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Hello! My name is Alexa Stevinson and I am an MSW student at LSU! Thank you for taking time to look at my Padlet Scrapbook. You will find articles printed by local news outlets around Los Angeles, CA. I have commented on many of these articles, and hope that you learn something new while going through this scrapbook!

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Hello! My name is Alexa Stevinson and I am an MSW student at LSU! Thank you for taking time to look at my Padlet Scrapbook. You will find articles printed by local news outlets around Los Angeles, CA. I have commented on many of these articles, and hope that you learn something new while going through this scrapbook!

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LA’s new Family Justice Center to be ‘a place of refuge,’ for those fleeing domestic violence, abuse

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LA’s new Family Justice Center to be ‘a place of refuge,’ for those fleeing domestic violence, abuse

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Jan 11, 2018 - Daily News
This article is one that was a great read; a positive read in a slew of pretty negative and heart-wrenching articles. It shows that as a society, we are trying to do something to help those affected by family violence. It shows that even before the #Metoo movement, there were people in and around Los Angeles wanting to make a safe space for victims. This article showed me that we are headed in the right direction. This center will provide medical, mental-health, legal and social-service components that all come together for victims, something that I have leaned is vital in all of the readings done throughout this course. As we have read throughout this course, many people do not leave their abusers out of fear (Barnett, Miller-Perrin, & Perrin, 2011, p. 369). This center hopes to be a place where they can help the victim feel safe and supported.  I believe this would be a great place for social workers to be working. With the skills sets I have leaned in this family violence course, and others like it, I believe I would have many of the skills to help those who came into the center.

Barnett, O. W., Miller-Perrin, C. L., & Perrin, R. D. (2011). Family violence across the lifespan: an introduction. Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE.

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In one of the busiest hospitals in the nation, a refuge now resides.

Officials declared that the Family Justice Center, inside the LAC+USC Medical Center in Boyle Heights, will be a place where Los Angeles County residents can escape domestic violence, finding all the pieces to put their lives back together. The new center formally opened Thursday, hailed as a one-stop shop where medical, mental-health, legal and social-service components all come together for victims, officials said.

The timing couldn't be better, said Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti - not only because domestic violence calls continue to increase in Los Angeles, but because of the very public discussions about sexual assault and harassment in high-profile industries and politics in recent weeks.

It's a moment in time, the #metoo moment for many people, that can have a ripple effect to help not just people who've been sexually abused, but women, children, and senior adults from all backgrounds, he added.

"To bring these services here at this moment in time is absolutey so critical," Garcetti said during a morning news conference. "There's a lot of talk about this moment. And for a lot of us it's always been a movement. But maybe the movement is having a moment."

The LAC+USC center is the second one of its kind in Los Angeles County - the other is in the San Fernando Valley. Both are part of a growing national model of Family Justice Centers nationwide.

The city/county partnership will assist law enforcement to help people leave "the monsters" who abuse children in foster care or traffic them sexually. It will weed out those who commit elder abuse, and those affected by domestic, sexual and interpersonal violence, said LAPD Chief Charlie Beck.

Beck said police officers know that victims struggle to leave their abusers out of fear. The Family Justice Center is the perfect type of collaboration, he added, because it will help officers link those they want to help to services.

"Many times, the abuser is also the provider," Beck said. "One of the reasons why family violence is so under reported is because victims believe there is no solution in their reporting."

The root cause of violence in the community is often violence in the home, he noted.

"Until we are able to address the root causes of family violence, we will always be faced with too much violence in our communities," Beck said.

Domestic violence calls have seen a steadily increase across Los Angeles County, though they fell slightly last year among the immigrant communities. Fearful of President Donald Trump's hard-line stance on illegal immigration, undocumented people stopped reporting crimes, some experts contend - and calls fell by a little more than 3 percent. But those numbers are starting to crawl back up again, Garcetti said.

In 2014, there were 39,145 domestic violence related calls for service in Los Angeles County, according to an annual status report on women. By 2015, that number rose to 41,534 domestic violence related calls for service in Los Angeles County, according to an annual report published by Mount St. Mary's University.

Women and children are most likely to experience homelessness because of domestic violence. Of the more than 17,000 women who were counted as homeless in 2017, half reported they had experienced domestic violence, according to figures provided by the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority.
RELATED STORY: 'I've had to become tough': How homeless women survive the dangers of Skid Row
Seeing the growing need, Los Angeles city officials reached out to county supervisors, who approved the partnership in June.

"We need to do something to address these issues and today is a statement to say we're going to do that," said Los Angeles County Supervisor Hilda Solis. "What we're doing today is integrating law enforcement, making this a new safe haven for people. It's really about getting the word out to the community that they are welcome here."

Dr. Astrid Heger, who heads the Violence Intervention Program at LAC+USC Medical Center, said news about the center's opening already has spread among Hollywood actresses who want to help.

She said she hopes the highlighted awareness that grew out of Hollywood will spread to such people as the woman working as server in Oklahoma, for example, and to people who believe they've never had a voice.

"Each one of these women, each one of these children, each of these men, in our minds is a star and is deserving of that service and that commitment," Garcetti said. "This center will be a lifeline, a place of refuge, of healing, of hope."

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LA's new Family Justice Center to be 'a place of refuge,' for those fleeing domestic violence, abuse

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In one of the busiest hospitals in the nation, a refuge now resides. Officials declared that the Family Justice Center, inside the LAC+USC Medical Center in Boyle Heights, will be a place where Los Angeles County residents can escape domestic violence, finding all the pieces to put their lives back together.

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The signs of abuse and neglect to look for

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The signs of abuse and neglect to look for

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Jan 16, 2018 - abc7 Los Angeles
This article shows me that people and society are becoming more aware of abuse and neglect. People are trying to educate the masses on how to spot family violence and to be more aware of their surroundings. I really enjoyed this article because it lists the signs of abuse and neglect to people to look out for, signs that many people may miss: missing school, body odor, having trouble walking/ sitting, quick attachments. etc. Many people may not realize that these are signs of abuse, so this article could really save someones life. In 2005-2006 there were over 1 million recorded cases of child maltreatment, and if this list is able to help one, it has really done a great thing (Barnett, Miller-Perrin, & Perrin, 2011, p. 146). I believe that education like this is something I could do, I could help educate those I am around through word of mouth, articles, and other sources - education is truly the start of any great intervention.

Barnett, O. W., Miller-Perrin, C. L., & Perrin, R. D. (2011). Family violence across the lifespan:  an introduction. Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE.

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On Sunday, a 17-year-old escaped from a home where she and 12 siblings had been held captive by their parents in Perris, Calif. Both parents were arrested for torture and child endangerment.

At a press conference about the case, officials said one of the most important things that can be done to stop similar situations is to call and report suspected cases of abuse.

Here are the signs to look for and report, especially if you spot a pattern, according to the government's Child Welfare Information Gateway.

To reach the Childhelp National Child Abuse Hotline, call 1.800.4.A.CHILD (1.800.422.4453) or look up your local number.
SIGNS OF NEGLECT
Child often misses school
Child steals or begs for food or money
Child lacks necessary medical care
Child has severe body odor and/or does not seem clean
Child does not properly dress for the weather
Child says no one is home to care for them
Parent/guardian and/or child abuses drugs or alcohol
Parent/guardian does not appear to care about the child
Parent/guardian exhibits bizarre behavior
SIGNS OF PHYSICAL ABUSE
Child has injuries that child and/or parent/guardian cannot explain including burns, bites, bruises, broken bones, or black eyes, especially after an absence from school
Child seems frightened of parent/guardian and does not want to go home with them
Child shrinks away from approaching adults
Child says that their parent/guardian hurt them
Child and/or parent abuses animals/pets

Parent/guardian describes the child in a very negative way
Parent/guardian uses harsh physical discipline
There is a family history of abuse
SIGNS OF SEXUAL ABUSE
Child has trouble walking or sitting
Child suddenly will not participate in physical activities
Child says they wet the bed and/or have nightmares
Child has a sudden increased or decreased appetite
Child demonstrates unusual sexual knowledge or behavior
Child becomes pregnant or contracts a venereal disease, especially if younger than 14 years old
Child runs away
Child says they have been sexually abused
Child develops quick attachment to new environments and people
Parent/guardian severely limits child's contact with other children, especially of the opposite sex
Parent/guardian is secretive and keeps to themselves
Parent/guardian is jealous or controlling

SIGNS OF EMOTIONAL ABUSE

Child exhibits extreme behavior in terms of passivity/aggression, compliance or maturity
Child has delayed emotional and/or physical development
Child has attempted suicide
Child says they do not care about the parent
Parent consistently scolds, belittles and/or blames child
Parent does not show concern for solving child's problems
Parent/guardian rejects child

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On Sunday, a 17-year-old escaped from a home where she and 12 siblings had been held captive by their parents in Perris, Calif. Both parents were arrested for torture and child endangerment. Here's how to spot signs of abuse and neglect.

