Tag Archives | Child Abuse

Are Republicans More Likely to Molest Children Than Democrats?

By on February 23, 2011 in News 34

And if so, why?

GOPArmchair Subversive posts a long list of Republicans who have been charged, arrested, or even pleaded guilty to molesting children or teenagers and related crimes:

  • Republican aide, Alan David Berlin, was arrested on charges that he wanted to engage in sex acts with a 15 year old boy while dressed in a panda costume.
  • Fox News producer Aaron Bruns pleaded guilty and was sentenced to 10 years for possessing child pornography.
  • Republican activist and former presidential campaign chairman Jeffrey Claude Bartleson was arrested on charges of sexually molesting a 5-year old boy.
  • Republican activist and former chairman of the Christian County Republicans Royce Fessenden pleaded guilty to two counts of first-degree child molestation and one count of second-degree statutory sodomy.
  • Republican parole board officer and former legislator George Christian (Chris) Ortloff pleaded guilty to attempting to lure 11- and 12-year-old girls to have sex with him.

… Read the rest

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Bipolar Christianity: How Torturing ‘Sinful’ Children Produced Holy Wars

By on February 4, 2011 in News 48
Lloyd deMause

Lloyd deMause

From Chapter 9 of Lloyd deMause’s The Origins of War in Child Abuse:

After half a century of primary source research into the history of childrearing, I and over a hundred other childhood historians have been unable to find a single mother who did not badly beat and torture their children prior to modern times. I have long offered a prize to anyone who could find actual evidence of just one mother prior to the 18th century who would not today be thrown into jail for badly abusing their children.

The occasional reformers, like Saint Anselm, who sometimes questioned whether whipping children “day and night” was wise, did not raise any children themselves because they were ascetic. Despite the fact that Jesus nowhere says children should be beaten, Christians taught that He wanted them to beat the sins out of them continuously, from birth. Actually, the main reference Jesus makes to children was “suffer little children to come unto me … and he laid his hands on them — that is, he exorcised the bad spirits out of them.”

The central rule of Christians toward children is simply never to give the child anything it wants.

… Read the rest

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Was Alice Miller an Abusive Mother?

By on January 22, 2011 in News 15

breaking-down-the-wall-of-silenceDaniel Mackler writes:

When asked to define abuse in an 2005 interview with Borut Jesenovec, Alice Miller stated:  “Abuse means to me using a person for whatever I want from her, him, without asking for their agreement, without respecting their will and their interests.  With children, it is very easy to do so, because they are loving, they trust their parents and most adults, and they don’t realize that they were abused, that their love had been exploited.” [from www.alice-miller.com].

Although this definition most obviously applies to extreme cases of abuse – such as overt sexual and physical abuse – I hold that it also applies to Alice Miller’s relationship with her daughter.  How could it not, considering that she herself has explained that she had not even explored her childhood at all by the time she had her own children, and thus was not aware of what her own unresolved and unmet childhood needs even were?  And when you consider that the mentally retarded are not even allowed to give their consent for so many adult activities, because of their limited intelligence and inherent dependency, as children they are often the most ripe for being exploited by people with unmet needs.  Now I grant, I am not stating that Alice Miller was in fact a full-blown monster with her daughter – but I am stating that on the metaphorical level, she was.  And until each of us heals from our own repressed traumas and thus are able to find mature, adult ways to meet our own needs, we will all inevitably exploit those over whom we wield power.  We may try to rationalize it as being “for the child’s own good” – to use Alice Miller’s classic phrase – and perhaps sometimes it is MORE good (or less bad) for the child than a different form of abuse might be, but the fact is, when the primary need being met is the parent’s, which it always is wherever the parent retains repressed and unresolved traumas, the behavior remains abusive of the child’s basic essence and needs.  And if Alice Miller’s son gave his consent to her and did not blame her for the abuses she perpetrated on him (because, after all, she was still ‘anti-blame’ when she wrote about her son in For Your Own Good), certainly her mentally retarded daughter was in less of a position to blame her.

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Liz Cheney’s Pro-Torture PAC Linked to Child Abusing “Boot Camp”

By on January 14, 2011 in News 4

Keep America SafeJoe Conason reported for Salon in February of last year:

The arrest of an Army sergeant (and Iraq veteran) who allegedly waterboarded his 4-year-old daughter for failing to recite the alphabet is sickening. Yet it may be the kind of news we must come to expect if, as a society, the United States determines that torture is an acceptable method of securing information and inducing obedience. Physical abuse of children is nothing new, of course,  in certain right-wing quarters, as Max Blumenthal reminded us by exposing the pedagogical sadism of Focus on the Family in Republican Gomorrah.

For a sergeant who tortures his child, however, the relevant model probably comes from somewhere high in the chain of command. At the center of today’s propaganda promoting the torture state are former Vice President Dick Cheney, his family and many of his friends, working through an organization called Keeping America Safe that is run by his daughter Liz Cheney.

… Read the rest

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Climate Change and the 4000 BCE Origins of Child Abuse, Sex-Repression, Warfare and Social Violence

By on December 22, 2010 in News 16

saharasiaMatriarchy.info reviews Dr. James DeMeo’s book SAHARASIA: The 4000 BCE Origins of Child Abuse, Sex-Repression, Warfare and Social Violence, In the Deserts of the Old World:

A new geographical study on the ancient historical origins of human violence and warfare, drawing upon global archaeological and anthropological evidence, has just been published presenting substantial proof that our ancient ancestors were non-violent, and far more social and loving than are most humans today – moreover, the study points to a dramatic climate change in the Old World, the drying up of the vast Sahara and Asian Deserts, with attending famine, starvation and forced migrations which pushed the earliest humans into violent social patterns, a trauma from which we have not yet recovered in over 6000 years.

