A jealous lover in South Africa stabbed a rival, cut out his heart and ate it with a knife and fork, police and media reported Thursday.
Police were called to the gruesome scene at a house in Cape Town's Gugulethu township by frantic neighbours, spokesman Frederick van Wyk told the Cape Times.
"On the scene they found a suspect, a Zimbabwean national, busy eating the heart of a human with a knife and fork," he said.
The woman at the centre of the love triangle told police that her former lover had visited the house where she was living with her current partner and they had chatted together before he gave her money to buy liquor and she left.
When she returned she found her partner, 62-year-old Mbuyiselo Manona, had been stabbed, Van Wyk said.
Neighbours alerted by the commotion said they had peered through the house windows to see the man cutting out Manona's heart and eating it.
"The whole situation was crazy. We were shouting at him to stop, but he did not listen," one neighbour said.
"Even when the police got here... the guys were scared to go in. They had to call for back-up.
"You can't really blame them -- how do you go into a room with someone dripping another person's blood out of his mouth?"
Western Cape deputy police commissioner Sharon Jephta said the motive for the murder was "definitely a love triangle".
The suspect was arrested and is expected to appear in court soon. – AFP
From The Sun
During lunch today, my younger son asked me if I had ever heard of 'The Black Dahlia'.
Shocked beyond words, our lunchtime conversation revolved round that unsolved murder after which I did loads of reading on it. Just cannot believe that up to 60 persons claimed they did it. If you have the time, read comments at this link.
Do share your views. Thanks.
CLICK HERE to read the shocking report by Neal Rich on business risks.
Every Saturday night in China, millions gather around their televisions to watch Interviews Before Execution, an extraordinary talk show which interviews prisoners on death row.
In the weeks, days or even minutes before they are executed, presenter Ding Yu goes into prisons and talks to those condemned to die.
Combining clips from the TV show, never-before-seen footage of China's death row and interviews with a local judge who openly questions the future of the death penalty in China, This World reveals a part of China that is generally hidden from from view.
CLICK HERE TO WATCH THIS VIDEO CLIP that Mr LYK kindly shared.
Here's an excellent article by Ta-Nenhisi Coates first posted in The Atlantic:
Excerpt:
A photograph that appeared in a chain e-mail about Trayvon Martin. In fact, the man in the photo is a 32-year-old rapper considerably larger than the slain 16-year-old.
In trying to assess the killing of Trayvon Martin by George Zimmerman, two seemingly conflicting truths emerge for me.
The first is that based on the case presented by the state, and based on Florida law, George Zimmerman should not have been convicted of second degree murder or manslaughter.
The second is that the killing of Trayvon Martin is a profound injustice. In examining the first conclusion, I think it's important to take a very hard look at the qualifications allowed for aggressors by Florida's self-defense statute.
CLICK HERE for the rest of the post.
You are reading this in Masterwordsmith's blog. I am stating this because there is one particular blogger who has been copying my blog content and hosting it in a website url that is very similar to mine just so to steal traffic for advertising revenue. He even proclaimed MY SONS to be HIS SONS!!! ????? Even the header is the same as mine!!! Utter audacity and unscrupulousness! I have already reported it to DMCA, Google and Blogger. If you like my site, please subscribe to the RSS feeds or follow me on Twitter to catch my posts. Thanks!
Thanks to Mr TSK who shared this post. Read on and discover which Malaysian city has been listed amongst the ten dangerous cities of the world. That site said the crime rate there increased by 70% in the last three years and that things seem to be getting worse. How should the authorities respond? And what is OUR response?
Excerpt:
Making a top of the most dangerous cities in the world is not an easy task, the lists change year after year. Some time ago, Chicago was, and still is considered the world’s crime capital. But let’s face it, just because Chicago has an interesting crime history and something that looks like a proneness to violence, there are other cities in this world that are basically imbued in constant acts of crime. There are cities out there which can scare even the most spectacular team of super heroes and if you think the Expendables can take a quiet walk in the park in some of these towns, think again! Today we will see (from the distance, as nobody dares to travel in those virtually war zones) the top ten most dangerous cities in the world.
1. San Pedro Sula – Honduras
It takes first place as the crime rate was established at 169 deaths at 100.000 inhabitants. Despite the touristic attractions, Honduras is a dangerous country and San Pedro Sula is not something we’d visit without the Terminator (Arnie’s version to be exact) to tag along.
CLICK HERE for the rest of the post.
Twenty years ago this October, Rebecca Solnit was writing about the Kennedy assassination for her first book when the Loma Prieta earthquake struck. She hit save, stood in a doorway until the shaking was over, and marveled in the days after at the calm, warm mood of the people of her city and her own changed state of mind. She's written regularly for TomDispatch since the outbreak of the war in Iraq. Her just published new book, A Paradise Built in Hell (Penguin, 2009), is a monument to human bravery and innovation during disasters.
Recently, she wrote A Rape a Minute, a Thousand Corpses a Year - Hate Crimes in America (and Elsewhere) which was first posted HERE with an introduction written by Erika Eichelberger.
Excerpt from the piece:
Here in the United States, where there is a reported rape every 6.2 minutes, and one in five women will be raped in her lifetime, the rape and gruesome murder of a young woman on a bus in New Delhi on December 16th was treated as an exceptional incident. The story of the alleged rape of an unconscious teenager by members of the Steubenville High School football team was still unfolding, and gang rapes aren’t that unusual here either. Take your pick: some of the 20 men who gang-raped an 11-year-old in Cleveland, Texas, were sentenced in November, while the instigator of the gang rape of a 16-year-old in Richmond, California, was sentenced in October, and four men who gang-raped a 15-year-old near New Orleans were sentenced in April, though the six men who gang-raped a 14-year-old in Chicago last fall are still at large. Not that I actually went out looking for incidents: they’re everywhere in the news, though no one adds them up and indicates that there might actually be a pattern.