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Captive children suffered years of abuse, starvation and cruelty by parents, authorities say

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Captive children suffered years of abuse, starvation and cruelty by parents, authorities say

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Jan 19, 2018 - latimes.com
This article was one that made me so angry to read. When I first heard about it I truly couldn't believe it. 13 children, 2-29, each looking almost half their age due to malnutrition and abuse, were held in a home for years. Shackled, watching the dogs get fed and not them, being allowed to only shower once a year. This should never acceptable in any society and I am so happy that their brave young daughter was courageous enough to escape and call for help. Due to this abuse the children experiences physical, emotional, and behavioral impairments, and I believe that these will exist for the children's entire lives. Our readings state that these negative effects can me long lasting and that this type of abuse can cause PTSD, mania, anger/ hostility, continual health issues, and many others (Barnett, Miller-Perrin, & Perrin, 2011, p. 154-155). I am not sure to what extent I would be able to intervene with this case. It seems like it would be emotionally taxing and require lots of knowlege regarding this sensitive subject, and I am not sure I am experienced enough to handle something of this magnitude yet.

Barnett, O. W., Miller-Perrin, C. L., & Perrin, R. D. (2011). Family violence across the lifespan:  an introduction. Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE.

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The siblings who were discovered this week living captive in a Perris tract home were tortured and abused by their parents for years, living in conditions that only grew more horrific over time as the family moved from Texas to California, prosecutors said Thursday.

David Turpin, 56, and Louise Turpin, 49, whose 13 children ages 2 to 29 were discovered Sunday after one of them escaped and called 911, punished their children by beating and choking them, tied them to beds for weeks or months at a time, deprived them of food and forced them to stay up all night and sleep during the day, said Riverside County Dist. Atty. Mike Hestrin.

They were not allowed to shower more than once a year.

The alleged abuse and neglect started decades ago, when the family lived in Fort Worth, Texas, and only got worse as they moved to Murrieta in 2010 and then to Perris in 2014, Hestrin said in announcing multiple felony charges against the couple.

Their treatment was so extreme, it caused malnutrition, cognitive impairment and nerve damage in the victims, he said.

"This is severe emotional and physical abuse," Hestrin said. "There's no way around that. This is depraved conduct."

Even as the children suffered from lack of food, the district attorney said, the parents would buy food for themselves and leave it out for their children to see. Even as the children were not allowed to play with toys, the couple had numerous unopened toys throughout the house, he said.

Though one child was allowed to attend college classes outside of the home, Louise Turpin accompanied him and waited outside the classroom, the district attorney said.

"When he was finished with class, she would take him home," Hestrin said.

The charges include, against each of the defendants, 12 counts of torture and 12 counts of false imprisonment, seven counts of abuse of a dependent adult and six counts of child abuse. David Turpin was also charged with one count of a lewd act on a child under the age of 14.

Although there were 13 children, the parents are charged with 12 counts of torture because the 2-year-old was getting enough to eat, Hestrin said.

If convicted, they face up to 94 years in prison.

Thursday afternoon, the couple appeared briefly in Riverside County Superior Court and pleaded not guilty to all of the charges. They wore black blazers provided to them by the public defender's office and sat separated by their attorneys.

"Our clients are presumed to be innocent, and that's a very important presumption," Deputy Public Defender David Macher, who represents David Turpin, told reporters after the hearing.

The couple's children were discovered early Sunday morning after one of them, a 17-year-old, escaped the home through a window and called police.

She had planned to escape for about two years, prosecutors said, and she initially left the home with a sibling. But that sibling grew frightened and returned home, Hestrin said.

When deputies arrived at the house on Muir Woods Road, three of the children were tied up and it was "extremely dirty," Riverside County Sheriff's Capt. Greg Fellows said at a news conference Tuesday. There was a strong, foul stench in the home, he said.

Even so, Louise Turpin seemed surprised to see authorities, Fellows said.

"It seemed that the mother was perplexed as to why we were at the residence," he said.

Sheriff's deputies had no prior contact with the Turpins or calls from their house, Fellows said. Police in Murrieta also had no interactions with them, said a spokesman for the agency.

Deputies at first assumed from the children's frail and malnourished appearances that all of them were minors but later determined that seven of them were adults, according to the Sheriff's Department.

The children had not seen a doctor in four years, prosecutors said. None of them had ever been to a dentist.

Though the children were supposedly home-schooled, they lack very basic knowledge about life, Hestrin said.

Many of them did not know what a police officer is, and the 17-year-old who escaped did not know what medication or pills are, he said.

Their undernourishment was so severe that the 29-year-old weighed only 82 pounds when deputies arrived, Hestrin said. A 12-year-old victim weighed the same as an average 7-year-old.

Prosecutors believe the neglect began when the couple lived in Fort Worth for several years in the 1990s. At one point during that time, the parents lived apart from their children and dropped off food from time to time, Hestrin said.

The district attorney pleaded with the public for help piecing together what happened when the family lived in Texas.

"Someone must have seen something. Someone must have noticed something. We need your help," he said.

According to public records, the family also appears to have lived in rural communities south of Fort Worth for several years before moving to California.

Two officials in the Texas communities of Rio Vista and Blum, near where the Turpins appear to have lived for a time, said in phone interviews this week that they did not recall the family.

Jeff Sanders, superintendent of Blum Independent School District, said he had no record of the Turpin children ever being enrolled in local schools. And Rio Vista Mayor William "Keith" Hutchison said he did not remember the family and had not come across anyone who did.

"In our area, if someone lives out in the county they might not ever come into our town because there's not a full-service grocery store or things like that," Hutchison said. "You may never meet someone or see someone living in our area if they don't come into town for some specific reason."

Through their years of isolation and abuse, one thing the children were allowed to do was write in journals, Hestrin said.

Prosecutors have recovered hundreds of those journals and plan to use the details in them as they build their case against the couple.

Times staff writers Sonali Kohli and James Queally contributed to this report.

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Captive children suffered years of abuse, starvation and cruelty by parents, authorities say

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The siblings who were discovered this week living captive in a Perris tract home were tortured and abused by their parents for years, living in conditions that only grew more horrific over time as the family moved from Texas to California, prosecutors said Thursday.

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Marcia Frederick, first U.S. Gymnastics world champion, shares story of abuse

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Marcia Frederick, first U.S. Gymnastics world champion, shares story of abuse

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FALL RIVER, Mass. - There is a weariness in her eyes and voice, the first hints of a woman worn down by the decades.

"I'm beat," she said. "Done."

Marcia Frederick, America's first world champion female gymnast, is haunted.

By the naïve, vulnerable teenage girl she can never save.

By the coach she said preyed on her.

By the adults who she said didn't stand up for her.

By all those early mornings and middle of the nights in her bedroom, all those times in hotel rooms and cars and secluded hallways.

By that day at the 1979 World Championships in Fort Worth when Frederick, the reigning uneven bars world champion, walked onto the competition floor for the all around event overwhelmed by a sense of dread.

"I had no brain left," Frederick said. "I couldn't think of gymnastics."

No, Frederick said she couldn't stop thinking about whether the same thing was going to happen that night after the competition that had taken place that very morning.

Two hours before then 16-year-old Frederick was to represent the United States against the world's top gymnasts, she said her coach, Richard Carlson, had her perform oral sex on him.

Frederick, in an exclusive interview with the Southern California News Group, alleged that Carlson had her engage in sex acts for two years starting in 1979, just weeks after she turned 16 and only months after she won the uneven bars gold medal at the 1978 Worlds. Carlson continued to have sexual relations with her while she competed for Team USA in major international competitions and trained for the 1980 Olympic Games, Frederick said, until she was 18.

"Two years," she said. "For me it seemed like 10 years."

More than two years since Frederick filed a formal complaint with USA Gymnastics, the sport's national governing body, alleging sexual misconduct by Carlson the organization still hasn't taken action against the coach.

Frederick's frustration with USA Gymnastics' failure to sanction Carlson more than two years after then-USA Gymnastics president Steve Penny confirmed that the organization was investigating Carlson led her to make what she characterized as the difficult and painful decision to go public with her allegations. USA Gymnastics' failure to discipline Carlson mirrors the inaction of her coaches and other adults in her life when Frederick first told them of Carlson's alleged sexual misconduct in 1980, she said.

"I'm tired of living with ghosts," Frederick said.

Frederick's allegations come as USA Gymnastics finds itself in the midst of the worst sex abuse scandal in American sports history. More than 140 former gymnasts and young athletes allege that former U.S. Olympic and USA Gymnastics national team physician Larry Nassar sexually abused them as teenagers and even younger. McKayla Maroney, Gabby Douglas and Aly Raisman, members of the "Fierce Five," record-shattering 2012 Olympic gold medal-winning gymnastics team, said Nassar sexually assaulted them while they competed for the U.S. at major international competitions like the Olympic Games and World Championships as well at Team USA training camps at the Karolyi ranch in Texas. Jamie Dantzscher, another Olympic medalist, told the SCNG last August year that Nassar sexually assaulted her and some of her U.S. teammates on an almost daily basis at the 2000 Olympic Games in Sydney.

Maggie Nichols was the first known former U.S. national team member to alert USA Gymnastics officials of Nassar's alleged sexual abuse, confirming the charges to Penny and other top officials in June 2015. USA Gymanstics kept the allegations private for 15 months, allowing Nassar to retire from his USA Gymnastics and U.S. Olymmpic Committee duties to retire in without disclosing the real reason and to continue to see young patients at Michigan State and Michigan-area gymnastics clubs.

Nassar was sentenced last month to 60 years in prison after pleading guilty to three federal child pornography charges. He has also pled guilty to 10 sexual assault charges in state court in Michigan. Nassar is scheduled to be sentenced on those charges later this month.

