Free Republic

Long lines have formed in front of a U.S. Post Office in San Francisco’s Castro District this morning as supporters of assassinated city Supervisor Harvey Milk rush to get a stamp dedicated to the gay rights leader, a postal service spokesman said. The stamp with Milk’s laughing face, name and a small strip of the rainbow flag, first became available this morning at post offices throughout San Francisco and nationwide. Gay civil rights activist Cleve Jones is at the Castro District post office, located at 4304 18th St., along with filmmaker Dustin Lance Black, who wrote the 2008 movie about...

Pedophile teacher abused scores as clues missed He was one of the most beloved teachers in the small world of international schools that serve the children of diplomats, well-off American expatriates and local elites. He was often the first to arrive in the morning, and the last to leave each day. He led students on class trips to exotic places, treating them to cookies and milk at bedtime. That was the public persona of William Vahey, carefully crafted over four decades until a maid cleaning his home in Nicaragua stole a 16-gigabyte memory drive. There, in photograph after photograph, was...

A former youth pastor has been charged with sex crimes involving young men at an Arkansas church. ... Berkley, 34, was arrested at a cemetery in Covington, Tennessee, Monday afternoon after finishing a funeral service. Police in Harrison say the investigation into the former pastor began March 28, while he was a pastor at Shiloh Baptist. They interviewed more than a dozen male victims—all between the ages of 14 and 18—through mid-April. One victim said he went to Berkley’s house believing it was a Bible study. While there, he was allowed to drink and smoke marijuana and a hookah. Several...

Members of a Seattle church are outraged they're just learning a priest who had a longtime sexual relationship with a young man was disciplined in 2004. And they're disturbed he was prohibited from performing baptisms and other sacraments but continued doing so. The Archdiocese of Seattle sent a letter to members of St. Bridget Parish last Friday, notifying them that the Archdiocesan Case Review Board concluded Harry Quigg had sexual contact with a then-17-year-old in 1980, and continued the relationship for 15 years. The letter said because both civil and canon law considered the age of majority to be 16-years-old...

The devastating damage inflicted by one of history’s worst pedophiles began to emerge Thursday as parents in London were informed that a serial sex offender from the U.S. had targeted boys in their school. William Vahey, an American teacher, is believed to have drugged and abused at least 90 students in his care during an unprecedented wave of attacks at schools from Nicaragua to Indonesia. Child-protection experts told The Daily Beast that he had been taking advantage of lax international standards that left thousands of American children vulnerable to attack.

The mother of the alleged victim of a powerful Hollywood pedophile ring says she tried for years to interest the media in the story. Michael Egan’s mother Bonnie Mound said, “I wrote every news channel, every magazine, every talk-show host, everybody, from Oprah to ‘20/20’ to ‘60 Minutes’…. Nobody wanted to do anything because of the high-profile people involved.” One of those alleged “high-profile people” is defendant Bryan Singer, who is said to have “manipulated his power, wealth, and position in the entertainment industry to sexually abuse and exploit the underage Plaintiff [Michael Egan], “through the use of drugs, alcohol,...

Kevin Clash, the voice of everyone’s favorite ticklish red puppet, resigned from Sesame Street amid allegations of sexual abuse, but the case was dismissed and recently upheld due to "statute of limitations," an attorney for one of the accusers said. SNIP “The case was dismissed because of the statute of limitations. There is no ruling on the merits,” said an attorney for Sheldon Stephens, 25, Clash’s first accuser. SNIP

Nathan Hasty set up phony Facebook pages to solicit nude photos from children, including kids in his own youth group, according to a federal investigation. A judge accepted Hasty's guilty plea on one charge of sexual exploitation of a minor on Wednesday and sentenced him to 15 years. He had been a campus life director for Youth for Christ for about nine years, according to court documents. In an affidavit detailing the investigation which dates back to 2012, an FBI agent who investigated the case said Hasty used Facebook under three different fake identities in order to start sexual conversations...

EXCLUSIVE: In the wake of shocking allegations of sexual abuse against Bryan Singer that surfaced five weeks before the launch of the new X-Men film, Singer has cancelled a scheduled appearance at this weekend’s WonderCon in Anaheim, Deadline hears. Fox instead will send Simon Kinberg as the studio prepares to launch the Singer-directed blockbuster X-Men: Days Of Future Past. Kinberg wrote and produced the film and has been a part of the X-Men universe since the beginning. Singer had been scheduled to be on hand to do interviews for the film that Fox opens May 23. It seems fairly obvious...

RICHMOND — The arrest of a middle school teacher on suspicion of child sexual abuse this week has raised questions about the West Contra Costa Unified School District's hiring practices, because the teacher was hired while police were investigating him. Ron Guinto, 32, of Vallejo, was arrested about 7:45 a.m. Wednesday in the parking lot of Mira Vista Elementary School. The seventh-grade English and science teacher is expected to be charged with 11 counts of lewd acts on a child under 14 years old, two counts of forced oral copulation and one count of assault with intent to commit sodomy,...

