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Over the course of the last few weeks, I have received several requests for an update on the Frank Lombard case. Lombard is the (now former) Duke administrator who was accused last summer of attempting to allow, and even arrange for, strangers he met on the internet to rape his adopted child. A few days ago, WRAL, a Raleigh-based news station, released an update on the case. That update is worth re-printing here, along with my commentary, both for what the update says and what it does not say: “A former Duke University employee has agreed to plead guilty to...

"LAMBERTVILLE: Restaurant owner jailed on attempted homicide, rape, robbery, aggravated assault and other charges" 14 May 2009 | Uncategorized LAMBERTVILLE — SNIPPET: "Khalid Altawarh, 36, who also goes by the name David Shookby, took the woman’s Jeep Wrangler and fled the scene when she escaped into the arms of a friend who had stopped by to see if she was all right. She had failed to show up for work that morning, May 8, police said. Plumstead Township, Pa., police Chief Duane E. Hasenauer said Mr. Altawarh has been charged with attempted homicide, rape, robbery, aggravated assault and other related...

An Edwardsville man was arrested Thursday and charged with raping a 6-year-old girl. Joseph D. Marcy, 23, of Roosevelt Street, is accused of having sexual intercourse with the girl at his Hilltop Apartments home during the period beginning Jan. 20 until recently, according to arrest papers filed by Edwardsville police. A warrant for Marcy’s arrest was issued Thursday morning. Police said they captured him later Thursday in his family’s vehicle on Grove Street. Marcy was charged with felony counts of rape of a child, involuntary deviate sexual intercourse, aggravated indecent assault and indecent assault, court records state. According to the...

A Swiss court has accepted film-maker Roman Polanski's plea to be freed on bail from a Swiss jail where he is being held for a US child sex case.

IMMOKALEE — Four Immokalee High School football players accused of having group sex with a 15-year-old girl on school grounds entered not guilty pleas at their arraignments this week. Joshua Edison, Deonte Clifton and Demandrea Fuller are to return to court on Dec. 21, while Kovan McSwain will have a hearing on Jan. 7. None of the teens, who are all 17, appeared before Collier Circuit Judge Lauren Brodie in juvenile court on Monday because written pleas had already been entered on a felony charge of lewd or lascivious battery. The charge involves sex with a person 12 to 15...

BRIDGEPORT -- Three members of Sacred Heart University men's lacrosse team were charged Sunday with sexually assaulting a female student in a dormitory room. Nicholas Travers, 18, of Smithtown, N.Y.; Zachari Triner, 18, of Mansfield, Mass., and Timothy Sanders, 19, of Ashburn, Va., were all charged with conspiracy to commit first-degree sexual assault. In addition, Sanders was charged with first-degree unlawful restraint. Travers and Triner are free after posting $25,000 bond. During an arraignment hearing Monday, Superior Court Judge Joseph Doherty reduced Sanders' bond to $15,000 and continued the case to Jan. 5. "We are investigating the matter and it...

When I was in college, I read a book that changed my life. It was Susan Brownmiller's tome, Against Our Will: Men, Women, and Rape, which explained rape as an act of power, not just lust. What I found particularly chilling was the chapter on war -- how rape is used to terrorize a population and destroy the enemy's spirit. While edifying, the book magnified the vulnerability I already felt as a female. Fear of rape became a constant dread, and I sought a solution that would help shield me from danger. The answer: seek safe harbor within the Democratic...

A fight between two inmates Sunday resulted in one person dead and another facing additional charges. A disagreement and some teasing between two cellmates was reportedly taken as a slight and escalated into fisticuffs inside their cell... After the victim was punched several times in the head, he was then strangled with a "ligature made from a laundry bag,". Both inmates were housed in a section of the prison typically reserved for sex offenders. Mawien was convicted in 2004 of two amended charges of attempted aggravated sex assault, a first-degree felony; and forcible sex abuse, a second-degree felony. He was...

The reason that the monstrous crime of pedophilia matters is simple: In an increasingly secular age, it is one of the few taboos about which people on both sides of the religious divide can agree. It remains a marker of right and wrong in a world where other markers have been erased. And that is also the reason that the questions surrounding the attempted extradition of Roman Polanski for a 1977 child rape briefly became the Rorschach tests of our times. Sophistication vs. prudery, the morality of the 1970s vs. the morality of today, European artistes vs. American law, Hollywood...