Former gymnasts and female athletes have filed civil lawsuits in several states including California against Nassar, USA Gymnastics, three of its former top executives and former U.S. national team directors Bela and Martha Karolyi. The suits allege that USA Gymnastics, its top officials and coaches, and the Karolyis created a culture of abuse within American gymnastics that enabled Nassar's abuse and then ignored warning signs of his predatory behavior.

The USA Gymnastics sex abuse scandal became public in 2011 when three women told the Orange County Register that former U.S. national team coach Don Peters had sex with three teenage gymnasts in the 1980s. Peters was banned for life by USA Gymnastics in November 2011 and removed from the sport's Hall of Fame. Peters did not contest the ban.

Frederick said she first told USA Gymnastics investigators that the sport's sex abuse issue extended beyond Peters during an interview for the organization's 2011 investigation following the Register report. Peters was Frederick's coach when she won her world title. Frederick said she was not sexually abused by Peters. During the 2011 interview a USA Gymnastics investigator told Frederick that the organization was only focused on Peters at that time.

Carlson continued to coach young female gymnasts until at least 2015 and instruct at USA Gymnastics-sanctioned clinics for promising young female athletes until at least 2012, according to USA Gymnastics reports and interviews.

Frederick, 54, filed a formal complaint about Carlson with USA Gymnastics on September 12, 2015. The complaint came two days after Penny was informed that Nassar was retiring from his position with the organization.

Penny confirmed Frederick's complaint about Carlson in a December 17, 2015 letter obtained by SCNG.

"USA Gymnastics takes complaints of this nature very seriously and will investigate this matter," Penny wrote.

"We anticipate that the investigation will be completed in approximately 90 days," Penny added in the letter. Penny was forced to resign in March under pressure from the U.S. Olympic Committee.

More two years later the matter remains unresolved.

"To me they're dragging their heels," said Frederick, who turned 55 earlier this month and works as a rehabilitative therapist and coaches young gymnasts.

When SCNG first attempted to reach Carlson at the Elite Gymnastics Center in Amityville, New York, where he has coached in recent years, an employee asked to take a message, saying he was expected at the gym later that day. An employee later contacted the SCNG and said Carlson had not worked at the gym in two years.

Attorney Anthony Colleluori contacted SCNG the following day on Carlson's behalf and confirmed that Carlson has been interviewed by USA Gymnastics investigators.

"I guess he would deny any of her allegations dealing with impropriety," Colleluori said.

Asked if Carlson denied having sex with Frederick, Colleluori said "there was no physical relationship between the two of them. There was nothing of a sexual nature."

"Rick just wants to live a nice, quiet life," Colleluori said of Carlson, who owns a Long Island plumbing business.

Colleluori added that Carlson has considered suing Frederick for defamation but "he won't do it. He's too good of guy."

Carlson was later reached by SCNG. He gave a brief response, saying he was on his way to an appointment and citing that the matter was under investigation.

"USA Gymnastics is investigating all that," Carlson said when asked if he had sexual contact with Frederick. "Yeah, I deny it."

USA Gymnastics did not respond to a request for comment on the Carlson investigation.
THE FIRST GOLDEN GIRL
Before Mary Lou and Gabby and Simone there was Marcia, America's first golden girl, the New England 15-year-old who shocked the gymnastics world in 1978 by upsetting Nadia Comaneci, the personification of perfection, among others for the U.S.' first woman's global title.

"I went into their world and broke it down," Frederick said.

Frederick's victory at the 1978 World Championships in Strasbourg, France, was the first tear in the Iron Curtain that had been tightly wrapped around a sport dominated by Soviet bloc women for 30 years. The Strasbourg triumph was a pivotal moment for U.S. gymnastics, changing overnight the mindset by infusing a confidence into the American sport; the first significant step in the U.S. women's emergence as a global superpower in the coming years, a rise that elevated gymnastics to a place alongside track and field and swimming as the marquee sports at the Olympic Games.

"You know how Americans love to win," said Kathy Johnson-Clarke, an Olympic medalist. "To finally break through. She was by far the best and it was such a spectacular moment. It just raised the possibility, like, 'Hey, we're onto something!' It's like getting your foot in the door. It raised everybody's, not just their expectations, but their belief that we could do this."

Nearly 40 years after the emergence of the first U.S. world-beater, the expectations for American women are golden. In the nine Olympic Games that the U.S. has participated in since Strasbourg, American women have won 46 medals, 14 of them gold, including the last two team titles and the last four individual all-around crowns. The international success of the American women has turned USA Gymnastics into one of the most recognized and lucrative brands in Olympic sports, attracting corporate sponsors like NBC, AT&T, Procter & Gamble, Kellogg's, Hersheys and Under Armour. USA Gymnastics, a non-profit organization with tax exempt status based in Indianapolis, reported revenues of $34.3 million in 2016, according to documents filed with the Internal Revenue Service.

( SCNG reported in December that several corporate partners, including Procter & Gamble and Kellogg's, decided not to continue sponsoring USA Gymnastics in the wake of the sex abuse scandal.)

But Frederick also has more in common with Douglas, Maroney and Raisman then just athletic excellence. The U.S. rise to the top of the sport triggered by Frederick's World title has been tracked along the way by a parallel and decades-long undercurrent of sexual abuse sometimes lurking just beneath the surface, sometimes visible in plain sight and now washed up upon American gymanstics' golden shore.

"This didn't just start with Larry Nassar," said Jennifer Sey, a former U.S. champion and author of "Chalked Up: Inside Elite Gymnastics' Merciless Coaching, Overzealous Parents, Eating Disorders, and Elusive Olympic Dreams." "This was going on before Bela and Martha."

Which is why Olympic veterans like Johnson-Clarke sees Frederick's story as important to U.S. gymnastics today as it was in 1978. To understand the culture of abuse that Nassar exploited, they said, you have examine the environment that shaped it, you have to expose its roots.

"If we don't at some point connect the dots to say, 'You know what, this goes so far back,' it's going to keep going on in the future," Johnson-Clarke said.
A LIFE UPSIDE DOWN
Growing up in Springfield, Massachusetts, Frederick was always looking for a game of some sort.

"I was a very competitive little thing," she said. "I was good at dodge-ball because I was small and fast. I couldn't hit anybody but nobody could hit me either and the job is to be the last one standing."

When she was 9 years old, Frederick rolled her ankle, running across a neighbor's lawn late for a dodge-ball game.

"So I decided to walk on my hands," Frederick said. "And that's how I became a gymnast. I was a gymnast that day. That's how I started gymnastics.

"I never really made it to the dodge-ball game. I never cared. I spent my life upside down from that day forward."

She started sneaking into gymnastics classes on the other side of a curtain from her father's adult league basketball games.

"I went into that class and joined it for a month before they caught me," Frederick said. "I just walked right in. (The coaches asked) 'Who are you and where are your parents and how did you get here?'"

Before long she was spending nearly every free moment in a gym that moved to an abandoned hotel, sometimes staying until 10 or 11 p.m.

Frederick's victory as a 12-year-old at the Massachusetts state championships caught the eye of Muriel Davis Grossfeld, a three-time Olympian and then the U.S. national team coach who ran the Muriel Grossfeld School of Gymnastics Inc. Grossfeld opened her operation in a former A&P grocery store, later moving to a Masonic Temple. By the time Frederick's original coach Leo Leger turned her over to Grossfeld in 1977, agreeing he had taken her as far as he could, Grossfeld's academy was working out of a cinder block gym in Milford, Connecticut. Fifty feet away was the three-story farmhouse she used as a dorm for the girls.

"It was the first real program (in the U.S.)," Johnson Clarke said. "There were only handful of places back then."

Christine Frederick (now Gaetano), Marcia's mother, told the New York Times in 1978 "Mrs. Grossfeld is an excellent role model."

Grossfeld oversaw a staff that included a Russian pianist who played the girls' floor exercise music, a trainer, a housekeeper and Peters, then a young up and coming coach.

"Don Peters never liked me. He didn't like me in the beginning, kind of made it clear," Frederick said. "He just found me ugly and little. They all kind of found me not eye candy, you might say, and I was aware of that."

Frederick, however, was undeterred. She woke up each morning to a poster on her bedroom wall of Nadia Comaneci, who left the 1976 Olympic Games in Montreal with three gold medals and seven perfect 10.0 scores.

"That was the gymnast I had to beat, that's her," Frederick recalled. "My attitude was, 'I'm coming for you.'"

But first Frederick had to navigate the tension between the equally strong willed Grossfeld and Peters.

"Don and Muriel were always volatile," Frederick said. "Very different views on sport. Very different views on coaching it. Her and Don would have explosive arguments. Don is a very, very technical coach. Very technical. This is how he coaches: he stares at you, and he can look at it and go, 'If you do this and this, this will happen.' He's very technical. Muriel had a huge emotional aspect to it. 'Marcia take these feelings' and Don says, 'Well Marcia put your arm in this position.'

"Muriel was the reason I got to World Championships. She got me there. The reason why I won was because of Don Peters."

Said Johnson-Clarke, "Don was a genius as a bars coach. He made Marcia."

Frederick posted her own perfect 10.0 on the uneven bars at the U.S. Championships, a performance so impressive that meet officials gave Grossfeld the bars. Even so Frederick wasn't among the favorites when she arrived at the 1978 World Championships in Strasbourg, France.

