Human Trafficking

28 12 2009

By Timothy D. Naegele[1]

Lots of Americans may not know that human trafficking exists in the Twenty-First Century, much less in their hometowns and where they work.  The Kansas City Star has a fine article on the subject entitled, “U.S. system to find, help victims of trafficking is broken,” which everyone should read.  It is an eye-opener; however, it merely touches on one of the greatest tragedies in the world today, which must be dealt with and eradicated.

In comments following the article, I wrote:

This is a terrific article; and its authors, Mike McGraw and Laura Bauer, are to be congratulated on such fine reporting.  Seldom have I seen an excellent piece of investigative reporting about this subject of such importance.

Years ago I read an article about a Korean girl who began as a “comfort woman” for the Japanese military during World War II.  She and other women traveled with the military, and were forced to provide non-stop sex to Japanese soldiers.  Toward the end of the war, somehow she escaped and made her way back to Korea where her family disowned her because of the shame that she had caused them.  She married, to an abusive husband, and finally left that marriage and found happiness with another Korean man.

Also, I read an article about a woman in the former Yugoslavia who was caught up in the fighting there, and lost both her husband and son, and ended up in a refugee camp.  There, she and other women were told about opportunities to become secretaries across the Adriatic in Bari, Italy where I have been years ago.  When she arrived, she and the other women were forced into prostitution.  Only when the Italian police raided the house where she was enslaved did she escape.

There are approximately 50,000 human slaves in the U.S., and more than a million worldwide.  It is so tragic, yet little or nothing is being done about it, which is why this article is so important.

I brought the issue to the attention of someone who is very close to President Obama’s two top campaign chiefs, and never heard back from him on the subject.

I include my comments here, not because they contain great wisdom, but because it is the easiest means of highlighting an issue of enormous importance.  Every year we read about lots of cases here in the U.S., where children are kidnapped and never found again.  Clearly, the case of Jaycee Lee Dugard, an 11-year-old girl who was kidnapped from South Lake Tahoe in 1991, and who was found alive recently, riveted national attention.  She was kept as a sex slave[2]; however, her story is not unique.  There are lots of women like her in the United States and elsewhere in the world today.  Men are victims as well, as Mike McGraw and Laura Bauer have discussed in their article.

Too often when we hear of such stories, we think that it could never touch our lives or the lives of our loved ones or friends.  Tragically, that is what Jaycee Lee Dugard’s family thought; and the same was true of the family of Elizabeth Smart whose kidnapping occurred on June 5, 2002, when she was abducted from her Salt Lake City, Utah bedroom at the age of 14.  She was found nine months later, after having been held as a sex slave too.[3]

While there are issues galore facing Americans today (e.g., the economy, national security, wars), human trafficking cannot be one that is shunted aside and forgotten.  It is too important.

© 2009, Timothy D. Naegele

[1] Mr. Naegele was counsel to the U.S. Senate Banking Committee, and chief of staff to Presidential Medal of Freedom recipient and former U.S. Senator Edward W. Brooke (R-Mass), the first black senator since Reconstruction after the U.S. Civil War.  He practices law in Washington, D.C. and Los Angeles with his firm, Timothy D. Naegele & Associates (www.naegele.com).  He has an undergraduate degree in economics from UCLA, as well as two law degrees from the School of Law (Boalt Hall), University of California, Berkeley, and from Georgetown University.  He is a member of the District of Columbia and California bars.  He served as a Captain in the U.S. Army, assigned to the Defense Intelligence Agency at the Pentagon, where he received the Joint Service Commendation Medal.  Mr. Naegele is an Independent politically; and he is listed in Who’s Who in America, Who’s Who in American Law, and Who’s Who in Finance and Business. He has written extensively over the years.  See, e.g., www.naegele.com/whats_new.html#articles

[2] See, e.g., http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kidnapping_of_Jaycee_Lee_Dugard

[3] See, e.g., http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elizabeth_Smart

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21 responses

16 01 2011
Timothy D. Naegele (04:04:33) :

Rape: Justice Is A Distant Dream

The UK’s Economist has an important article about rape in Africa and elsewhere, which should be read.

See http://www.economist.com/node/17900482

Few people realize today that as the Soviet Army moved through Germany at the end of World War II, they raped at least two million German women in what is now acknowledged as the largest case of mass rape in history.

See, e.g., https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2010/02/06/the-silent-voices-of-stalin%E2%80%99s-soviet-holocaust-and-mao%E2%80%99s-chinese-holocaust/

I had a secretary in Washington, D.C., who was a young girl in Berlin when it happened; and she told me that no human being should ever see what she did. I will remember what she told me as long as I live.

Equally important is the issue of human trafficking, inter alia, because that issue and rape are often inextricable. In the article that I have written above, I cite two women—one from Korea, and the other from the former Yugoslavia—who were victims of both.

Indeed, if Afghanistan falls, the mass rapes and killings in that country are apt to be staggering.

. . .

Lastly, someone who is very dear to me described this whole discussion as “Depressing.” I agree completely, but the spotlight must be turned on such issues, or nothing will ever be done to prevent them from happening again and again, throughout the world. Woman and young girls are victims, especially in Africa. Women who have been raped know this better than most people.

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21 05 2012
Timothy D. Naegele (14:31:15) :

Shame On Japan

Comfort Women Memorial

In an article entitled, “Japanese officials ask New Jersey town to REMOVE memorial to Korean sex slaves captured by Japan in World War II,” the UK’s Daily Mail has reported:

Last month, Japanese officials visited Palisades Park, a suburban enclave across the Hudson River from New York City, with a curious request: they wanted the town to remove a small plaque in front of the public library.

In 2010, Palisades Park installed a memorial to the thousands of Korean women and girls that were enslaved by the Japanese during World War II.

The town says that it is the first such dedication to the so-called ‘Comfort Women’ and refused the Japanese officials’ request, igniting a decades long quest to raise awareness of the victims’ plight.

. . .

‘In memory of the more than 200,000 women and girls who were abducted by the armed forces of the government of imperial Japan,’ the plaque reads.

‘Known as “comfort women,” they endured human rights violations that no peoples should leave unrecognized. Let us never forget the horrors of crimes against humanity.’

. . .

After the war, many of the women were brutally slaughtered and their story was first told in 1991.

Two years after the memorial was installed, Japanese officials requested a meeting with Palisades Park Mayor James Rotundo, who helped unveil the monument.

The two discussed ‘niceties,’ Mr Rotundo told the paper, before Mr Hiroki pulled out two documents and began to read aloud a formal acknowledgement and apology from the government of Japan to the surviving comfort women.

He then requested that the memorial be removed, Mr Rotundo said, and mentioned that the Japanese government would be willing to plant cherry trees and donate books to the library in its absence.

The offer was rejected.

Shortly afterwards, Japanese officials requested a second meeting with the mayor, but were not as formal.

‘They said the comfort women were a lie, that they were set up by an outside agency, that they were women who were paid to come and take care of the troops,’ the Mr Rotundo told the New York Times.

‘I said, “We’re not going to take it down, but thanks for coming.”‘

The Japanese counsel general’s office refuted the idea that the Japanese government would offer a reward for the removal of the monument, but said the talks about comfort women were ‘quite complicated.’

Korean American groups say that after the incident, they will seek to install more monuments to raise awareness about comfort women.

See http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2147248/Japanese-officials-ask-U-S-town-remove-memorial-Korean-sex-slaves-captured-Japan-World-War-II.html (emphasis added); see also http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/19/nyregion/monument-in-palisades-park-nj-irritates-japanese-officials.html

The mere idea that the Japanese officials would have the gall to ask for the removal of the memorial, and lie about what happened during World War II, speaks volumes.

The consul general of Japan, Shigeyiki Hiroki, should be deported immediately and banished forever from the United States. What the Japanese did to the “comfort women” and others was and is unspeakable, barbarian, and shameful; and it must never be forgotten.

If we are to remember other horrific events of World War II, this must be remembered too. The Japanese killed the human spirit, and yes tortured the women, aside from killing them physically. They were every bit as cruel and brutal as Hitler’s thugs, if not worse.

Shame on Japan!

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10 03 2013
Timothy D. Naegele (15:22:34) :

Teenage Sex Slave Raped 90 Times In One Weekend Despite Authorities Saying She Wasn’t At Risk

The UK’s Daily Mail has reported:

A teenage girl was raped 90 times in one weekend it has been revealed, in a shocking report into modern-day slavery in the UK.

The report, due to be published tomorrow by the Centre for Social Justice, contains evidence from the girl, who was 16 at the time she was taken into slavery and raped by 90 men.

The girl, who gave evidence to the committee despite still being ‘deeply traumatised’ by the attacks, did not come from a background which put her at risk, but became enslaved after befriending girls vulnerable to abuse, it has been reported.

Andrew Wallis, chairman of the working group that produced the report, would only tell the committee the girl ‘is now safe’ when asked what had happened to her since the attacks, according to the Sunday Times.

The report claims efforts to tackle modern slavery in the UK, including the sexual exploitation of children, are in a state of crisis.

The . . . investigation uncovered a ‘shocking underworld’ of human trafficking.

Its study found more than 1,000 adults and children were trafficked into or within the UK in 2011/2012, but the figure could be ‘only the tip of the iceberg’.

Among the cases were British and foreign victims who had been forced into the sex trade, a life of crime or domestic labour.

British girls trafficked within Britain for the sex trade made up nearly one half of all UK slavery victims in the latest set of figures.

. . .

‘Elements of control in these cases can be subtle and difficult to identify; this control frequently takes the form of sexual and other forms of violence, physical or emotional abuse, threats of violence towards family members or threats of public shaming.’

See http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2291037/Centre-Social-Justice-Teenage-sex-slave-raped-90-times-weekend-despite-authorities-saying-wasnt-risk.html (emphasis added)

As one commenter has written:

There are 27 million people worldwide who are trafficked and enslaved right now. To make a difference please go to either Shared Hope International or ECPAT UK. The reason people do it [is] because [it is] more profitable than drug trafficking or any other criminal activity. It’s also easier and less risky.

See, e.g., http://sharedhope.org/ and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ECPAT and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavery

Stories like this are seldom told; however, this is merely one example of daily occurrences everywhere. Human slavery and trafficking are rampant in the UK, the United States and globally; and they will only get far worse as economic conditions worsen. They must be stopped!

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13 10 2014
Timothy D. Naegele (21:54:49) :

Thousands of Yazidi Women Sold As Sex Slaves [UPDATED]

Yazidi Women
[Displaced Yazidis cross Syrian-Iraqi border]

An article in the UK’s Telegraph—subtitled, “Article in Islamic State’s English-language online magazine Dabiq not only admits selling Yazidi women into sex slavery but justifies it according to the theological rulings of early Islam”—states in pertinent part:

The women were seized when [Islamic State jihadists] swept across parts of northern Iraq in early August.

When the jihadists attacked areas occupied by Yazidis, the West’s attention focused on the tens of thousands of refugees who crowded on to the barren hills of nearby Mount Sinjar, before they were rescued by Kurdish fighters.

But thousands more were surrounded and captured in nearby towns and villages.

The article does not specify that they are to be used as sex slaves, but later on equates them with “concubines”.

The Islamic State newsletter, released online at the weekend, also contains an article by John Cantlie, a British journalist being held hostage, in which he says he fears he will soon be killed like his four fellow hostages, James Foley, Steven Sotloff, David Haines and Alan Henning.

But most of it is devoted to theological justifications for Islamic State behaviour, citing early clerics and the practices of the Prophet Mohammed and his Companions during the early years of Islamic expansion.

“The enslaved Yazidi families are now sold by the Islamic State soldiers as the mushrikin were sold by the Companions before them,” the article, entitled “The Revival of Slavery before the Hour”, says.

It says that “well-known” rules are observed, including not separating mothers from their children – something which may account for the number of teenage girls being used in this way, according to their families.

It says that 20 per cent of women are being taken in this way, in accordance with rules demanding a fifth of property captured in war to be handed over as tax.

The women are also given the chance to convert to Islam.

“This large-scale enslavement of mushrik families is probably the first since the abandonment of this sharia law,” the article says.

“The only other known case – albeit much smaller – is that of the enslavement of Christian women and children in the Philippines and Nigeria by the mujahedeen there.”

See http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/islamic-state/11158797/Thousands-of-Yazidi-women-sold-as-sex-slaves-for-theological-reasons-says-Isil.html; see also http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/islamic-state/11160906/Isil-carried-out-massacres-and-mass-sexual-enslavement-of-Yazidis-UN-confirms.html (“Isil carried out massacres and mass sexual enslavement of Yazidis, UN confirms”) and http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/middleeast/iraq/11162336/Iraqs-Yazidis-speak-of-horrors-under-Islamic-State.html (“Iraq’s Yazidis speak of horrors under Islamic State”) and http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/islamic-state/11171874/Islamic-State-commanders-using-Yazidi-virgins-for-sex.html (“Islamic State commanders ‘using Yazidi virgins for sex'”—”Isil’s English-language online magazine Dabiq confirmed rumours that “thousands” of Yazidi woman and girls had been kidnapped and kept as concubines when its fighters stormed towns and villages in Sinjar province”)

These tragic events are similar to what has happened to women and young girls in Afghanistan, under Taliban rule. The world stands by while enslavement and other atrocities take place.