Six held in gang rape of West Philadelphia woman By Sam Wood INQUIRER STAFF WRITER Police tonight are holding six males, ranging in age from 16 to 52, all charged in the assault of a young woman they dragged out of a Chinese take-out in West Philadelphia, and then gang-raped inside a nearby apartment. The attack ended only after people heard the woman's screams and called 911. Police arrested all six at the scene, an apartment across from Li Lai Chinese restaurant at 5609 Walnut St. Police said the attack happened late Thursday night. The 24-year-old victim was inside Li...

Cops: Girl Raped, Killed On Day She Was Taken 29-year-old man faces sexual assault, murder charges in 5-year-old’s death Police say Shaniya Davis was raped and asphyxiated Nov. 10, the day her mom reported her missing from the trailer park. FAYETTEVILLE, N.C. - A 5-year-old North Carolina girl was raped and killed the same day she was taken from her home, according to an arrest warrant released Friday. Shaniya Davis was sexually assaulted and asphyxiated Nov. 10, the day her mother reported her missing from the trailer park where she was staying, according to the warrant. Authorities embarked on a...

Schoolgirl, 13, 'Gang-Raped By Boys Who Filmed Ordeal On Mobile Phone' Daily Mail Reporter 19th November 2009 Alleged attack: Three teenagers are on trial for the rape of a 13-year-old girl A 13-year-old schoolgirl was gang-raped at knifepoint by three teenage boys who filmed the attack on a mobile phone, a jury heard today. The girl, who had walked out of school after being bullied, was led to the eighth floor of a block of flats for the ordeal which was filmed by her 14 and 15-year-old attackers, it is claimed. The alleged attack on an estate in Peckham, South-East...

The View ladies laughed uncomfortably at an awkward rape joke made by Modern Family's Sofia Vergara. It's the most uncomfortable 22 seconds of TV we've seen in a while, and this letter sums up everything they need to hear.

NASHVILLE, Tenn. -- Jennifer Thompson-Cannino was a 22-year-old college student in North Carolina in 1984 when she was raped at knifepoint. She tried to memorize her attacker’s face. “If I lived, I wanted to be able to take my memory to the police," Thompson-Cannino told Channel 4. The composite sketch done by the police lead them to arrest Ronald Cotton, also 22 years old. Thompson-Cannino picked him out of a line-up . Cotton was convicted of rape and sentenced to life plus 54 years, all the while claiming his innocence. "It was like I was in a dream,” said Cotton....

A story was just released by 10News.com that really upset me. It concerns "a desolate corner of San Diego County" that is "so dangerous 10News crews had to put on bulletproof vests before entering the area." "The violence in this area is so bad that a 12-year-old was raped to death." This kind of news make me sick. It makes me angry. And makes me wonder what can we do to stop it. News10 reports "They're ruthless; they'll come over here, they'll pick one out that they want, they drag her off onto the rocks, they'll rape her and they...

Politically correct Scotland Yard chiefs have stopped using the term 'gang rape' because it is too 'emotive', the Mail can reveal. Instead officers have been advised to use the long-winded phrase 'multi-perpetrator rape' when describing sex attacks involving three or more culprits. Critics branded the move by the Metropolitan Police an 'affront' to the victims of appalling sex crimes and are preparing to launch a campaign on the issue. Six years ago the Met was at the centre of a similar row over its choice of language to describe 'gang rapes' after a senior officer referred to them as 'group...

One of the witnesses of last month's gang rape of a 15-year-old girl at her homecoming dance said that while he could have stopped the attack that he watched for 20 minutes he didn't feel accountable for what happened. I feel like I could have done something, but I don't feel like I have any responsibility for anything that happened," the unidentified 16-year-old witness told ABC's San Francisco affiliate KGO-TV. Two witnesses told the television station they didn't call police during the more than two-hour-long assault on the girl because they didn't want to be called a snitches. For the...

One of Australia's most prestigious university colleges has been urged to launch an investigation into student behaviour after it emerged that some had set up a "pro-rape" page on the social networking website Facebook. The group, which was named "Define Statutory", described its members as "anti-consent" and was listed in the sports and recreation section of the site. Created by male students from the St Paul's College at the University of Sydney, the page could be accessed from any of its members profiles. It was shut down at the end of last month, but had been live on Facebook since...

CHARLESTON, W.Va. -- Megan Williams, who was supposed to take back her story that seven Logan County residents beat, raped and tortured her, didn't speak at a press conference at her lawyer's office on Wednesday. Instead, lawyer Byron L. Potts recanted her claims for her. He said Williams told him that the only injuries that weren't self-inflicted were the bruises on her face. "She is recanting the entire incident. She says it did not happen, and she's scared,'' Potts said. He urged prosecutors to re-examine the cases against the seven people convicted in the attack. Authorities don't believe Williams' new...

