Ararat parish priest Father Andrew Hayes says the church should accept a court's decision to dismiss George Pell's appeal against his convictions, but the Melbourne Bishop is standing by the disgraced Cardinal.

The Catholic Church may have opened itself up to hundreds of potential damages claims from sexual abuse survivors after admitting liability in court documents.

George Pell's lawyers lodge an application seeking leave to appeal the jailed 78-year-old's child sexual abuse convictions in the High Court of Australia.

A child abuse survivor says the priest who assaulted him did so in the 'welcoming' home of another clergyman. His claim comes amid new allegations that paedophiles acted in concert within the Catholic Church.

A former ABC journalist, who pressed assault charges after her elderly mother was allegedly hit by a carer, urges Australians with family members in aged-care to install personal surveillance equipment.

Police evidence presented to Wollongong Local Court reveals allegations of violent physical abuse against a 12-week-old baby.

Sam Leishman was sexually abused by his high school teacher in Hobart in 1978. He and other survivors are suing the Department of Education for negligence.

New legislation in the ACT will criminalise elder abuse, but some lawyers are worried about how effective the laws will be.

The Federal Government will name and shame organisations which do not sign up to the National Redress Scheme for victims of child abuse, but a parliamentary committee wants it to go much further.

A 95-year-old celebrates a win after a decades-long fight for an apology from the Catholic Church in Melbourne for the abuse of her daughter by priest Gerard Mulvale.

For years, questions have been asked about what Cardinal George Pell might have known about clerical abuse within the Catholic Church. A report that could be released within days may give us the best answer we will ever get.

The findings are expected to reveal what the royal commission made of the evidence put before it about whether Cardinal Pell could or should have done more to prevent children from being abused by priests in the 1970s and 80s.

A Catholic order settles out of court paying $4 million to survivors of historic sex abuse and apologising to them, their families and the Latrobe Valley community.

Findings from a probe into alleged cover-ups of child abuse within the Catholic Church in NSW have identified credibility issues among members of its upper echelons.

Three women, inspired by the revelations in The Teacher's Pet podcast, have come forward with allegations of sexual abuse by teachers at a NSW high school.

James Gino Salerno, who was once based in the Adelaide Hills, is jailed for at least eight years for repeatedly sexually abusing a teenage member of the group. His victim says other girls still in the cult "can sleep easy now".

It is now decades since Todd Jefferis first raised the alarm about the sexual abuse atrocities carried out at Katanning's St Andrew's Hostel in Western Australia, but his fight for justice might finally be nearing an end.

The 24-year-old believes a move to change laws in Tasmania allowing survivors of sexual crimes to share their stories will give greater insights into how perpetrators operate.

Bus drivers used to receive respectful thanks at the end of a quiet ride, but these days some say they work in fear of being punched, stabbed, screamed at or spat on.

A new foundation to help fund lawsuits against perpetrators of child sexual abuse is launched, with profits from successful legal action used to help victims and survivors.

A man in his 70s is remanded in custody over a string of alleged child abuse offences uncovered in a joint investigation between NSW Police, Northern Territory Police and the Australian Federal Police.

Garry Marsh, 73, pleads guilty to indecently assaulting a student while he coached him in rugby union at Canberra's St Edmund's College in 1979, and will spend two years behind bars.

A case worker responsible for murdered Canberra boy Bradyn Dillon admits she was overwhelmed by her job, and felt child protection services did not support her in dealing with the boy's abusive father.

One of Australia's former top police officers says he is not guilty of the alleged offences, which his lawyer describes as "trivial".

An independent review last year found that Dr. Richard Strauss had abused at least 177 male students during his tenure at Ohio State University.

“I should be dead.”

Cases have increased since the coronavirus outbreak began.

Cases have increased since the coronavirus outbreak began.