See https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2010/12/03/barack-obama-is-a-lame-duck-president-who-will-not-be-reelected/#comment-1102

Time cover

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17 11 2014
Timothy D. Naegele (19:06:21) :

Nearly 36 million People Are Slaves

Slavery

Reuters has reported:

Almost 36 million people are living as slaves across the globe with an index on Monday listing Mauritania, Uzbekistan, Haiti, Qatar and India as the nations where modern-day slavery is most prevalent.

The Walk Free Foundation, an Australian-based human rights group, estimated in its inaugural slavery index last year that 29.8 million people were born into servitude, trafficked for sex work, trapped in debt bondage or exploited for forced labour.

Releasing its second annual index, Walk Free increased its estimate of the number of slaves to 35.8 million, saying this was due to better data collection and slavery being uncovered in areas where it had not been found previously.

For the second year, the index of 167 countries found India had by far the greatest number of slaves. Up to 14.3 million people in its population of 1.25 billion were victims of slavery, ranging from prostitution to bonded labour.

Mauritania was again the country where slavery was most prevalent by head of population while Qatar, host of the 2022 World Cup, rose up the rank from 96th place to be listed as the fourth worst country by percentage of the population.

“From children denied an education by being forced to work or marry early, to men unable to leave their work because of crushing debts they owe to recruitment agents, to women and girls exploited as unpaid, abused domestic workers, modern slavery has many faces,” the report said.

“It still exists today, in every country – modern slavery affects us all.”

The index defines slavery as the control or possession of people in such a way as to deprive them of their freedom with the intention of exploiting them for profit or sex, usually through violence, coercion or deception.

The definition includes indentured servitude, forced marriage and the abduction of children to serve in wars.

BORN INTO SERVITUDE

Hereditary slavery is deeply entrenched in the West African country of Mauritania, where four percent of the population of 3.9 million is estimated to be enslaved, the report said.

After Mauritania, slavery was most prevalent in Uzbekistan, where citizens are forced to pick cotton every year to meet state-imposed cotton quotas, and Haiti, where the practice of sending poor children to stay with richer acquaintances or relatives routinely leads to abuse and forced labour, it said.

Ranked fourth was Qatar.

The tiny Gulf state relies heavily on migrants to build its mega-projects including soccer stadiums for the 2022 World Cup. It has come under scrutiny by rights groups over its treatment of migrant workers, most from Asia, who come to toil on construction sites, oil projects or work as domestic help.

The next highest prevalence rates were found in India, Pakistan, Democratic Republic of Congo, Sudan, Syria and Central African Republic.

The index showed that 10 countries alone account for 71 percent of the world’s slaves.

After India, China has the most with 3.2 million, then Pakistan (2.1 million), Uzbekistan (1.2 million), Russia (1.05 million), Nigeria (834,200), Democratic Republic of Congo (762,900), Indonesia (714,100), Bangladesh (680,900) and Thailand (475,300).

GOVERNMENT RESPONSE

For the first time, the index rated governments on their response to slavery. It found the Netherlands, followed by Sweden, the United States, Australia, Switzerland, Ireland, Norway, Britain, Georgia and Austria had the strongest response.

At the opposite end of the scale, North Korea, Iran, Syria, Eritrea, Central African Republic, Libya, Equatorial Guinea, Uzbekistan, Republic of Congo and Iraq had the worst responses.

Every country in the world apart from North Korea has laws that criminalise some form of slavery, yet most governments could do more to assist victims and root out slavery from supply chains, Walk Free Foundation’s head of global research said.

“What the results show is that a lot is being done on paper but it’s not necessarily translating into results,” Fiona David told the Thomson Reuters Foundation by telephone from Canberra.

“Most countries got 50 percent or less when we looked at the strength of their victim assistance regime. It’s also striking that … out of 167 countries we could only find three (Australia, Brazil and the United States) where governments have put things in place on supply chains.”

The report showed that conflict had a direct impact on the prevalence of slavery, David said, citing the example of the Islamic State militant group which has abducted women and girls in Iraq and Syria for use as sex slaves.

“What our numbers show is the correlation really is quite strong so as an international community, we need to make planning for this kind of problem part of the humanitarian response to crisis situations,” David said.

See https://ca.news.yahoo.com/nearly-36-mln-people-slaves-qatar-focus-global-134217592.html (emphasis added); see also http://humanevents.com/2015/07/03/uk-sex-groomed-children-preferable-to-backlash-against-multiculturalism/ (“UK: ‘Sex Groomed’ Children Preferable to Backlash Against ‘Multiculturalism’“)

Human slavery and trafficking are global issues, not limited to one country or region, or to one ethnic, religious or racial group.

It is an epidemic that must be stopped.

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31 12 2014
Timothy D. Naegele (17:49:52) :

Japanese Sadism, Amnesia And Denial, But No Contrition

Allied prisoners of Japan

The UK’s Daily Mail has reported:

The only British survivor of the brutal Japanese POW camp featuring in Angelina Jolie’s new blockbuster has revealed his own ordeal at the hands of the sadistic guard who ‘crucifies’ his victims.

In the movie, which was released on Boxing Day, Officer Matsuhiro Watanabe relentlessly tortures the one-time Olympic hero Zamperini by making him hold a railway sleeper over his head for 37 minutes.

The film has enraged Japanese nationalists who have denounced it as a ‘fabrication’ with ‘no credibility’ and called for Jolie to be banned from the country.

But Tom Henling Wade knows the incident is true because he was there – as Zamperini’s barrack’s commander – and told MailOnline of his own utterly brutal experiences in the notorious Omori camp.

The 94-year-old told MailOnline: ‘Watanabe treated us with terrible brutality and most of the time with no respect at all. He was a psychopath. Practically nothing the prisoners said coming out of that camp was a fabrication.’

Recalling one incident in which he was attacked with a 4ft kendo sword, made of tightly bound bamboo, Wade said: ‘He whirled it above his head with both arms outstretched and cracked it down on the top of my head. Then he swung it like a baseball bat against the left side of my head and then the right. He just went on and on – the Japanese never know when to stop.’

Wade recalls a man who took pride in his sadism and would become so carried away with his attacks that saliva would bubble around his mouth.

He said: ‘The first time I was slapped by Watanabe was for insufficient water in my barracks fire buckets. The second and third times were for telling a lie.’

He added: ‘We decided we had to have a name for him. I wanted to call him ‘The Snake’ but an American said we should call him ‘The Bird’ and that stuck.

‘It was anodyne and could be heard but not acted upon because it was not offensive.’

The film is based on Zamperini’s biography of the same name, which charts the transformation of a teenage tearaway to an Olympic athlete and eventually a US air force captain in the Pacific War.

The book, which was written after extensive interviews with Wade, details how Zamperini, who only died earlier this year, survived 47 days on a raft in the Pacific and then Watanabe’s brutality.

But British POW Tom Henling Wade has also catalogued the cruelties meted out by Watanabe, who was known as The Bird among inmates, in a book of his own called Prisoner of The Japanese.

Then a 21-year-old intelligence officer with the Loyal Regiment (North Lancs), Wade, who was captured at the Fall of Singapore, first encountered Watanabe in September 1943 at Omori, on an island in Tokyo Bay.

As an officer and barracks commander Wade recalls that he was particularly vulnerable to being singled out for punishment by Watanabe if any of his men transgressed Japanese orders.

It was an apparent lie by Wade over the enforcement of yet another petty rule regarding POWs boots that saw Watanabe subject him to a sustained beating and threats of instant death.

Wade said: ‘He cracked a stunning [fist] into my mouth. I staggered back and sat on the laps of two men sitting watching.

‘As I rose he landed two more punches left and right on my head. I was too dizzy to think, my face was burning and I felt a bruise on the back of my head when I bounced against a pillar.

‘I watched the next blow all the way from his right trouser pocket. I could see his fist swing up to the side of my jaw and I was rocked back.’

The stunned Wade was ordered to Watanabe’s room where the Japanese NCO reached for his 4ft kendo sword, made of tightly bound bamboo.

Wade said: ‘He whirled it above his head with both arms outstretched and craked it down on the top of my head. Then he swung it like a baseball bat against the left side of my head and then the right.

‘He just went on and on – the Japanese never know when to stop. He must have hit me about 36 times with all his strength.’

But Wade’s ordeal wasn’t over because the enraged Watanabe pulled out his imperial army sword. Wade said: ‘He told me ‘If you lie, if you break a Japanese order, I will kill.’ His eyes were blazing with anger.’

One episode that still stands out in Wade’s memory is the arrival of a new batch of American POWs, including Zamperini.

He said: ‘I knew Zamperini very well. I was barrack commander, he was in my barracks so I was in charge of him and welcomed him into Omori camp.
‘He was an ebullient character and we liked him. I do not remember anyone disliking him among the POWs.

‘I thought he was very Italian in appearance, very athletic with beautiful long legs and compact body. He looked a perfect miler.

‘The other Americans who arrived told me that he was an Olympic athlete and said he had run at the 1936 Berlin Olympics.’

Laughing, Wade added: ‘He was not as fast as the three British runners who were there but he was good!’

When they were later moved to another camp as the war drew to a close, Wade recalls Zamperini being targeted by Watanabe.

He said: ‘He made him pick up a beam of wood 6ft long by 4 inches square and hold it at arm’s length above his head.

‘He was being crucified holding up this heavy beam of wood. Finally Watanabe allowed the American to put down the beam.

‘Zamperini could hardly move, could hardly unlock his fingers. I looked at the clock and it had been 37 minutes. I defy anyone to do it for that long.’

However, Wade doesn’t recall Zamperini being struck in the stomach, which is central to the book Unbroken and central to Jolie’s film.

Although it is understood that Wade was unhappy about certain passages in Unbroken he prefers to draw a veil over the issue.

He said: ‘I would rather not comment on that.’

After Japan’s surrender Wade gave evidence of Watanabe’s crimes to the War Crimes Commission and US General Douglas MacArthur listed Watanabe as a war criminal.

But Watanabe had become a fugitive, had changed his name and went into hiding, only remerging when the war crimes prosecutions were shelved several years later.

Watanabe subsequently built up a successful insurance business and when he was tracked down by the Mail on Sunday in 1995, was living in a luxurious Tokyo apartment.

He said: ‘I understand their bitterness and they may wonder why I was so severe. But now my feeling is I want to apologise. A deep, deep apology.’

The former sergeant then stuck out his chin and feigned a punch with his right hand. ‘If the former prisoners want, I would offer to let them come here and hit me – to beat me,’ he said. He added: ‘I was severe. Very severe. I did not use weapons, only fists and hands. I was obeying orders under Japanese military rule – I had to teach the prisoners military discipline.’

Wade dismisses this claim not least because of his own bitter experience but believes the apology was probably genuine.

Wade, who was brought up in China, admits that if he were younger he might be tempted to take Watanabe up on the offer of a free hit.

When asked if he would strike Watanabe, he said: ‘I would certainly have considered it as a younger man. Not now though.’

He said: ‘Age has mellowed my perspective, as has my Far Eastern experience. I can understand how Watanabe was trying to be a good Japanese. I can respect him for that but he went too far with the beatings and near torture.

‘When he made his apology I said I could forgive him and I stand by this. An apology can mean something and it can mean nothing but in his case it probably meant something.’

Zamperini, who became a born again Christian, also offered Watanabe his forgiveness.

After Watanabe was tracked down by The Mail on Sunday, an American network TV interview with the Japanese OAP followed. Zamperini was prepared to meet his former tormentor but Watanabe backed out.

Zamperini subsequently wrote to Watanabe offering his forgiveness but Watanabe never replied. He died in 2003 and Zamperini died earlier this year at the age of 97.

Mr Wade kept in contact with Zamperini with occasional letters and became close friends with some of Zamperini’s fellow American POWs but his friends have now all passed away.

Wade said: ‘As far as I know I believe I am the last British survivor of Omori camp but I do not know about the Americans.’

In the film Zamperini is played by Briton Jack O’Connell but in the film credits there is no mention of Wade, who is sanguine about whether he makes an appearance of any sort in the film.

Mr Wade said: ‘I would like to see the film at the cinema but perhaps I am too old now. Perhaps I will be able to watch it with a DVD.

‘I had no contact with the film makers. I offered to give the British point of view but they did not reply. I wrote to Universal Pictures. Perhaps they did not get the letter.

‘I did not really expect them to come back to me because they had accepted so few words from other British veterans with this project. As far as I know the British perspective rarely features in these films.

‘I don’t know if I am portrayed in the film. I was just 21-22 and the people you remember most would be those who are different and stand out from the crowd.’