A young woman cried rape after 'fulfilling a fantasy' of having sex with two strangers, a court heard yesterday. Chloe Dolton, 22, was 'bored' with her life and willingly engaged in the threesome after an argument with her boyfriend, it was alleged...

RIYADH (Reuters) - A Saudi court of cassation upheld a ruling to behead and crucify a 22-year-old man convicted of raping five children and leaving one of them to die in the desert, newspapers reported on Tuesday. International rights groups have accused the kingdom, the birthplace of Islam, of applying draconian justice, beheading murderers, rapists and drug traffickers in public.

<p>None of the bodies has been identified; search of house to continue Saturday (CNN) -- A search has been launched for a 50-year-old convicted rapist and suspect in the killings of six people whose bodies were found in and around a house in Cleveland, Ohio, police said Friday.</p>

RICHMOND, CALIF. -- Security was unusually tight Thursday as four young men made their first court appearance in last weekend's gang rape at Richmond High School, a crime that brought anguish to students and leaders in the city and sent shock waves throughout the nation. Later Thursday, police arrested a sixth suspect in the case. A fifth suspect was arrested earlier but has not been charged. Three defendants, all of them juveniles charged as adults, were wearing bulletproof vests when they were led into Superior Court by a corps of Contra Costa County sheriff's deputies. The three - one of...

RICHMOND, Calif. – The number of people arrested in the gang rape of a 15-year-old girl outside a high school dance in Northern California has increased to six and could get higher, authorities said. Jose Carlos Montano, 18, was arrested Thursday evening outside his San Pablo home. He was being held on $1.3 million bail, on suspicion of rape, rape in concert with force and other charges, Richmond police said. Authorities were still looking for suspects, and have said as many as 10 people ranging from 15 to the mid-20s may have attacked the girl for more than two hours...

It did not take long for the judge to determine that the convicted rapist in front of him was irredeemable. "He is beyond help," Judge Nicholas Geeker said of Joe Harris Sullivan. "I'm going to try to send him away for as long as I can." And then Geeker sentenced Sullivan to life in prison without the possibility of parole. At the time, Sullivan was 13 years old. Now, 20 years after that sentencing in a courtroom in Pensacola, Fla., the Supreme Court will consider whether Sullivan's prison term -- and what his supporters say is an only-in-America phenomenon of...

RICHMOND, California — Four teens were charged Wednesday in the gang rape and beating of a 15-year-old girl outside her high school homecoming dance in Northern California, in an attack that has generated widespread outrage. All four — ages 15, 16, 17 and 19 — were charged with rape and enhancements that they acted in concert, which could make them eligible for life in prison.

KNOXVILLE - A jury this afternoon convicted Lemaricus Davidson of first-degree murder in the January 2007 torture slayings of a Knox County couple. Davidson, 26, faces a potential death sentence for the deaths of University of Tennessee student Channon Christian, 21, and her boyfriend Christopher Newsom, 23. Jurors will consider his punishment in a separate proceeding that will begin Thursday. The jurors also could choose life without parole or life in prison, a mandatory 51-year sentence.

Natalie Portman Equates Meat-Eating With Rape Today 10:42 AM PDT by GINA SERPE First, she admits to cutting herself, now she's making criminals of meat-eaters. Make no mistake, Natalie Portman is all grown up and not some shrinking violet. Penning what amounts to a Harvard-caliber book report for the Huffington Post, the actress and animal rights activist holds forth on her devotion to veganism and her opinion that those who choose to feast on flesh without regard for the moral implications might as well change their name to Roman Polanski. The 28-year-old—with whose glowing self veganism clearly agrees—starts off harmlessly...

RICHMOND, Calif. — Police believe as many as a dozen people watched a 15-year-old girl get beaten and gang-raped outside her high school homecoming dance without reporting it. Two suspects were in custody Monday, but police said as many as five other men attacked the girl over a two-hour period Friday night outside Richmond High School. "She was raped, beaten, robbed and dehumanized by several suspects who were obviously OK enough with it to behave that way in each other's presence," Lt. Mark Gagan said. "What makes it even more disturbing is the presence of others. People came by, saw...

Polanski's arrest has caused his victim health problems and job worries, and she just wants to be left alone, her attorney wrote in a court filing. Attorney Lawrence Silver urged a California appeals court to dismiss the criminal case against the "Chinatown" director. The filing with the Second District Court of Appeal on Friday said Samantha Geimer and Silver have received nearly 500 media calls seeking comment since Polanski was arrested in Switzerland on Sept. 26. Geimer, who long ago identified herself publicly, and her family have to contend with such pressure whenever Polanski is in the news, the six-page...