"I was really unknown to everybody," she said.

Before the 1978 Worlds the sport had no reason to pay attention to women gymnasts outside Eastern Europe. The individual events and the all-around were added to the Olympic program in 1952. Of the 105 individual women medalists in the seven Olympic Games between 1952 and 1976, 104 were won by women from the Soviet bloc. In the uneven bars only one non-Eastern European woman had even placed in the top six at the Olympics.

The uneven bars competition in Strasbourg was expected to be decided by the Soviet Union's Elena Mukhina, the World all-around champion, and Comaneci, whose bars routine in Montreal produced the first 10.0 score in Olympic history.

"She was the queen," Frederick said.

But not for long.

Frederick, her training severely limited in the weeks leading up to Worlds by an ankle injury, led off the final round.

"She went up first, this unknown American with ice water in her veins," said Johnson-Clarke, a bronze medalist in the floor exercise at the 1978 Worlds.

Frederick delivered a routine that earned a 9.95 score that gave her an overall total of 19.80 that held up for the gold medal. Mukhina finished second with Comaneci, the Olympic champion, slipping to fifth.

"I don't think (Comaneci) could have touched her," Johnson-Clarke said. "Marcia elevated it to a place where the others just couldn't go."

Frederick returned to the U.S. with the world title but without her coach. Peters left the Connecticut gym following a dispute with Grossfeld shortly after the World Championships, Frederick said. Within a few months he landed at SCATS, a gym in Huntington Beach he soon built into a global powerhouse. Peters coached two SCATS gymnasts onto the 1980 Olympic team and then four years later Team USA, again coached by Peters, won the team silver medal and eight overall medals at the Olympic Games in Los Angeles, a total not surpassed by a U.S. Olympic women's gymnastics team until the Simone Biles-led squad won nine medals at the 2016 Games in Rio de Janeiro.

Yet in the same decade in which Peters led the U.S. to Olympic glory, he was also having sex with teenage gymnasts, three women said. Former U.S. national team gymnast Doe Yamashiro and another former SCATS gymnast told the Register Peters had sex with them when they were teenagers. A former SCATS assistant director also told the Register that Peters confessed to her in the 1990s to having sex Yamashiro, the second SCATS gymnast and a third teenage gymnast.

Frederick said in 1977 when she was 14 she "walked in on Don and one of the gymnasts."

"I always went to the gym early and if you went down these stairs and took a right, there was a team room and we had a grip bag, take my grip bag and put it in there and go out," Frederick recalled. "Well I opened up the team room door and there was Don with a gymnast and she was putting on her leotard and she was bending over and he was standing behind her. And I took that grip bag and went out. And in my mind it was odd."

Said Gaetano "there was a pattern there" at Grossfeld's.

Frederick said Peters never acted inappropriately toward her.

"I almost wondered if Don hadn't left would that have happened to me?" she said. "Because Don really didn't like me. He just thought I was the ugliest thing. So I felt safe.

"When he left that's when my hell began," Frederick continued. "When Don left that's when Richie began."
"NO IDEA WHAT WAS IN STORE"
Grossfeld assigned Carlson to work with Frederick after Peters' departure. Carlson was tall, athletic, handsome with a thick dark hair and mustache.

Carlson began working with Frederick at a time when she was depressed about Peters leaving and struggling with her body image and appearance.

"I was mourning Don, I really was," she said. "When he left I thought to myself how am I get to the Olympics? How am I going to win without him?"

Frederick's spirits lifted when Carlson began complimenting her appearance.

"To have Richie do it, a good looking man, I'd been called somewhat not good looking all my life. I was always called a boy," Frederick said. "I was very tomboyish. I was always called the boy. And I was just under the impression that I wasn't very likable or a good looking girl. I was used to that. Even as a child outside of the sport I was always known as the tomboy, the athlete, you know. I wasn't asked to dances. I rarely wore dresses. I knew to Muriel and Don, I was a gymnast in the rough.

"So when Richie began to notice me over all the other girls, I was flabbergasted, enthralled and I had quite a crush on him, I really did because he noticed me...He made comments about my lips and then he would make comments about how I'm starting to fill up my leotard and how my hair is starting to grow from short to a little bit longer now.

"And all these things, for this person to notice me not in a gymnastic way was quite a pull. All the girls had crushes on him. He was charming to everybody. But when he noticed me it was, to me that changed things for me and I smiled more, said, 'Wow, maybe I am not that ugly ducking, maybe I'm not the ugliest world champion out there.' And I had this thing about this body, this body image and then things went from there and Richie took it to another level."

Carlson began talking to Frederick about steps they could take to improve her chances of defending her world title and winning at the 1980 Olympic Games in Moscow.

"Richie had conversations with me, separately, about being closer to your coaches," Frederick said. "(Carlson said) 'Gymnasts should get very close to (their coach) so they have a good bond and a good relationship.' So I said 'Ok, alright.' I had no idea what was in store for me. And when I look back I was so easy (to be manipulated). I was so easy. It kills me. I feel sorry for her. That Marcia. Because I was so easy. I was right there. I was being groomed. Easily being groomed from the lipstick (comment). When I look back I can see it.

"He made a comment about how pretty my lips were. Odd, that's an odd comment. But for me 'pretty,' there's that word. Because he knew I was a loner. He knew I was a little on the outside of all the other girls and I was easy. So Richie had conversations (about getting closer).

"And my abuse with Richie was oral sex. 'This is what we're going to do and this is how you get closer to me.'"

Under Connecticut law in 1979 the age of consent was 16. The current Connecticut law making sex between a coach and athlete under 18 second degree sexual assault wasn't passed until 2002.

Frederick said the married Carlson insisted oral sex wasn't "cheating" in trying to convince her to be intimate with him the first time in an area between the farmhouse kitchen and living room.

"It seemed to happen so quick. ..," she said.

"Then it was sometimes every day, twice a day, could be once a week, could be in the bedroom. If we traveled to competitions. In cars, at competitions, in hotels, everywhere, all the time. And for me it was just this is how this person wants us to be so we're closer and I just did it."

Carlson's abuse of Frederick took place at a time when relationships between young female gymnasts and their male coaches were commonplace. It was even evident in her own gym. Grossfeld married - and later divorced - her coach Abie Grossfeld.

"Back in my day gymnasts married their coaches," Frederick said. "So I thought this is what you're supposed to do. I really thought that. This is natural and normal.

"I didn't like any of this but I just thought this was what Muriel did with Abie. This is what (another coach/former gymnast married couple) did. This is just what we do. So I didn't..." Frederick paused, "I just did that. I just went on with that."

Said Johnson-Clarke "Did (Frederick) see it as horrible? No. Because people did that back then. Did she want to do it? No, because even back then that age difference was seen as no good."

Frederick was like many young elite athletes, whose drive and focus prevented them from fully grasping the peril of the situation they're entering into with their coach, said Katherine Starr, a former Olympic swimmer and founder of Safe4Athletes, a athlete welfare advocacy organization.

Young elite athletes have, Starr said, "so much passion that they don't think about this tidal wave coming ashore. Then it comes to shore and then you're going to ask this person to pull up? You can't pull up. You're with them. So the sad thing is that your passion and your focus doesn't allow you to connect with what's wrong and what's danger."

Gaetano recalled a change in her daughter's personality after she began working with Carlson. Marcia Frederick began insisting that her family make the hour drive from Springfield to Milford to pick her up for the weekend

"She was very anxious to get out of there," Gaetano said. "I just didn't know why."

Gaetano recalled one 1979 weekend in particular. A massive snow storm hit New England, closing down major freeways. Gaetano stopped at roadside restaurant to call her daughter with the news should wouldn't be able to make it to Milford.

"And she said 'no,no, no, you've got to come,'" Gaetano recalled Marcia saying. "'I don't want to be alone.'"

Gaetano said she missed another red flag during a trip Frederick took to a European competition with Carlson.

"I called her in hotel room and she said she couldn't talk because Richie was massaging her," Gaetano said. "I found that strange so I called Murial and Murial said 'they do it all the time.'"

By the time Frederick was to defend her world title in Fort Worth in December 1979 she was overwhelmed by the situation with Carlson, desperate to find a way out yet unable to ask for help. As part of their preparation for the competition, U.S. coach Bill Sands had the team go through a visualization exercise.

"We had to lay on the mat and visualize and close our eyes," Frederick said. "And I kept opening my eyes because I was really uncomfortable laying there with my eyes closed and a man (walking around).

"That '79 whole situation was a horrid, horrid competition. The competition itself wasn't great but all the background things. All the time I had to be with Richie. The day of the competition. That morning before we competed. That night after we competed. This was awful. I'm not surprised I lost my title."

Gaetano remembered Frederick being especially rattled in Fort Worth.

"In those days the gymnasts weren't allowed to be with the parents," Gaetano said. "But you could wave at them from the stands and Marica and I would make a signal to meet in the bathroom. So I met her in the bathroom and she said 'Mommy, I don't want to stay here anymore.'"

Frederick finished sixth on the uneven bars, 23rd in the all-around.

"I couldn't think of gymnastics," she said. "I thought of how many ways I could get away from this person. Literally two hours before this I was (having oral sex). I was just beat. Done."