See http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2880676/I-tortured-sadistic-prison-camp-guard-Angelina-Jolie-blockbuster-British-victim-Bird-reveals-Japanese-psychopath-crucified-soldiers-got-excited-saliva-bubbled-round-mouth.html (“‘I was tortured by sadistic prison camp guard in Angelina Jolie blockbuster’: British victim of ‘The Bird’ reveals how Japanese psychopath ‘crucified’ soldiers and got so excited saliva bubbled round his mouth”) (emphasis added)

American general and war hero Douglas MacArthur’s policies of reviving Japan immediately after World War II made its recovery a great success. However, they produced amnesia with respect to the vicious and inhumane acts that it had perpetrated against others (e.g., comfort women, POWs). To deny this destroys the good will and credibility that the country has achieved.

Unlike Germany that has spent at least a generation atoning for its sins during the war, it can be argued that Japan has never done this, and continues in a state of denial. The Germans have paid billions of dollars to the victims of the Nazi Holocaust, but none have been paid by the Japanese.

Like the victims of holocausts during the last century who have never been recognized, much less honored, the victims of Japan’s brutality must be honored too. Most are dead now, but they still must be honored.

Almost 70 years have passed since the war’s end, yet there has been no Japanese contrition.

See https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2010/02/06/the-silent-voices-of-stalin%E2%80%99s-soviet-holocaust-and-mao%E2%80%99s-chinese-holocaust/

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26 01 2015
Timothy D. Naegele (01:25:56) :

Worth Watching

FULL FRAME – JULIA ORMOND EPISODE SEVENTEEN from Full Frame CCTV America on Vimeo.

This entire program is worth watching.

Especially poignant is the interview with Dr. Kevin Bales of “Free the Slaves” who joined the show from London to talk about how the global economy has affected the slave trade and how we can eradicate it.

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10 05 2015
Timothy D. Naegele (20:45:09) :

Boko Haram And The Lost Girls Of Nigeria

The Lost Girls Of Nigeria

[Habiba Audu, 16 years old, is recovering at a hospital in Yola, Nigeria after being shot in crossfire between Nigerian troops and Boko Haram militants during her rescue from captivity. “I want to forget that life,” she said.]

Patrick McGroarty of the Wall Street Journal has written:

Fatima Bukar last saw her husband and home in December, the night Boko Haram swept through her village to kidnap the women and children.

Armed insurgents herded Ms. Bukar, her 2-year-old daughter and dozens of others on a two-day march to a hide-out in the Sambisa Forest, a wilderness bordering Cameroon, joining about 300 women and children held there.

They spent their days hungry, foraging for firewood and edible plants, serving as wives or human shields for men whose conduct swung between cruelty and indifference.

“I pray to God to help us find each other,” Ms. Bukar said of her husband, who fled during the December attack. But so much has happened. “Maybe,” the 27-year-old woman said, “life will not ever be the same.”

Ms. Bukar is among 275 women and children who have been living in this makeshift encampment since Nigeria’s military rescued them last week from retreating Boko Haram militants. Military forces freed about 1,000 women and children, and chased the insurgents into distant pockets of the wilderness. No one knows whether the victory will last.

A dozen of the women told The Wall Street Journal of their injuries, their lost children and the day-to-day brutality of living under the hand of a guerrilla force that two months ago declared its allegiance to Islamic State.

Zarah Mohammed, 24 years old, said she watched Boko Haram fighters slice off her husband’s head. Months later, she gave birth to his daughter. Amina Abubakar, 16, was abducted a week after her wedding last year. “All I want is to see my husband,” she said, “and go back to him.”

In a crowded hospital ward in Yola, the regional capital near the women’s camp, 16-year-old Habiba Audu winced with the pain from a bullet wound in her shoulder. She was struck in crossfire last week as Nigerian soldiers overran the Islamists’ encampment where she had been held for nine months.

Ms. Audu said she was forced to marry a Boko Haram fighter, a man later killed in action. “I want to forget that life,” she said, picking at a plate of rice with a fork until the pain in her shoulder stopped her. “It was circumstance that made me a wife of Boko Haram.”

Nana Musa, another woman recovering in the ward, said she was assigned to serve coerced brides after she refused to marry a militant. “We became slaves to their wives,” said the 25-year-old mother of two surviving children.

As Ms. Musa walked out of the Boko Haram encampment during the military rescue, she carried her third child, an infant named Bakaka, strapped to her back. A land mine exploded and killed the baby instantly. The left side of Ms. Musa’s face and body were badly burned.

“All I wanted was for us to go home. Now she’s not with us,” she said, her hand wrapped in bandages, blue stitches knitting the wounds on her lips.

Some women died of hunger. Others were accidentally run over and killed by armored military trucks sent to rescue them. Doctors say some women may have been impregnated by their captors.

Ms. Bukar escaped with her daughter Maryam, whose protruding shoulder blades and rust-colored hair testify to her malnutrition.

“We don’t know what will happen to us,” said Ms. Bukar, who is also looking after six children who lost their parents. “At least now we can eat.”

A life of want

The women described a strict hierarchy in the Boko Haram camps, where they could bargain for better treatment by converting to Islam or marrying fighters. Food and shelter in the forest stronghold were scarce, they said. They sought shade trees to block the equatorial sun and slept outdoors, fending off snakes and scorpions.

Now safe at Malkohi Camp, the rescued women receive daily counseling sessions in the dusty courtyard. The profound impact of their ordeal is only beginning to emerge.

Some Christian women have refused donated Western clothes, preferring to keep the hijabs they adopted after their forced conversion to Islam. Others are desperate to get in touch with husbands and parents who may not know they are still alive.

Meanwhile, hundreds more of the captives remain lost. Amnesty International says that half of the 2,000 women and children kidnapped by Boko Haram since last year are still missing.

Women here said the remaining captives include some of the more than 200 students taken from a boarding school in the town of Chibok last April—the kidnapping that drew global attention and spawned a ubiquitous social-media campaign #SaveOurGirls. Nigerian President Goodluck Jonathan has pledged to free them.

The counteroffensive this year by Nigeria’s military was bolstered by regional allies, better weaponry and new battlefield resolve. Troops have so far reduced Boko Haram’s territory by more than 80%, from an area the size of Belgium to a few city-size chunks of the Sambisa Forest.

The rapid retreat has raised hope for an end to Boko Haram’s six-year insurgency, which has displaced more than a million people from their homes and cost 23,000 lives.

“Now they are in disarray,” said Maj. Gen. Chris Olukolade, Nigeria’s military spokesman. “We are optimistic we will secure the release of more hostages.”

The insurgents’ collapse, however, has raised concerns the militia might just be retreating to regroup.

Military officials won’t say how many fighters its forces have killed; Boko Haram’s leader, Abubakar Shekau, remains at large, authorities say.

Boko Haram has exploited two of Nigeria’s key weaknesses: the anger of disaffected youths in a country with high unemployment and the dysfunction of the Nigerian army. Years of failed efforts to beat back insurgents helped cost Mr. Jonathan a second term in presidential elections in March.

Nigeria’s incoming president, Muhammadu Buhari, a retired general, campaigned, in part, on his military credentials. He has sought to dampen hopes for a quick end to the insurgency. “The expectation is too high,” he said Tuesday, “and I have started nervously to explain to people that Rome was not built in a day.”

Seeing through a costly military campaign will be difficult, given Nigeria’s economic troubles. The fall in global oil prices has sapped federal revenues in Africa’s top crude producer. The government is struggling to pay for public salaries and imported gasoline in a country with little refining capacity.

Martin Ewi, a senior researcher at South Africa’s Institute for Security Studies is among those who caution that insurgents may now be regrouping.

“Boko Haram is evolving into something else,” said Mr. Ewi, a native of Cameroon, where Boko Haram has also attacked villages and kidnapped women and children.

“We could see a return to the kind of stealthy terrorism where they attack a public target and then melt back to walk among the people,” Mr. Ewi said. “That could be even more difficult to stop.”

Last week, Boko Haram stormed a network of islands on Niger’s side of Lake Chad, killing dozens of civilians and soldiers.

Here in northeast Nigeria, displaced villagers, even those who backed Mr. Buhari over Mr. Jonathan, say their patience is wearing thin.

“You see, we are still here,” said Jalo Usman, the leader of some 400 people who moved to a warren of brick-and-plywood sheds in Yola after Boko Haram overran their town in September.

Before the March election, Mr. Usman planned to soon return home. But now, he said, many of his neighbors don’t have the means to make the trip back or fear for their safety. The few dozen people who have gone say the homes had been torched and the stores looted.

Several families from in his community have reunited with daughters and sisters they feared were forever lost.

Fatima Mustphar said she expected a long wait before her 24-year-old sister Salamatu was ready to travel, and even longer until her sister feels safe again in their hometown. “She suffered a lot,” Ms. Mustphar said.

The road home

At Malkohi Camp, a half-hour down a rutted dirt track from Yola, the freed women and children say they are exhausted and traumatized—but eager to fight their way back to health and rejoin their families.

“I’m so happy I am here,” said 15-year-old Fatima Abba, a broad smile filling her face, framed by a leopard-print hijab. “I want to stay somewhere safe, guarded by the military.”

For Amina Mohammed, sitting with two friends on a concrete stoop nearby, the joy of freedom is tempered by deep grief.

The 24-year-old woman was kidnapped five months ago with her two children. While living in the forest, Boko Haram fighters made her cook their food, but left her to forage for nuts and roots to feed her children.

Two days before Nigerian troops liberated the camp, her children died of what she believes was cholera. “Each time I remember, I feel pain,” she said.

Her husband, a farmer, avoided capture by fleeing to Cameroon, she said, and she doesn’t know if she will be able to find him now. “I want to forge a life, despite what happened,” Ms. Mohammed said. “I want my life to go on.”

See http://www.wsj.com/articles/boko-haram-and-the-lost-girls-of-nigeria-1431113437 (emphasis added; graphics omitted)

This is so so tragic. However, it is indicative of what is happening to women and young children all over the world, which must end.

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27 07 2015
Timothy D. Naegele (20:21:10) :

The Serial Rapist Bill Cosby [UPDATED]

New York Magazine cover

New York Magazine and its editors and writers must be commended for this issue, which documents what Bill Cosby has done to women.

See http://nymag.com/thecut/2015/07/bill-cosbys-accusers-speak-out.html (“‘I’m No Longer Afraid’: 35 Women Tell Their Stories About Being Assaulted by Bill Cosby, and the Culture That Wouldn’t Listen”); see also http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2015/07/27/quaaludes-cosby-s-alleged-rape-drugs-of-choice-were-somehow-even-scarier-than-you-think.html (“Quaaludes, Cosby’s Alleged Rape Drugs of Choice, Were Somehow Even Scarier Than You Think”—”Some of Cosby’s accusers weren’t unconscious when he allegedly assaulted them. Many were awake, and unable to do anything about it”) and http://www.thewrap.com/3-new-bill-cosby-accusers-reveal-explicit-details-of-alleged-assaults/ (“3 New Bill Cosby Accusers Reveal Explicit Details of Alleged Assaults“) and http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3425533/Tell-mom-orgasm-Bill-Cosby-describes-mentor-teacher-friend-woman-complaint-led-criminal-charges.html (“Caught on tape: ‘Tell your mom about the orgasm, tell your mom you were awake’ – Bill Cosby describes sex act with woman whose complaint led to criminal charges”—”In a taped phone call to his alleged victim and her mother, Bill Cosby admitted they had sex and he had given her drugs”) and https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/thr-esq/janice-dickinson-scores-huge-appellate-wins-bill-cosby-defamation-case-1060782 (“Janice Dickinson Scores Huge Appellate Wins in Bill Cosby Defamation Case”)

Having grown up in Hollywood/LA, my parents always counseled me not to get involved with those in the movie business. An old friend—who is a multi-billionaire and a true Hollywood mogul—told me the same thing, “because the people are not nice.”

Hollywood has had the “casting couch” almost since it began. And Washington, D.C.—where I worked nonstop for 21 years, part of the time in the U.S. Senate—has the same thing.

As I have written:

When I left Capitol Hill after working there for three and a half years, there was one four-letter word that stood out in my mind, and it still does today: “S-I-C-K.” I vowed that neither of my kids would ever work there. I had seen raving narcissists and demagogues who were not nice people—and equaled or surpassed those in Hollywood where I had grown up.

I saw senators and congressman chasing and bedding female staffers between the ages of about 22-26, and wrecking their lives in the process. When the women reached about 28, they were considered “over the hill,” and a new batch of fresh young faces would replace them. I saw attractive young female staffers flock to the politicians like groupies are attracted to rock stars and other celebrities. I saw lobbyists providing women for sex to important committee chairmen.

See https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2010/09/24/washington-is-sick-and-the-american-people-know-it/ (“Washington Is Sick And The American People Know It“); see also https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2015/01/03/edward-w-brooke-is-dead/ (“Edward W. Brooke Is Dead“)

New York Magazine must be encouraged keep up the good work. It has “touched” the very tip of an enormous “iceberg.”

All of us have mothers; and many of us are blessed to have daughters and granddaughters. Thus, whether we are men or women, we must stand up against what Bill Cosby and others have done, and keep on doing!