There is, however, a pattern of violence against women that’s broad and deep and horrific and incessantly overlooked. Occasionally, a case involving a celebrity or lurid details in a particular case get a lot of attention in the media, but such cases are treated as anomalies, while the abundance of incidental news items about violence against women in this country, in other countries, on every continent including Antarctica, constitute a kind of background wallpaper for the news.
If you’d rather talk about bus rapes than gang rapes, there’s the rape of a developmentally disabled woman on a Los Angeles bus in November and the kidnapping of an autistic 16-year-old on the regional transit train system in Oakland, California -- she was raped repeatedly by her abductor over two days this winter -- and there was a gang rape of multiple women on a bus in Mexico City recently, too. While I was writing this, I read that another female bus-rider was kidnapped in India and gang-raped all night by the bus driver and five of his friends who must have thought what happened in New Delhi was awesome.
We have an abundance of rape and violence against women in this country and on this Earth, though it’s almost never treated as a civil rights or human rights issue, or a crisis, or even a pattern. Violence doesn’t have a race, a class, a religion, or a nationality, but it does have a gender.
Here I want to say one thing: though virtually all the perpetrators of such crimes are men, that doesn’t mean all men are violent. Most are not. In addition, men obviously also suffer violence, largely at the hands of other men, and every violent death, every assault is terrible. But the subject here is the pandemic of violence by men against women, both intimate violence and stranger violence.
What We Don’t Talk About When We Don’t Talk About Gender
There’s so much of it. We could talk about the assault and rape of a 73-year-old in Manhattan’s Central Park last September, or the recent rape of a four-year-old and an 83-year-old in Louisiana, or the New York City policeman who was arrested in October for what appeared to be serious plans to kidnap, rape, cook, and eat a woman, any woman, because the hate wasn’t personal (though maybe it was for the San Diego man who actually killed and cooked his wife in November and the man from New Orleans who killed, dismembered, and cooked his girlfriend in 2005).
Those are all exceptional crimes, but we could also talk about quotidian assaults, because though a rape is reported only every 6.2 minutes in this country, the estimated total is perhaps five times as high. Which means that there may be very nearly a rape a minute in the U.S. It all adds up to tens of millions of rape victims.
We could talk about high-school- and college-athlete rapes, or campus rapes, to which university authorities have been appallingly uninterested in responding in many cases, including that high school in Steubenville, Notre Dame University, Amherst College, and many others. We could talk about the escalating pandemic of rape, sexual assault, and sexual harassment in the U.S. military, where Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta estimated that there were 19,000 sexual assaults on fellow soldiers in 2010 alone and that the great majority of assailants got away with it, though four-star general Jeffrey Sinclair was indicted in September for “a slew of sex crimes against women.”
CLICK HERE for more.
In Frontpagemag, Daniel Greensfield wrote:
Hardly had the blood been scrubbed off the floors in Newtown than everyone who was anyone had begun shifting the blame from Adam Lanza to some intangible social failure.
Back in 2002, Michael Moore trundled his bulk over to Colorado to exploit the Columbine massacre for a general rant about gun culture, American foreign policy and how hard it was to find a shop selling bacon grease by the ton at two in the morning.
In his film, which won an Oscar for Best Documentary, Moore gave his audience what they wanted, lots of scenes of “hicks and hillbillies” buying, selling and giving away guns all over the place to illustrate the murderous ravages of American gun culture. Some of those scenes were staged, but it didn’t matter since Moore was catering to an audience that had nothing but contempt for working class Americans and would believe any awful thing about them.
What did gun culture have to do with a plot by two disgruntled dorks with tastes in pop culture far afield from the rural gun-loving dystopia that Moore was doing his best to depict? About as much as gun culture has to do with headcases like Adam Lanza or Jared Loughner.
Your average school shooter is unhappy and angry, irreligious, incapable of fitting into a community and filled with rage that he exercises through violent fantasies. His culture isn’t gun culture. It’s loner culture. Video games do not cause him to kill, but they are how he entertains himself until he can get a taste of the real thing.
CLICK HERE for more.
Tragically, rape culture is spreading and culprits are neither repentant nor remorseful.
BBC reports here that Three Delhi gang rape suspects to plead not guilty.
Last month, NYT reported on Rape Case Unfolds on Web and Splits City.
And today,Alternet reported on How Anonymous Hacking Exposed Steubenville High School Rape Case.
What is happening to this world when young people have become numb and desensitized to committing such crimes?
Very sad. To think some still boast about how much progress has been achieved in life.
Has mankind regressed? Do share your views. Thanks!
Who could look at the face of this sweet 10-year-old girl and ever imagine her to be one of the youngest serial killers ever discovered. Was this youngster who killed her playmates without any feelings of guilt the result of a monstrous family or a bad seed or something else? Too young to execute, and a victim of abuse herself, she was rehabilitated, allowed to have a family, and released, her name legally changed to protect her privacy.
Read the excerpt of the account written by Shirley Lynn Scott:
"Are you looking for your Brian?" asked Mary Bell. Brian's sister, Pat, was worried about the missing toddler, who should have been home by now. A small, three-year-old boy with fair hair, Brian Howe usually played close to home. Mary and her best friend, Norma, eagerly offered to help search for him. They led Pat through the neighborhood, looking here and there, all the while knowing exactly where Brian was.
They crossed the railroad tracks to the industrial area, where the kids of Scotswood often played among construction materials, old cars, and dangerous wreckage. Pat was worried -- only a few weeks ago little Martin Brown was found dead inside of a condemned house. Mary pointed to some large concrete blocks. "He might be playing behind the blocks, or between them," she said.
"Oh no, he never goes there," insisted Norma. In fact, Brian lay dead between the blocks. Mary wanted Pat to discover her dead brother, Norma later said, "because she wanted Pat Howe to have a shock." But Pat decided to leave. The Newcastle Police would find his body at 11:10 later that night.