Lawsuits alleging the sexual abuse of minors in a Hollywood pedophilia ring were filed in Hawaii Monday against three prominent Hollywood executives: David Neuman, Gary Goddard, and Garth Ancier. The suits were announced at the Four Seasons Hotel by Jeff Herman, the attorney representing Michael Egan, the man who alleges he was sexually abused by "X-Men" director Bryan Singer as a teen. Variety reports that: Ancier is the former president of BBC Worldwide America and headed the Fox entertainment group while Neuman is the former president of Disney TV. Goddard heads a design firm in Los Angeles which has created...

The Boy Scouts of America has revoked its charter agreement with a Seattle church that refused to remove a gay troop leader after the organization withdrew his membership. A Boy Scouts attorney told Rainier Beach United Methodist Church last week that it no longer could host troops under the Boy Scouts name. The church has stood by Geoff McGrath, 49, a Seattle software engineer and Eagle Scout, after his membership in the organization was revoked last month, setting off an impasse between the church and one of the country’s most popular youth organizations. …

In a move with major legal implications, The California Supreme Court Advisory Committee on The Code of Judicial Ethics has proposed to classify the Boy Scouts as practicing “invidious discrimination” against gays, which would end the group’s exemption to anti-discriminatory ethics rules and would prohibit judges from being affiliated with the group. “The Committee’s invitation ignores the fact that the change also encompasses other youth organizations whose membership is limited on the basis of gender, e.g., the Girl Scouts, as well as the military, which continues to practice ‘discrimination’ on the basis of gender,” wrote Catherine Short, legal director of...

Probably the most emotive issue to come before the electorate in a vote on May 18 is an initiative to ban convicted paedophiles from working with children for life, the culmination of a ten year campaign sparked by a controversy in the town of Biel. The initiative has mainly been backed by the rightwing Swiss People’s Party and the centrist Christian Democrats. ... The initiative, brought by the Marche Blanche (White March) group of concerned parents, would amend the Swiss constitution to ensure that “persons who are convicted because they have affected the sexual integrity of a child or a...

Famous Hollywood director Bryan Singer has been accused in a new federal lawsuit of sexually abusing a 15-year-old boy. The suit, filed Wednesday in federal court in Hawaii, accused the 48-year-old “X-Men” filmmaker of first preying on the 15-year-old aspiring actor at a party at a California mansion where underage boys were plied with drugs and alcohol and taken advantage of. “The stories that I’ve heard of what went on at the estate are truly despicable,” the accuser’s lawyer, Miami attorney Jeff Herman, told the Daily News Wednesday night. Herman identified the accuser as Michael Egan III. Egan, who is...

An animal rights group is taking a stab at buying the childhood home of serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer in an effort to transform the Ohio house into a vegan eatery. In a letter last week, PETA president Ingrid Newkirk asked a real estate agent about the Bath Township home and proposed making it a restaurant “to respond to the past with something positive,” the Akron Beacon Journal reported. Newkirk compared the way animals were slaughtered to the way Dahmer treated the 17 victims he was convicted of killing. […] Richard Lubinski of Stouffer Realty, who is handling the sale of...

Pink Brick Award Posted on April 7, 2014 by Pastor Scott Tonight I was informed by a writer at the Bay Area Reporter that I have been “awarded” the Pink Brick Award by the San Francisco LGBT Pride organization.From their website: “The Pink Brick is a symbol of the first brick hurled at the Stonewall Riots in 1969. This faux award is an opportunity to highlight an individual or organization that has done significant harm to the LGBT community. It is also an opportunity to educate the community and the Pink Brick recipient about relevant issues.” http://www.sfpride.org/pink-brick/Here is his...

Claims of widespread child sex abuse at four Christian Brothers-run WA boarding schools will be investigated as part of a nationwide inquiry. The Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse will hold its first WA public hearing at the end of this month. It will hear from dozens of former boarders who spent time as young boys at Castledare Junior Orphanage in Wilson, St Vincent’s Orphanage in Clontarf, St Mary’s Agricultural School in Tardun, and Bindoon Farm School.

The State Department in its 2013 human rights report on Afghanistan said the sexual abuse of boys, or bacha baazi, is on the rise in the region, with the practice becoming common in Kabul. “The practice of ‘bacha baazi’ (dancing boys)—which involved powerful or wealthy local figures and businessmen sexually abusing young boys who were trained to dance in female clothes—was on the rise,” the State Department said in its human rights report. The report noted an increase in rapes during the year, with most victims being children. In fact, sexual abuse of children reached an all-time high, according to...

From September 2007, police took 1,776 statements from 192 alleged victims, identifying 151 alleged abusers and only seven people were successfully prosecuted. WHY ? Because the majority of abusers are being protected ! We know from court cases and statements made [during the 2008 inquiry] that children in Jersey care homes were ‘loaned out’ to members of the yachting fraternity and other prominent citizens on the pretence of recreational trips but during which they were savagely abused and often raped. When these children complained they were beaten and locked in cellars [at Haut de la Garenne] The youngsters were told...