The same thing should happen with respect to Roman Polanski (i.e., “rape by use of drugs, perversion, sodomy, lewd and lascivious act upon a child under 14, and furnishing a controlled substance to a minor”), who is a fugitive from American justice.

See, e.g., https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_Polanski_sexual_abuse_case (“Roman Polanski sexual abuse case“); see also http://www.salon.com/2015/07/28/camille_paglia_how_bill_clinton_is_like_bill_cosby/ (“How Bill Clinton is like Bill Cosby“) and http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3179555/She-responded-paternal-Woody-Allen-reveals-secret-23-year-relationship-Mia-Farrow-s-adopted-daughter-thought-just-fling.html (“‘She responded to someone paternal’: Woody Allen reveals secret to his 23-year relationship with Mia Farrow’s adopted daughter… which at first he thought was ‘just a fling'”)

Golfer Tiger Woods has followed a similar path. Indeed, a double standard is operating with respect to both Cosby and Woods. If they were white, every women’s rights group in the United States would be up in arms against them—trying to destroy them.

See, e.g., https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2009/12/17/is-redemption-possible-for-tiger-woods/#comment-7344 (“Tiger Woods Cheats Again“)

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29 10 2015
Timothy D. Naegele (20:40:17) :

The Tragic Story of Comfort Women

Comfort Women

In the article above, I related the following:

Years ago I read an article about a Korean girl who began as a “comfort woman” for the Japanese military during World War II. She and other women traveled with the military, and were forced to provide non-stop sex to Japanese soldiers. Toward the end of the war, somehow she escaped and made her way back to Korea where her family disowned her because of the shame that she had caused them. She married, to an abusive husband, and finally left that marriage and found happiness with another Korean man.

. . .

There are approximately 50,000 human slaves in the U.S., and more than a million worldwide. It is so tragic, yet little or nothing is being done about it. . . .

See also https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2009/12/28/human-trafficking/#comment-2174 (“Shame On Japan“) and https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2009/12/28/human-trafficking/#comment-6922 (“Japanese Sadism, Amnesia And Denial, But No Contrition“)

In an article entitled, “Seoul Brings ‘Comfort Women’ Dispute Into Classroom,” the Wall Street Journal has reported:

In this gritty town known for its nearby military bases, a class of elementary-school students is among the first to study a new national curriculum about a dark chapter in Korea’s past.

The teacher recently told fifth-graders that girls as young as themselves were taken by Japanese soldiers to be used as sex slaves for the military during the occupation of Korea in the first half of the 20th century.

“I think Japan should acknowledge its sins and apologize,” one 10-year-old said after the class.

The lessons about the euphemistically named “comfort women” are part of a push by Seoul to raise the profile of a dispute that has irritated bilateral ties since the 1990s and to add pressure on Tokyo to provide a new settlement. The government also plans to release an exhaustive report on the issue later this year.

South Korean President Park Geun-hye will press the issue, aides say, when she holds formal bilateral talks with Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe on Monday in Seoul, their first since each took power almost three years ago. Ms. Park will also host a trilateral summit with Mr. Abe and Chinese Premier Li Keqiang this Sunday.

The U.S., which has been frustrated by the bickering between two of its closest allies in Asia, is hoping for a breakthrough as it seeks a coordinated approach to rising military threats from North Korea and China. After an Oct. 16 meeting with Ms. Park in Washington, President Barack Obama called for the resolution of “historical challenges” between South Korea and Japan, a clear reference to the comfort women dispute.

To prevent it from impeding cooperation on other matters, South Korea recently pledged to deal with the dispute separately. Ms. Park also dropped her precondition that a new deal for the comfort women be in place before holding bilateral talks.

Encouragement from the U.S. for the two leaders to talk and Seoul’s concerns about other nations viewing it as having a closer relationship with China than traditional ally Japan has contributed to the shift, said Park Cheol-hee, director of the Institute for Japanese Studies at Seoul National University.

South Korean opinion polls show strong support for an assertive approach. A 2011 constitutional court ruling also requires Seoul to seek a new settlement of apologies and compensation. Time is a factor: Eight former Korean comfort women have died this year, leaving 47 still alive, many in their 80s and 90s.

Mainstream historians estimate 20,000 to 200,000 women, many of them Korean, worked in Japanese military brothels in the 1930s and 1940s. Limited documentary evidence means historians clash on details, but testimony from former comfort women has provided a consistent account of women as young as teenagers being coerced or tricked into joining the brothels.

Japan says that a string of apologies from its former leaders, a 1965 treaty that provided millions of dollars to end all compensation claims against the former occupying power, and a compensation offer to the victims from private donors in 1995 show that it has made sufficient efforts to end the dispute. About 60 former comfort women accepted the 1995 offer and received an apology letter signed by the Japanese prime minister, according to Japanese officials.

A spokesman for the Japanese Embassy in Seoul declined to comment on the South Korean curriculum. He said Mr. Abe has repeatedly stated that he is “deeply pained” by the suffering of the former comfort women and would uphold previous government apologies. However, Mr. Abe and other senior officials have also questioned whether the Japanese military was directly involved in forcing women to serve as prostitutes, a stance that appears to undermine previous apologies.

People familiar with talks between the two countries on the issue say that under a previous Japanese administration a deal to resolve it was nearly reached in 2012. But Mr. Abe’s administration has taken a tougher line, sticking to its position that the 1965 treaty resolved the matter, these people say. Senior officials from the two nations’ foreign ministries have held nine rounds of talks on the issue since April 2014.

Facing deadlock, South Korea has looked for ways to gain more international attention. In a speech to the United Nations General Assembly in September, Ms. Park called for the dispute to be resolved while the remaining former comfort women are still alive. In addition to an apology the government is seeking from Mr. Abe, Korean advocates for the comfort women want compensation from Japanese state funds.

South Korea began its compulsory education in September to counter what it called “historical distortions” in Japanese media and government accounts of the dispute. The subject has only brief mentions in South Korean school textbooks.

“Truthfully, this is something that we should have been done earlier,” said Minister of Gender Equality and Family Kim Hee-jung in an interview. The new curriculum is for fifth-grade school children and up through high school.

Some of the teaching materials were modified after a ruling party lawmaker raised concerns over explicit language about sexual violence. The final content has been reviewed by experts, although some parents have reservations about teaching the subject to children.

“It’s too early to teach fifth-graders about the comfort women in detail,” said Shim Cheol-soo, the father of a fifth-grade elementary-school student.

In the classroom at Yonghyun Elementary School in Uijeongbu, the students turned through workbook pages that showed a drawing of a young girl being forcefully dragged away by a soldier and a photo of an elderly lady at a news conference in 1991, the first to publicly declare herself as a former comfort woman.

At the end of the workbook, the children noted down messages they would like to send to the surviving comfort women. “Grandmothers, thank you for being courageous,” one student wrote. “I hope you will never be hurt again.”

See http://www.wsj.com/articles/seoul-brings-comfort-women-dispute-into-classroom-1446075141 (emphasis added); see also http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-5444813/First-footage-showing-WWII-Japan-army-killing-sex-slaves.html (“First footage shows WWII Japan army killing sex slaves“)

It is important to honor these women.

Soon, they will be gone, like the millions who died under the murderous Stalin and Mao.

Indeed, it must never be forgotten that as the Soviets moved through Germany at the end of World War II, they raped at least two million German women in what is now acknowledged as the largest case of mass rape in history.

See https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2010/02/06/the-silent-voices-of-stalin’s-soviet-holocaust-and-mao’s-chinese-holocaust/ (“The Silent Voices Of Stalin’s Soviet Holocaust And Mao’s Chinese Holocaust“)

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31 01 2016
Timothy D. Naegele (17:47:47) :

Europol: More Than 10,000 Migrant Children Are Missing [UPDATED]

Stop Human Trafficking

It has been reported:

Over 10,000 unaccompanied migrant children have disappeared in Europe, the EU police agency Europol said on Sunday, fearing many have been whisked into sex trafficking rings or the slave trade.

Europol’s press office confirmed to AFP the figures published in British newspaper The Observer, adding that they covered the last 18-24 months.

The agency’s chief of staff Brian Donald said the vulnerable children had disappeared from the system after registering with state authorities following their arrival in Europe.

“It’s not unreasonable to say that we’re looking at 10,000-plus children,” Donald said, adding that 5,000 had disappeared in Italy alone.

“Not all of them will be criminally exploited; some might have been passed on to family members. We just don’t know where they are, what they’re doing or whom they are with.”

Donald said there was evidence of a “criminal infrastructure” established over the last 18 months to exploit the migrant flow.

The Observer reported that Europol found evidence of links between smuggling rings bringing people into the EU and human trafficking gangs exploiting migrants for sex and slavery.

“There are prisons in Germany and Hungary where the vast majority of people arrested and placed there are in relation to criminal activity surrounding the migrant crisis,” Donald said.

Over one million migrants and refugees, many fleeing the Syria conflict, crossed into Europe last year.

“Whether they are registered or not, we’re talking about 270,000 children,” Donald told the paper.

“Not all of those are unaccompanied, but we also have evidence that a large proportion might be,” he said, adding that the 10,000 is likely to be a conservative estimate.

He said many of the children are “visible”, and not “spirited away and held in the middle of forests”.

‘Most vulnerable group’

Raffaela Milano, Save the Children’s Italy-Europe programme director, said that “unaccompanied minors who travel without adults are the most vulnerable group of the migratory flow”.

“Many minors, in fact, make themselves ‘invisible’ to the authorities to enable them to continue their journey in Europe, for fear of being sent back,” she said.

Many children arrive first on the Greek islands before making the journey to relatives across Europe.

Laura Pappa, president of the Greek charity Meta-Action, a group accompanying children who travel without relatives, said they “face a destiny that is worse than that of the rest of migrants waiting to be relocated”.

She said they often have to wait for around seven months to be reunited with relatives, and that procedures can be slow and complicated.

“There are some people that present themselves as uncles and take the children. It’s not easy in this mess to cross check the identity of the ‘uncle’.”

Pappa said the group has helped 3,000 children reach family, but that it “is not enough”.

Escalating tensions

Britain is one country that has said it will take in migrant or refugee children who have been separated from their parents.

Despite the constant risk of death and deportation, migrants continue to stream into Europe, risking their lives to escape poverty, repression and conflict.

Many children are among the refugees and migrants who have lost their lives making the perilous crossing in the Mediterranean.

In the latest tragedy, the Turkish coastguard recovered the bodies of women and children were washed up on a beach after their boat sank, leaving at least 37 people dead.

Tensions are escalating across the continent over the increasing numbers of migrants, with many right-wing groups calling for more immigration restrictions and tighter borders.

On Saturday, Swedish police said dozens of masked men believed to belong to neo-Nazi gangs gathered in Stockholm and handed out leaflets calling for attacks against young unaccompanied migrants.

And anti-fascist and far-right protesters clashed in a southern German town where unknown assailants threw a hand grenade into a refugee shelter on Friday, as the country scrambles to integrate the over one million asylum seekers it welcomed last year.

See http://news.yahoo.com/over-10-000-migrant-children-missing-europol-135658731.html (“Over 10,000 migrant children missing: Europol”) (emphasis added); see also http://www.express.co.uk/news/world/660200/Europe-refugee-system-chaos-Germany-9000-child-migrants-MISSING (“Refugee chaos: Germany admits nearly 9,000 child migrants are MISSING”—”[M]any youngsters, having learned to fend for themselves on the dangerous trek into Europe, have wandered off into the criminal underworld or have fallen into slavery”) and https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2015/07/01/global-chaos-and-helter-skelter/#comment-7653 (“Aylan And Galip Kurdi Will Be Remembered“) and https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2012/02/07/poverty-in-america/#comment-8084 (“Life At The Bottom“) and http://www.wsj.com/articles/europe-chokes-flow-of-migrants-to-buy-time-for-a-solution-1454232247 (“Europe Chokes Flow of Migrants to Buy Time for a Solution”—”[M]any European policy makers say they have only until March to reduce the numbers from the Middle East, South Asia and Africa who are arriving in the Continent’s core, mainly Germany”—”European governments are discussing a Plan B that would have the Macedonian-Greek border sealed off entirely, with the help of EU and Balkan countries further north. . . . ‘[T]his is the second-worst option, because the worst option isn’t doing anything, and then each of the [EU] member states would be sealing off its own borders'”—”Hungary has donated razor wire, to be deployed near the main border crossing and funneling people to a registration camp at the Macedonian town of Gevgelija”—”[German Chancellor Angela] Merkel remains skeptical about cutting off Greece . . . : She shares Athens’s concerns that swelling numbers of trapped, frustrated migrants could destabilize a country still struggling with a long-running debt crisis. . . . [H]er government is desperate to avoid a repeat of 2015, when a million asylum seekers and irregular migrants entered the country”) and http://www.wsj.com/articles/europe-is-losing-track-of-child-refugees-1470002526 (“Europe Is Losing Track of Child Refugees”)

As my article above and the comments beneath it stress, human trafficking is present in the United States and throughout the world.