Brian was found covered with grass and purple weeds. He had been strangled. Nearby, a pair of broken scissors lay in the grass. There were puncture marks on his thighs, and his genitals had been partially skinned. Clumps of his hair were cut away. The wounds were bizarre: "There was a terrible playfulness about it, a terrible gentleness if you like, and somehow the playfulness of it made it more, rather than less, terrifying," said Inspector James Dobson. Brian's belly had been signed "M" with a razor blade. This cut would not be apparent until days later. It appeared that someone had imprinted an "N", and that a fourth mark was added (by a different hand?) to change the "N" into a "M".
CLICK HERE for more.
Frankly, it was an emotional experience to read the following article by Connecticut Shooting Victims' Stories Begin To Emerge Associated Press featured in Huffington Post AT THIS LINK. I read it as a mother, as a teacher and as a one with a heart that reaches out to those who lost their loved ones in the recent Connecticut shooting.
Excerpt:
At the very start of their lives, the schoolchildren are remembered for their love of horses, or for the games they couldn't get enough of, or for always saying grace at dinner. The adult victims found their life's work in sheltering little ones, teaching them, caring for them, treating them as their own. The gunfire Friday at Sandy Hook Elementary School left a toll both unbearable and incalculable: 20 students and six adults at the school, the gunman's mother at home, and the gunman himself.
A glimpse of some of those who died:
___
CHARLOTTE BACON, 6
They were supposed to be for the holidays, but finally on Friday, after hearing much begging, Charlotte Bacon's mother relented and let her wear the new pink dress and boots to school.
It was the last outfit the outgoing redhead would ever pick out. Charlotte's older brother, Guy, was also in the school but was not shot.
Her parents, JoAnn and Joel, had lived in Newtown for four or five years, JoAnn's brother John Hagen, of Nisswa, Minn., told Newsday.
"She was going to go some places in this world," Hagen told the newspaper. "This little girl could light up the room for anyone."
___
DANIEL BARDEN, 7
Daniel's family says he was "fearless in the pursuit of happiness in life."
He was the youngest of three children and in a statement to the media, his family said Daniel earned his missing two front teeth and ripped jeans.
"Words really cannot express what a special boy Daniel was. Such a light. Always smiling, unfailingly polite, incredibly affectionate, fair and so thoughtful towards others, imaginative in play, both intelligent and articulate in conversation: in all, a constant source of laughter and joy," the family said.
His father, Mark is a local musician. The New Haven Register reported that Mark was scheduled to play a show at a restaurant in Danbury on Friday, a show that was later cancelled.
On the biography on his professional website, Mark Barden lists spending time with his family as his favorite thing to do.
___
RACHEL D'AVINO, 29
Days before the Connecticut shooting rampage, the boyfriend of Rachel D'Avino had asked her parents for permission to marry her.
D'Avino was a behavioral therapist who had only recently started working at the school where she was killed, according to Lissa Lovetere Stone, a friend who is handling her funeral planned for Friday. D'Avino's boyfriend, Anthony Cerritelli, planned to ask her to marry him on Christmas Eve, Lovetere Stone said.
Lovetere Stone said she met D'Avino in 2005 when D'Avino was assigned to her son, who has autism, in their town of Bethlehem. D'Avino, 29, was so dedicated she'd make home visits and constantly offered guidance on handling situations such as helping her son deal with loud music at a wedding.
"Her job didn't end when the school bell rang at 3 o'clock," Lovetere Stone said.
Police told her family that she shielded one of the students during the rampage, Lovetere Stone said.
"I'm heartbroken. I'm numb," Lovetere Stone said. "I think she taught me more about how to be a good mother to a special needs child than anyone else ever had."
CLICK HERE for the rest of this heartwrenching article.
Thanks to Angela who sent me the following information.
Please watch this video clip - It has a very important lesson for all of us.
So guys - show this to your wife, girlfriend, mom, daughter, in-laws, friends, grandma, cousins etc...
Watch it. Be aware of the Deception behind the CON!
CLICK HERE to watch the video!
After the arrest of seventeen-year-old Austin Reed Sigg for the kidnapping and killing of Jessica Ridgeway, a Westminster elementary schooler, attention naturally turned to the suspect's dad, Robert Sigg, a man whose image as the self-styled ruler of a mini-media empire contrasts with his many arrests. Details and videos below -- including a shot of a younger Austin wearing a cross similar to one found by Westminster police.
READ MORE HERE.
Also read WHO IS AUSTIN REID SIGG?
Fox News said:
Mindy Sigg sat sobbing, listening to prosecutors tell a court that her 17-year-old son had confessed to the abduction and killing of 10-year-old Jessica Ridgeway.
While any mother would be devastated, there was an even more heartbreaking wrinkle for Sigg: She was the one who called police.
It was not the only high-profile case this week in which a mother made that painful choice. In New Jersey, Anita Saunders saw something on a Facebook page that led her to call police.
Her two sons, ages 15 and 17, are now charged with murdering 12-year-old Autumn Pasquale, a bike-lover who authorities said was lured to their home with the promise of new parts.
What does it feel like to turn in your child, knowing they could be sentenced to many years in prison? Surely, no one knows but those who've done it.
But a main motivation, according to one criminologist, is simply a desire to do the right thing.
"These are law-abiding people, pro-social people," said Kathleen Heide, professor of criminology at the University of South Florida. "And besides doing the right thing, the parents often want to get their children help."
Read more HERE.
CLICK HERE for Huffington Post's article on Austin Reid Sigg.
Last week, the reports about the abuse of boys by former Penn State assistant football coach Jerry Sandusky, a founder of the Second Mile program for at-risk youth. The 30-60 year prison term handed down to him will effectively keep him locked away for the rest of his life. Those who work with child sexual abuse victims have welcomed the news.
Then many were even more appalled when news broke out about Jimmy Savile's alleged sexual abuse. The BBC is currently faving accusations of a cover-up. The revelations have been nightmarish and my heart goes out to the victims and their years of painful earth-shattering silence!
Why do humans abuse children - be it innocent boys, little girls or young teenagers?
