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Charity highlights male domestic abuse victims — Brian Hitchcock, who runs Coventry-based charity Men’s Aid, says men who suffer violence at the hands of wives and girlfriends have been left out of a new £700,000 programme. The ‘violence perpetrator programme’ which will cover the entire West Midlands, will target husbands and boyfriends who commit domestic violence and abuse.

Chris Johnson: Nebraska must address gender bias — The Nebraska legal system suffers from widespread gender bias against men. While gender bias against fathers in family law cases is well documented, anti-male bias in other areas is less well known. According to the largest-ever review of domestic violence research, women and men abuse their partners at comparable rates.

Group Exhumes Boy’s Casket After Almost 100 Years, Is Shocked When They Open It — When forensic analysts and Pennsylvania state police gathered at the site of a nearly 90-year-old grave to dig out the body of teenager Thomas Curry, the anthropologists believed they would find clues as to why the boy died. Instead, they were left with more questions. The scientists didn’t find the boy’s body, but instead discovered layers of wood. The wood seemed to provide weight as if to hold the body or prevent it from moving.

Male prison rape survivors speak out

Originally posted on May 20, 2015

Prison rape remains a major issue in the United States. Despite the Prison Rape Elimination Act passing several years ago, states do little to reform their prison systems. Texas Governor Rick Perry has even refused to implement the changes suggested by the act.

Yet that inaction pales in comparison to how other countries view prison rape. Many countries do not acknowledge it occurs. Those that do often do nothing to curb the assaults. This is particularly true in countries where social norms prevent victims from coming forward. Such is the case in South Africa. Fortunately, there is a new effort to raise awareness:

South African prisons are notorious the world over for their endemic sexual abuse. Despite this, prisoner rape is not well understood by the South African public and government, and does not receive the serious attention it urgently needs. This is according to a report compiled by Emily Nagisa Keehn, policy development and advocacy manager at Sonke Gender Justice and Sasha Gear, programme director at Just Detention International, South Africa.

Sonke, Just Detention International – South Africa, and NICRO have partnered to increase public awareness of sexual abuse in prison. Three men came forward to share their stories about surviving rape in prison. Vincent*, Francois and Thabo* are the first South African survivors of prisoner rape to tell their stories in this way.

The three men’s stories can be viewed below.

Hiding in Plain Sight: The Female Sexual Predator

What does it say about our society when we are only acknowledging the reality of female sexual perpetrators at the end of 2016?

As much as I detest the “it’s the current year” argument, I feel it is applicable in this instance. Despite all the progress made in victim advocacy in the last thirty years, we still hesitate to admit that women commit sexual violence. The hesitation comes in part from cultural norms about women’s capacity for violence, in part from assumptions about male victimization, and in part from a political movement that frames sexual violence as a “gendered” crime.

I have written numerous times about female sex offenders. While the topic receives less media and scholarly attention, there are plenty of studies showing the prevalence of female sexual perpetration. I previously noted that if one looks at these studies in chronological order, the reported rate of female perpetration, particularly against male victims, increases over time. The more we study the topic, the more obvious it becomes that not only do women commit sexual violence, but that they represent the majority of people who sexually assault men and boys.

As shown above, none of this information is new. I pieced it together without access to scholarly publications. Other advocates, men’s rights activists, and even feminists have done the same. The information is scattered and somewhat limited, yet it is not hard to find.

It is simply not discussed.

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Elementary School Teacher Killed in Apparent Murder-Suicide May Have Abused Multiple Kids: Reports — A Minnesota elementary school teacher and his husband, who were found dead last week in an apparent murder-suicide in Washington state, may have sexually abused multiple underage boys, according to reports. Aric Babbitt, 40, and Matthew Deyo, 36, were reportedly found dead on Lopez Island on Aug. 25, just two weeks after one of Babbitt’s former students went to police and accused him of sexual assault.

Exposed: UP’s hell prison where inmates suffer vicious torture and corruption — The crime team of India Today has unearthed a prison that has turned into a vicious hub of third-degree torture, abuse and corruption. Here, an inmate is pinned down on the ground, with his feet up and locked in bamboo sticks by fellow prisoners. Unbearable screams pierce through the large hall as a deputy jailer unleashes a flurry of club blows on his bare soles.