Criminal elements prey on women and children especially, forcing them into lives of prostitution and other forms of human slavery.

As I have written in the article above:

Every year we read about lots of cases here in the U.S., where children are kidnapped and never found again.

It must be dealt with and eradicated.

. . .

Americans often view this with dispassion and detachment, not able to place ourselves in the shoes of the migrants who are braving everything to seek a better life.

We have no conception of how many have died already trying to reach Europe, much less how many more will die. Policymakers go about their bickering over how to “buy time for a solution,” while human beings suffer.

However, many of us remember the photos of young Aylan And Galip Kurdi smiling; and then, the tragic photo of Turkish police Sgt Mehmet Ciplak carrying the lifeless body of little Aylan.

Aylan Kurdi

[Photograph taken by Nilufer Demir of Turkish police Sgt Mehmet Ciplak carrying the lifeless body of Aylan Kurdi on a beach near the Turkish resort of Bodrum]

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2 04 2016
Timothy D. Naegele (16:00:18) :

The Fate Of Lina Zinab: Is Life Fair? [UPDATED]

Lina Zinab

Ayla Albayrak of the Wall Street Journal has reported:

Lina Zinab was terrified of the water.

The Syrian mother of six had fled Damascus for Turkey, and she had enough money for a smuggler’s boat to carry her and her mother to Greece, where they hoped to travel by land across Europe to reunite with their family.

All that stood before them was a boat ride across a short stretch of the Aegean. “We are afraid of the sea,” she said in an interview in late November.

She could swim a little. Her 62-year-old mother, who had joined her in Turkey after traveling from Egypt, could not. Ms. Zinab, 39, understood the risks of sea travel in harsh winter weather, she said. But she had come this far, and nothing was left for her in Damascus.

More than 1.1 million refugees and migrants have crossed the Mediterranean in the past 15 months. Most have arrived safely in Europe, but more than 4,200 others never made it, according to the International Organization for Migration, or IOM.

Next week, under a deal with the European Union, Turkey is expected to begin accepting back recent migrants, including Syrian refugees, who were smuggled to Greece. As Turkey and the EU move to shut the smugglers’ sea route, Ms. Zinab’s fate is a reminder of the risks that Syrian refugees have taken.

Sitting in a cafe in the Turkish coastal city of Izmir four months ago, Ms. Zinab stirred her tea and gave a quick, shy smile that belied her worry.

Her family had scattered. A year earlier, she had sent four of her children, ages 9 to 17, to live with her ex-husband in Lebanon. Her two youngest children, a 7-year-old daughter and a 4-year-old son, had been smuggled to Germany a year before with her brother. She hoped to travel to Germany, she said. They could settle at her brother’s place and work to reunite her children.

She was looking for a “reliable” smuggler and knew that rubber boats packed with people were especially dangerous. She wanted to find a real boat, a safe one.

In early November, she had flown from Damascus to al-Qamishli, a Kurdish-dominated town at the Turkish-Syrian border. While trekking to the Turkish border with a group of migrants, she hurt her knee and had to be carried by the others. “It felt like a journey of death, not a journey for survival,” she said.

Once over the border, after being smuggled to southern Turkey and taking a bus to Izmir, she had met with a middleman, a graying Syrian-Palestinian man in his 50s. He was operating openly in a hotel in Izmir’s Basmane district, a notorious smuggling hub. Like most migrants, she never met the Turkish “big boss” in charge of the operation.

The middleman offered Ms. Zinab a “winter price” of $900 for the crossing, down from $1,200 in the fall when the weather was better and the sea calmer. But he couldn’t promise her anything other than a rubber boat, and she insisted on a “proper” vessel.

Ms. Zinab then found another middleman, according to her family. Turkish officials say that he was a Syrian known to the police as Eyyub, a man in his 30s. Smugglers put the migrants on a boat in Cesme, a small town near Izmir.

From the shore, covered with olive orchards and empty holiday homes, her destination was clearly visible: the Greek island of Chios, less than 10 miles away. For tourists, a trip on a fast ferry would take 20 minutes and cost $30.

Ms. Zinab and her mother ended up paying far more than the going “winter crossing” rate of roughly $1,000 and were promised a big tourist yacht, but the boat turned out to be an old, midsize wooden vessel, a relative said.

On Dec. 1, 2015, the boat left shore, but it soon took on water and began to break apart. Ms. Zinab and her mother drowned. So did more than 20 others, including six children, Turkish officials said. The boat washed up on a deserted beach that is flocked by tourists in summer.

Forensic teams took photographs. The victims’ passports were photocopied and added to a file in a Turkish prosecutor’s office. The corpses were taken to a morgue.

Eyyub, the middleman, was last seen in January, Turkish officials say. Turkey has intensified antismuggling operations in Izmir in recent months.

The smugglers now work more discreetly, but only weeks before the readmittance of refugees was set to start, their lucrative business hadn’t stopped. By mid-March, some 150,000 people had arrived in Greece and Italy via Mediterranean Sea routes since the start of the year, according to the IOM. More than 450 died at sea.

Some of Ms. Zinab’s relatives traveled to Izmir to hold a quiet funeral in a cemetery there later in December. None of her children could attend.

“Maybe her children will want one day to take her from here and make a funeral in Syria,” a male relative said.

See http://www.wsj.com/articles/a-migrant-mothers-journey-and-tragic-end-1459523368 (“A Migrant Mother’s Journey and Tragic End“) (emphasis added); see also http://www.wsj.com/articles/hundreds-of-migrants-feared-to-have-drowned-in-mediterranean-1464516161 (“Hundreds of Migrants Feared to Have Drowned in Mediterranean”—”About 700 people are thought to have died attempting to cross the Mediterranean Sea from North Africa in the past few days, the United Nations’ refugee agency said Sunday, further highlighting the perils of the world’s deadliest migration route”) and https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2015/07/01/global-chaos-and-helter-skelter/#comment-7653 (“Aylan And Galip Kurdi Will Be Remembered“) and https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2009/12/28/human-trafficking/#comment-7778 (“The Tragic Story of Comfort Women“) and https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2009/12/28/human-trafficking/#comment-8087 (“Europol: More Than 10,000 Migrant Children Are Missing“) and https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2015/12/06/islamophobia-is-un-american/ (“Islamophobia Is Un-American“)

The fate of Lina Zinab is echoed again and again across the Middle East and Europe, and around the world, as human beings struggle to survive against seemingly insurmountable odds.

The story is told too in the lifeless body of Aylan Kurdi on a beach near the Turkish resort of Bodrum; and in the faces of human trafficking victims worldwide.

So much hope for a better life . . . dashed.

Is life fair?

See https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2010/05/12/what-and-where-is-god/ (“What And Where Is God?“)

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14 05 2016
Timothy D. Naegele (21:46:15) :

Man Who Choked 8-Year-Old Girl In Women’s Restroom Stokes Alarm Over Transgender Access

Gender Neutral Restroom

Valerie Richardson has reported for the Washington Times:

The attack by a man on an 8-year-old girl in a women’s restroom last week in a Chicago restaurant is raising alarm about opposite-sex access to public facilities in the name of transgender rights.

Police say the man, 33-year-old Reese Hartstirn, entered the women’s room May 7 at Jason’s Deli in Chicago’s South Loop and choked the girl until she passed out.

The girl’s mother, who was in the adjacent stall, heard her daughter’s screams and rescued her, while restaurant patrons held the suspect until police arrived, according to WLS-TV in Chicago.

Opponents of laws allowing opposite-sex public-facility use argue that they increase the danger of such attacks because they allow men, transgender or not, to enter women’s rooms unchallenged.

“I’m sure his intent was innocent,” said Susan Wright in a Friday post on the conservative website RedState. “I’m sure he really felt that he belonged in the women’s restroom and the little girl was somehow oppressing him, which caused the confusion, resulting in his hands ending up around her neck.”

Chicago bans discrimination based on gender identity in employment, housing and public accommodations. Battles over whether such anti-discrimination ordinances apply to transgender bathroom access have spiked since Houston voters defeated 3-to-1 a so-called “bathroom bill” in November.

The Obama administration released an order Friday banning public schools from denying access to bathrooms, locker rooms and other single-sex facilities. Under the order, a parent must first notify the district that the child’s gender identity “differs from previous representations or records.”

In other situations, no such proof is required. In New York City, for example, Mayor Bill de Blasio last week signed an executive order forbidding municipal employees from asking for proof of gender identity from those using city-owned facilities such as restrooms and showers.

Hartstirn is scheduled to appear in court Monday on charges of aggravated kidnapping of a child, aggravated battery of a child and battery causing bodily harm, as well as aggravated assault of a police officer, according to WLS-TV.

Supporters of transgender rights argue that such attacks are still against the law and that anyone who commits crimes after entering opposite-sex bathrooms remains subject to prosecution.

“You know, a dude who would choke out an eight-year-old girl is probably not the kind of dude who would be dissuaded by the wrong sign on a restroom door,” argued a commenter on RedState.

Others say allowing men to enter women’s rooms is asking for trouble. After a Washington state commission ruled in December that the state’s anti-discrimination law applied to transgender bathroom access, a man drew headlines by undressing in a Seattle women’s public locker room, saying he was allowed to do so.

“It was dangerous before this new bathroom insanity came along,” said another comment. “The guy is a criminal looking for victims. Don’t make it any easier for him!”

See http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2016/may/14/man-who-choked-girl-in-womens-restroom-stokes-alar/ (emphasis added)

First, Barack Obama is a black racist. If you have any doubts whatsoever, please read his book “Dreams from My Father,” which is summarized in the article below, with direct quotes and page cites.

See https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2009/12/05/is-barack-obama-a-racist/ (“Is Barack Obama A Racist?“)

Second, he is the worst president in U.S. history, and the most divisive. Americans are counting the days, quite literally, until his presidency ends and he never darkens the corridors of the White House again.

Third, are the United States and other countries going to skew time-tested rules to accommodate the “freaks of nature” in this world? Time will tell.

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24 05 2016
Timothy D. Naegele (01:25:33) :

The Serial Rapist Bill Cosby: To Stand Trial [UPDATED]

Bill Cosby

Earlier, detailed allegations against Cosby were revealed.

See https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2009/12/28/human-trafficking/#comment-7566 (“The Serial Rapist Bill Cosby“)

As if these revelations were not enough, more is coming out about Cosby.

The UK’s Daily Mail has reported:

Bill Cosby admitted to sexual encounters with teenagers and having an agency send him models on a weekly basis in depositions released just as he learns if his sexual assault case will go to trial.

He admitted in those depositions, given in 2005 and 2006 during Andrea Constand’s lawsuit against him, that he gave quaaludes to 19-year-old Therese Serignese in Las Vegas in 1976 and that he had another teenager, who he met in 2000, masturbate him with lotion.

That second teenager was one of the ‘five to six models’ Cosby said an agency sent to his studio each week. Cosby, 78, said in his deposition that he would give the young women ‘a very, very good meal.’

These new details from Cosby’s depositions come one day before he is scheduled to appear in a Pennsylvania court for a preliminary hearing to determine if his criminal sex-assault case goes to trial.

He was charged in that complaint, made by Constand in 2005, after these depositions were first made public last year.

After admitting to giving Serignese quaaludes during his deposition and acknowledging that they made the teenager ‘high’, Cosby was then asked by Constand’s lawyer Dolores Troiani; ‘She said that she believes she was not in the position to consent to intercourse after you gave her the drug. Do you believe that is correct?’

Cosby responded to that question by saying; ‘I don’t know. … How many years ago are we talking about? 197(6)? … I meet Ms. Picking in Las Vegas. She meets me backstage. I give her quaaludes. We then have sex.’

He also stated that he had never taken quaaludes despite the fact that he gave them to women, claiming they make him sleepy.

Troiana then asked how he could know that they would make him sleepy if he never took any, to which Cosby replied; ‘Quaaludes happen to be a depressant. I have had surgery and while being given pills that block the nervous system, in particular the areas of muscle, the back, I found that I get sleepy and I want to stay awake.’

Serignese said in a 2014 interview that she met Cosby at the Las Vegas Hilton in 1976 and was invited to spend time with him after his show, which is when he gave her two Quaaludes.

‘I took them, didn’t know what they were didn’t even ask. I just was intimidated I guess and I took them,’ Serignese told WPTV.

‘Then my next memory is feeling drugged and him having sex with me.’

Despite this, she ended up staying with Cosby, living in his penthouse for weeks, but eventually she moved out and later married.

She did however take up Cosby on his promise to pay her $500 if she went to school and earned good grades.

After attending nursing school, and doing well, she got word to go down to Western Union. In the end, she got $10,000 from Cosby.

The other teenager Cosby admitted to having a sexual interaction with he first met when she was just 17, though he does not state how old she was when he had her masturbate him with lotion.

After admitting to the sexual act with the teenager, Troiana asked Cosby; ‘[She] used the lotion to rub your penis and make you ejaculate?’

Cosby responded to this by saying; ‘Bingo.’

The deposition also reveals a previously unknown young actress filed a complaint with police in New York City after she claims Cosby tried to force her to have oral sex.