Jeff Wiehe of The Journal Gazette reported:
Some are as young as 1 or 2 years old. A few are as old as 15.A few of my friends were sexually abused when they were young.
But they come through the doors of the Dr. Bill Lewis Center for Children with stories that share common themes.
A 10-year-old girl told about six years of molestations she suffered at the hands of a middle-aged man she knew.
Another girl, 11, talked about the time an 18-year-old man tried to pull down her underwear and have sex with her after they drove a car around a motorcycle track.
One 12-year-old boy was given an air-soft gun and cash to keep quiet about the sexual abuse he endured.
Children with stories like these are coming to the center – a place where potential child abuse victims from the region are interviewed by forensic specialists – more frequently now.
“We’ve definitely seen an increase from last year,” said Bobbi Golani, the center’s program director. “We’ve opened a second interview room in response to an increasing need. It’s busy.”
The reason for the increase can only be guessed at, according to those involved at the center.
Is it because the Jerry Sandusky scandal at Penn State has made child abuse easier to talk about? Is it because more people know about the center? Is it because there is more awareness of child abuse? Is it because child abuse becomes more prevalent in hard economic times?
Theories abound. MORE HERE.
One of them was abused by his care-giver when he was young - an ordeal that went on for many years and I doubt his parents are aware of it. From pre-teens, he was quite dysfunctional and things came to a head in his fifth form years. He shared it with a few of us and to our horror, he said that no one knew about it and eventually, he liked what she did to him. :-( :-(
Tragically, he was dysfunctional all the way in all his relationships with his family, friends and colleagues. He was cheated of his money many times by unscrupulous guys. Yes, he turned gay. Despite his talent and giftings, he never quite made it because of low self-esteem and the scars from the past that never healed.
Another one was also abused but by a stranger and also turned gay as a result. His fortunes were much better for he eventually married a very rich foreigner, although much older than him.
One of my girlfriends was molested in the elevator. She never told me. And she does not know I know. I only stumbled upon it when I was covering court cases. To my horror, her name was called but she never turned up for the trial so the case which came up seven years after the incident was dismissed. Things fell into place and I realized then why there was always sadness in her eyes.
I am sure there are more rape/abuse/incest cases than what is reported. It is appalling that any human can resort to such animalistic ways to subjugate their victims robbing and destroying not only their childhood but their lives. In the mid-1980's, I attended counselling courses for rape and abuse victims in Singapore and my heart broke into a million fragments when victims related their stories explaining how the situation was exacerbated by the way they were questioned, even blamed by authorities.
There are many reasons why child abuse occurs but honestly, I can never understand nor accept any of excuse or reason because it is something which should not have happened in the first place!
Of all the articles on the recent cases as highlighted, I daresay the most passionately written one is by Howard Jacobson in The Independent titled My father knew Jimmy Savile. See the good in him, he told me. That was the mistake we all made.
Excerpt:
So, is philanthropy the last refuge of the scoundrel?
When you have things to conceal – a criminal past, a ruthlessly accumulated fortune, a predilection for underage girls, or just a hankering to be better thought of than you deserve – what works better than giving to charity? Give munificently and ostentatiously – for there’s no advantage in hiding your light under the same bushel you hide your dirty secret – and a knighthood will surely come your way, to say nothing of the devotion of your beneficiaries, and therefrom, if you’re smart, ample opportunity to pursue your secret predilections even further. Crime, charity, crime: call it the perpetual motion of the immoralist.
It’s not my intention to be cynical. The charitable impulse is honourable and more than ever necessary in these cruel times; we cannot afford it to be discredited by dubious motives – whether of the criminal or simply the inadequate sort. (I’m thinking of Kitty’s friend Varenka in Anna Karenina who devotes herself to good works because she can’t otherwise find a centre to her life.)
My father knew Jimmy Savile a little and spoke with admiration of the charity work he saw him do at close quarters. “But the man’s a creepy nincompoop,” I used to say. “He has the dead face of a thug, makes ridiculous noises, and aspires to the condition of a slow-to-develop infant. You’d have had me adopted had I behaved like that when I was three.” “As usual you’re quick to make judgements about people you don’t know,” my father replied with justice, for I was at university and dropped judgements the way an autumn tree drops leaves. “You should see him with disabled kids. You should see the pleasure he brings them.”
Predatious
My father was a taxi driver in Manchester when he met Jimmy Savile. For some reason Savile liked the company of taxi drivers and often joined them in their hut at Piccadilly Station. I attach no sexual significance to this, not least because I can’t, for the life of me, see any. It’s hard to imagine how you’d prey on the innocence of a Manchester taxi driver. But you never know. Perhaps he needed their discretion. Or occasionally craved the conversation of grown-ups.
He gave his time freely, anyway, to the annual Manchester taxi drivers’ convoy of disabled children to Blackpool, an event which my father helped to organise, chivvying other drivers and spending weeks decorating his own cab with toys and balloons. It doesn’t fall to everybody to be good with disabled children on an outing such as this. At the behest of my father, I tried once and failed. But he was excellent at it, naturally kind and jolly, not distressed into uselessness as I had been, and Jimmy Savile, he assured me, was even better. That being the case, one has to take one’s hat off to him. Behaving as though you’re a child yourself has its uses.
That I know of, my father never had to square Jimmy Savile’s charitable work with his predatiousness. Certainly he never said anything to suggest he was aware of it, as it’s becoming more evident by the day that many at the BBC were. Mark Thompson has unwisely said he had never heard a word, which confirms one’s suspicions that he didn’t have a clue about much, including what was going on in the institution he ran. But how other people at the BBC who did have a clue managed to arrange their suspicions into complaisance is a question we are bound to ask.
