via Raw Story:
Vatican detectives analyzing a computer used a by an archbishop arrested earlier this week discovered over 86,000 pornographic photos and 160 sexually explicit video files of children, reports the International Business Times. According to investigators, another 45,000 pictures had been deleted. ormer Archbishop Jozef Wesolowski, 66, was arrested at the Vatican earlier this week on charges that he paid to have sex with minors when he was a papal ambassador in the Dominican Republic from 2008 to 2012. Wesolowski is the first Vatican official to be arrested within the city state on charges of pedophilia. The former archbishop was recalled to Rome by the Vatican last year while still a diplomat in Santo Domingo and relieved of his duties following accusations from Dominican media that he was paying for underaged sex partners.
Until earlier this week, he had been free to roam Rome, but is now being held in in a small room in the basement of the Collegio dei Penitenzieri, which hosts the Vatican’s court and military police. Vatican authorities are now investigating if Wesolowski was part of a network of pedophiles and whether he abused children in other posts during his career. Wesolowski previously served in South Africa, Costa Rica, Japan, Switzerland, India and Denmark. If convicted, Wesolowski faces 12 years in jail in the first trial for sexual abuse to be held inside the Vatican City. His trial is expected to start in January.
Thursday, May 28, 2015
Tuesday, May 26, 2015
Decapitated body of Brazilian journalist investigating child prostitution ring found
via The Independent:
The decapitated body of a missing blogger who was investigating a child prostitution ring has been found by police in Brazil. Evany José Metzker's body was found outside the town of Padre Paraíso, in the northeast of Brazil's southeastern Minas Gerais state. According to local media reports he had been stripped half-naked and his hands tied behind his back. His head was found 100 metres from his body. Metzger, who maintained a blog named 'Coruja do Vale' (The Owl of the Valley), was reportedly investigating a child prostitution ring operating in the area. Media rights groups, including Reporters Without Borders as well as the Minas Gerais Union of Professional Journalists, called on the Brazilian authorities to mount a "thorough" investigation into Metzker's murder...Metzger's wife, Hilma Chaves Silva Borges, was quoted by The Committee to Protect Journalists as saying that Metzker was working in a dangerous part of the country. "There are lots of murders here. I think that the motive, given the barbarity of his murder, was because he hit on something," she was quoted as saying. Brazil is the third most dangerous country for journalists in Latin America, after Mexico and Colombia, according to Reporters Without Borders. In his blog Metzger often reported on corrupt officials and politicians.
The decapitated body of a missing blogger who was investigating a child prostitution ring has been found by police in Brazil. Evany José Metzker's body was found outside the town of Padre Paraíso, in the northeast of Brazil's southeastern Minas Gerais state. According to local media reports he had been stripped half-naked and his hands tied behind his back. His head was found 100 metres from his body. Metzger, who maintained a blog named 'Coruja do Vale' (The Owl of the Valley), was reportedly investigating a child prostitution ring operating in the area. Media rights groups, including Reporters Without Borders as well as the Minas Gerais Union of Professional Journalists, called on the Brazilian authorities to mount a "thorough" investigation into Metzker's murder...Metzger's wife, Hilma Chaves Silva Borges, was quoted by The Committee to Protect Journalists as saying that Metzker was working in a dangerous part of the country. "There are lots of murders here. I think that the motive, given the barbarity of his murder, was because he hit on something," she was quoted as saying. Brazil is the third most dangerous country for journalists in Latin America, after Mexico and Colombia, according to Reporters Without Borders. In his blog Metzger often reported on corrupt officials and politicians.
Sunday, May 24, 2015
Paedophile Freemason Ran Lodge For Official UK Spy Agency
via Your News Wire:
Former secretary of the Paedophile Information Exchange (Pie), Keith Harding, who was also a known prolific paedophile, was made Worshipful Master of the Mercurius Lodge In Cheltenham in 2011. This masonic lodge has been revealed to have been set up by UK spy agency GCHQ with many of the agencies intelligence officers members.