It was a crime shocking not only in its brutality but in its callousness, Richmond police say. A 15-year-old girl leaving early from the homecoming dance at Richmond High School was enticed into a darkened alley just off campus to hang out with as many as a dozen young men who were drinking.

(CNN) -- Rape has turned into a weapon of war in the Democratic Republic of Congo, with the number of attacks on women having grown threefold over the past few years, human rights activists said in October. Anneke van Woudenberg, senior researcher with Human Rights Watch, told Christiane Amanpour that 200,000 women and girls have been raped in Eastern Congo since 1998, and the condition of women has become more dire as the Congolese army has pressed a military campaign against armed groups in the countryside. "Rape is being used as a weapon of war in eastern Congo. So we...

A trio of illegal male immigrants from Mexico were found to have arrest records in California when they were processed by Border Patrol agents from the Douglas Station. Tucson Sector spokeswoman Colleen Agle said the three were found to have significant criminal arrests when their fingerprints were checked against records Thursday. One individual had been accused of intercourse with a minor and rape by force/fear, another of unlawful sexual intercourse with a minor and aggravated assault with a deadly weapon and the third of threatening crime with intent to terrorize, child cruelty, and possible injury/death and battery of a spouse,...

The sexual assault of a female student by a group of men on the San Diego State University campus is being investigated by campus police.A dusty vacant lot became the backdrop to the horrifying assault. The victim told police that six black men attacked her. They held her down, poured liquid into her mouth, and sexually assaulted her. Breanna Piper knows the pain this latest victim is going through. She just started up a campus organization at SDSU for sexual assault victims called Sorority Outreach and Support. "We have a society

Sometimes the dems know no bottom to the cesspool within which they live. Franken offers an amendment to the Defense appropriations bill. It stems from the awful case of Jamie Leigh Jones who was allegedly sexually abused while working for contractor Halliburton/KBR in Iraq.

By Loretta Park (Standard-Examiner Davis Bureau) Last Edit: 13 hours 32 min ago (Oct 16 2009 - 10:10pm) CLEARFIELD -- Police believe a 34-year-old Clearfield woman may have victimized more than just one teenage boy. Clearfield police arrested Tabitha Ash at her home Friday after investigating the complaints of a mother of a 14-year-old neighbor boy. Ash was booked in Davis County Jail on one count of sexual abuse of a minor and two counts of unlawful sexual activity with a minor. She is being held without bail. The Davis County Attorney's Office is reviewing the case before filing formal...

Attorneys for Steelers quarterback Ben Roethlisberger yesterday responded point-by-point to the civil lawsuit filed against him by a Nevada woman accusing him of sexual assault and countersued her for unspecified damages. In the filing, John Echeverria, Mr. Roethlisberger's Reno-based attorney, said the woman, an employee of Harrah's Lake Tahoe, willingly entered Mr. Roethlisberger's room on July 11, 2008, with plans to seduce him. "At all times while she was in Mr. Roethlisberger's room, [the woman] acted voluntarily," Mr. Echeverria said. "Mr. Roethlisberger did not sexually assault, assault, batter, falsely imprison, or otherwise commit any crime or tort against [her]." The...

"They spent 42 days trying to drive me bizarre, but thank god I’m smart and rich ... In America, California, I lose my wife, my baby, my friends, perhaps my sanity and almost my freedom. No, I say, no! The Nazis couldn’t take it away from me, nor could the grief of my losses. And this little whore and the California laws won't either. I have given much and they have taken too much from me."

WEST PALM BEACH - Citing the depravity of the gang rape and torture of a mother and her son, 12, in the Dunbar Village Apartments, Circuit Judge Krista Marx on Tuesday sentenced three of the four men involved to life in prison. It was the only appropriate disposition, the judge said. The standing-room-only crowd gasped in disbelief. As deputies led the men from the courtroom, a scuffle ensued between defendant Tommy Poindexter and an officer. A woman in the crowd began screaming, setting off more yelling.

Rallying to the defence of director Roman Polanski after his arrest in Switzerland, French Culture Minister Frederic Mitterrand declared the situation "horrifying," and suggested that if the cultural world didn't come to the rapist's defence, "it would mean there is no culture in our country." He may have a case -- if you consider drugging and sodomizing a 13-year-old a manifestation of advanced "culture." Sadly, however, Mr. Mitterrand is hardly the only public figure willing to shrug off sexual crimes and indiscretions. Mr. Mitterrand's own background is illustrative. In a 2005 book he described as "half real and half dream,"...