Cosby denied this allegation in the deposition.

The comedian also spoke about trying to hide the money he paid out to Serignese and later Constand from his wife.

In the case of Serignese, he had the money sent through his agent at William Morris.

With Constand, Cosby said he told his wife ‘there is a person I would like to help.’

Constand, the former director of operations for Temple’s women’s basketball team and a one time college basketball star herself, launched the legal suit against Cosby, a man she called her ‘mentor’, in March 2005.

Now 42, she said she first met Cosby, a Temple alum, in November 2002 and the pair became friends and she was a frequent guest at dinner parties at his home.

Cosby is now accused of drugging and sexually assaulting Constand at his mansion in January 2004.

The case against him emerged just days before Pennsylvania’s 12-year statute of limitation deadline for pressing charges was about to run out and despite a previous DA declining to charge Cosby a decade ago.

Cosby previously said under oath that he had consensual sexual contact with Constand.

The criminal complaint alleges that on the night in question Cosby told Constand to take three blue pills that left her feeling weak and then led her to a sofa where the assault took place.

When she woke up the next morning he gave her a muffin and sent her home.

The charge against him is punishable by five to 10 years behind bars and a $25,000 fine.

Steele said at the press conference on Wednesday that Cosby made two failed sexual advances towards Constand before the incident now in question.

The affidavit of probable cause describes both incidents, as well as the night of the alleged assault.

Constand claims that the first time Cosby made an advance at her was after the two shared a meal at his house and were sitting on his sofa having a discussion.

That is when ‘without warning, Cosby reached over and touched her pants, her waist, and her inner thigh’, according to the affidavit of probable cause.

She claims she then excused herself, went to the bathroom, gathered her things and left.

The next time he made an advance at her also occurred at his home in Elkins Park, and this time he ‘unbuttoned her pants and began touching her,’ according to the affidavit of probable cause.

Once again Constand claims she left soon after.

Then, sometime between mid-January and mid-February 2004, the alleged sexual assault occurred.

Constand claims she arrived at Cosby’s home and was greeted by the actor, who was wearing a sweatsuit.

The two spoke about Constand’s future, and she told Cosby she was feeling ‘drained’ and ’emotionally occupied’.

That is when Cosby allegedly went upstairs and returned with three blue pills. telling Constand: ‘These will make you feel good. The blue things will take the edge off.’

Constand claims she then asked if the pills were herbal, to which Cosby replied: ‘Yes. Down them. Put ’em down. Put them in your mouth.’

According to the affidavit of probable cause, Cosby then told Constand to have some wine, and soon after she began to have trouble speaking and seeing.

Cosby then allegedly told her to lie down on the couch, and soon after, according to the affidavit of probable hearing, was ‘fondling her breasts, put his hands into her pants, and penetrated her vagina with his fingers’.

He also allegedly took her hand and placed it on his erect penis.

Constand claims she woke up hours later around 4am and realized her bra was undone and above her breasts and that her sweater was bunched up.

As she made her way to the door she claims Cosby was standing there in a robe and holding a muffin, which he handed to her as she left while saying: ‘Alright.’

Constand later returned to her native Canada, where she reported the incident to police in January 2005.

Authorities in Montgomery County, Pennsylvania, followed up with an investigation after she reported the assault, but in February 2005 District Attorney Bruce Castor declined to press criminal charges due to a lack of evidence.

The affidavit of probable cause also details an interview authorities had with Cosby about the alleged assault on January 26, 2005.

Cosby said at that time he had given Constand Benadryl and then, according to the affidavit, ‘they began to pet (touching and kissing) and then he touched her bare breast and private parts.’

Cosby claims that Constand did not ask him to stop at any point.

He then admitted to giving her a blueberry muffin and some tea when she awoke early the next morning.

He also said the two had ‘petted and kissed’ several times in the past, and that he ‘liked the petting and touching’.

When asked if he had ever had sexual intercourse with Constand he said ‘never asleep or awake’.

Constand then launched her civil suit against Cosby, a man she called her ‘mentor’ in March 2005, after no criminal charges were filed against the actor.

Cosby settled that suit for undisclosed terms in 2006.

An attorney for Constand said in a statement when Cosby was charged last December: ‘We have the utmost confidence in Mr Steele, Ms Feden and their team, who have impressed us with their professionalism.’

Through this all, Cosby’s wife Camille has stood by him and even been forced to give her own deposition in a lawsuit filed against her husband by several of his accusers.

Camille married the comedian in 1964 and the couple have three children; Erinn, Evin and Erica.

Their oldest son, Ennis, was shot dead while changing a tire in 1997 at the age of 27.

______________

EXCERPTS FROM BILL COSBY’S DEPOSITION

COSBY DISCUSSING HIS RELATIONSHIP WITH 19-YEAR-OLD THERESE SERIGNESE

Q: Did you give her quaaludes?

A: Yes.

Q: What effect did the quaaludes have on her?

A: She became in those days what was called high.

Q: She said that she believes she was not in the position to consent to intercourse after you gave her the drug. Do you believe that is correct?

A: I don’t know. … How many years ago are we talking about? 197(6)? … I meet Ms. Picking in Las Vegas. She meets me backstage. I give her quaaludes. We then have sex.

COSBY DISCUSSING THE TEENAGE MODEL HE HAD A SEXUAL ENCOUNTER WITH

Q: She says that just days after … she told you that she did not drink, you told her to come over to (your townhouse) and served her amaretto. Do you recall serving her amaretto?

A: No.

Q: That you told her to sit next to you on the couch and that you put your arm around her and began massaging her shoulder and arms suggestively. Did that occur? … This occurred sometime after you met her parents.

A: I need clarification on time.

Q: She’s 17 and I believe throughout the time she knows you she becomes 18 or 19.

Q: On a later occasion you had her masturbate you with lotion. Did that ever happen?

A: Yes.

Q: (She) used the lotion to rub your penis and make you ejaculate?

A: Bingo.

COSBY DISCUSSING A TEENAGER WHO FILED A POLICE COMPLAINT AGAINST HIM

A: I fed her dinner, gave her three drinks. We went then to the living room. We went through acting, elementary moves. We then went to the sofa. We laid down together. I was behind her.

Q: Was she lying down or sitting up?

A: No, she was down.

Q: Did she fall asleep?

A: Yes.

Q: What did you do when she fell asleep?

A: I got up.

Q: Did you engage in any type of sexual contact with her while you were on the couch?

A: No.

Q. Are you aware that the woman’s statement was that on the night of the dinner at your New York townhouse, “At some point Cosby and the woman were sitting on a sofa and Cosby was massaging her back?”

A: Yes.

Q: “Cosby then lowered his pants in an effort to receive oral sex?”

A: “In an effort to receive oral sex,” that did not happen.

Q: “The woman rebuffed Cosby’s advances and was immediately sent home, driven by Cosby’s driver?”

A: And that is not true.

See http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3605263/Bill-Cosby-ADMITS-sexual-encounters-teens-says-agency-sent-young-models-weekly-basis-deposition-released-day-learns-sex-assault-case-trial.html (“Bill Cosby ADMITS to sexual encounters with teens and says agency sent him young models on a weekly basis in deposition released the day before he learns if sex assault case will go to trial“) (emphasis added)

There is no other way to describe this except as disgusting and criminal. Thus, it is not surprising that right after this article appeared, it was announced that Cosby would stand trial.

See http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3606778/Bill-Cosby-arrives-court-smiling-waving-s-set-come-face-face-woman-accused-rape-time-decade.html (“Bill Cosby WILL STAND trial on sex assault charges after judge hears rape accuser’s claims actor told her to drink wine and take ‘herbal medication’ to relax before unconscious assault“)

Cosby, Bill Clinton and the fugitive from justice, Roman Polanski—who fled the United States—are three despicable individuals, who should be serving time in American prisons.

See, e.g., https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2015/12/11/boycott-the-gop-and-ignore-foreign-naysayers/#comment-8828 (“Bill Clinton Ditched Secret Service On Multiple “Lolita Express” Flights“) and http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/roman-polanski-faces-new-extradition-898312 (“Roman Polanski Faces New Extradition Challenge Over Child Sex Conviction“) and http://variety.com/2016/film/global/roman-polanski-extradite-u-s-1201785415/ (“Roman Polanski Faces New Attempt to Extradite Him to U.S.“)

Hillary, Chelsea and Bill . . . Cosby
[Hillary, Chelsea and Bill . . . Cosby]

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24 02 2019
Timothy D. Naegele (08:23:14) :

NFL Patriots Owner Caught In Human Trafficking Sex Sting [UPDATED]

Jonathan Levin has reported for BloombergQuint:

The Orchids of Asia Day Spa was an open secret around southeast Florida, well known for blending the opulent with the sordid. Online reviews on a site called Rubmaps.com cited paid sex services in vulgar terms including “rub and tug.” Another on yelp.com noted a “happy ending.”

It was here — aside a nail salon and Outback Steakhouse in the town of Jupiter — that the police say Robert Kraft, owner of the New England Patriots, was twice dropped off by a chauffeured vehicle. Worth $4.4 billion, he paid, the police say, between $59 and $79 for sex acts. An explicit police affidavit says the encounters didn’t include intercourse.

The 77-year-old Kraft proclaims his innocence in a broader investigation that ensnared two other prominent financiers, including John Havens, Citigroup Inc.’s former president. John Childs, a buyout pioneer, was also charged in a related prostitution investigation. The police say in total 26 encounters are captured on video in the Orchids.

The case has peeled back one of the most unsavory aspects of this stretch of Florida — where a playground of the wealthy filled with golf courses and beaches meets with what authorities say may be a human trafficking ring spanning from China to the U.S. There are multi-million dollar mansions as well as the massage tables that police say women slept on when not engaged by customers.

Mansions and Massages

“This is the tip of the iceberg,” Martin County Sheriff William Snyder said in an interview Saturday.

The juxtapositions are jarring.

Jupiter is home to countless celebrities and sports stars, as well as the Trump National Golf Club, where the president golfed with Tiger Woods and Jack Nicklaus earlier this month. Thirty minutes to the south, in the area around near Trump’s Mar-a-Lago club, there are $10 million homes tucked behind carefully groomed hedges and the valet lines teem with Lamborghinis and Rolls-Royces.

Sheriff Snyder said the multi-jurisdiction probe was expected to carry on for the foreseeable future into more and possibly broader human trafficking operations. He said that in many cases it involved coerced women without access to their own transportation, who would be moved from location to location, living where they were taken and sometimes working late into the night.

‘Treated Like Cattle’

Snyder said, for all the attention given to the high-flying men accused, this in his mind is a story of the women: None of the women ever left until they were moved — and many, he said, had been carried out of their jurisdiction in expensive cars. They had no days off, he said, and cooked rice on hot plates. Condoms were never used, he said.

“These women are being treated like cattle,” Snyder said. He said of the arrested men: “Any thoughts that they didn’t know they were trafficked women were hogwashed.”

The affidavit covering the police operation at the Orchids was based in part on video surveillance obtained from Jan 18-22, described the sex acts in graphic detail, but the men were only identified as Man 1-26. Charges were filed against 25 johns with the State Attorney in Palm Beach County. The police said Kraft visited twice.

Others Deny Charges

In addition to owning the Patriots, Kraft is the money behind the New England Revolution Major League Soccer team and other businesses. His wife Myra died in 2011.

Florida statutes describe a first offense of soliciting a prostitute as a second-degree misdemeanor punishable by as many as 60 days in jail and a fine. But the punishment can increase significantly for repeat offenders. Suspects who are Palm Beach County residents will receive a summons in the mail to appear in court, Jupiter Detective Andrew Sharp said, while those residing outside the county will have an arrest warrant issued.

Kraft is a frequent visitor to the president’s Mar-a-Lago resort. The Patriots owner was in the area this past weekend, attending a fund-raiser for the Everglades Foundation.

Childs, meanwhile, was among 165 people that were charged by Florida’s Vero Beach Police Department in a separate but related investigation into massage parlors.

“I have received no contact by the police department about this charge,” he said Friday in a phone interview. “The accusation of solicitation of prostitution is totally false. I have retained a lawyer.”

A man who answered a phone number listed for Havens said, “I have no idea what you are talking about,” He then hung up and additional calls weren’t answered.

See https://www.bloombergquint.com/onweb/kraft-charges-reveal-sordid-world-thriving-amid-florida-royalty#gs.v6qW36yI (“Kraft Charges Reveal a Sordid World Thriving in Florida“) (emphasis added); see also https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-6738523/Former-Citigroup-president-arrested-soliciting-prostitution-Florida-sting.html (“Former Citigroup president is arrested for soliciting prostitution in Florida sting“) and https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-6738743/Robert-Kraft-pictured-pre-Oscars-party-Beverly-Hills.html (“Robert Kraft pictured at pre-Oscars party in Beverly Hills“)

It is important to repeat what Sheriff William Snyder said of the arrested men:

Any thoughts that they didn’t know they were trafficked women were hogwashed.