Blackmail
Ditto tabloid journalists who have been half inclined to use the Savile revelations as a reminder to Leveson of the importance of exposing public figures, but who should be reminded in turn of their failure to expose this public figure when no one was stopping them from doing so. No one except Savile himself, that is. It’s said he blackmailed any paper about to unmask him with the threat of putting an end to his giving, but it’s difficult to imagine a threat like that shutting any decent journalist up. Indeed, the threat itself would only have made the story juicier. That it might have silenced some of the staff of the homes, hospitals and special schools he supported, and from which he is said to have drawn a plentiful supply of victims, is easier to understand if not to forgive. You need a hard nose to survive as a charity.
PLEASE CLICK HERE for the rest of the entry.
My heart goes out to all victims of abuse..even to the comfort women in WWII. I cannot fathom how one can be so heinous to do such despicable acts. Also, there is the silent assumption that women are 'smutty playthings' as highlighted by Janet Street Porter HERE in her article titled This was never just about Jimmy Savile. Too many men in TV and radio see women as smutty playthings.
The Daily Mail has also revealed the existence of a fake letter that cast doubt on Savile victim's claims... and played key role in BBC decision to ditch its News Night investigation.
Savile was famous for his yodel and his catchphrases included "how's about that, then?", "now then, now then, now then", "goodness gracious", "as it 'appens" and "guys and gals". Perhaps now, those phrases actually shed lots of light on his dark side that SOME knew and did something about it but was never supported by those in power because of self interests.
The Telegraph reported HERE that a senior member of the staff at the BBC confronted Jimmy Savile over rumours of suspected child abuse more than 20 years ago, it has emerged.
What is shocking is that in many cases (not just the ones mentioned here), there are those who walk the corridors of power who protect the perpretators without batting an eyelid!
There is more than meets the eye. Even in the field of entertainment, this is a problem. Just google for 'paedophilia' and the names of famous producers and you will see what I mean.
I believe mankind has regressed. True, all this occurred even in the dark ages, 17th or 18th century. But the difference is this - our generation is supposed to be more enlightened and educated so if that is the case, why do see so many scoundrelous fiends surfacing, one by one?
That is the sad state of affairs in the world today. Hypocrites, criminals, child abusers, paedophiles, con men/women strutting around in sheep's clothing....ever ready to pounce on gullible, ignorant or helpless victims!
Remember - Child abuse is more than bruises and broken bones. While physical abuse might be the most visible, other types of abuse, such as emotional abuse and neglect, also leave deep, lasting scars. The earlier abused children get help, the greater chance they have to heal and break the cycle—rather than perpetuating it. By learning about common signs of abuse and what you can do to intervene, you can make a huge difference in a child’s life. (from HERE)
According to UNICEF Malaysia, an average of 7 children in Malaysia suffered abuse everyday in 2009, and these were only the reported cases.
Victims must not keep quiet. Those who suspect such cases must not keep quiet either. More importantly, parents must educate their children so that they know what to do at first instinct! Sometimes the people whom the children trusted are the worst perpetrators, e.g. in boarding house situations. The scars really last through the tunnels of time...deep set wounds that re-surface in adulthood. I have seen it happening in the lives of people I know.
Signs of physical child abuse
- Have unexplained burns, cuts, bites, bruises, broken bones or black eyes.
- Seems frightened and reluctant to go home.
- Fear of a particular person or family member.
- Seems unusually withdrawn or overly aggressive.
- Have numerous fractures, welts or bruises in various stages of healing.
Signs of sexual child abuse
- Sudden refusal in participation of physical activities.
- Shows unusual sexual knowledge or behaviour.
- Have difficulty walking or sitting.
- Irritation of genital or anal areas.
- Juvenile prostitution, pregnancy or sexually transmitted infections.
Signs of emotional child abuse
- Apathy, depression and hostility.
- Shows extreme in behavior such as over demanding or extreme passivity.
- Have attempted suicide.
- Have low self-esteem.
- Recurrent nightmares, disturbed sleep patterns or a sudden fear of the dark.
- Hunger and inadequate growth from poor nutrition.
- Consistently dirty, offensive body odour, unkempt.
- Inappropriate and lack of sufficient clothing.
- Failure to get needed medical care, illness left untreated.
- Poor school performance, tardiness or absenteeism. MORE HERE
Be aware and help to raise awareness. Authorities and concerned quarters must do their part to stop these fiends and to provide the support, counselling and rehabilitation so desperately needed by victims. God help us!
Remember - it should not hurt to be a kid or a teenager.
Recommended readings:
1. Dr. Jim Hopper, "Child Abuse - Statistics, Research and Resources"
2. What is Child Abuse?
3. Preventing Child Abuse
4. A saddening list of some of the most notorious acts of violence against children ever
For millions of British children, Jimmy Savile was the TV presenter who promised to make their dreams come true. Now it appears he has been haunting the memories of some of them — and could be turning into a nightmare for his former employer, the BBC.
Savile, who died last year, hosted prime-time children’s shows in the U.K., including the wishes-come-true favorite, Jim’ll Fix It, and raised over £40 million ($64 million) for charity throughout his life. But in a documentary aired on British commercial television last week, five women claimed to have been raped, molested or forced to commit sexual acts on Savile when they were underage, often on the premises of the BBC, for whom Savile worked. Since the documentary aired, over 40 women have made similar allegations.
The BBC is now facing accusations of an institutional cover-up as it emerges that producers, press officers, executives and other presenters at the BBC were aware of Savile’s alleged behavior at the time. The publicly funded broadcaster buckled under pressure to acknowledge the “horrifying” allegations last week, vowing to support the police in any investigations, although it has insisted that there is “nothing to suggest any wrongdoing was ignored by management.” Prime Minister David Cameron has described the allegations as “deeply, deeply troubling” and hinted in a television interview that Savile could be posthumously stripped of his knighthood.
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The Sun (UK) reported: Family remove Jimmy Savile headstone out of ‘respect to public’
While the police and government leaders were touting about the reduction in crime rate and blame the media for creating a perception that crime is rife, several Malaysiakini staff were having first-hand experiences as victims of crime just last month.
One of them was traumatised in a gang robbery, while three others suffered losses after their cars were either stolen or broken into.