Frederick said she considered telling Sands in Fort Worth about the situation with Carlson

"And I wasn't strong enough to go Mr. Sands and say 'This happened just now, right before I got here and I know I'm competing in two hours. And I don't want to go back to my hotel because it will happen again so I'm just going to stay here. Is that OK?' I just never asked."

Frederick began leaving a trail of evidence hoping someone would discover Carlson's sexual involvement with her.

"I left so many clues as a little girl. Underwear in strange places," she said. "I left so many clues for people and no one (found them)."

At one point a housekeeper working for Grossfeld in the farmhouse confronted Carlson about a condom she found in a strange place.

"And he made up some stupid story and I'm right there behind that wall and I'm going, 'It's finally going to happen, finally' and nothing," Frederick said. "I was so upset."

Frederick's inability to speak up is not uncommon among young elite athletes who have been sexually abused by their coach, Starr said.

"You are harmed and the fact is that you need to suppress this so far because you have to continue to perform in your sport, you've had to continue to show up," said Starr, who was sexually abused by a coach. "It has nothing to do with age. You've been silenced. And your voice has been shoved so far down and I don't care if this person's 40, you're asking a person to speak out and be the strength in a weakening situation. The power differential. This person had talent. This person took away their soul to get to that talent, right? So the coach takes away the soul which athletes have the talent. So you're asking the person who has lost something to show up again and be her own advocate in this situation that has broken them in so many ways. That's a tall order."

And so the situation with Carlson continued, Frederick telling herself it was price she had to pay to chase a gold medal at the 1980 Olympic Games in Moscow.

"At the time I had one goal I wanted to be the best in the world and I wanted to go to the Olympics and nothing superseded that," she said. "I think it was a way for me to rationalize. If I keep my goal I can forget everything else. And you know what so the morning went by, all right maybe the night will have to go by. That was my rationale.

"I still had the goal."

And then Jimmy Carter took it away.
NOT WORTH IT
Initially Frederick, like many likely U.S. Olympians, dismissed talk of a U.S. boycott of the 1980 Olympic Games in Moscow because the Soviet Union's December 1979 invasion of Afghanistan.

"We had heard (about) the boycott as a threat," she recalled. "I honestly really didn't think It was going to happen. I was just like there's no way this person is going to do this. No way."

Frederick was visiting her parents, who had moved from Springfield to Connecticut, when President Carter on March 21, 1980 formally announced his decision to boycott the Moscow Games.

"It really shocked me and I was sitting in a big green chair and I remember thinking, 'Well, that's over,'" she said. "And I became so enraged at everything I did just to get this Olympics, to have the highest person in the world take it away from me. But then I got so angry, I hadn't been that angry before. I was so upset and everything I did for this, with him and all that training. I was beyond angry. I was vengeful."

It was that March day that Frederick, jolted and devastated by the confirmation of the boycott, decided she would no longer let Carlson have sex with her.

"That day, that boycott, never again," Frederick recalled thinking. "That day it is over. I knew I was beat. I was beat. No gymnastics. No Olympics."

Frederick said she confided to Grossfeld about Carlson.

"I told her what happened," Frederick said. "I was 18 (at the time). I told her in the parking lot at Grossfelds. I went to my father, I told them all within a couple of days.

"I went and told my mother and the reactions I got were none," she continued, running her hand in front of her face to demonstrate a blank look. "None. Murial had no reaction whatsoever. No emotion, no reaction, didn't say a word to me. I just stood there when I told her. She was in her car and I told her, 'Murial, I have to talk to you there's something so wrong.' And I was always sort of a quiet person anyway, so when I told her she just, there was nothing, zero, she just drove off.

She received similar reactions from her father, Frederick said.

"I went and told my father in the house and my father, the look on his face was disgust, just disgust for me, for me. This is how I viewed it," she said. "My father and I are so estranged. My father has nothing to do with me, wants nothing to do with me, can't even look at me. He's just, I don't know, I don't know why. The look on his face, I was again, it was a like an electric shock and then there was nothing. Zero."

Said Gaetano, "my husband just shut down." The couple later divorced.

"When all that happened and there was no reaction, I expected something, I expected my father, who was my idol, to go break his legs, my Dad would at least go to his house, something, something, pull his hair out," Frederick said."And he did nothing and the look, that look changed my life that day. And I was so enraged. How could these people do nothing? It's not like they didn't believe me. They probably did, but I wasn't worth any effort, nothing, not even a conversation, not even a hug, nothing. I was really taken aback by that. I realized I wasn't worth it. I was world champion but I wasn't worth it."

Charles Frederick did not respond to multiple requests for comment.

Gaetano said she was stunned when Frederick told her of Carlson's alleged sexual misconduct.

"We were in the car," Gaetano said. "I was driving the car and I had my daughter tell me something that I I wouldn't have imagined.

"I said 'how long?' 'Why didn't you tell me?' And she said you would have pulled me out and I knew I could be the best in the world."

Carlson denied the allegations to Grossfeld, Frederick and Gaetano said.

Gaetano said she confronted Grossfeld but not Carlson. "If I had it would have been with a gun," she said.

Grossfeld did not respond to numerous requests for comment over a more than month long period.

"The reason Murial won't call you back is because she continues to deny what happened," Gaetano said. "Murial knows what happened.

"Murial will never admit that she knew he was lying about what happened with my daughter. She knew."

Devastated and frustrated by the reaction of those closest to her, Frederick said she felt that she had no choice but to have sex with Carlson in a situation where she knew they would be caught.

"I regret it to this day," she said. "(But) if they didn't believe me then I was going to prove this.

Shortly after Carter's announcement Frederick said she and Carlson were caught in bed by his wife.

"To me I had no choice," Frederick said. "I didn't want to do this to her. But I had no choice, how was anyone going to see me?"

This time Grossfeld fired Carlson, Frederick said. Three months later she hired him back.

"When Richie was brought back into the gym," Frederick said, "I had that same thing of 'well, I'm not worth it.'"

Frederick made the 1980 Olympic team, the team going nowhere. Unwilling to work with Carlson, unable to find a female coach to train under with Grossfeld focusing more on the business side of the academy, Frederick slowly faded from the sport.

"All I could see was this going back to the way it was," she said. "So I was unable to work with a male coach anymore. I didn't trust anybody, couldn't trust anybody.

"It was all of it. It was all of it. Obviously the boycott was huge. Richie was huge. But it was the actions or the inactions of the people. That was still prominent to me. I couldn't believe these people who were supposed to love me, my Mom, my Dad. They were supposed to love me. How could they let me go like this?"

Two years later Mary Lou Retton, not Frederick, would be the 1984 Olympic Games' cover girl, joining Peters and Johnson-Clarke in leading Team USA to its Olympic breakthrough in Los Angeles. Gymnastics fans would see one final glimpse of Frederick that year in "Nadia," a made for television biopic on her former rival. Frederick performed the Comaneci character's gymnastics stunts in the film.

"I was a better gymnast after the boycott as far as maturity, experience and health," Frederick said. "My body was healthy. I was in a great spot physically. All I needed was a female coach. Honestly I couldn't spread my legs anymore. I couldn't. I couldn't do it. I couldn't look at a man and listen to him objectively as a coach. I gave up. I just gave up.

"I had so many people tell me, 'Marcia just hang on, just hang on. None of them knew what had happened. That all stayed with the Grossfeld family. And again I just didn't say anything.

"I was quiet."
NOTHING IS DONE
She fell in love, got married, started a family, got divorced and all along she was building walls.

"Really this whole thing, it's not what happened between Richie and I that changed my life," she said. "It's everybody's reaction or non-reaction for lack of a better word. That's what's changed my life. I don't trust anybody. Everybody's at an arm length. Everybody.

"And a lot of my decisions have been based on protecting myself even if I didn't know it at the time."

Frederick remains estranged from her father.

"He doesn't know my children," Frederick said of her father. "He doesn't know me. He literally wants nothing to do with me. He's a rather cool person if I do see him.

A few years ago Charles Frederick attended a ceremony honoring her daughter and the 1980 U.S. Olympic team in Hartford and left without speaking with Marcia, she said.

"To this day I don't know that face that he gave is it because that happened to him in his life and he didn't protect his daughter?" she said referring to his reaction when she first told him about Carlson. "Or is it that she's just a disgusting slut? I still don't know. And I struggle with that a little but I've gotten through it.

"I think I've reached the point where I just can't get any lower. I'm already there. I just can't get any lower so I've gotten to that place where I don't care. I'm numb because I can't fix it. I can't change it."

But she could help push Carlson out of gymnastics. A few years ago Frederick was shocked when she saw a photograph of Carlson at an age group gymnastics meet on a friend's Facebook page.

"All these years I was under the impression that he was gone" from gymnastics, Frederick said. In fact, in addition to running a plumbing business on Long Island. Carlson coached at Elite Gymnastics, which offers classes and teams for children from 18 months to late teens. Carlson was worked alongside USA Gymnastics national staff as an instructor for several years at USA Gymnastics-sanctioned "Rising Stars" for young, high level female gymnasts until at least October 2012, a year after Frederick first warned USA Gymnastics investigators there other coaches in the sport besides Peters who acted inappropriately.

Frederick confided to Johnson-Clarke in 2015 about Carlson's alleged abuse and filed the formal complaint with USA Gymnastics.

"The complaint was made and it's been sitting for two years," she said.

She has had a series of interviews with USA Gymnastics officials over the past two years.

