By JIM VERTUNO, Associated Press Writer1 hour, 35 minutes ago
Police were sent to 22 Texas Youth Commission facilities and the agency headquarters Tuesday to investigate claims that young inmates were sexually abused and that agency officials covered it up.
Jay Kimbrough, appointed by the governor to look into the allegations at a West Texas youth prison, said the officers would conduct interviews at the prisons and halfway houses, secure equipment and collect documents if necessary.
He also issued a warning to agency employees.
"If you are part of this gig, you need to move on or we're going to find you and prosecute you," Kimbrough said.
The Texas Youth Commission houses offenders ages 10 to 21 who are considered the most dangerous, incorrigible or chronic. Its new board of directors chairman pledged Tuesday that the agency would cooperate with the investigations.
"I'd like to assure everyone that the board is very, very interested in a new direction of the Texas Youth Commission," Don Bethel said. "We are going to cooperate with everyone."
Late last month, state lawmakers questioned agency staff about an investigation in 2005 that had found evidence that high-ranking officials at the West Texas State School in Pyote had repeated sexual contact with some of the 250 boys and young men housed there. An internal investigation found prison staff members had complained about the abuse to their supervisors but that no one took action for more than a year.
The Texas Senate asked Republican Gov. Rick Perry last week to fire the board and take over the troubled agency.
Perry instead demoted the board's chairman and appointed Kimbrough, his former deputy chief of staff, as a special master to conduct an independent investigation. He also ordered the agency's acting executive director to design and implement a rehabilitation plan.
The recently appointed acting executive director, Ed Owens, said the agency will have a "zero tolerance policy of any type of mistreatment of youth."
Roger Mahony spent millions and kept details of clergy sex abuse secret, but what was the real cost of the deal?
By Jeffrey Anderson, JEFFREY ANDERSON is a staff writer at the L.A. Weekly. December 5, 2006
THE $60-MILLION settlement announced last week between 45 molestation victims and the Archdiocese of Los Angeles is a brutal reminder that moral crisis cannot be cured through legal compromise.
In those cases, and the hundreds more yet to be settled, victims want the truth to come out about abusive priests; they also want the perpetrators and those who harbored them, including Cardinal Roger Mahony and his hierarchy, to face consequences.
Mahony, for his part, wants to put the whole mess behind him and shield from public view any documents that could provide the truth — while also preserving the finances of his archdiocese.
But here's what is wrong with the mediation approach both sides agreed to: It leads to compromise but not reconciliation. No one can move beyond the past if they don't know what truly happened. No one can prevent relapse without fully understanding what, or who, led to the problem. Now Mahony and his flock of 4.3 million risk the return of a cancer that has stricken the church and eroded its leaders' moral authority.
Four years ago, the Boston archdiocese set the standard for a cathartic end to scandal. Clergy abuse victims and their lawyers went into court and forced the archdiocese to turn over documents that showed in vivid detail the complicity of Cardinal Bernard Law and his hierarchy in shielding pedophile priests and transferring them to other parishes, where they molested again. The revelations were stunning and led to Law's resignation.
Mahony and his fellow church officials took note and took steps to ensure that no such revelations would occur here. Victims' lawyers in Los Angeles played right into the cardinal's hand by lobbying for a change in the law that allowed hundreds of older claims to be heard. The number of cases was so great that the courts devised a consolidated plan that forced the entire scandal into private mediation for more than two years. With this settlement, these 45 cases will never see a courtroom, where the discovery process might have cracked open Mahony's files.
Plaintiffs' continuing demands that these files be released was the major stumbling block for years. This settlement sets that issue to one side and lets a retired judge decide what the church can keep secret. Victims' lawyers even bargained away their right to appeal. Most likely, this judge will rule the same way another did in a case against the Diocese of Orange last year, unsealing only files about priests who were dead or who had no objections.
No documents, no truth, no closure — for anyone.
Church lawyers argued — and probably still believe — that what happened in Boston was no panacea. Parishes closed; enrollment in the priesthood dropped. The new cardinal faces controversy all the time. But no one in Boston is still speculating about who knew what when, as Catholic Angelenos will be for years to come.
Is this justice? For those who carried their scarred youths into court, seeking an end to years of anguish? Or for loyal Catholics who still wonder whether their parishes or schools will close?
Mahony dug in his heels like the chief executive of an oil company accused of a massive spill. The only difference is that shareholders in a private corporation have the option of dumping stock if its value sinks. The dividend that members of an organized religion seek is not so easy to give up on.
Like a clever executive who is looking at either retirement (to a cushy post at the Vatican) or a stubborn march to infamy as the tarnished but enduring prelate, Mahony wanted it this way. For $60 million, he has just disposed of all the outstanding claims post-1986 — when the archdiocese became self-insured — and pre-1954, when it wasn't insured at all. Conveniently, that takes care of the cases of abuse that happened on Mahony's 20-year watch. He still faces a choice of battling with insurance companies to pay off remaining pre-1986 claims or kissing off another half a billion or so of the church's money. But there's little doubt that the roughly 500 remaining claims will be tidied up in the coming years.
It's hard to see what evil lies in men, and what weakness brings them down, when the truth remains locked away. Church documents remain the Holy Grail that victims and their lawyers said they were looking for but will probably never see. Even if they do, the risk of consequences for Mahony and his hierarchy might have passed.
