TresSugar

Stranger than Fiction: School Used Lap Dance Therapy

TresSugar — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 09:00:00 -0800

When you think of activities to help the emotional growth of teens with behavior troubles or special learning needs, lap dances would probably be the last thing you'd think of.

But that's exactly what the staff at Mount Bachelor Academy came up with, and they forced students to undergo lap dance therapy as a part of their "emotional growth" curriculum. The boarding school was shutdown after students accused the staff of employing this dubious therapy, and a seven-month state investigation has just confirmed the allegations.

According to the report, the school's "Lifesteps" seminars made students take on sexualized roles and perform in front of staff and students. One girl, who had been raped before going to the school, was forced to dress as a French maid and perform a lap dance. (Who thought this was a good idea?!)

Oregon's Department of Human Services says the school poses "a serious danger to child safety." Whenever I hear these horror stories about reform schools, I wonder: did anyone ever check to see if the people allowed to run them for so long needed some reform themselves?

Infamous Reform School For Girls Closes Its Doors

TresSugar — Mon, 26 Oct 2009 07:00:00 -0700

The idea of a reform school for girls seems to come straight out of a B-movie from the '50s, complete with stock characters like the naïve innocent, the hardened mean girl with a heart of gold who ends up plotting a way for them both to escape, and an evil warden who gets in their way. It's hard to believe that such a place could still exist.

Until August of this year, the notorious Beloit reform school for girls in Beloit, KS did exist, and the school, founded in the 1890s, only recently shut down because the state could no longer afford to house the remaining 21 girls to the tune of $200,000 a year.

Although the school's founders had good intentions, Beloit's dark history includes the severe mistreatment of girls, many of who were running away from physically and sexually abusive homes. In effect, the abused were shipped off to be further abused. How bad did it get? In the '30s, a superintendent who was influenced by Nazi eugenics practices had 62 of her charges involuntarily sterilized. To read more about the history of Beloit and how it evolved, read more

Beloit was founded and in part funded by the suffragist and pro-Prohibition group The Women's Christian Temperance Union in the 1890s. Sometimes, the girls there were practically "indentured" by farm families in this rural town in order to earn the food they ate. (This was all before the state took over.)

At the time, according to Russell Jennings, commissioner of the Kansas Juvenile Justice Authority, girls "were really viewed in our society much more as property." They didn't even have to run away to be deemed "incorrigible" or "wayward." They only had to be, as he put it, "a pain in the neck."

In a file from a girl housed (incarcerated?) at Beloit in the '30s, her offenses were that she "associated with Mexican men" and "became intoxicated at dances." Another woman was sent to the reform school for "being immoral (with father)."

A federal law passed in the mid-1970s ended the practice of sending girls to reform school when their offenses, if they'd been committed by adults, would not be considered crimes. But their incarceration continued in Kansas until 1983. Now, troubled teenage girls are sent to community centers where they can get the help that they need.

In spite of its history, for some who stayed there, Beloit was a haven from abuse at home. "I will always believe that because of Beloit and the staff, I am where I am today," said a 50-year-old who is happily married with three children and counsels survivors of sexual abuse. "They saved the lives of unwanted children."

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Do You Believe in Women's Intuition?

TresSugar — Tue, 01 Sep 2009 08:00:00 -0700

If you've ever been to the UC Berkeley campus, you'll understand when I say that it takes a lot for someone to stand out as weird. But for female police officers Allison Jacobs and Lisa Campbell, something was off about Phillip Garrido, and thanks to their intuition and further probing, an 18-year-old missing person case was finally solved. The FBI and family of Jaycee Lee Dugard would know what happened 18 years ago to the 11-year-old who Garrido kidnapped right in front of her stepfather's eyes.

In an interview on CCN’s AC360, Lisa Campbell, a special events manager for the university police, said that Garrido, accompanied by two girls, approached her and asked about holding an event on campus. "[T]here was just something about the girls that wasn't right," she said.

Campbell did a background check on Garrido, which revealed that he was on parole after a rape conviction and was a registered sex offender. She asked officer Allison Jacobs to sit in on the meeting with her. Jacobs seconded Campbell’s hunch with her own suspicions about Garrido, calling it “police intuition” and then “a mother’s intuition.” After a call to Garrido’s parole officer, Campbell and Jacobs learned something chilling: “He doesn’t have daughters,” Jacobs recalls him saying. A meeting was set up the next day with Garrido's parole officer and finally, Garrido was arrested and 29-year-old Jaycee Dugard (he called her "Allissa") and her two daughters were finally free of his insane grip.