Express.co.uk reports:
Harding was convicted of an indecent assault against four children aged eight and nine in 1958 and classified a Schedule-1 offender, which meant the offence remained on his criminal record all his life. His name was also on a list of about 400 PIE members seized by police in 1984, the year the organisation disbanded.
The Sunday Express revealed earlier this month how Harding met MPs Cyril Smith and Leon Brittan in the 1980s when he ran a north London antiques store. Thirty-five years ago he appeared alongside paedophile television presenter Jimmy Savile in a Christmas special of Jim’ll Fix It. The lodge boasts of its Government Communications Headquarters heritage on its website. A source close to Harding revealed: “The Mercurius Lodge is known as the Spies Lodge because it was set up by GCHQ and over the years many intelligence officers have become members. “These are people trained to find out sensitive information and yet none of them had any idea of Keith’s background and past convictions. “They even voted him the highest honour by making him Worshipful Master. “Keith felt the Freemasons were somewhere he finally belonged, he called them his “brotherhood”.
When he died last year, they arranged his funeral and made sure the ceremony started at midday because the time apparently has significance within Masonic ritual.” Spies displaced from London and Bletchley Park in Buckinghamshire, where the German wartime Enigma code was cracked, set up the Mercurius Lodge in 1957. It meets at the Grade IIlisted Cheltenham Masonic Hall, purpose-built in 1823. Harding ran the Mechanical Music Museum 10 miles away in Northleach after moving from London in 1987. In 2013, he organised a trip to the museum for Freemasons and their families. A photograph shows Harding wearing a Masonic apron, collar and medals during a ceremony a couple of years ago. The Mercurius Lodge last night declined to comment. Detectives probing historical sexual abuse allegations revealed on Wednesday they are investigating 1,433 suspects, including 135 from the entertainment industry, 76 politicians, seven sportsmen and 43 from the music industry.
- See more at: http://yournewswire.com/paedophile-freemason-ran-lodge-for-official-uk-spy-agency/#sthash.hprJEYLS.dpuf
Former secretary of the Paedophile Information Exchange (Pie), Keith Harding, who was also a known prolific paedophile, was made Worshipful Master of the Mercurius Lodge In Cheltenham in 2011. This masonic lodge has been revealed to have been set up by UK spy agency GCHQ with many of the agencies intelligence officers members.
Express.co.uk reports:
Harding was convicted of an indecent assault against four children aged eight and nine in 1958 and classified a Schedule-1 offender, which meant the offence remained on his criminal record all his life. His name was also on a list of about 400 PIE members seized by police in 1984, the year the organisation disbanded.
The Sunday Express revealed earlier this month how Harding met MPs Cyril Smith and Leon Brittan in the 1980s when he ran a north London antiques store. Thirty-five years ago he appeared alongside paedophile television presenter Jimmy Savile in a Christmas special of Jim’ll Fix It. The lodge boasts of its Government Communications Headquarters heritage on its website. A source close to Harding revealed: “The Mercurius Lodge is known as the Spies Lodge because it was set up by GCHQ and over the years many intelligence officers have become members. “These are people trained to find out sensitive information and yet none of them had any idea of Keith’s background and past convictions. “They even voted him the highest honour by making him Worshipful Master. “Keith felt the Freemasons were somewhere he finally belonged, he called them his “brotherhood”.
When he died last year, they arranged his funeral and made sure the ceremony started at midday because the time apparently has significance within Masonic ritual.” Spies displaced from London and Bletchley Park in Buckinghamshire, where the German wartime Enigma code was cracked, set up the Mercurius Lodge in 1957. It meets at the Grade IIlisted Cheltenham Masonic Hall, purpose-built in 1823. Harding ran the Mechanical Music Museum 10 miles away in Northleach after moving from London in 1987. In 2013, he organised a trip to the museum for Freemasons and their families. A photograph shows Harding wearing a Masonic apron, collar and medals during a ceremony a couple of years ago. The Mercurius Lodge last night declined to comment. Detectives probing historical sexual abuse allegations revealed on Wednesday they are investigating 1,433 suspects, including 135 from the entertainment industry, 76 politicians, seven sportsmen and 43 from the music industry.
- See more at: http://yournewswire.com/paedophile-freemason-ran-lodge-for-official-uk-spy-agency/#sthash.hprJEYLS.dpuf
Wednesday, May 20, 2015
Child sex abuse inquiry: Victim had teeth pulled out by nuns with pliers, royal commission hears
via ABC News:
Nuns used pliers to pull out the teeth of a child sex abuse victim at a Ballarat orphanage, and he was also locked in a dungeon known as the "horror room" and abused by a priest, an inquiry has heard. Giving evidence at the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse, Gordon Hill - now in his 70s - said he was taken to the St Joseph's Home as a three-year-old. He told the inquiry he could still remember "all the little kids getting on the bus" in 1946.
Mr Hill said he was among a group at the home known as "the Drones", children who had no-one and instead of going to school were put to work. He said he was assigned a number and a locker number, instead of a name, and did not know his own surname until he was 10 years old.
Mr Hill told the inquiry he was first abused by a priest at age five, in a dungeon-like environment he called "the horror rooms". [These particular details are consistent with another account of torture at Roman Catholic institutions.]
"I was given a drink ... I blacked out," he said. "When I woke up my genitals and bottom hurt ... I discovered bite marks. The priest told me to get out." Mr Hill said a nun had told him to go to the rooms.
"Father wants to cleanse you, 29," the nuns said to him. He said when he woke up and walked outside, "The nun was laughing. Big joke to her ... she told me to get back to work. Maybe because I was walking funny." On other occasions Mr Hill said he was strapped down naked, tied up and sexually abused. Mr Hill also described being tortured with electric shock therapy while he was tied down, with pads on his head and neck, and a catheter inserted 'so I didn't make a mess'."
He said his hair on the back of his head never grew back from where it bounced against the bed. "Sometimes I think, how the hell did I survive all that happened to me?" he said. Mr Hill began crying as he recalled the ongoing nightmares and toll the abuse had taken on his life. "I felt like an outcast, always in the background, from all the rejection I got when I was at St Joseph's," he said. "One of the last things my wife said before she died ... was that she hoped one day I could tell my story."
"Sometimes the nuns would punish us by pulling out a tooth with a pair of pliers or hitting one of us in the head with an engineer's hammer." Mr Hill told the inquiry his mouth was so sore after having his teeth removed he could not eat, so he fed his food to a mouse he made a pet of in the dungeon. He said sticks were broken across his back and he still bears the scars. "I made a mess on the floor because I was bleeding so much ... I was left in a room with a bucket behind a soundproof door. For a bed I had a concrete slab," he said. "I stayed there about a month. The nuns told me nobody wants you, nobody cares about you. You're just a nobody."
Nuns used pliers to pull out the teeth of a child sex abuse victim at a Ballarat orphanage, and he was also locked in a dungeon known as the "horror room" and abused by a priest, an inquiry has heard. Giving evidence at the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse, Gordon Hill - now in his 70s - said he was taken to the St Joseph's Home as a three-year-old. He told the inquiry he could still remember "all the little kids getting on the bus" in 1946.
Mr Hill said he was among a group at the home known as "the Drones", children who had no-one and instead of going to school were put to work. He said he was assigned a number and a locker number, instead of a name, and did not know his own surname until he was 10 years old.
Mr Hill told the inquiry he was first abused by a priest at age five, in a dungeon-like environment he called "the horror rooms". [These particular details are consistent with another account of torture at Roman Catholic institutions.]
"I was given a drink ... I blacked out," he said. "When I woke up my genitals and bottom hurt ... I discovered bite marks. The priest told me to get out." Mr Hill said a nun had told him to go to the rooms.
"Father wants to cleanse you, 29," the nuns said to him. He said when he woke up and walked outside, "The nun was laughing. Big joke to her ... she told me to get back to work. Maybe because I was walking funny." On other occasions Mr Hill said he was strapped down naked, tied up and sexually abused. Mr Hill also described being tortured with electric shock therapy while he was tied down, with pads on his head and neck, and a catheter inserted 'so I didn't make a mess'."
He said his hair on the back of his head never grew back from where it bounced against the bed. "Sometimes I think, how the hell did I survive all that happened to me?" he said. Mr Hill began crying as he recalled the ongoing nightmares and toll the abuse had taken on his life. "I felt like an outcast, always in the background, from all the rejection I got when I was at St Joseph's," he said. "One of the last things my wife said before she died ... was that she hoped one day I could tell my story."
"Sometimes the nuns would punish us by pulling out a tooth with a pair of pliers or hitting one of us in the head with an engineer's hammer." Mr Hill told the inquiry his mouth was so sore after having his teeth removed he could not eat, so he fed his food to a mouse he made a pet of in the dungeon. He said sticks were broken across his back and he still bears the scars. "I made a mess on the floor because I was bleeding so much ... I was left in a room with a bucket behind a soundproof door. For a bed I had a concrete slab," he said. "I stayed there about a month. The nuns told me nobody wants you, nobody cares about you. You're just a nobody."
Children's homes were 'supply line' for paedophiles, says ex-minister
The Guardian:
Powerful people in the 1980s targeted children's homes that served as a "supply line" for paedophiles, a former health minister has claimed. As a former child protection manager warned that a "powerful elite" of at least 20 prominent figures carried out the "worst form of abuse", the former health minister Lord Warner described the sexual abuse of children as a "power drive". Warner, a health minister in 2003-07 who conducted an inquiry into child abuse in Birmingham in 1992, spoke out after the home secretary, Theresa May, announced a national inquiry into how the authorities may have ignored child abuse at Westminster. "It is vital that the inquiry is sufficiently comprehensive and over-arching. The important thing is to get at the truth to get at justice, to get what happened in institutions, and to get the right answers for the future. The appalling examples of child protection abuse we have seen must never be allowed to happen again."
MPs on the home affairs select committee will question Mark Sedwill, the home office's permanent secretary, on Tuesday afternoon over the loss of 114 potentially relevant files on child abuse dating back to the 1980s. Warner, a director of social services in Kent in the 1980s, said insufficient action was taken to deal with child abuse in that decade because there was "disbelief in the public mind". He said: "It is pretty distasteful stuff. Society has found it difficult to come to terms with this … We still had an air of deference about people in authority.
"A cover-up means something is very organised. I think much more of this is about people being insensitive to some of these concerns and not being as preoccupied with protecting vulnerable people – children and adults."
Peter McKelvie, a former child protection manager whose allegations about child abuse led to a police inquiry in 2012, claimed that at least 20 prominent people abused children. McKelvie told BBC2's Newsnight: "I believe that there is strong evidence – and an awful lot of information that can be converted into evidence if it is investigated properly – that there has been an extremely powerful elite amongst the highest levels of the political classes for as long as I am alive, and I am 65.
"There has been sufficient reason to investigate it over and over again, certainly for the last 30 years. There has always been the block and the cover-up and the collusion to prevent that happening."
He added: "For the first time I have got a belief that survivors will come forward and justice will be served for a lot of survivors. Unfortunately it has been left so late that a lot of the abusers are now dead.
"We are looking at the Lords, we are looking at the Commons, we are looking at the judiciary, we are looking at all institutions where there will be a small percentage of paedophiles and a slightly larger percentage of people who have known about it but have felt that in terms of their own self-interest and self-preservation and for political party reasons it's been safer for them to cover it up rather than deal with it." May said she would look at plans, backed in principle by the Labour MP Tom Watson, to require public servants to report allegations of child abuse to officials in a form of mandatory whistleblowing. A duty to report would place some form of culpability on a public official if they knowingly withheld information concerning suspected child abuse.
Powerful people in the 1980s targeted children's homes that served as a "supply line" for paedophiles, a former health minister has claimed. As a former child protection manager warned that a "powerful elite" of at least 20 prominent figures carried out the "worst form of abuse", the former health minister Lord Warner described the sexual abuse of children as a "power drive". Warner, a health minister in 2003-07 who conducted an inquiry into child abuse in Birmingham in 1992, spoke out after the home secretary, Theresa May, announced a national inquiry into how the authorities may have ignored child abuse at Westminster. "It is vital that the inquiry is sufficiently comprehensive and over-arching. The important thing is to get at the truth to get at justice, to get what happened in institutions, and to get the right answers for the future. The appalling examples of child protection abuse we have seen must never be allowed to happen again."
MPs on the home affairs select committee will question Mark Sedwill, the home office's permanent secretary, on Tuesday afternoon over the loss of 114 potentially relevant files on child abuse dating back to the 1980s. Warner, a director of social services in Kent in the 1980s, said insufficient action was taken to deal with child abuse in that decade because there was "disbelief in the public mind". He said: "It is pretty distasteful stuff. Society has found it difficult to come to terms with this … We still had an air of deference about people in authority.
"A cover-up means something is very organised. I think much more of this is about people being insensitive to some of these concerns and not being as preoccupied with protecting vulnerable people – children and adults."
Peter McKelvie, a former child protection manager whose allegations about child abuse led to a police inquiry in 2012, claimed that at least 20 prominent people abused children. McKelvie told BBC2's Newsnight: "I believe that there is strong evidence – and an awful lot of information that can be converted into evidence if it is investigated properly – that there has been an extremely powerful elite amongst the highest levels of the political classes for as long as I am alive, and I am 65.
"There has been sufficient reason to investigate it over and over again, certainly for the last 30 years. There has always been the block and the cover-up and the collusion to prevent that happening."
He added: "For the first time I have got a belief that survivors will come forward and justice will be served for a lot of survivors. Unfortunately it has been left so late that a lot of the abusers are now dead.
"We are looking at the Lords, we are looking at the Commons, we are looking at the judiciary, we are looking at all institutions where there will be a small percentage of paedophiles and a slightly larger percentage of people who have known about it but have felt that in terms of their own self-interest and self-preservation and for political party reasons it's been safer for them to cover it up rather than deal with it." May said she would look at plans, backed in principle by the Labour MP Tom Watson, to require public servants to report allegations of child abuse to officials in a form of mandatory whistleblowing. A duty to report would place some form of culpability on a public official if they knowingly withheld information concerning suspected child abuse.
1,400 investigated in child sex abuse inquiry, including politicians, entertainers
via The Guardian:
Police across the country are investigating more than 1,400 men – including 261 high-profile individuals – over allegations of child abuse in the past, a senior officer running the national operation has revealed.
The scale of alleged child abuse across society – both recent and non-recent – was stark, said Ch Const Simon Bailey, who runs Operation Hydrant, the national coordinating team overseeing the various inquiries.
Figures from police forces in England and Wales published on Wednesday reveal that 1,433 men have been identified in reports of alleged abuse by victims, since the operation was set up in 2014.
Of these 216 are dead, 76 are politicians, both national and local figures, 43 are from the music industry, 135 from TV, film or radio and seven from the world of sport. The cases include recent high-profile convictions, including Rolf Harris, Gary Glitter and Max Clifford.
Hundreds of institutions have been identified by victims of non-recent abuse as places where their abuse took place. These include 154 schools, 75 children’s homes, 40 religious institutions, 14 medical establishments, 11 community groups, nine prisons or young offender institutions, nine sports venues and 28 other places including military establishments....“What we are seeing is an absolutely unprecedented increase in the number of reports that are coming forward. That has brought about a step-change in the way the police service has had to deal with this. We are rising to and meeting the challenge, this is what Operation Hydrant is about.”
Bailey said the Hydrant team was working to create a database which would try to ensure that the failures of the past – as identified in the Jimmy Savile case – would not be repeated.
During the investigation of the late Radio 1 DJ it emerged that intelligence and information, including reports of abuse, were buried in the system – in some cases to prevent leaks – which meant when individual police forces with their own allegations checked the national police computer database his name did not come up...Gabrielle Shaw, chief executive of the National Association for People Abused in Childhood (Napac), said: “The scale and scope of sexual abuse of children committed in the past can often seem overwhelming. What these figures from the National Police Chiefs’ Council do is to provide some degree of measure of the issue.
“And what a measure it is; prolific offenders from all spheres of society, thinking they were untouchable, abusing children and the most vulnerable in settings where they should have been safest , including schools, care facilities and religious institutions.”
Police across the country are investigating more than 1,400 men – including 261 high-profile individuals – over allegations of child abuse in the past, a senior officer running the national operation has revealed.
The scale of alleged child abuse across society – both recent and non-recent – was stark, said Ch Const Simon Bailey, who runs Operation Hydrant, the national coordinating team overseeing the various inquiries.
Figures from police forces in England and Wales published on Wednesday reveal that 1,433 men have been identified in reports of alleged abuse by victims, since the operation was set up in 2014.
Of these 216 are dead, 76 are politicians, both national and local figures, 43 are from the music industry, 135 from TV, film or radio and seven from the world of sport. The cases include recent high-profile convictions, including Rolf Harris, Gary Glitter and Max Clifford.
Hundreds of institutions have been identified by victims of non-recent abuse as places where their abuse took place. These include 154 schools, 75 children’s homes, 40 religious institutions, 14 medical establishments, 11 community groups, nine prisons or young offender institutions, nine sports venues and 28 other places including military establishments....“What we are seeing is an absolutely unprecedented increase in the number of reports that are coming forward. That has brought about a step-change in the way the police service has had to deal with this. We are rising to and meeting the challenge, this is what Operation Hydrant is about.”
Bailey said the Hydrant team was working to create a database which would try to ensure that the failures of the past – as identified in the Jimmy Savile case – would not be repeated.
During the investigation of the late Radio 1 DJ it emerged that intelligence and information, including reports of abuse, were buried in the system – in some cases to prevent leaks – which meant when individual police forces with their own allegations checked the national police computer database his name did not come up...Gabrielle Shaw, chief executive of the National Association for People Abused in Childhood (Napac), said: “The scale and scope of sexual abuse of children committed in the past can often seem overwhelming. What these figures from the National Police Chiefs’ Council do is to provide some degree of measure of the issue.
“And what a measure it is; prolific offenders from all spheres of society, thinking they were untouchable, abusing children and the most vulnerable in settings where they should have been safest , including schools, care facilities and religious institutions.”
Friday, May 8, 2015
California Trio Accused of Running Rogue Masonic Police Force
source: BBC, via Cryptogon:
Three people have been charged in California with impersonating law enforcement officers after claiming to operate a police department with jurisdiction in 33 states. They said they belonged to a group called the Masonic Fraternal Police Department, which they claimed dated back to the Knights Templar. One of the trio is a junior aide to California’s attorney general. Uniforms, weapons and vehicles were found in premises linked to the group. Brandon Kiel – an aide to state Attorney General Kamala Harris – David Henry and Tonette Hayes were arrested on 30 April and released later that day.
“When asked what is the difference between the Masonic Fraternal Police Department and other Police Departments the answer is simple for us. We were here first!” the group’s website page reads. “We are born into this Organization, our bloodlines go deeper than an application.” Los Angeles County sheriff’s spokeswoman Nicole Nishida told the Associated Press news agency that there were no indications that the group had carried out any law enforcement activities.
Three people have been charged in California with impersonating law enforcement officers after claiming to operate a police department with jurisdiction in 33 states. They said they belonged to a group called the Masonic Fraternal Police Department, which they claimed dated back to the Knights Templar. One of the trio is a junior aide to California’s attorney general. Uniforms, weapons and vehicles were found in premises linked to the group. Brandon Kiel – an aide to state Attorney General Kamala Harris – David Henry and Tonette Hayes were arrested on 30 April and released later that day.
“When asked what is the difference between the Masonic Fraternal Police Department and other Police Departments the answer is simple for us. We were here first!” the group’s website page reads. “We are born into this Organization, our bloodlines go deeper than an application.” Los Angeles County sheriff’s spokeswoman Nicole Nishida told the Associated Press news agency that there were no indications that the group had carried out any law enforcement activities.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)