The study and book, titled SAHARASIA: The 4000 BCE Origins of Child Abuse, Sex-Repression, Warfare and Social Violence, In the Deserts of the Old World, by retired professor James DeMeo, Ph.D., is the culmination of years of library and field research on the subject.

… Read the rest

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Florida Mom Sells Baby To Buy Car

By on November 11, 2010 in News 11
Stephanie Bigbee Fleming, left, and her mother, Patty Bigbee, right.

Stephanie Bigbee Fleming, left, and her mother, Patty Bigbee, right.

Hot on the heels of the mother who shook her baby to death so that she could play Farmville, a Florida woman wanted a car more than she wanted her baby, selling it for $9,000, according to Reuters:

A Florida woman was charged with trying to sell her infant son in order to pay for a new car, police said Tuesday.

The baby’s grandmother brokered the deal and initially demanded $75,000 but agreed to cut the price to $30,000 when told the prospective buyer could not get a bank loan, the Florida Department of Law Enforcement (FDLE) said.

The mother of the eight-week-old boy, Stephanie Bigbee Fleming, 22, of Bradenton, Florida, was to receive $9,000 of the proceeds, the FDLE said.

“Fleming planned to purchase a new vehicle from the money received,” an FDLE spokeswoman said.

Fleming also needed money to pay court costs for an unrelated probation violation, the arrest documents said.

… Read the rest

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Teacher Uses “Sexual Harassment Dice” To Punish Elementary School Students

By on October 29, 2010 in News 8

sekuhara-diceInstead of determining a punishment based on the weight of the crime, a 59-year-old elementary school teacher left it to a throw of the dice. In replace of numbers, these dice read “kiss,” “forgive,” and “snot.” The Mainichi Daily News reports:

A sixth grade primary school teacher is in hot water with parents and the local school board after complaints that he was using kisses and snot to punish his students.

The 59-year-old teacher at Ogi Elementary School in Iruma, Saitama Prefecture, apparently had three dice, one with sides marked with the words “hug” and ” forgiven,” another marked with “kiss,” “snot” and “forgiven” among others, and the third marked with “snot” and “forgiven.” Students who forgot to bring something to class were forced to roll one of the dice. The teacher has apparently admitted to kissing one boy and acting as if he would put snot on one girl. He nicknamed the dice the “sexual harassment dice.”

“I made the dice while playing with the children.

… Read the rest

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As More Bullying Victims Commit Suicide, Right-Wing Groups Decry Anti-Bullying Policies As ‘Gay Agenda’ Ploy

By on October 6, 2010 in News 46

As a sort of follow up to my post yesterday, from Think Progress:

Many states across the country are taking laudable steps to enact measures that bolster administrators’ ability to protect students who face such harassment. However, despite the evidence supporting the need, right-wing lawmakers and activists insist that anti-bullying measures are nothing more than insidious tools of the “homosexual agenda”:

  • The American Family Association of Michigan has spent years decrying a proposed anti-bullying measure as “a Trojan Horse to sneak [homosexual activists'] special rights agenda into law” and to “legitimize homosexual behavior” which is “a practice scientifically proven to result in a dramatically higher incidence of domestic violence, mental illness, illegal drug use, promiscuity, life-threatening disease, and premature death.” The bill “died in 2008 in the state Senate because senators could not agree” on whether to address bullying based on sexual orientation and gender identity in the measure.

… Read the rest

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The Culling is Here: Is Abuse a Form of Social Control?

By on October 5, 2010 in News 8

Amidst the recent spate of news stories about bullied youth committing suicide (at least nine in September), ScienceDaily reports:

Loners and antisocial kids who reject other children are often bullied at school — an accepted form of punishment from peers as they establish social order. Such peer victimization may be an extreme group response to control renegades, according to a new study from Concordia University published in the Journal of Early Adolescence.

“For groups to survive, they need to keep their members under control,” says author William M. Bukowski, a professor at the Concordia Department of Psychology and director of its Centre for Research in Human Development. “Withdrawn individuals threaten the strong social fabric of a group, so kids are victimized when they are too strong or too antisocial. Victimization is a reaction to anyone who threatens group harmony.”

Bukowski notes that the word victimization is related to the word for sacrifice and speculates the term remains relevant in establishing modern dynamics among kids.

… Read the rest

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Woman Molested Own Grandson To Exorcise ‘A Sexual Demon’

By on September 30, 2010 in News 15

DemonJohn McCann writes in the Herald-Sun:

DURHAM, North Carolina — A grandmother who authorities say committed sexual acts with her grandson because she believed she needed to get a demon off him insisted she understood rejecting a plea offer could mean more than a decade in prison.

The woman made it clear she’d allow jurors to give thumbs up or down on what she did and didn’t do with her own child’s child. Toni Stowers-Moore wants a trial.

Addressing concern about the defendant’s sanity, Superior Court Judge Donald Stephens on Thursday ruled Stowers-Moore is competent to stand trial based on the findings of a certified forensic examiner. That trial is expected to start Monday.

Stowers-Moore, 52, is charged with statutory rape/sex offense in which the defendant is six years older than the victim, incest with a child and sexual battery. The crimes allegedly occurred between July 28, 2008 and Aug.

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