October 13, 2009 Dear Tanya: Before She Died My Mother Told Me I Was Born As A Result Of Rape I'm not who I thought I was and I feel overwhelmed Dear Tanya Before my mother died from breast cancer two months ago she told me that I was born as a result of rape when she was 18. I had always realised that she treated me differently from my sister and I can never remember her hugging me or telling me that she loved me, as she did my sister. Now I know why. Every time she looked at...

A teenage girl was raped four times by a gang who took pictures of the abuse on their mobile phones. The 16-year-old victim, who cannot be named for legal reasons, was attacked in the attic room of a house in Rochdale on 28 May 2008. The girl's mother called her mobile phone after noticing she was missing from their home, only to hear the cries of her daughter on the end of the line. Her four attackers, aged 17 to 20, pleaded guilty at Bolton Crown Court. The girl had gone to the house after being called on her mobile....

If you believe in evolution, there is nothing wrong with rape. In fact, you can’t really call it rape. Whoopi Goldberg dismissed Roman Polanski’s rape conviction by declaring that it “wasn’t rape-rape” (see her comments on The View.) As a firm believer in evolution, she should have said, “There’s nothing wrong with rape or sexual aggression. That’s how we all got here!” Here’s the premise: Whatever animals do in nature is natural. What’s natural is normal. What’s normal is moral. So if penguins engage in homosexual behavior, then that behavior must be natural, normal, and moral. How can we mere...

The suburban Chicago cop who was caught on video beating a 15-year-old student for refusing to tuck his shirt last May is being accused of raping a woman while holding a pillow over her face. He also killed his ex-wife’s new husband last year by shooting him 24 times in front of their children while he was a cop for another suburban police department. He was suspended for that incident and eventually found work with the Dolton Police Department, where he ended up beating the special needs student who weighed only 140 pounds, breaking his nose and lacerating his face....

Swiss authorities rejected on Tuesday an appeal by lawyers for Roman Polanski, arrested in September after fleeing America in 1978 from an underage sex charge, to release the film director from prison. Authorities also urged a Swiss court dealing with his extradition warrant to reject another appeal by Polanski's lawyers to have him freed and to refuse any request to release the 76-year-old Oscar-winning film director on bail. Polanski pleaded guilty to having sex with a 13-year-old girl in 1977 but fled the United States on the eve of his 1978 sentencing because he believed an American judge might overrule...

YWCA Misinforms Raped Inmate About Adoption, Pays for Abortion Topeka, KS -- The case of a raped inmate in Kansas who was coerced into an abortion and taken to a Planned Parenthood center is generating criticism of Kansas corrections officials. But it is also implicating the YWCA, which appears to have misled the woman and arranged her abortion. http://www.LifeNews.com/state4479.html

A father of a high-school student is infuriated after he said a teacher provided "banned books" to her 11th-grade students, including at least one with explicit descriptions of homosexual sex acts, rape, masturbation, profane language and even bestiality. John Davis, father of an 11th-grade student at William Byrd High School in Vinton, Va., told WND that English teacher Kathleen Renard provided her personal copy of a book called "Perks of Being a Wallflower" by Stephen Chbosky to one of her English students, and it was passed to his son. The book is published by MTV Books. Davis found the book...

We didn’t think the Polanski matter could get a whole lot stranger. But it has. And given the way this situation has unfolded in the last couple days, we’re going to go out on a limb and say that we think it’s going to get a lot weirder before all is said and done. The news: Over at the Daily Beast today, Marcia Clark (yes, that Marcia Clark; the prosecutor in the OJ Simpson murder trial) writes a piece which, if true, could hurt Polanski’s case going forward. The background requires a quick trip back to the late 1970s. Polanski...

Whoopi Goldberg offered a practical defense — that what Polanski did was not "rape-rape," a distinction she left imprecisely delineated. Which may leave you with the vague impression that this was one of those deals where you're in a bar, and the gal says to you she's in 10th grade, and you find out afterward she's only in seventh.

I was tempted to write some scathing remarks about those who support Roman Polanski because they believe he is a great artist. But then I realized two things. One was that Dr. Blanchard had beaten me to the punch. The other was that those of us who are moviegoers or moviestayers (I am a huge fan of Netflix), are guilty of the same kind of support. Consider the case of Nicole Kidman. In 2004, she starred in the movie Birth, where she plays a widow who believes that a ten-year-old boy is her husband reincarnate. The movie features a bathtub...