"Again nothing is done," she said.

And so she waits. She lives in a remote part of southern Massachusetts with her longtime boyfriend and 40 years of ghosts. Coming forward about Carlson was hard, Frederick said, and the drawn out investigation has worn on her. Yet the ordeal, she said, has given her a chance for the closure on her gymnastics career denied her by Carter's boycott and the inaction to her initial allegations against Carlson.

"I'm going to go down fighting," she said. "On my terms.

"I want peace in my life. I don't care about myself but if coming forward can prevent some little girl from going through what I went through it was worth it."

Yet there will always be one young girl she knows she can never save. Frederick doesn't sleep much and her nights are frequently interrupted by a reoccurring dream in which she tries unsuccessfully to save her 16-year-old self from Carlson.

"It's a completely different person," she said. "What goes through my mind I feel so sorry for that little girl. I feel so bad for her. I wish that didn't happen to her. And she was so easy (to manipulate), and so little and so naïve. Just so little. Such a sweet thing.

"Every day I have to deal with this girl."

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Marcia Frederick, first U.S. Gymnastics world champion, shares story of abuse

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FALL RIVER, Mass. - There is a weariness in her eyes and voice, the first hints of a woman worn down by the decades. "I'm beat," she said. "Done." Marcia Frederick, America's first world champion female gymnast, is haunted. By the naïve, vulnerable teenage girl she can never save.

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Parents cannot be allowed to use religious freedom to hide their abuse of children with home-schooling

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Parents cannot be allowed to use religious freedom to hide their abuse of children with home-schooling

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To the editor: To remain viable, a democracy must ensure that its children are educated. The overarching goal of course is to produce healthy, knowledgeable, well-adjusted, productive adults.

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Parents cannot be allowed to use religious freedom to hide their abuse of children with home-schooling

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To the editor: To remain viable, a democracy must ensure that its children are educated. The overarching goal of course is to produce healthy, knowledgeable, well-adjusted, productive adults.

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Larry Nassar sentenced to 40 to 175 years in prison

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Larry Nassar sentenced to 40 to 175 years in prison

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Jan 24, 2018 - Daily News
This is an article that I had also read about and followed the story for quite some time. This article shows how some people in authoritative positions in our society have been protected in the past. Many of the women that Nassar sexually abused saw him as a father figure. He used that power and trust to pray on women of all ages. He was a household name in many athletes lives; yet when victims shared their stories, he was protected until very recently. I am so happy to read that he was going to get such a long sentence, and believe he completely deserves it. Sexual assault has lasting affects on its victims As we read the letter by Grant Watkins (2010), we see how much hurt is done when someone is sexually abused. I believe that I would advocate that more women speak up against this man, as I am sure he abused many others. Watkins was able to tell his abuser how he felt, which helped him heal (Watkins, 2010). I believe that is a great step, and one that I would urge others to do.
Watkins, G. (2010). Unpinned: breaking the hold of sexual assault and abuse. Minneapolis, MN: Tasora.

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As the survivors of Larry Nassar's sexual abuse have turned onto the last cold sidewalk leading them into the Ingham County Courthouse for the past two weeks they have been greeted by a human wall lining this final and perhaps toughest stretch on their road to reckoning.

The crowds, bundled and enduring the harsh Michigan winter, have been a reminder that Nassar's survivors are finally no longer alone. There are mothers holding small children, young girls and old men holding handmade signs that read "Gold Medal for Courage," "Thank you" and simply "BRAVE."

One by one the survivors, more than 150 of them, have made their to the building's third floor and into Judge Rosemarie E. Aquilina's courtroom for Nassar's sentencing hearing and the final steps of the ultimate women's march in the #MeToo era.

For seven days they have marched into the nation's consciousness and heart, some of them still in their teens, others in their 30s, Olympic champions and dreamers, all of them sharing the same nightmare.

One by one they have stopped at a rostrum to tell their stories and to confront Nassar, the serial predator now appearing frail and meek, and all those who they say enabled him.

"Little girls don't stay little forever," Kyle Stephens, one of the survivors told told Nassar last week. "They grow into strong women that return to destroy your world."

Aquilina sentenced Nassar, 54, the former U.S. Olympic and USA Gymnastics women's national team physician, to 40 to 175 years in prison Wednesday for sexually assaulting seven girls.

"I've just signed your death warrant," Aquilina told Nassar. "I find that you don't get it, that you're a danger. That you remain a danger."

Nassar was sentenced to 60 years in federal prison on child pornography charges last month. He must serve the federal sentence before beginning the Michigan term. He is also scheduled to be sentenced in Eaton County in Michigan on January 31 on three sexual abuse charges.

Nassar briefly apologized Wednesday before Aquilina announced her decision.

"I will carry your words with me for the rest of my days," he said reading from a statement.

But Aquilina was unmoved.

"You played on everyone's vulnerability," she told Nassar. "I'm not vulnerable...

"I want you to know that as much as it was my honor and privilege to hear the sister survivors, it was my honor and privilege to sentence you because sir you do not deserve to walk outside of a prison ever again.

"You have nothing to control those urges and anywhere you walk destruction will occur to those most vulnerable."

Nassar still faces civil suits filed by more than 140 women in several states including California that also allege USA Gymnastics, three of the organization's top executives, the U.S. Olympic Committee and former U.S. national team directors Bela and Martha Karolyi created a culture of abuse that enabled Nassar's predatory behavior. Several of the suits charge that officials at Michigan State, where Nassar worked on the university's sports medicine staff, repeatedly ignored over the course of decades clear signs of Nassar's sexual abuse.

Despite Aquilina's statement, the federal sentence had already assured that Nassar will die behind bars. But the Ingham County case was different, resonating far beyond central Michigan. Aquilina's decision to clear her calendar and invite all of Nassar's victims to speak at the sentencing hearing gave a voice to women who complained that for years they had not been heard by USA Gymnastics, the U.S. Olympic Committee, Michigan State, where Nassar was on the university's sports medicine staff, their coaches and even in some cases their own families.

"The stories of these woman, have left a scar on everyone's heart that is so deep that in many cases have taken your breathe away," said Katherine Starr, a former Olympic swimmer and founder of Safe4Athletes, an athlete advocacy group. "The pain shared in one courtroom, has to be the loudest single cry of any group of survivors that will never be forgotten, by anybody that even just brushed past a headline about it."

It was a voice that was heard from Hollywood to Madison Avenue and Capitol Hill.

Celebrities and politicians took to social media and the airwaves to share their support of the survivors. In the midst of the hearing, AT&amp;T announced it was suspending its sponsorship of USA Gymnastics, joining other former corporate partners Procter &amp; Gamble, Kellogg's, Hershey and Under Armour in distancing themselves from the national governing body and leaving NBC as the organization's only remaining major sponsor.

"We, this group of women you so heartlessly abused over such a long period of time, are now a force, and you are nothing," Olympic champion Aly Raisman told Nassar last week. "The tables have turned, Larry. We are here. We have our voices, and we are not going anywhere."

Aquilina on Wednesday joined the survivors and their supporters in demanding "a massive investigation" into the roles USA Gymnastics, the USOC and Michigan State played in enabling Nassar's abuse and their failure to detect it.

The sentencing hearing gave the nation a detailed look at the complexities of sexual abuse, especially among young elite athletes through the eyes of young women, generating perhaps the first real national conversation on the subject.

"The very detailed stories and the way the judge handled each one with such care, giving each the weight it deserved, whether they were famous or not, was not only very healing for these survivors, but it grabbed people by the heart and they paid attention and they began to see it wasn't just about Larry Nassar's grotesque sexual abuse, his doctor in monster's clothing, it's how each woman took us back to when they were a child," said Kathy Johnson Clarke, a 1984 Olympic gymnastics medalist. Johnson Clarke was not among Nassar's victims.

"Because too many people, gymnastics people most prevalently, were trying to view everything with their "adult" brain no one could wrap their head around why these women couldn't avoid, stop, or immediately know and tell they were being sexually molested," Johnson Clarke continued. "The how, why and when had been scrutinized from the wrong perspective. The only part that resonated in the beginning was that these underage athletes were treated by Larry in a room, alone. Well, duh! That one is an obvious, egregious error!

"Now people were seeing why they could make such an obvious mistake. The 'responsible' adults were busy focusing on developing champions and the most dominant program in the world. How to win, put together the best team, one with no weaknesses. The sad reality is those are weeded out, and though I am sure there are many who care(d) about those who didn't quite make it, it is just the way the system works and why we are the best."

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Larry Nassar sentenced to 40 to 175 years in prison

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As the survivors of Larry Nassar's sexual abuse have turned onto the last cold sidewalk leading them into the Ingham County Courthouse for the past two weeks they have been greeted by a human wall lining this final and perhaps toughest stretch on their road to reckoning.

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Mom accused by family of killing Highgrove daughter, 3, is arrested

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Mom accused by family of killing Highgrove daughter, 3, is arrested

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Jan 26, 2018 - Press Enterprise
Although I am not sure how accurate, this article states this mother had a mental illness and tried to get treatment, only to be turned away. As a society, we should not be turning those who need treatment away, and I believe if this woman had gotten the treatment she was seeking, this little girl may still be alive today. The aunt stated, "I wish I could say how hard it is to get someone with mental illness past the door of a mental health facility." That is something that really got to me while reading this article. What did the system do wrong, how/ why did the system fail her and her daughter? 69.9% of all child fatalities are caused by a parent (Barnett, Miller-Perrin, & Perrin, 2011, p.147). Why is this statistic so high? As a social worker, I would want to help prevent this and use education and other tools to do so.