Do you think it's just a coincidence that female police officers noticed something funny about Garrido that even his parole officer and others who dealt with him didn't sense? Granted, they saw the girls his parole officer didn't, but others who met Garrido with these girls didn't suspect anything. Do you believe in women's intuition?

Why Do Some Women Prey on Boys?

TresSugar — Thu, 16 Jul 2009 13:00:00 -0700

Another day, another news story about a woman getting sexually involved with a teen. This time, a babysitter has been arrested on charges of molesting a 14-year-old boy who was in her care a couple years ago.

Summer Nelson, 28, of Post Falls, ID, was friends with the boy's mother and babysat him and his younger siblings. Nelson began to have sexual relations with the boy, even telling his siblings she was in love with him.

We routinely hear about men's pedophilic sex crimes, and it's still shocking to hear about female perpetrators of sex crimes even though women commit the crime in fewer numbers. Why do they do it, and does the sexual abuse affect boys any differently than it affects girls who are sexually abused? To find out, read more.

"These women are psychologically not much older than their victims," says Richard Gartner, a New York psychologist and author of Betrayed as Boys. "They're attracted to kids they can handle."

Women who have sex with minors often feel socially and sexually inadequate, says Susan Strickland, a forensic social worker in Atlanta. One woman, who received 30 years for plying her daughter's underage teen friends with alcohol and having sex with them, told police that it was the first time she'd felt popular and part of a group.

Abusers often come from strange families with few boundaries. Women who molest prepubescent kids, especially, were more than likely sexually abused or traumatized as kids themselves. Whether consciously or not, abusing minors may be a way to regain the power the women lost when they were abused.

And what about abused boys? Although we live in a culture that tells boys that they should never turn down sex, or that it is a fantasy for a sexier older woman to want to have sex with them, this makes the trauma even harder to handle. They end up having trouble developing age-appropriate relationships and, as adults, they're more likely to be depressed, anxious, and addicted to drugs, pornography, or casual sex.

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Queen Latifah Reveals Childhood Sexual Abuse

TresSugar — Wed, 10 Jun 2009 09:43:16 -0700

"I was a kid, and I had no power or control over the situation. I really wish I'd had the strength and the knowledge to say something sooner, because I always wondered, 'did he do that to someone else?' But I accept that the time for action has come and gone."

- Queen Latifah tells Essence magazine in its July issue that she was sexually abused as a child by a teenage babysitter. Like many adult survivors of childhood sexual abuse, this caused her, she says, to be wary of others and to have commitment issues.

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Front Page: Abu Ghraib Photos Blocked by Obama Show Rape

TresSugar — Thu, 28 May 2009 08:00:34 -0700

Unreleased graphic photographs of alleged prisoner abuse at Abu Ghraib show apparent rape and sexual abuse by US soldiers. Some citizens are protesting Obama's decision to censor the photos. - Telegraph
As a judge, Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor has ruled in favor of abortion opponents. Abortion rights advocates are nervous that she might not uphold Roe v. Wade if it came before the court. - New York Times
General Motors is preparing for bankruptcy. - LA Times
A powerful 7.1 earthquake hit Honduras today. So far one person is confirmed dead. - AP
American Idol runner-up Adam Lambert is being pressured to publicly address his sexuality. - MTV
Four common myths about swine flu debunked. - ABC News

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NYC Fights Sexual Abuse in Orthodox Jewish Communities

CitizenSugar — Thu, 02 Apr 2009 09:30:51 -0700

Sexual abuse is one of those problems - if acknowledged - Orthodox Jews tend to hush and handle in religious courts, which apparently exist. Stigma, shame, cultural isolation, and the more obvious fear that revelations will hurt future marriage prospects ensure secrets stay in the streets of ultra-Orthodox Brooklyn neighborhoods.