Here are their personal accounts taken from Malaysiakini. Take care and keep safe.
Website and communications executive Subendran Ravindran
I was robbed in the wee hours of July 24 near the Sime Darby Medical Centre in Subang Jaya by two men.
It happened at 1.28am as I was walking to a teh tarik stall near the Subang Business Centre in SS15 after visiting a relative at the emergency ward of the medical centre.
I saw two men standing about 60 metres away from me. As I walked past between them, one of them asked for directions to some place.
Then, all of a sudden, he grabbed my shirt collar with both hands. As I struggled, the other guy came towards me with I believed was a steel rod from a car jack.
Speaking in Tamil, they asked me to take off my clothes. I refused, despite them telling me to do so three times.
I was struggling to get out of the assailant's grasp and we were moving in circles, while the other stood by, ready to swing the steel rod at my head. They then demanded my wallet and handphone, which I refused to hand over. The guy holding my collar punched me on the face.
Just then, I spotted a car nearby, with two other men in it looking at us. A four-member gang, I thought, and decided it would make no sense to fight them. I gave in.
They grabbed my handphone and wallet - in which I had just RM30, my bank ATM card, MyKad and a few other personal things - and then dashed into the car which sped off.
I immediately made a police report. The car was a Proton Iswara, greyish or blue in colour and I'm certain about the number plate - BFY 5334.
My advice: Be more alert, especially when it is dark. And be mindful of cars with two or three men roaming around in a particular area. I could have avoided this if I did not assume that the two men who grabbed me were restaurant workers.
Journalist Lee Long Hui
My car was stolen from the outdoor car park at Stadium Melawati in Shah Alam between 8.30pm and 10.30pm on July 17 while I was watching an exhibition basketball match there.
I had parked my second-hand Proton Waja, which I bought for RM20,000 no more than a month ago, at the outdoor car park. The Proton was my first-ever car and I got to love it very much.
As I walked back after the game, I noticed that the car park was very dark due to insufficient street lighting. I found my car missing, and I went straight to the police station to make a report.
Fortunately, 11 days later the police found my car abandoned in a residential area in Petaling Jaya. It was in very bad condition. The boot was severely dented, the left side mirror broken and there were scratches all over the car.
However, the engine was intact and in fine condition. Nothing inside the car was taken and I have just filed the damages claim with my insurance company.
What also disappointed me greatly was that the investigating officer told me "there is no criminal case involved" as I got my car back.
Even if I had got my car back within two weeks, the police officer's attitude annoyed me - and the fact that the culprits are still out there and probably joking about the ‘joy ride' that they had with my car.
Senior videographer Tan Jiun Wuu
My car window was smashed on the night of July 24 as I was having dinner with a colleague at Old Klang Road and I lost my camera and video-shooting equipment costing more than RM10,000.
My colleague and I arrived at the Chinese food outlet around 9.30pm that day, driving there separately in our cars. We parked our cars back to back, beside a bus stop under a street lamp close to the shop.
We finished our meal an hour later and upon reaching the parking spot, we saw a few people inspecting my car. One man on a mountain bike told me that the front passenger seat window of the car was smashed.
He then showed me his police identity card, told me to lodge a report and left, saying he would be on the lookout for the thieves.
According to a witness at the bus stop, the theft happened five to 10 minutes before my colleague and I got back to our cars, and that it was done by a gang of four. One of them used his elbow to smash the window.
It was my carelessness for not bringing my equipment along. These were in a bag that I placed under the front passenger seat. The camera and other equipment belonging to Malaysiakini were gone. Besides these, nothing else was stolen.
The road was busy at that time and there were buses stopping frequently to drop and pick up passengers.
After I made my police report, the officer who recorded my statement told me that even police cars, adorned with the police logo and all, have had their windows smashed and some of their equipment stolen.
He also showed me a device thugs use to detect electronic items kept inside cars. The China-made device is also used by the police as well and it can detect anything with a clock running in it, such as laptop and camera with a time feature, even if the main battery is removed.
The police officer advised me not to keep any electronic item in the car, even in the boot, because the device can easily detect them.
Assistant news editor Kuek Ser Kuang Keng
The rear passenger window was smashed on the night of July 5, while parked on Lorong Abdullah in Bangsar Utama, near the Malaysiakini office. However, the window remained intact because of the anti-theft security film on it.
Due to insufficient parking space in the area, many workers park their cars along the quiet road leading to the KTM quarters. There have been numerous car break-ins reported in the area - and it was my turn that night.
Fortunately, the glass window did not break through because of the tinted window security film, and so nothing inside was taken. And yes, luckily I do have windscreen insurance for my car.
Source: HERE
After a week’s work in the slums of Chennai, I stopped over in Petaling Jaya for the weekend en route to Sydney. I heard from friends alarming stories of abductions and killings, assaults and robberies in Malaysia.
A week earlier a decomposed torso was found washed up by heavy rains in Jalan SS22/21 in Damansara Jaya - less than five minutes’ walk from where I lived. One might feel safer navigating the urban chaos and mass human traffic in the capital city of Tamil Nadu than wandering in the shopping mall car park and streets of PJ and KL. With each bloodier crime reported in the media, community fear goes up a notch.
Pemandu had urged for more “balanced reporting” to allay the public fear. Crime reporting, however, is fraught with difficulties when headlines are driven by blood and gore. The more frequently crime stories are highlighted, and sensationalised, by the tabloids - the more we feel unsafe. Anxiety and insecurity then breeds distrust of strangers and neighbours, stereotyping of criminality by ethnicity and fear stoking by right-wing populist parties.
Should the media restrain and sanitise its crime reporting? Certainly not. Crime stories follow the crime rates. The higher the crime rates, the more the crime stories. But, journalists should know that for every crime story written, there could be many that go unreported. Pemandu’s statement of a 40 percent decline in street crime from January to May this year doesn’t explain the community anxiety over ‘rising’ crime in the city.
