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The story of the 11-year-old sexually assaulted in tiny Cleveland, TX continues to unfold.
The horrific story of the 11-year-old girl in Cleveland, TX who was gang raped in November continues to unfold. Though a gag order was recently approved in the case, preventing the accused, the victim and both the prosecution and defense from speaking to the media, shocking new details are still being gathered from court documents. According to News Talk 670 KBOI, the victim may have been sexually assaulted more than once by some of the suspects over a period of four months.
Court documents obtained by the Cleveland Advocate suggest that “four of the defendants have been charged with a more serious felony of continuous sexual abuse of a child because they are accused of assaulting the girl on two or more dates.” The alleged assaults occurred between Sept. 15 and Dec. 1. Only four of the 18 defendants remain in jail; 17 pleaded not guilty to the crime. One of the defendants who is not currently in jail has another sexual assault case pending.
This unbelievable turn of events has stirred racial tensions in Cleveland and the resulting news coverage has been widely criticized. The New York Times apologized for its initial coverage of the story, saying it “lacked balance” and didn’t give proper attention to the concerns of the victim. This week, Florida Republican Kathleen Passidomo co-opted the victim’s tragedy to push for the passage of the so-called “sagging pants bill” that would require a dress code in Florida schools. While discussing the bill’s merits, Passidomo said:
There was an article about an 11-year-old girl who was gang raped in Texas by 18 young men because she was dressed like a 21-year-old prostitute. And her parents let her attend school like that. And I think it’s incumbent upon us to create some areas where students can be safe in school and show up in proper attire so what happened in Texas doesn’t happen to our students. Continue reading »
The inside of the trailer where the 11-year-old Texas girl was raped.
Thanks to a change.org petition and an outpouring of criticism from Times readers and bloggers alike, the New York paper has issued a contrite response to their initial coverage of the gang rape of an 11-year-old girl in Cleveland, TX. Public editor Arthur Brisbane wrote in an online-only column Friday, “My assessment is that the outrage is understandable. The story dealt with a hideous crime but addressed concerns about the ruined lives of the perpetrators without acknowledging the obvious: concern for the victim.”
Brisbane notes that the one-sided reporting by the Times “led many readers to interpret the subtext of the story to be: she had it coming,” something a defense attorney in the case is still arguing. Moreover, Brisbane conceded that the Associated Press “handled the story more deftly” by offering various perspectives from the community, quoting a local resident as saying, “She’s 11 years old. It shouldn’t have happened. That’s a child. Somebody should have said, ‘What we are doing is wrong.’” Continue reading »
A television news reporter for one of the largest media markets in the country has been arrested on charges that he sexually assaulted a 4-year-old girl in his New Jersey home.
Charles Leaf, a reporter for New York’s Fox 5, is being held on $250,000 bail. Continue reading »
Some birth activists are calling bad birth experiences — the kind where laboring women are pushed around by arrogant doctors and high-handed L&D nurses — “birth rape.”
I really, really hope this phrase does not catch on.
I’m a rape survivor, and a mom. My first labor ended not with the idyllic home birth I’d dreamed of, but with an emergency transport to the nearest hospital, where I was poked, prodded and medicated with only the vaguest pass at getting my consent. I spent days in the hospital fighting with nurses over everything from when I could hold my baby to what needles they could stick her with.
Both the assault and the hospital stay are difficult memories that I’ll probably carry with me always. If I had a chance to write the perfect life for myself, there would be no rape and no hospital birth.
But. A difficult birth, even one that includes non-consensual medical procedures, is not the same thing as a rape.
April is Child Abuse Prevention Month, and also Sexual Assault Awareness Month. As a survivor myself, this topic is pretty close to my heart. Last month, the mothers of Momversation had a chat about it. This week, Catherine Connors from Her Bad Mother talks about her own experiences, and her decision to speak out about abuse.
As many as one in five children are sexually abused. But we’re not doing any better than our parents did at teaching our kids how to understand, avoid and report abuse when it occurs. Continue reading »
Lauri Price, a 42 year old Houston mom remains in custody on Wednesday, accused of flying to Canada to have a sexual encounter with a 16 year old boy with whom she had an online relationship for about a year.
Dr. Earl Bradley, a pediatrician who runs BayBees Pediatrics in Lewes, Delaware, has been arrested and charged with 33 felony counts including at least eight counts of first-degree rape. Other charges may be forthcoming, and one prosecutor said there could be as many as 100 victims. The abuse appears to have gone on for years, with victims as young as a few months old.
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