But New York City has ambitious plans to change that. The city is setting up an outreach program, which includes prosecutors visiting synagogues and a hotline called Kol Tzedek, meaning "voice of justice" in Hebrew. The voice of justice on the line will be a "culturally sensitive" social worker, who will allow callers to remain anonymous until they're ready to come forward. When and if that happens, victims can meet with social workers and lawyers who specialize in sex crimes.

The chief of Brooklyn's sex crimes bureau told the New York Times "there is a climate of change" in the ultrasecretive community. Maybe so - the number of current cases in Brooklyn is up to 19 from not enough to count in years past.

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Austrian Dad Charged With Murder, Rape, Slavery

CitizenSugar — Sat, 15 Nov 2008 06:05:20 -0800

Josef Fritzl, the man who imprisoned and abused his daughter for 24 years and later blamed Hitler, has been charged with murdering one of the children he fathered with his daughter.

Fritzl, 73, was found to be responsible for the death of a newborn in 1996 after he neglected to seek medical help when he knew the baby might die. Fritzl previously told police that the baby, one of twins, was born dead and he had burned the body. To learn some of the heartbreaking details uncovered from the case files (warning: they are truly awful), read more.

The case files offered some chilling details about Fritzl's violent behavior and history. He kept his daughter in the cellar of his apartment building for 24 years - raping her on a regular basis and fathering seven children with her. Apparently, he chained his then 18-year-old daughter for the first nine months of her captivity in 1984, drugged, beat, and raped her. Fritzl eventually filled the rat-infested cell with furniture, but regularly shut off power as punishment. He admitted to abusing his daughter soon after he was arrested, but didn't admit to killing the baby. Fritzl's trial isn't expected to begin before January 2009.

Source

Front Page: Key al-Qaeda Leader Killed, Bush, Paulson Promise Improvements, Austrian Incest Dad Fit For Trial

CitizenSugar — Wed, 15 Oct 2008 07:00:18 -0700

Key al-Qaeda Leader Killed:
The US military has announced that the second-in-command of al-Qaeda in Iraq has been killed. The militant leader Abu Qaswarah had ties to senior al-Qaeda leaders in Afghanistan and Pakistan. He was killed in a raid on Oct. 5 in Mosul, a city described as the military as one of the group's last strongholds.
Bush, Paulson Promise Improvements:
President Bush and Treasury Secretary Paulson said today that confidence and cash will rehabilitate the economy, but that improvements will take time and patience. Bush said he's confident the economy will "come back" in the long run. Speaking on the $250 billion bank investment announced yesterday, Paulson said, "There's no doubt that the way to get the maximum bang for the taxpayers here was to invest in banks."
Austrian Incest Dad Fit For Trial:
Josef Fritzl, the Austrian man accused of holding his daughter in the cellar for 24 years and fathering seven children with her, has been declared mentally fit to stand trial. The court said the psychiatric evaluation of the 73-year-old found him lucid enough, but that he suffers from a "profound personality disorder."

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Rhode Island Requires Lessons on Dating Violence

CitizenSugar — Mon, 06 Oct 2008 09:00:08 -0700

Reading and writing have competition for lesson time in Rhode Island. A new law requires all middle and high school students to take a unit in their health classes to help students recognize the beginnings of an abusive relationship. Sadly, the inspiration behind the law is a victim of one such fatally violent murder and is named the Lindsay Ann Burke Act in her memory.

The murder of Lindsay Ann Burke at the hands of her ex-boyfriend prompted the enactment of the lesson mandate. The Rhode Island Attorney General who was instrumental in getting this law passed said: “You teach sex ed., you teach ‘don’t do drugs,’ you teach ‘don’t drink,’ you should also be teaching ‘don’t be a victim of domestic violence.’ “

But the education isn’t all about abuse and violence. To see what else it teaches, read more.

The teaching also focuses on fostering healthy connections, communication skills, and navigating potentially combustible situations in both friendships and romantic relationships. Although some of these behaviors seem obvious to adults, teachers hope that students will begin to see the telltale signs of potentially violent partners, signs such as obsessive text messaging or physical control.

The law is becoming more popular around the nation as members of the National Association of Attorneys General unanimously adopted a resolution requesting passage in their own states. Lindsay's mom says her daughter would have wanted others to learn about the dangers. She said, "You may have killed her physical body, but I'll be damned: her spirit is still living on in her family and friends. We're going to do what we need to do."

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