Someday, perhaps soon, the rest of the victims of clergy sex abuse and their lawyers will be left shaking their heads, glad the legal battle is over. Then the cardinal can finally rest as the man who kept his kingdom afloat but sacrificed the morality it was supposed to have been built on.
ALEXANDRIA, Va. (AP) - A Maryland rabbi ensnared in a nationally televised sex sting was sentenced to 6 years in prison Friday for attempting to have sex with someone posing as a 13-year-old boy.
David A. Kaye, 56, of Rockville, Md., was convicted in September on federal charges of enticement and traveling across state lines to engage in illegal sexual conduct.
Most of the evidence came from a sting on ``Dateline NBC'' that was conducted in conjunction with an Internet watchdog group called Perverted Justice.
A Perverted Justice member posing as a 13-year-old boy met Kaye in an online chat room in 2005, and Kaye solicited sex acts. When Kaye drove to what he thought was the boy's home in Virginia, he was instead confronted by a TV reporter and camera crew and admitted he was there for ``not something good.''
At his sentencing, prosecutors said Kaye's crime was not an isolated incident, and submitted affidavits from others who claimed Kaye engaged in improper conduct, including one incident at a youth camp as far back as 1974.Kaye denied any improper conduct in those instances.
He said that he now believes his actions last August were ``a cry out for help.''
Kaye was a rabbi at a congregation in Potomac, Md., for 16 years and at the time of the sting was vice president of a Jewish youth organization called PANIM: the Institute for Jewish Leaders and Values.
Perverted Justice says its stings have resulted in more than 100 convictions nationwide since 2004. The group has a partnership with NBC to produce additional shows, titled ``To Catch a Predator.''
Critics claim Perverted Justice's methods border on vigilantism. Last month in Texas, a man about to be arrested after being caught in a Perverted Justice sting shot and killed himself when police came to arrest him.
SEATTLE - An arrest is sending shockwaves through the halls of local political power.
Larry Corrigan has worked on a number of Republican campaigns, but now he's in jail after he was caught in an Internet sting, accused of trying to solicit sex from young girls.
Corrigan's orange jail uniform he was wearing in court Thursday is a far cry from the business suit he wore at the King County Prosecutor's Office for 25 years.
Until last year, Corrigan was the Director of Operations and Budget. Now he's suspected of attempted child rape and communicating with a minor for sex.
"The suspect was communicating online with someone whom he believed was a 13 year old girl." said Debra Brown with the Seattle Police Department. "In fact, that person was a detective from our Internet Crimes Against Children unit."
Seattle police say Corrigan used the AOL screen name LCOR102 to chat with the fictitious 13 year old girl. Court documents say he bragged he'd already "had sex with a 14 year old girl from Kansas."
Police say LCOR102 eventually switched to the screen name Palisade199. Detectives say he told the 13 year old he was in his 50's and asked her to meet and perform a very specific sex act.
Police say Corrigan also sent the fictitious girl e-mails that contained pornographic images of the kind of sex he wanted to have.
Court documents say on Wednesday, Corrigan showed up at a Capitol Hill video store to meet the fictitious girl. Instead, police threw him in jail. They also searched his Magnolia home and seized his computer.
News of Corrigan's arrest swept through the corridors of Republican power in King County. Sources describe him as a longtime political operative; a former right hand man to King County Prosecutor Norm Maleng.
Sources say Corrigan also worked on previous sheriff's campaigns for now-Congressman Dave Reichert.
Now, Corrigan finds himself snared in an Internet police sting aimed at online predators.
"We're out there aggressively looking for these guys," Brown said. "And unfortunately, this gentleman was caught."
The judge ruled Thursday evening that Corrigan would be allowed to go home without posting bail.
Meanwhile, the King County prosecutor's office issued a statement expressing shock over Corrigan's arrest. One of his co-workers declined an on-camera interview, but said "this is not the Larry" she knows.
Because Corrigan is a former employee, the King County prosecutor's office is asking the state attorney general's office to handle the case.
A christianist is political designation for someone on the far right and not to be confused with a real Christian. --- Yet another Republican Christianist pedophile (though not yet in rehab) Submitted by lambert on Wed, 2006-11-29 22:07.
pedophiles | Republicans
OC Weekly:
The Orange County District Attorney’s Office claims that sex-crime prosecutions are a top priority. So why is one accused serial child molester still free and awaiting trial after nearly four years? One answer might be connections. Jeffrey Ray Nielsen is not merely a former intern in the DA’s office. He’s a prominent Republican activist in a county controlled by the Republican Party, a man with close ties to the former and current heads of that party; Huntington Beach Congressman Dana Rohrabacher; and Michael Schroeder, adviser to the county’s top law enforcement officials, DA Tony Rackauckas and Sheriff Mike Carona. Nielsen preached the Bible, and berated liberals and homosexuals alike.
Naturally. I can't quote the letters to "Billy." Twisted, sad, pathetic, manipulative, and, also naturally, very authoritarian.
“He tried to brainwash me,” says Billy, who is now married. “He was very controlling.”
As authoritarians do tend to be. Another case of Winger Projection Syndrome. NOTE Say, how's that Ethics Committee report on the Foley Affair coming? Or is that another Republican mess the Dems are going to have to clean up?
OP-ED COLUMNIST Bought and Sold By BOB HERBERT Published: November 20, 2006
One of the most tightly kept secrets in the U.S. is the extent to which children are sexually exploited by men who are viewed as quintessentially solid citizens.
