Brazilian Bass Fishing Offers More Than A Good Catch
Brazilian bass fishing is more than big business, it's also apparently a vehicle for child sex tourism. For the past 20 years, U.S. fishing aficionados have been spending up to $10,000 for trips to remote lodges in the interior reaches of Brazil or Venezuela. American sport tour ads are filled with promises of "uncompromising luxury" in plush jungle lodges, complete with resort-like amenities, fine dining and satellite phones to keep in hailing distance of the office.
Now a federal investigation and two related actions — a parallel criminal inquiry in Brazil and an ...
Foster Children Speak to Congress – is anyone listening?
This summer, fifteen former foster children worked as Capitol Hill interns and developed a set of policy recommendations outlined in a recently released report entitled "The Future of Foster Care - a revolution for change."
Among the recommendations created by these former foster youth:
Congress should require that an education advocate be trained and assigned to every foster child in special education;
Congress should require that surrogate parents be trained on the unique needs of foster youth in special education;
Documented and undocumented immigrant children within ...
Handling Lost/Destroyed Records in Child Welfare Tort Litigation
A recently published article in the American Bar Association's Child Law Practice examines the potential effects of failing to preserve or produce evidence in the child welfare context. Best practices are offered from three perspectives—the plaintiff, the defending agency, and the court.
Litigation involving public and private social services agencies should make administrators and attorneys keenly aware of the obligation to preserve evidence. Across the country, torts regarding individual children in the child welfare system are common.
Professor Daniel Pollack and ...
Chinese Babies Kidnapped and Sold for Adoption
From today's New York Times:
The abduction of children is a continuing problem in China, where a lingering preference for boys coupled with strict controls on the number of births have helped create a lucrative black market in children. Just last week, the police announced that they had rescued 89 babies from child traffickers, and the deputy director of the Public Security Ministry assailed what he called the practice of “buying and selling children in this country.”
But parents in Longhui say that in their case, it was local government officials who treated ...
The Free Market in Child Pornography
More than six years after the international law enforcement community began desperately searching for the child pornography victim known as the Disney World Girl, justice remains allusive for Masha Allen. Despite two Congressional investigations in 2006 and pressure from Nancy Grace and Oprah, none of the perpetrators involved with her international adoption have been brought to justice.
Despite the involvement of almost 30 lawyers since Masha was rescued from Matthew Mancuso in 2003 (including the prosecutor and lead investigator in the much-hyped Caylee Anthony invest...
DOJ Video – Sexual Exploitation of Children
More PR than facts, this Department of Justice video discusses the Department's national strategy to prevent and combat the sexual exploitation of children. (For some bizarre reason, the video's imagery exclusively shows Black males as offenders. In reality, the vast majority of defendants who produce, distribute and collect child pornography are White males between the ages of 35 and 60. The video also mixes child prostitution, the online solicitation of children, and child pornography; they are all very separate problems with different perpetrators and victims.)
F...
The ‘Secret’ – the key to understanding child sex abuse
The 'Secret' is the bond established by the abuser with the child victim. It ensures that nobody knows of the abuse other than the abuser and the abused. It is kept in place by embarrassment, fear or respect.
Embarrassment that friends or family will find out what happened. An emotion sometimes secured with photographs.
Fear for the safety of the child and their family should they disclose anything - fear that the abuser will inform - parents - friends, about the behaviour their child has been pulled into and subjected to.
Respect or love for the abuser - strange ...