Barnett, O. W., Miller-Perrin, C. L., & Perrin, R. D. (2011). Family violence across the lifespan:  an introduction. Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE.

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Zayla Rank, like most children, loved her mother and enjoyed spending time with her, but according to family members, little Zayla, 3, lost her life Friday at the hands of the woman she loved.

The body of Zayla was found around 6:45 a.m. in the backyard of a home in the 3400 block of Cannes Avenue in Highgrove - a community between Riverside and Grand Terrace, family and neighbors said.

Riverside County sheriff's authorities confirmed the death but cited the ongoing death investigation in being unable to confirm the child's age or exactly where she was found.

A sheriff's statement said deputies "responded to a possible child death at a residence" and found "a child with obvious signs of trauma," who was pronounced dead at the scene. Further details on the cause of death have not yet been made public.

Zayla's great-aunt, Tracylyn Sharrit, said Zayla's mother, whom the family identified as Susan Rank, had mental health issues and had sought help several times in the last month only to be turned away.

"She's been asking for mental health help," she said.

Late Friday, the Sheriff's Department said Rank, 30, had been arrested and booked on suspicion of murder.

Ray Smith, a Riverside County spokesman, said of mental health issues "that because this is an active criminal investigation, the county is unable to respond and must defer to law enforcement."

Sharrit said the mother and daughter lived in a sober living home in Highgrove when the fatal attack took place.

"I wanted to let people know that mental illness killed this child," Sharrit said

Investigators couldn't immediately confirm if Rank had a history of mental illness.

However, Riverside County sheriff's Deputy Mike Vasquez on Friday did say that all avenues were being investigated to try to get to the root cause of the fatality.

Sheriff's homicide detectives ask that anyone who may have information to call 951-955-2400.

"She was a child, she was a beautiful little girl," said a tearful and distraught Sharrit, adding that the mental health system is broken. "Zayla is collateral damage because of this. She's collateral damage of mental illness."

Sharrit said the mother and daughter loved each other and kept in touch with family regularly.

"I wish I could say how hard it is to get someone with mental illness past the door of a mental health facility," she said.

The family started a GoFundMe account to help raise money to bury Zayla, Sharrit said. To donate, visit gofundme.com and search "Zayla needs a burial."

During the initial stages of the investigation Friday, neighbors in the Highgrove neighborhood peeked through drawn curtains as deputies gathered evidence.

As neighbors began to come outside, they said they were taken aback at the news that a child was killed so near their homes.

Lori Pulliam, who has lived in the neighborhood for 19 years, said there have never been any issues with the women at the home.

"They'd walk by everyday, three or four of them, and we'd say, 'Hi.' No problems with them."

"I've seen the girls who used to live there walk up and down the street," Pulliam said. "This is a shock."

She said she was amazed at how young the victim was.

"I can't believe that," she said. "Three years old. That's my granddaughter's age. It's crazy."
Staff writer Jim Steinberg contributed to this report.

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Mom accused by family of killing Highgrove daughter, 3, is arrested

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Zayla Rank, like most children, loved her mother and enjoyed spending time with her, but according to family members, little Zayla, 3, lost her life Friday at the hands of the woman she loved. The body of Zayla was found around 6:45 a.m.

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LA man who molested 5 boys after luring them with video games, amusement park visits could spend life in prison

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LA man who molested 5 boys after luring them with video games, amusement park visits could spend life in prison

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LOS ANGELES - A 58-year-old Los Angeles man was sentenced today to decades in prison for sex-related crimes involving five boys.

Amador Valencia Santos was found guilty Dec. 6 of three counts of oral copulation of a minor, two counts each of continuous sexual abuse, lewd acts on a child and sodomy on a child, and one count of attempted sodomy.

Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Stephen A. Marcus sentenced Santos to 47 years and four months to life for his crimes, which occurred between 2000 and 2007 and involved five boys who were between 7 and 17 years old.

Santos preyed upon the boys - most of whom were being raised by single mothers - by often convincing the families that he could be a surrogate father for the children.

He met the boys through mutual friends and earned their trust by taking them to the movies and amusement parks, and playing video games and basketball games with them, Los Angeles police said.

Prosecutors said Santos would buy the boys video games and clothes, have them sleep overnight at his home and take them on outings that lasted several days.

He introduced the victims to pornography and then sexually assaulted them.

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LA man who molested 5 boys after luring them with video games, amusement park visits could spend life in prison

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LOS ANGELES - A 58-year-old Los Angeles man was sentenced today to decades in prison for sex-related crimes involving five boys. Amador Valencia Santos was found guilty Dec. 6 of three counts of oral copulation of a minor, two counts each of continuous sexual abuse, lewd acts on a child and sodomy on a child, and one count of attempted sodomy.

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Man sentenced for slashing wife's throat after she found evidence of affair with student

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Man sentenced for slashing wife's throat after she found evidence of affair with student

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Jan 26, 2018 - abc7 Los Angeles

The man in this article shows that the abuser, has little to no understanding of what society sees as acceptable. Not only did he slash his wives throat in an attempt to kill her, he also isolated and manipulated a young student into having a sexual relationship with him. Although this made me upset, I have come to realize that things of this nature happen often. MFIPV can rage from minor abuse, to severe abuse using a weapon; as seen in this article (Barnett, Miller-Perrin, & Perrin, 2011, p 421). Although I know it would be hard for me, I would be interested in trying to figure out a treatment for the abuser. Although it did not state in the article, I wonder if he has any mental illnesses or issues he may be having and go from there.

Barnett, O. W., Miller-Perrin, C. L., & Perrin, R. D. (2011). Family violence across the lifespan:  an introduction. Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE.

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A former Michigan teacher has been sentenced to 30 to 60 years in prison for slashing his wife's throat after she discovered evidence of an affair that investigators said involved a middle-school student.

James Chelekis was sentenced Tuesday in Kent County Circuit Court after pleaded no contest to attempted murder for attacking his wife at their home in June. The 32-year-old also pleaded guilty to criminal sexual conduct related to the student.

The attack came after Amanda Chelekis found evidence of an affair. The couple spent most of the evening discussing the issue before agreeing to marriage counseling. Amanda Chelekis wasn't aware at the time that her husband's contact was with a juvenile.

"Standing behind me, he kissed my forehead and slit my throat from one side to the other," Amanda Chelekis said in court. "The trauma I was forced to endure was horrendous."

Amanda Chelekis, who is a registered nurse, was able to contain the bleeding for almost an hour before her husband called for help. She filed for divorce after the attack. The pair has two daughters together.

James Chelekis was a math teacher at Crestwood Middle School. Investigators said he'd traded texts, chats and photos with a 14-year-old girl that suggested they began sexual encounters in June 2016.

In a statement read by prosecutors, the girl's mother wrote that James Chelekis had manipulated and isolated her daughter in order to start an inappropriate relationship with the girl.

"He robbed our daughter of her innocence and childhood. And that is something that she can never get back," she wrote.

James Chelekis was sentenced to 15 to 40 years in prison on the criminal sexual conduct charge. The prison term will be served concurrently with the attempted murder sentence.

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Man sentenced for slashing wife's throat after she found evidence

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A former Michigan teacher has been sentenced to 30 to 60 years in prison for slashing his wife's throat after she discovered evidence of an affair that investigators said involved a middle-school student. James Chelekis was sentenced Tuesday in Kent County Circuit Court after pleaded no contest to attempted murder for attacking his wife at their home in June.

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Should we be treating domestic violence as a medical problem?

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Should we be treating domestic violence as a medical problem?

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Jan 31, 2018  - Daily News
I really enjoyed this read because it it showed me that as a society, we are becoming more proactive regarding IPV. This article states that there is a push for doctors, nurses, emergency room staff, and other healthcare professionals to ask questions regarding IPV. In the past, many doctors would notice things that seemed off, but not ask about them, sending the abused back into the arms of the abuser. We saw this happen often to Beth in I Am Not Your Victim. She was seen by many medical professionals, most of whom never asked the right questions (Sipe & Hall, 2014). I believe education is really important here. Showing medical professionals the right questions to ask and training them on how to ask them. Many people just don't know the signs, how to handle a situation like IPV, or the correct steps to take. Something that education could really help with.

Sipe, B., & Hall, E. J. (2014). I am not your victim: anatomy of domestic violence. Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE Publications.

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Fanny Ortiz, a mother of five who lives just east of downtown Los Angeles, spent nearly a decade married to a man who controlled her and frequently threatened her. Then, she said, his abuse escalated. "He would physically hit me in the face, throw me on the wall," she recalled.

Ortiz, 43, eventually left the marriage, taking her children with her. A few years later, she learned that the East Los Angeles Women's Center offered domestic violence services at the Los Angeles County-USC Medical Center, near her home. Now she goes to the hospital campus for weekly therapy sessions, which she said have helped stop her suicidal thoughts.

"I was afraid to talk," Ortiz said. "Now I am more open to talk about things that I was holding in."

