when he was 15. But, like many male victims, Jones didn’t seek help, didn’t tell anyone about the trauma he had suffered. Instead, he buried his pain and shame deep inside, carrying the burden alone and in silence for another 15 years. Silence did not equal acceptance.

Caldey Abbey: first male victim comes forward to describe sexual abuse — A man has come forward to describe how he was groomed and sexually abused as a child by a Benedictine monk on Caldey Island, intensifying calls for an inquiry into what happened at the abbey in south-west Wales. The victim, who has told police of the abuse he was subject to during summer holiday trips to Caldey Island, is the first man to allege he was sexually assaulted by Father Thaddeus Kotik.

South Carolina Church To Pay $300,000 And Apologize In Child Sex Abuse Case — A Baptist church in South Carolina settled a child sexual abuse lawsuit, agreeing to issue an apology, admit liability, and to pay $300,000 to the plaintiff. Bryan Barnes, spokesman for First Baptist Church of Columbia, S.C., said that church leadership issued the apology and explained the terms of the settlement before the congregation on Sunday, according to the Baptist Press.

Afghan Pedophiles Get Free Pass From U.S. Military

Here we are in 2018, and here is yet another article detailing the systematic abuse of Afghan boys. I have written about the abuse almost every year for a decade. Several of my posts detail instances of United States, Canadian, and British forces knowing of the abuse yet doing nothing. Here is yet another article, this time from the New York Times, showing that despite the government’s full knowledge of the rampant sexual abuse of Afghan boys, nothing has been done to prevent it.

According to the article:

On 5,753 occasions from 2010 to 2016, the United States military asked to review Afghan military units to see if there were any instances of “gross human rights abuses.” If there were, American law required military aid to be cut off to the offending unit.

Not once did that happen.

That was among the findings in an investigation into child sexual abuse by the Afghan security forces and the supposed indifference of the American military to the problem, according to a report released on Monday by the Special Inspector General for Afghan Reconstruction, known as Sigar.

The report, commissioned under the Obama administration, was considered so explosive that it was originally marked “Secret/No Foreign,” with the recommendation that it remain classified until June 9, 2042. The report was finished in June 2017, but it appears to have included data only through 2016, before the Trump administration took office.

Let us stop here to acknowledge what the New York Times just stated. According to the NYT, the Obama administration requested the investigation, and upon receiving the findings they sought to classify them for almost 30 years. This is solely because of the nature of the findings.

In short, it looks so bad that the Obama administration did not want anyone to see it.

The Hypocrisy of the US Complicity in Child Rape

A United States government agency finally took issue with the rampant rape of boys in Afghanistan. According to a recent article:

In its most recent quarterly report, the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR) criticized the Afghan government for failing to adequately protect boy victims of sexual abuse known as bacha bazi. […] The SIGAR report said the Afghan government has failed to adequately assist bacha bazi victims and that is resulting in the “arrest and prosecution” of boys who have been victims of that abuse. These abuses continue despite President Ashraf Ghani’s June 2016 pledge of “thorough investigation and immediate action” of bacha bazi abuse by military personnel.

The U.S. is in no position to point fingers. Our government has known about the abuse for almost two decades. Rather than stop the abuse, we have ignored it. Two years ago, the Pentagon denied promoting a policy of ignoring this abuse, despite a leaked field manual showing that troops were instructed to avoid “any criticism of pedophilia.” The State Department researched the abuse against boys, however, the findings focused on protecting girls from potential abuse from former male victims, not preventing the boys from being raped in the first place. This is the same institution that tried to discharge a Green Beret for assaulting a child rapist.