Also, it have been noted:

Kraft is charged with two misdemeanor counts of soliciting prostitution after twice visiting Jupiter “rub and tug” massage joint Orchids of Asia Day Spa. Police say the business has ties to an international human-trafficking and prostitution ring, and some of the women at the Asian spa and five other affiliated Florida properties are sex slaves from China.

. . .

Kraft allegedly visited Orchids of Asia first on Jan. 19, a day after police — who had been investigating the joint for at least six months — had set up surveillance cameras inside the business, located 17 miles from the 77-year-old billionaire NFL owner’s Palm Beach apartment.

According to the affidavit, Kraft paid cash at the front desk and then went to another room, where he took off his clothes. He was accompanied by Wang and Mingbi, who allegedly massaged him lying face-down before turning him over and performing a sex act by hand.

Wang, identified by police as the manager of the massage parlor nicknamed “Lulu,” was arrested and faces charges of maintaining a house of ill fame and deriving profits from prostitution. Mingbi, an employee of the spa, has not been arrested or charged and is believed to be cooperating with authorities. Kraft was seen tipping them $100 each before leaving.

Kraft left the spa in a white Bentley owned by a friend who had driven him there and had waited outside. A Jupiter police officer then pulled the Bentley over on a traffic stop and asked Kraft — the front-seat passenger — for identification.

. . .

Kraft’s second visit was on the following day, Jan. 20, the morning of the AFC Championship Game, and he was allegedly seen on video with Lulu, who massaged him face-down before turning him over and appearing to put her face near his genitals, the affidavit states. He gave her a $100 bill and two other unidentified bills before leaving.

See https://nypost.com/2019/02/28/how-patriots-owner-robert-kraft-could-get-off-in-prostitution-case/ (emphasis added)

What real man does what Kraft did?

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10 05 2019
Timothy D. Naegele (16:57:57) :

Sex Sells: Hollywood Is Sick [UPDATED]

I grew up in Hollywood—or Los Angeles—and I was warned by my parents at an early age what the town was all about. Later, I learned that our nation’s capital, Washington, D.C., was “Hollywood East.”

See, https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2017/05/31/jerry-perenchio-kind-and-caring/ (“Jerry Perenchio: Kind And Caring“); see also https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2017/05/16/americas-newest-civil-war-2017-and-beyond/#comment-16569 (“Is Barbra Streisand Hollywood’s Female Harvey Weinstein?“) and https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2010/09/24/washington-is-sick-and-the-american-people-know-it/#comment-13133 (“Finally, The Beginning Of Justice For Hollywood’s Serial Rapist, Bill Cosby“) and https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2017/05/16/americas-newest-civil-war-2017-and-beyond/#comment-12196 (“THE VERY ESSENCE OF HOLLYWOOD’S DEPRAVITY“)

In December of this year, it will have been a decade since I wrote the article above about human trafficking. Yet, such trafficking continues today, unabated. Tatiana Siegel has written an important article for The Hollywood Reporter, but one that barely grazes the surface of what is happening in the century-old depraved movie industry:

Each May, young women arrive in the South of France with big-screen ambitions, but even after the Harvey Weinstein scandal and the #MeToo movement, their journey to Hollywood often begins with producers promising movie roles and visas in return for sex.

In 2014, Kadian Noble met Harvey Weinstein in the lobby of the Majestic Hotel in Cannes. After some small talk, he instructed the aspiring actress to come upstairs so that he could have a look at her reel. Noble, who was 27 and from the U.K., had previously met the since-disgraced mogul in London, where he told her he liked her look and was eager to cast her in one of his movies. To make the whole matter seem legit, he introduced Noble during that London encounter to Oprah Winfrey, an idol of Noble’s.

Before Hollywood’s #MeToo awakening in 2017, there was nothing unusual about taking a meeting alone in a hotel room during the Cannes Film Festival. Hundreds of U.S. film companies like The Weinstein Company booked suites at glorious resorts along the Croisette like the Majestic and used them as makeshift offices during the festival and accompanying market.

“It was a case of this man who creates masterpieces has just chosen me, telling me, ‘I have something in mind for you. It’s going to be good for you,’ ” Noble tells THR. “It sounds like I was delusional at the time to believe all of that, but I did believe it.”

Once they were in the room, Weinstein put Noble on the phone with a man who Weinstein said was a producer. The man spoke so fast that she didn’t catch his name. He told her to be “a good girl” and comply with Weinstein’s wishes. “He was just like, ‘Harvey has told me about you. These things are going to happen for you.’ But it was very vague, and it made no sense,” she adds.

Weinstein then began watching the actress’ reel. What happened next, according to Noble, was sudden and unexpected, culminating with Weinstein sexually assaulting her in the bathroom.

Although Noble’s story rings familiar given the number of women who have emerged since October 2017, her lawyer took a novel approach in seeking justice. Attorney Jeff Herman, who has represented alleged sexual abuse victims of director Bryan Singer and billionaire Jeffrey Epstein, filed a federal suit in New York in November 2017 accusing the film titan of violating sex trafficking laws (at the time the Noble suit was filed, Weinstein released a statement denying any allegations of nonconsensual sex).

The fact that Cannes has become publicly associated with sex trafficking certainly sparked headlines. And yawns. After all, for decades, the festival — with its booming yacht circuit and influx of wannabe actresses and uber-wealth — had been ground zero for nefarious activity, including sex trafficking in all its myriad forms. What’s more surprising is that despite the tidal shift in awareness post-#MeToo, bad behavior on the Cannes party scene persists.

Under the Obama administration, the federal sex trafficking laws were amended to create jurisdiction over U.S. citizens violating these laws in foreign countries. The amendment allowed Herman to make a claim against Weinstein because he’s a U.S. citizen and allegedly violated federal sex trafficking laws while in France.

Herman’s suit has been challenged, but Judge Robert Sweet of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York denied Weinstein’s motion to dismiss and has allowed the case to move forward.

Herman has another client — whom he declined to name — who alleges that she was raped by Weinstein in the late 1990s at Cannes. “You’re talking about a 20-year span of him utilizing the Cannes Film Festival for this purpose,” he says.

Still, Herman says it’s important to distinguish the Cannes casting couch from what rises to the level of sex trafficking.

“The casting couch is [a form of] sexual harassment. It’s using your position of power to coerce women to get them to agree to engage in sexual activity for a part,” he says. “You can be morally offended by that and [say it’s] ethically wrong, but those are two adults making that decision. What makes it sex trafficking with regard to Harvey is that he coerced these women using violence, threats, fraud. They basically didn’t have a choice. And one way or another, once he had them in the room, he was having sex with them or sexually assaulting them.”

Another form of sex trafficking that is bubbling under the radar on the Riviera but obvious to most producers in the know is one in which non-U.S. citizens meet film industry connectors on the Cannes yacht circuit. The go-betweens help the would-be actresses, often still in their teens and hailing from countries ranging from Britain to former Soviet bloc states, gain legal entry into the U.S. and land a small or nonspeaking role in an American movie. The unspoken quid pro quo is that once in the U.S., they are lent out — sexually — to other powerful industry men. With the threat of her H-1 visa being revoked, the actress effectively can’t say no or go to the police.

“I have definitely seen cases where you see someone at Cannes in May, then you’re in L.A. in September, and they’re there,” says one producer who has witnessed the gambit.

In fact, the producer says it should raise a red flag any time you see a foreign-born actress with no credits suddenly make her way into a U.S.-shot movie. “No one would legitimately pay for the H-1 visa for that kind of role. No way. It costs four or five thousand bucks,” he says. “As a producer, there’s no chance that there’s this one-liner that should be a local hire [and] that we’re going to go with a first-timer from Ukraine and get a work visa for her.”

And yet, it happens with disturbing frequency, with the Cannes Film Festival playing a pivotal role. THR has learned of at least one now-prominent actress who made her first connections on a Cannes yacht and quickly landed her debut role in a U.S.-shot movie. In exchange, she told confidants, she was passed around to a group of Hollywood men, sometimes coerced. Another name actress has a nearly identical trajectory. Both declined to speak to THR.

How the young women wind up in Cannes in the first place is a bit of a mystery given the price of travel and accommodations during the festival. But a source familiar with the inner workings of yacht life says services that pay to bring women to such places are particularly reliant on Eastern Europeans and will groom them in their home countries before moving them to high-profile events. Girls who have received refinement training — so they will blend in at premieres and posh restaurants — typically fetch more for the service. As to who is paying, well-heeled film financiers often are footing the bill. One London-based woman who previously ran such a service was known by producers as a point person for the scheme but declined to talk to THR, fearful of being on the record.

“It’s important to point out that to be trafficked, you don’t have to be locked up somewhere,” says Jean Bruggeman, executive director of Freedom Network USA, which works with victims of human trafficking. “The fact that people have freedom of movement, that’s not relevant. The question is: Is there a level of coercion? In the trafficking of foreign nationals, the methods of coercion are often very different from the trafficking of U.S. citizens because the immigration system is designed in such a way as to give all power to the employer.”

Kimberly Mehlman-Orozco, an authority on human trafficking who frequently appears as an expert witness in legal cases, says most victims never come forward, making statistics meaningless. “We do know that this crime, because of its clandestine nature, is significantly underreported,” she says. “So, as far as measuring prevalence, we really don’t have those metrics to say how often this happens because of how underreported it is. Even if it is reported, [there is] a low-variable likelihood of successful conviction because of how difficult a crime it is to successfully litigate. And oftentimes the [accused] mount a very zealous defense and have the finances to do so.”

Epstein, for one, avoided a lifetime prison sentence for underage sex trafficking and abuse and instead served just 13 months thanks to a pitbull legal team that included Alan Dershowitz.

As for Noble, she says she let one of Weinstein’s female assistants know after the encounter that “he forced himself on me,” she says. “And her advice was to put it in a letter to him because ‘maybe he doesn’t realize his actions,’ and I should ‘put my skills into expressing myself.'”

The case is moving forward. However, Judge Sweet passed away in April, and a trial date has not yet been scheduled. While there are both state and federal laws in play for sex trafficking, penalties at the federal level start with 10- to 15-year minimums.

Now 32, Noble says she has no intention of returning to Cannes. Instead, she is spending more time pursuing film and TV work in Los Angeles. But she says the experience at the Majestic has left her with health issues, and she’s wary of the intentions of men in the business.

“I did have more trust in people [before], if somebody approached me and was talking about wanting to work with me,” she says. “But now I just always feel like most people are talking shit.”

See https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/features/cannes-has-a-sex-trafficking-problem-metoo-era-1208261 (“Cannes Has a Sex Trafficking Problem Despite #MeToo Era“) (emphasis added)

The true sickos—such as Harvey Weinstein, Bill Cosby, Roman Polanski and their counterparts today—are alive and well, and “functioning” as if the #MeToo movement never existed.

With money and power comes those who desperately want to get a piece of it, even if it means selling the bodies, souls and everything else.

See, e.g., https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Me_Too_movement (“Me Too movement“)

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30 07 2019
Timothy D. Naegele (20:44:11) :

Margot Robbie: Shame [UPDATED]

Margot Robbie

First, I urge everyone to read (or reread) my comments above, about Hollywood’s century-old depravity. It never seems to stop.

See https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2009/12/28/human-trafficking/#comment-17162 (“Sex Sells: Hollywood Is Sick“)

Second, Margot Robbie is a lovely and very talented married actress, who was born and raised on a farm in Dalby, Queensland, Australia. People may have doubts about her acting talents after watching her in Quentin Tarantino’s “Once Upon a Time in Hollywood,” because her acting was not on full display in that film. However, watch her in Martin Scorsese’s “The Wolf of Wall Street,” and you will see her fine acting skills shine.

See, e.g., https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Margot_Robbie (“Margot Robbie“) and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Once_Upon_a_Time_in_Hollywood (“Once Upon a Time in Hollywood“) and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Wolf_of_Wall_Street_(2013_film) (“The Wolf of Wall Street (2013 film)“)

Third, the photo above is merely the latest display of her breasts and naked body, which obviously she and Hollywood are pitching to the world.

See, e.g.,
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-7302577/Margot-Robbie-Brad-Pitt-lead-cast-One-Time-Hollywood-London-Premiere.html (“Once Upon A Time In Hollywood London Premiere: Margot Robbie, Brad Pitt and Leonardo DiCaprio lead the star-studded cast on the red carpet to celebrate Quentin Tarantino’s NINTH feature film“) and https://www.celebjihad.com/margot-robbie/margot-robbie-extended-sex-scene-wolf-wall-street-leaked and http://celebxxx.pw/margot-robbie-naked-hot/ [Note: the photos displayed at the last two links were taken by professional photographers on movie sets or otherwise, with the full knowledge of Margot Robbie and/or her Hollywood production companies. Otherwise they would not have found their way onto the Web]

Fourth, imagine what this does to the self esteem of women in general, and young girls in particular, around the globe.

And yes, there are perverts and sexual predators and human traffickers and Jeffrey Epsteins and Harvey Weinsteins who are ready and willing to prey on them, abuse and misuse them, and even kill them.

Just read my article above about “Human Trafficking,” and the comments beneath it, if you have any doubts whatsoever.