I received an email from a BFM89.9 Radio journalist when I arrived in Sydney. Referring to my article ‘Reporting crime in context’, the journalist, Lee Jian Chung, asked “why are Malaysian media organisations not pursuing critical and contextual stories about crime?”
The plausible factors are - short turnaround of breaking news, ‘if it bleeds it leads’ news value in commercial media, prevalence of ‘cue journalism’ (as termed by a colleague, Mustafa K. Anuar from Universiti Sains Malaysia), journalists who see crime incidents as events rather than as symptoms of broader socio-economic issues and woefully inadequate policing, journalists who uncritically assume that what the authorities say are true without verifying its factual and contextual accuracy.
The real question is how can Malaysian journalists do better in their crime reporting?
Go beyond traditional sources
My suggestion is simple - delve into the context, and go beyond the traditional sources for explanation - police, NGOs, government departments. Saying that sources are not willing to speak is a cop-out. Good journalists persist. They should go with their instincts, put on their critical thinking caps, tenaciously research and consult with alternative sources to make sense of the perceived rise in crime in the city.
Journalists should crunch the numbers released by the authorities, study the crime patterns, time and where they’re committed, the hot spots, the demographics of the perpetrators. Based on available evidence and a clear understanding of the context, work out a theory.
Indeed, journalists routinely work on assumptions. But good journalists test their assumptions on available evidence to form a theory. Then, they approach expert sources for reactions. Herein lies the essence of critical purposive reporting - which takes self-belief to investigate, time to write, and dedication to follow through.
Purposive journalism could be guided by having SMART goals in mind (acronym borrowed from the field of counseling that refers to goals that are specific, measurable, achievable, realistic and time-limited).
Applied to purposive SMART crime reporting, it would mean the stories should aim to stir public discussion that will lead to identifying the specific improvements badly needed in the policing system; publicising the measurable achievements or otherwise by the authorities in tackling the rising crime in specific communities; in collaboration with the stakeholders, develop achievable anti-crime community action plans; responsive reporting and monitoring of criminal activities; and truthful account of what’s going on in the community, what’s lacking in the law and enforcement sector.
Good journalists don’t just report what the authorities and experts say. Good journalists go beyond ‘he said this’ and ‘she said that’. Good journalists check it out for themselves and test their theories with independent sources and the people on the streets.
Thus, when the home minister and his underlings say the crime rate has declined, that should set off crime reporters’ crap detector to ask why doesn’t it feel like it when you walk the streets after dark or withdraw money from the ATM machine?
ERIC LOO left Malaysia for Australia in 1986 to work as a journalist. He currently lectures at University of Wollongong, Australia, and also mentors international journalism students via UPIU.com, run by United Press International. He edits a refereed journal Asia Pacific Media Educator published by SAGE Publications (New Delhi) and conducts journalism training workshops in Asia.
Last month, The Malaysian Insider carried a report here about how "PEMANDU has called on the media to play its role in fighting crime and help arrest the “doom and gloom” by reporting on solved cases and not sensationalising crime by repeatedly reporting the same news angle.
Putrajaya’s efficiency unit, tasked with helping the police reduce crime under its Government Transformation Programme (GTP), has staunchly defended statistics showing street crime has fallen by 40 per cent in the past two years despite a recent spate of high-profile kidnappings and assaults."
In an editorial HERE, The Malaysian Insider said:
Numbers don’t tell the stories that people pass on to each other, the violence and the fear among those who have been robbed in broad daylight or in the wee hours of the morning in what are supposedly safe areas.
In addition, there are several hundred thousand foreign security guards who protect Malaysian neighbourhoods, some which are now gated but still report incidents of crime.
It is an open secret that a fair number of Malaysians have lost trust in the police force and therefore don’t report crimes when they happen. Or often enough, are discouraged from reporting petty crime.
So instead of lecturing the media on what to do and what not to, Jala and his colleagues in PEMANDU should step off their pedestal and acknowledge that window dressing and cosmetic change have their limits.
Malaysians don’t feel safe, and it doesn’t matter if the mass media reports it or not. There is enough social media to put flesh to the bare bones that statistics do to explain the crime rate in the country.
So, are statistics ever reliable where crime is concerned? No.
We have to bear in mind the existence of the dark figure.
The Dark Figure of (or for) crime is a term employed by criminologists and sociologists to describe the amount of unreported or undiscovered crime, which calls into question the reliability of official crime statistics.
Instead of looking at statistics of reported crimes, our authorities should carry out victim studies, such as the research associated with the British Crime Survey (BCS) to provide an insight into the amount of unreported crime in order to provide a better perspective of crime in our country.
According to this site:
Not all the crimes that take place are reported to, or recorded by, the police. Given this, sociologists refer to the gap between the official level of crime and the amount of crime in the community as the dark figure of crime. For a crime to be recorded, at least three things must happen:
- Somebody must be aware that a crime has taken place.
- That crime must be reported.
- The police or other agency must accept that a law has been broken.
1. Some crimes are not reported to the police because:
- The general public regards them as too trivial.
- The victim finds the matter embarrassing.
- Individuals are unaware that they are victims (e.g., fraud or confidence tricks).
- Lack of confidence or trust in the police
- A fear of reprisals or victimisation
- The victim may take law into own hands—a form of rough justice.
- Children may not understand issues.
- Victim may not want to harm the offender (e.g., domestic violence and abuse).
2. Some crimes are much more likely to be reported and recorded than others:
- Where insurance claims for cars or household goods are involved
- Serious crimes are more likely to be reported than trivial offences.
- Media campaigns or the reporting of high-profile cases can lead to "moral panics" and sensitize the general public to the existence of crime and thus reporting behaviour. This is known as "deviance amplification".
- Different police forces employ different categories and paperwork.
- There are campaigns that lead to crackdowns on certain crimes or offences, such as drunk driving at Christmas.
- Some forces will pay less attention to certain types of offence, such as the decision by the Met to liberalize the policing of soft drugs in Brixton in 2002.