The platforms, providers, and infrastructures which together make up the contemporary Internet play an increasingly central role in the business of governing human societies. Although the software engineers, administrators, business professionals, and other staff working at these organisations may not have the institutional powers of state organisations such as law enforcement or the civil service, … Continue reading Three Paper Thursday: The role of intermediaries, platforms, and infrastructures in governing crime and abuse →

MAP Health Management and IBM Watson Health today announced a partnership that aims to address the pervasive problem of relapse among Americans suffering from Substance Use Disorder, a chronic disease. MAP will integrate Watson cognitive technologies into the MAP Recovery Network Platform to enhance the platform’s existing capabilities around patient risk models. In doing so, it is anticipated that behavioral health and substance abuse treatment providers that use the MAP platform will be better able to predict and prevent incidence of relapse nationwide.

From Ukraine to Coronavirus: Trump’s Abuse of Power Continues

Donald Trump has spent a lifetime exploiting chaos for personal gain and blaming others for his losses. The pure madness in America’s response to the coronavirus pandemic – shortages of equipment to protect hospital workers, dwindling supplies of ventilators and critical medications, jaw-dropping confusion over how $2.2 trillion of aid in the recent coronavirus law will be distributed – has given him the perfect cover to hoard power and boost his chances of reelection.

As the death toll continues to climb and states are left scrambling for protective gear and crucial resources, Trump is focused on only one thing: himself. 

He’s told governors to find life-saving equipment on their own, claiming the federal government is “not a shipping clerk” and subsequently forcing states and cities into a ruthless bidding war.

Governors have been reduced to begging FEMA for supplies from the dwindling national stockpile, with vastly different results. While we haven’t seen what “formula” FEMA supposedly has for determining who gets what, reports suggest that Trump’s been promising things to governors who can get him on the phone. 

Our narcissist-in-chief has ordered FEMA to circumvent their own process and send supplies to states that are “appreciative”.

Michigan and Colorado have received fractions of what they need while Oklahoma and Kentucky have gotten more than what they asked for. Colorado and Massachusetts have confirmed shipments only to have them held back by FEMA. Ron DeSantis, the Trump-aligned governor of Florida, refused to order a shelter-in-place mandate for weeks, but then received 100% of requested supplies within 3 days. New Jersey waited for two weeks. New York now has more cases than any other single country, but Trump barely lifted a finger for his hometown because Governor Andrew Cuomo is “complaining” about the catastrophic lack of ventilators in the city.

A backchannel to the president is a shoe-in way to secure life-saving supplies. Personal flattery seems to be the most effective currency with Trump; the chain of command runs straight through his ego, and that’s what the response has been coordinated around.

He claims that as president he has “total authority” over when to lift quarantine and social distancing guidelines, and threatens to adjourn Congress himself so as to push through political appointees without Senate confirmation.

And throughout all of this, Trump has been determined to reject any attempt of independent oversight into his administration’s disastrous response.

When he signed the $2 trillion emergency relief package into law, he said he wouldn’t agree to provisions in the bill for congressional oversight – meaning the wheeling-and-dealing will be done in secret.

He has removed the inspector general leading the independent committee tasked with overseeing the implementation of the massive bill.

He appointed one of his own White House lawyers, who helped defend him in his impeachment trial, to oversee the distribution of the $500 billion slush fund for corporations. That same day, he fired Inspector General Michael Atkinson – the inspector general who handed the whistleblower complaint to Congress that ultimately led to Trump’s impeachment.

There should never have been any doubt that Trump would try to use this crisis to improve his odds of re-election.

Stimulus checks going to the lowest-income earners were delayed because Trump demanded each one of them bear his name. As millions of the hardest-hit Americans scrambled to put food on the table and worried about the stack of bills piling up, Trump’s chief concern was himself.

It doesn’t matter that this is a global pandemic. Abusing his power for personal gain is Trump’s MO.