Lastly, I am not a prude, but I do not like to see women exploited; and Hollywood has perfected that to a fine art. Margot Robbie is simply the latest example.

See, e.g., https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2017/05/31/jerry-perenchio-kind-and-caring/ (“Jerry Perenchio: Kind And Caring”—”My parents . . . lived in Hollywood after they were married, before building their home in Westwood, and they knew famous movie stars, etc. They always told me not to get involved with those in the business, whom they described as ‘phonies.’ Years later, Jerry told me something similar: that they were not ‘nice.’ Hollywood is a rough-and-tumble town, much like our nation’s capital; and the narcissistic ‘phonies’ of both towns seem to adore each other”)

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30 07 2019
Rick (22:51:06) :

What does this have to do with the incredibly hot Margo Robbie?

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30 07 2019
Timothy D. Naegele (23:03:22) :

Thank you as always, Rick, for your comment.

First, please read (or reread) the following comments.

See https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2009/12/28/human-trafficking/#comment-17162 (“Sex Sells: Hollywood Is Sick“)

Second, as stated in my comments above, Hollywood has perfected the exploitation of women to a fine art. Margot Robbie is simply the latest example.

Third, young women take their cues from celebrities like Robbie, and feel that they too must be provocative in their dress and otherwise. To her credit, Academy Award-winner Natalie Portman seems to have gone in the opposite direction.

See, e.g., https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natalie_Portman (“Natalie Portman”—”During the 2018 Women’s March in Los Angeles, she spoke about the ‘sexual terrorism’ she experienced that began when she was 13 years old after the release of Léon: The Professional. She told the crowd; ‘I understood very quickly, even as a thirteen-year-old, if I were to express myself sexually, I would feel unsafe. And that men would feel entitled to discuss and objectify my body to my great discomfort.’ She drew attention to the #MeToo movement stating her first ever piece of fan mail, was a rape fantasy between her and the male fan, and that her local radio station created a countdown until her eighteenth birthday (when she would be of legal age to consent to participation in sexual activity)”) and https://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-7298139/Natalie-Portman-puts-radiant-display-Harpers-Bazaar.html (“Natalie Portman REFUSES to play a parent on screen because it ‘feels weird’ and claims she’s constantly fighting against being judged for her looks as a woman”)

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9 11 2019
Timothy D. Naegele (06:38:24) :

Fugitive From American Justice Roman Polanski Accused Of Violently Raping French Actress [UPDATED]

Peter Allen has written for the UK’s Daily Mail:

French film actress Valentine Monnier has accused Oscar winning director Roman Polanski of raping her when she was 18 in a ski chalet.

Ms Monnier waived her right to anonymity so as to describe the alleged horrific ordeal just as Polanski, 86, launches a new movie called ‘I accuse’.

She told how she feared being murdered by the film director after he ‘violently raped’ her in Gstaad, Switzerland.

Polanski is still wanted in America after pleading guilty to the statutory rape of a 13-year-old schoolgirl in 1977 and then fleeing the country.

In a detailed victim statement released through the Parisien newspaper, Ms Monnier said she now wanted to accuse Polanski of attacking her in a ski chalet in early 1975.

Responding to the claims, a lawyer for the director said: ‘Roman Polanski firmly denies all accusations of rape.’

Ms Monnier, who is now 62, said: ‘In 1975 I was raped by Roman Polanski. I had no link with him, neither personnel, nor professional, and I hardly knew him.

‘It happened extremely violently, after we got back to his chalet in Gstaad, Switzerland, from skiing.

‘He hit me, beat me until I surrendered, and then raped me and put me through all kinds of vicissitudes. I had just turned 18’.

She feared ‘I would die’, because the already world famous Polanski would want to keep his crime secret by murdering her.

Ms Monnier, who now lives in New York, said she was finally speaking out after 44 years because of Polanski’s hypocrisy.

The French-Polish director, who made his name with films such as ‘Rosemary’s Baby’, ‘Chinatown’ and ‘The Pianist’, has just made ‘J’accuse’ (‘I accuse’) about Alfred Dreyfus, the Jewish officer convicted and imprisoned on false evidence at the end of the 19th Century.

Dreyfus was accused of smuggling French Army secrets to the Germans in a notorious case of anti-Semitism, before finally being cleared.

Ms Monnier said she was disgusted at the way Polanski was using the plot of ‘J’accuse’ to allegedly mirror his own case in the USA. He plead guilty to the statutory rape of a 13-year-old schoolgirl and then fled the country.

She said: ‘Is it tenable, under the pretext of a film, under the cover of history, to hear the person who has marked you for life to say “I accuse”, while preventing you – the victim – to accuse him?’

Describing the crime of rape as a ‘time bomb’, Ms Monnier said the ‘traumatic memory’ of what father-of-two Polanski did to her would never go away.

She felt guilty about what happened for decades and was too scared to go to the authorities.

Polanski had also apologised to her in floods of tears, while other guests in the chalet also encouraged her to remain silent.

Because of the 20-year statute of limitations in France, Polanski cannot be prosecuted for a crime that allegedly took place in 1975.

Marlene Schiappa, France’s equality minister, confirmed that Polanski could not be arrested over the accusations.

Referring to Switzerland – where Ms Monnier was allegedy raped – Ms Schiappa said: ‘I cannot intervene in legal proceedings in another country. Nevertheless, I wish to express my full support for your courageous approach.’

Ms Monnier said she was invited on the 1975 trip to the Alps by a girlfriend who knew Polanski, and that she found herself alone on a ski lift with the director when he used coarse language to ask her: ‘Do you want to have sex?’

She said no, but that night Polanski arrived in her room naked and tore off her clothes before raping her.

‘I was completely shocked,’ said [Monnier]. ‘I weighed 50 kilos [7.8 stone] – Polanski was small but muscular and, at 42, in the prime of life. He got the upper hand in two minutes.’

Ms Monnier explained: ‘I said to myself – it’s Roman Polanski, he cannot take the risk of this becoming knows, so he will have to kill me.’

Ms Monnier said she later recounted her ordeal to a few close friends and family, including her husband in 1993.

‘This drama has resurfaced every time Polanski is in the news,’ she said, naming confidantes including the screenwriter Gerard Brach, who died in 2006.

There is one direct witness – referred to by pseudonym Charles – who said he met Ms Monnier in early 1975 and ‘she told me that she had been brutally raped by Polanski’.

He added: ‘I asked Valentine if she wanted to go to the police. In shock, she did not know what to do. She was so young and very positive, so she was trying to leave that horrible experience behind.

‘I thought that [s]he was an honest person who was moving forward and I had no reason to doubt what she was saying to me.’

Following the publication of Ms Monnier’s testament in the Parisien, lawyer Hervé Témime said: ‘Roman Polanski firmly denies all accusations of rape.’

Mr Termimé added: ‘On a personal note, I can only note that the alleged facts are from forty-five years ago.

‘That they have never, during all these long years, been brought to the notice of the judicial authorities or to Mr. Polanski.

‘In such circumstances, I deeply regret the publication, on the eve of the release of the film, of such accusations.’

‘J’accuse’ is called ‘An Officer and a Spy’ for the British and American cinema market, and is written by Polanski and the British author Robert Harris.

Polanski currently lives in Paris with his wife Emmanuelle Seigner, who is 33 years younger than him, and their two children, Morgane and Elvis.

The news comes two months after Polanski won the Grand Jury prize at Venice Film Festival but the jury chair has refused to congratulate him.

His new film, An Officer and a Spy, won the Grand Jury prize, known as the Silver Lion – which recognises strong contenders for the Golden Lion.

The jury chair, Argentinian director Lucrecia Martel, said that although she doesn’t separate the ‘art from the artist’ she believed his film was rightly screened at the festival.

She told the Independent: ‘I will not congratulate him, but I think it is correct that his movie is here at this festival.’

Polanski did not go to Venice to accept the award, as he may have been arrested, extradited back to the US and jailed for his statutory rape conviction.

His wife who stars in the film, Emmanuelle Seigner, collected the award on his behalf.

The new film, which stars Jean Dujardin and Louis Garrel, is based on Robert Harris’s novel about the Dreyfus affair in 1895 France.

The criminal’s precaution over not attending the Venice festival may stem from a similar situation he found himself in 2009 when he was arrested by Swiss officials for going to the Zurich Film Festival.

His arrest sparked a backlash from Hollywood stars and Harvey Weinstein, who 80 women have accused of sexual assault, started a petition demanding Polanski’s immediate release.

The ‘We demand the immediate release of Roman’ petition was signed by the likes of Woody Allen, Martin Scorcese and Tilda Swinton.

Polanski was struck by tragedy in 1969 when his then pregnant wife was murdered along with four friends by members of the Manson family at the couple’s Hollywood home.

The murders have recently been made into a film set to be released later this month, Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, by director Quentin Tarantino.

___

From sexual assault accusations to the murder of his wife: Who is Roman Polanski?

Roman Polanski, a French-Polish director whose films have won eight Oscars, has been a fugitive from the US since 1978.

He was arrested and charged with drugging and raping 13-year-old Samantha Geimer in 1977.

He pleaded guilty to the lesser charge of unlawful sex with a minor before undergoing 42 days of psychiatric evaluation in prison while awaiting sentencing.

Once he learned the judge planned to give him a prison term, he fled to Paris and has been avoiding extradition ever since.

Polanski was born in Paris in 1933 but moved back to Poland with his parents in 1936.

Three years later the family were trapped in Krakow as Nazis invaded Poland.

His parents were taken during raids, leaving Polanski to be brought up by the foster care system while using a different identity to evade Nazi capture.

In 1965 he directed his first feature-length film, Knife in the Water, before directing three more films in the UK.

He moved to the US in 1968 where he directed psychological horror film Rosemary’s Baby and gained status.

In 1969 he was struck by tragedy when his then pregnant wife, Sharon Tate, was murdered along with four friends by the Manson family.

He has been married to French actress Emmanuelle Seigner since 1989.

After Sharon Tate’s death Polanski returned to Europe and carried on his career until 1974 when he went back to America to direct Chinatown.

Although he was known as a convicted rapist, Polanski’s career continued to blossom after he fled America in 1978.

He returned once more to Europe where he became famous for directing films such as The Pianist (2002), a film about a Polish Jew who was trying to avoid Nazi capture, and Oliver Twist (2005).

In 2009 he was arrested by Swiss officials when he went to the Zurich Film Festival.

His arrest sparked a backlash from Hollywood stars and Harvey Weinstein, who 80 women have accused of sexual assault, started a petition demanding Polanski’s immediate release.

The ‘We demand the immediate release of Roman’ petition was signed by the likes of Woody Allen, Martin Scorcese and Tilda Swinton.

In 2017 two women came forward to accuse Polanski of sexual assault, Renate Langer claimed he raped her when she was 16 in 1972.

And Marianne Barnard claimed he molested her and photographed her naked when she was 10 years old in 1975.

See https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-7666363/Roman-Polanski-accused-violently-raping-French-actress-ski-chalet.html (“French actress Valentine Monnier accuses Oscar winning director Roman Polanski of raping her ‘extremely violently’ when she was 18 in alleged attack in a Swiss ski chalet in 1975“) (emphasis added; video omitted); see also https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2010/09/24/washington-is-sick-and-the-american-people-know-it/#comment-11474 (“SICKO SEXUAL PREDATOR ROMAN POLANSKI IS TARGETED FINALLY!“) and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_Polanski_sexual_abuse_case (“Roman Polanski sexual abuse case“) and http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/roman-polanski-faces-new-extradition-898312 (“Roman Polanski Faces New Extradition Challenge Over Child Sex Conviction“) and http://variety.com/2016/film/global/roman-polanski-extradite-u-s-1201785415/ (“Roman Polanski Faces New Attempt to Extradite Him to U.S.“) and https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2009/12/28/human-trafficking/#comment-17162 (“Sex Sells: Hollywood Is Sick“)

Polanski should be extradited and spend the rest of his life in an American prison, where the inmates may subject him to the full “Whitey Bulger Treatment.”

Polanski is a vile human being, who like Harvey Weinstein shows no remorse whatsoever; and both apparently believe they are immune to American justice.

See, e.g., https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2018/03/11/robert-mueller-should-be-executed-for-treason/#comment-15092 (“What Role Did Robert Mueller Play In The Savage Killing Of Whitey Bulger?“)

Lastly, Polanski has the audacity to claim that his accusers are anti-Semites, which is the last refuge of the pure scum that he is. The full “Whitey Bulger Treatment” would be too kind to him.

See https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-7683307/Roman-Polanskis-sex-attack-accusers-anti-Semitic-says-female-French-TV-director.html (“Roman Polanski’s sex attack accusers are ‘anti-Semitic’ says female French TV director“)

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31 01 2024
Timothy D. Naegele (15:10:03) :

The Tragedy Continues In California

https://abc7.com/california-human-trafficking-arrests-los-angeles-county-sex-workers-la/14372756/ (“More than 500 arrested, dozens rescued in statewide human trafficking operation”)

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