- A shift from informal or community policing to stricter, military-style policing and zero tolerance campaigns, or vice versa, will influence crime rates.
4. Changes in legislation, technologies and police manpower can influence the crime figures:
- Some existing offences may be decriminalised or downgraded (e.g., homosexuality, abortion, some drug offences).
- New offences may be created (e.g., cyber crime, not wearing seat belts, driving whilst using a mobile phone).
- The wider availability of telephones, alarm technologies, private security staff and closed-circuit cameras can make it easier to report offences and incidents.
- The number of police officers per capita has doubled in the UK since 1861. Furthermore, the police now employ civilians to deal with routine back-office tasks that have freed up uniformed officers and other professionals for other tasks.
- There are now more high-value consumer goods, such as domestic electronics or cars, to steal than in the past.
- Wider coverage for insurance has increased the incentives to report crimes.
- Changes in the age distribution of the population can influence the crime rate. Fewer young people can lead to a reduction in deviance and delinquency.
- The decline in close-knit communities and greater population mobility can reduce informal social control and influence the crime rate.
- Changing norms and values can influence the crime rate. For example, members of the public are now less tolerant of child abuse or domestic violence than in the past.
But why are crime rates spiralling? Absolute Truth Network offers very good reasons HERE.
According to another report:
The mother of a Penang federal lawmaker was robbed at knifepoint in a pre-dawn home invasion in George Town this morning, The Star reported on its website today.
According to the newspaper, Fatimah Ahmad — the mother of Balik Pulau MP Yusmadi Yusoff — was awoken by an armed burglar demanding cash and valuables from her.
Today’s robbery joins a recent high-profile crime cases that has struck fear into the hearts of Malaysians, including a break-in at the home of former Malacca Chief Minister Tan Sri Abdul Rahim Thamby Chik in Kuala Lumpur; an ATM robbery in Carrefour, Wangsa Maju that saw about RM1.2 million in cash carted away; and the recent carjacking and kidnapping of a Singaporean family in Johor.
These were preceded by the kidnapping of a 12-year-old Dutch schoolboy in Mont Kiara, and a vicious robbery-and-assault on a schoolteacher that required the victim to be put into an induced coma due to the severity of her wounds.
Yesterday, three men attempted to break into the home of Research for Social Advancement (Refsa) researcher Ong Kian Ming in broad daylight. They left after threatening the scholar, who was home at the time.
The authorities have sought to play down citizens’ concerns over crime, saying crime rate statistics do not support the perception.
The government’s Performance Management and Delivery Unit (Pemandu) also came out to blame the media for “sensationalising” crime. MORE HERE.
The authorities must take action to arrest this disturbing trend because our safety and even investor confidence is at stake!!!
So do we matter???
At this point of time, I am sure many of you out there would rather be singing the oldie Guantanamera (which means 'Woman from Guantanamo') than to be thinking of Guantanamo, thanks to certain notes made public as reported HERE. Apparently, there was a legal dispute over the rightful composer of 'Guantanamera'. After a long battle, the Supreme Court of Cuba credited José Fernández Diaz, known as JoseÃto Fernández as the sole composer of the music in 1993. (CLICK HERE for Celia Cruz's video.)
Ironically, the lyrics to the song relate to a woman from Guantánamo (the easternmost province of Cuba. Its capital is also called Guantánamo.), with whom Fernández had a romantic relationship, and who eventually left him. The alleged real story behind these lyrics (or at least one of many versions of the song's origin that Fernández suggested during his lifetime) is that she did not have a romantic interest in him, but merely a platonic one. If the details are to be believed, she had brought him a steak sandwich one day as a present to the radio station where he worked. He stared at some other woman (and attempted to flirt with her) while eating the sandwich, and his friend yanked it out of his hands in disgust, cursed him and left. He never saw her again. These words are rarely sung today. (Source: HERE)
What about Guantanamo, to be more exact - Guantanamo Bay Detention Camp?
According to THIS LINK:
The Guantanamo Bay detention camp is a controversial detainment and interrogation facility of the United States located within Guantanamo Bay Naval Base, Cuba. The facility was established in 2002 by the Bush Administration to hold detainees from the war in Afghanistan and later Iraq.
It is operated by the Joint Task Force Guantanamo (JTF-GTMO) of the United States government in Guantanamo Bay Naval Base, which is on the shore of Guantánamo Bay.[1] The detainment areas consist of three camps: Camp Delta (which includes Camp Echo), Camp Iguana, and Camp X-Ray, the last of which has been closed. The facility is often referred to as Guantánamo, G-Bay or GTMO, after the military abbreviation for the Guantanamo Bay Naval Base.
After the US Department of Justice advised that the Guantanamo Bay detention camp could be considered outside U.S. legal jurisdiction, the first twenty captives arrived at Guantanamo on January 11, 2002. After the Bush administration asserted that detainees were not entitled to any of the protections of the Geneva Conventions, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Hamdan v. Rumsfeld on June 29, 2006, that they were entitled to the minimal protections listed under Common Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions.
Following this, on July 7, 2006, the Department of Defense issued an internal memo stating that prisoners would in the future be entitled to protection under Common Article 3. Susan J. Crawford, who was appointed by Secretary of Defense Robert Gates to review practices used at Guantanamo Bay, told Bob Woodward of the Washington Post in an interview in January 2009 that Mohammed al-Qahtani was tortured while being held prisoner at Guantanamo Bay, making her the first Bush administration official to concede that torture occurred there. MORE AT THIS LINK.
If you want to know what goes on there, CLICK THIS LINK that will lead you to lots of information.
Other recommended readings:
Huffington Post's article which has 4, 288 comments!!! (must read, must watch!!!)
Sesame Street - Songs of War by Christopher Cerf,who has won two Grammy Awards and three Emmy Awards for his music.
Al-Jazeera's Report on Songs of War
Music in Psychological Operations
The Daily Mail's article
The Guardian's article