Just three and a half months ago, Trump was impeached on charges of abuse of power and obstructing investigations. Telling governors that they need to “be appreciative” in order to receive life-saving supplies for their constituents is the same kind of quid pro quo that Trump tried to extort from Ukraine, and his attempts to thwart independent oversight are the same as his obstruction of Congress.

Trump called his impeachment a “hoax”. He initially called the coronavirus a “hoax”. But the real hoax is his commitment to America. In reality he will do anything – anything – to hold on to power.

To Donald Trump, the coronavirus crisis is just another opportunity.

From an email from Paul Foster: From my perch, there are two primary reasons the right doesn’t more passionately oppose child abuse. The first has to do with parents’ rights. The general conservative view of the child welfare system is of a group of liberal ladies who think they know better than parents and who […]

The post Why is child abuse not opposed more passionately on the Right appeared first on Marginal REVOLUTION.

Netflix's wildly popular "Tiger King" documentary series has been progressively sweeping the nation since it first aired on March 20. As an outrageous, binge-worthy drama released when self-isolation and uncertainty were spreading around the world, the show certainly came at the right time to provide an escape from the news. Overnight, it seemed, conversations that didn’t revolve around the coronavirus or Joe Exotic were hard to come by. Photos of celebrities who’d visited the zoos were flooding the internet, Joe Exotic’s power-ballads were hitting it big on Spotify and even President Donald Trump was fielding questions about the gun-toting zookeeper[...]

The victim, identified in court papers as “Jane Roe” and now middle-aged, alleges tennis coach William Martire verbally assaulted, groped and forced her give him oral sex.

Shirr Teved was inside her home near Foster Ave. in Flatbush when a fire broke out about 10:30 p.m. Monday.

Rubin, now a genteel 72-year-old Staten Island resident, alleges in a newly-filed Child Victims Act lawsuit that he was sexually abused on a weekly basis between 1960-65 by a cabal of five predatory teachers at the prestigious school.

The plaintiff, a former high school cheerleader identified only by the pseudonym “Mary Coe,” was in her first year at the school when defendant William Martire allegedly initially forced her to perform oral sex on him in the early 1980s, according to a horrifying 18-page Brooklyn Supreme Court filing.

Mervyn Affoon, who taught at the Academy of Hospitality and Tourism at hospitality at Erasmus Hall High School in Flatbush, is accused of sexually abusing the teen about 15 times between March 2017 and June 2017.

The plaintiff, a former high school cheerleader identified only by the pseudonym “Mary Coe,” was in her first year at the school when defendant William Martire allegedly initially forced her to perform oral sex on him in the early 1980s, according to a horrifying 18-page Brooklyn Supreme Court filing.

"Never in my wildest dreams did I think it would be my brother until I saw everything the next day and saw his name," said Rosemary Gomez, 38. “I was like, ‘No, it can’t be him, it can’t be him.' Then his (estranged) wife called me. She was in a state of shock."

The state isn't doing right by undocumented immigrants with a financial relief program that does nothing to address abusive labor practices.

Gov. Mike Pence's Scott County order allowing a needle-exchange program is a welcome step. But it's just a start.

Former Arsenal and England striker Ian Wright says women's football deserves more support and backing.

If you’re a big business and you abused the Small Business Association’s new Paycheck Protection Program, you’re getting very close to the deadline for you to pay the government back. If you don’t, that means the government is going to be coming after you — and you can definitely be ready for an audit. That’s…

The post Big Businesses That Abused Paycheck Protection Program Should Get Ready for an Audit appeared first on The Western Journal.

The Defense Department's Inspector General has opened an investigation into whether U.S. troops were discouraged from reporting the rape and sexual abuse of children by their Afghan allies.

Research Event

Event participants

Charu Lata Hogg, Associate Fellow, Asia-Pacific Programme, Chatham House
Hameed Hakimi, Research Associate, Asia-Pacific Programme and Europe Programme, Chatham House
Chair: Champa Patel, Head of Asia-Pacific Programme, Chatham House