Family of malnourished boy found dead in Echo Park closet had been reported to social workers six times — Days apart in 2012, two teachers contacted the Los Angeles County Department of Children and Family Services about a young boy named Yonatan Daniel Aguilar. One reported that the boy was suffering from general neglect. Another said he had a black eye. County social workers interviewed school employees, including a soccer coach and a special education teacher.

There goes the best plea deal ever

I wrote about a case in which a former juvenile corrections nurse received a plea deal that allowed her to skirt sexual assault charges. She engaged in sexual activities with two inmates, and even followed one to his home after his release. The deal downgraded the charge from sexual battery on a minor to aggravated assault, which meant Valerie Lieteau would not have to register as a sex offender despite the severity of her crimes.

That has now changed:

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Abused men suffering from lack of support services — More services are needed to support male victims of domestic abuse, a charity has warned. Abused Men in Scotland (AMIS) – the country’s only group working to support male victims of domestic abuse – said rising levels of this kind of abuse mean more support is needed. It comes as new figures on partner abuse contained in the Scottish Crime and Justice survey revealed that of the 576,000 adults in Scotland who experienced some kind of abuse since the age of 16, 178,000 these were men.

Celebrated Alaska storyteller charged with sex abuse of 14-year-old — A prominent Alaska storyteller and performer faces felony charges after police say he had sex with a 14-year-old boy he met on Craigslist. Jack J. Dalton, 43, appeared in court Wednesday in Anchorage. He is accused of visiting the teenager’s home for sex in March and later admitting in a text message that he knew the boy was underage. Police say Dalton told investigators he previously had sex with a different juvenile he met online five to six years earlier and has used software to anonymously view child pornography.

Cuomo Mum on Child Sex Abuse Bill as Deadline Nears — New York Governor Andrew Cuomo has dodged repeated entreaties from advocates against child sexual abuse to support legislation that would enable many victims of this crime to seek justice from their abusers. In a May 9 statement, Cuomo sidestepped pointed questions from the advocates, and from the press, about his willingness to push the state Senate to pass the Child Victims Act before the current legislative session ends June 16. The bill would eliminate New York’s statute of limitations for sexual abuse, which is one of the shortest in the nation.

A true game of silence

The NBC drama Game of Silence tells the story of four men set on revenge over the abuse they suffered in juvenile prison. The show is a remake of the Turkish drama Suskunlar, which appears to be based the book Sleepers by Lorenzo Carcaterra, which had a movie of the same name. All four versions reveal the depth of cruelty that can occur in juvenile prisons. While the first two are fiction and there are some questions about the veracity of Carcaterra’s story, a recent case shows that this type of abuse does indeed happen.

Kevin Young went to Medomsley detention center in County Durham in 1977. There he endured abuse at the hands of a prison official:

The morning after he arrived at Medomsley, Young was lining up for breakfast when he was picked out of the queue by Neville Husband, the officer who ran the kitchen. Young later discovered that Husband had asked for his file – he wanted to know everything about him; most importantly, whether he had family who were likely to visit him. Young was one of a handful of new inmates sent to work in the kitchen with Husband.

“There are two things that are important to successfully sexually abuse somebody,” Young says. “By successful, I mean without being prosecuted. One, anonymity or silence – if you can’t carry out your act without people knowing, you’re not going to be at it very long. The second thing you need is a victim who’s ‘reliable’; a reliable victim is someone who’s already been abused to the point where, if they do speak out, who on Earth is going to believe them? And who on Earth is going to believe Kevin Young, the pauper’s son, who has been in and out of care, who’s a knife-wielding thug, a bully?” That is how a number of care home reports described Young, but he insists he was a quiet, over-obedient boy. “The truth is, nobody would have believed me.”

Abuse might be too mild a word for what Husband did to Young over the next two months. “I was raped repeatedly, tied up and ligatured [around the neck]. It was the worst of the worst.” That day after Young arrived, Husband took him to a storeroom above the kitchens that he had converted into a lounge. He locked the door, took out the key and stuffed the keyhole with tissues. “I thought I was going to be killed,” Young says. “I was told by Husband that you could easily be found hanged at Medomsley, and that that year, six boys had already hanged themselves.”

According to Young, Husband would take the boy to his house outside of prison and allow other men to rape him. One would think that people would notice an officer removing an inmate from the prison. As Young argues, the prison and police were not only aware of that, but aware of Husband’s violent tendencies yet still allowed him access to children: