remember, human trafficking and ritual abuse are Myths

1. gruesome finds at farm

BATES CITY (Missouri) - AT FIRST, people around this small farming town - even the horses grazing alongside the fence - seemed puzzled about the uniformed men who came to dig for the glass jars. Now they know why. And their curiosity has turned to hand-over-the-mouth shock.

Police say that for years Burrell Mohler and his sons, well known in the Bates City community and active in the church, led a bizarre, ritualistic child sex ring that included bestiality and the rape and sodomy of the elder Mohler's grandchildren. They held mock weddings in which girls as young as five would be paired with their father, uncles or grandfather and sent to the privacy of a chicken coop for consummation.

Victims, now grown, told investigators that a German shepherd dog was involved in the torrent of sexual assaults that allegedly took place from the late 1980s to the mid-1990s. The victims said they wrote notes detailing the horrific abuse and buried them in glass jars around the farm. The notes were cries for help, written in hope that people might someday come to know of the horrors that transpired here.

read more @ straits times


2. Australian PM Rudd apologizes to 500,000 child victims of institutional abuse

SYDNEY —

Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd formally apologized Monday to 500,000 victims of childhood abuse in the country’s orphanages and government-run institutional care facilities between 1930 and 1970. Australian children and thousands of young migrants who were sent to Australia from Britain suffered decades of neglect and emotional, sexual and physical abuse at the hands of caregivers.

Many children were told they were orphans and others were separated from their siblings.

...British Prime Minister Gordon Brown also plans to apologize on behalf of his government to the 130,000 children sent to Australia, New Zealand, Canada, South Africa and Zimbabwe from 1618 to 1967 under Britain’s Child Migration Programme.

Some 7,000 of the Australian victims were sent from Britain, often as young as 3 and often without their parents’ knowledge.

Most were from disadvantaged families and promised a better life in Australia.

read more @ japan today


3. Russian Federal Security Service detains 14 human traffickers

MOSCOW, November 10 (RIA Novosti) - Russia's Federal Security Service (FSB) has detained, in cooperation with the Investigation Committee and foreign law enforcement bodies, 14 suspected human traffickers, the service reported Tuesday.

The FSB said it had prevented the activities of "an organized criminal group that traded in humans for a long time using channels of illegal migration to Western Europe."

The criminal group had been operating in central Russian regions looking for young women, mostly from poor families, taking them to Moscow to transport later to Europe, where they forced them into prostitution.

"As a result of the operation, 14 people in all were detained, with eight out of them in Russia and six abroad. Moreover, 20 more people were established as being involved in this criminal activity," the FSB said.

The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) said in a report that human trafficking brings profit of about $32 billion annually.

The true scope of human trafficking is unknown, but around 2.5 million people worldwide are estimated to be held in forced labor, including sex slavery. Sexual exploitation is behind some 80% of all cases of human trafficking.

source: ria novosti