Nearly 1 in 4 women have experienced serious physical violence at the hands of a partner. They often end up in the emergency room or the doctor's office. But they don't typically volunteer the reason for their injuries, and doctors don't always ask about abuse in the home. That failure of communication means the patients may miss out on the help they need.

Yet a growing number of health providers and anti-abuse agencies in California and around the country are collaborating to identify victims and get them help. More doctors now screen their patients for signs of abuse and more agencies place victims' advocates inside health centers. Education and counseling for people experiencing violence is also more widely available in clinics and hospitals.

About four years ago, the East Los Angeles Women's Center opened offices on the campus of L.A. County-USC, a busy public hospital. Since then, center staff members have trained more than 2,500 doctors, nurses, social workers and others to identify victims of domestic violence. They also respond quickly to calls from the medical center's emergency room, inpatient hospital and outpatient facilities to help patients in crisis.

Today, the women's center has embarked on an innovative approach: In February, it plans to open a short-term shelter for abuse victims on the medical center grounds. The 10-bed shelter fills a serious need, said Deirdre Anglin, an emergency room physician at L.A. County-USC.

"We sometimes have patients in the emergency department who don't have a place to go, and in the evenings and nights all the shelters in L.A. will be filled," Anglin said.

Victims of abuse can suffer long-term health problems, including chronic pain, frequent headaches, depression, diabetes and asthma. And they have higher health costs than people who have not experienced abuse. So "it makes complete sense to have the health care providers acting as allies and partners in treating domestic violence," said Peter Long, CEO of the Blue Shield of California Foundation. (The foundation provides support for Kaiser Health News coverage in California.)

The foundation has funded 19 partnerships between health centers and domestic violence agencies around the state, including the L.A. County-USC office of the East Los Angeles Women's Center. Similar partnerships operate in Illinois, Maryland and other states.

Last year, the East Los Angeles Women's Center served 600 victims of domestic violence at the L.A. County-USC hospital campus. Nearly one-third were homeless or couldn't go back home for safety reasons.

Advocates say that hospitals and clinics are ideal settings to respond to the needs of abused women.

In the San Gabriel Valley, the YWCA sponsors domestic violence support groups at a community clinic, while the clinic offers health education for survivors of abuse at the YWCA. In Sacramento, a Native American health center works closely with a domestic violence group a few blocks away.

Doctors have an "unprecedented opportunity to promote prevention and to respond because they are seeing patients that may not ever reach out to a domestic violence agency or police for help," said Lisa James, director of health for Futures Without Violence, which runs a national resource center dedicated to improving the response of medical professionals to domestic violence. "They can provide this critical lifesaving intervention."

The proximity of the East Los Angeles Women's Center to the hospital and clinic buildings on the L.A. County-USC campus makes it easier for doctors to ask their patients about violence, said Rebeca Melendez, director of programs for the center's office at the medical center. The medical providers know where to turn for guidance - and that the help is nearby.

"They don't need to know all the answers," she said. "They just need to call us."

This growing collaboration between the medical profession and anti-abuse agencies is driven in part by the Affordable Care Act, which requires that health plans cover domestic violence screening and counseling.

The U.S. Preventive Services Task Force recommends doctors routinely question women about violence in the home and refer them to services if needed. The task force concluded in 2013 that intervention could reduce violence and abuse as well as mental and physical health problems.

Organizations such as the American Congress of Obstetricians and Gynecologists and the American Medical Association also recommend routine screening and counseling for domestic violence.

In the past, patients would go to health centers with such problems, but providers did not feel comfortable asking questions about abuse at home, said Long, of the Blue Shield of California Foundation.

"They didn't feel they had the time and they didn't feel they had the resources to do something about it," he said. Nor did they always have a place to send patients who were abuse victims.

Treating patients who are in abusive relationships is "very challenging," said Anglin, the ER physician. "There is no pill to give." But asking about violence needs to be part of a physician's job, she said.

"Part of what we need to do is try to identify patients who may be in a dangerous situation ... so we are not just sending these patients back to the same situation they were in only to come back worse off another time."
This story was produced by Kaiser Health News, an editorially independent program of the Kaiser Family Foundation.

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Should we be treating domestic violence as a medical problem?

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Fanny Ortiz, a mother of five who lives just east of downtown Los Angeles, spent nearly a decade married to a man who controlled her and frequently threatened her. Then, she said, his abuse escalated. "He would physically hit me in the face, throw me on the wall," she recalled.

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Reseda man arrested after girlfriend is found dead in shipping container they called their home

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Reseda man arrested after girlfriend is found dead in shipping container they called their home

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Jan 30, 2018 - Daily News
Like other articles I have read, it seems like this perpetrator had mental illness, as he was heard muttering about the incident. Him and his partner, the woman her killed, had lived in a shipping container for 3 years. As a society, we look at homeless people and expect them to have mental illness, but then do not provide enough services to help them, something I believe is a huge problem. Although there had been no past abuse reported, there many have been signs, signs that people missed. Although we don't know what caused this man to kill his partner, IPV can be caused by many things: mental illness, jealousy, control issues, and alcohol/drug abuse, to only name a few (Barnett, Miller-Perrin, & Perrin, 2011, p.450-452). I would be interested in learning more about the perpetrator and I would also like to advocate for better mental health services for those who are homeless.

Barnett, O. W., Miller-Perrin, C. L., & Perrin, R. D. (2011). Family violence across the lifespan:  an introduction. Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE.

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A boyfriend of a woman found dead in a shipping container Monday in Reseda were living together in the metal structure before he was arrested on suspicion of murder, authorities said Tuesday.

Marcelino Delossantos, 51, of Reseda was arrested in connection with the murder on Monday, said Los Angeles Police Department Operations Valley Bureau homicide Detective John Doerbecker.

"He's essentially confessed to the domestic violence incident," Doerbecker said.

The boyfriend was detained for questioning after the woman was found dead around 11:30 a.m. in the container behind a home on the 19000 block of Keswick Street, said LAPD Officer Mike Lopez.

RELATED STORY: Woman found dead in shipping container in Reseda

Doerbecker said the murder appeared to have happened within 24 hours of the LAPD finding her body.

"One of the neighbors witnessed him muttering to himself about the incident and called," Doerbecker said.

The detective declined to give the exact wording so as not to misconstrue the statement.

The couple lived in a "big, metal storage container" for approximately three years, Doerbecker said.

"That was their home," Doerbecker said. There was no evidence of prior domestic violence between the two "at this point," the detective said.

According to L.A. County Sheriff's Department booking records, Delossantos is being held at Van Nuys Jail in lieu of $2 million bail. He was arrested at 2 p.m. Monday, according to the records.

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Reseda man arrested after girlfriend is found dead in shipping container they called their home

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A boyfriend of a woman found dead in a shipping container Monday in Reseda were living together in the metal structure before he was arrested on suspicion of murder, authorities said Tuesday. Marcelino Delossantos, 51, of Reseda was arrested in connection with the murder on Monday, said Los Angeles Police Department Operations Valley Bureau homicide Detective John Doerbecker.

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Arkansas Mother of 5 Starved, Handcuffed 8-Year-Old Son Out of Jealousy, Affidavit Says

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Arkansas Mother of 5 Starved, Handcuffed 8-Year-Old Son Out of Jealousy, Affidavit Says

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A mom and her boyfriend are accused of abusing one of her children because she was jealous her own mother loved the child more than her, according to a probable cause affidavit.

Melissa Miranda, 33, and Josue Tovias, 28, were arrested Saturday in connection with kidnapping, permitting child abuse, second-degree domestic battery, first-degree endangering the welfare of a minor, aggravated assault on a family or household member, first-degree terroristic threatening and tampering with physical evidence, according to KTLA sister station KFSM.

Miranda, who is pregnant and has four other children, singled her son out for punishment because she was jealous that her mother loved him more than her, according to a probable cause affidavit.

Miranda said her son refused to stay in timeout and stole junk food from the kitchen, so she and Tovias began handcuffing him to a school desk in their living room between 8 p.m. and 4 a.m., according to the affidavit.

Miranda tried to take her son to the bathroom overnight but eventually had him sleep on a trash bag because he stained the carpet a few times, according to the affidavit.

Tovias, Miranda's live-in boyfriend and the biological father of two of their children, denied the allegations. Fayetteville police said he is not the victim's father.

Police learned of the allegations on Wednesday after officials at the state Department of Human Services alerted them to a possible case of child abuse at the couple's home.

On Thursday, police went to the boy's school and spoke with staff, who said his appearance had changed drastically since November 2017.

They said his eyes and cheeks were sunken and his skin tone changed. Staff also noticed the boy was eating from trash cans and hoarding and stealing food from other students.

Staff also said the boy's parents were evasive when confronted about the issues, adding that they refused to bring the boy clean clothes.

The school eventually created an alternate eating schedule to accommodate the boy's extreme hunger, according to the affidavit.

Miranda said her son only ate about three nights per week for months, according to the affidavit.

During an interview with the boy and his siblings at the Children's Safety Center, police found the boy had a distended stomach, was extremely skinny and that bones in his chest and ribs were visible.

They also found an injury to his wrist consistent with wearing handcuffs, as well as several healing injuries on his back and spine.

Police received a recording from the boy's sister - allegedly from inside the home - of Miranda threatening her son after he stole candy from the kitchen while Tovias was present, according to the affidavit.

On the recording, Miranda threatened to cut her son, leave him outside in the cold and have him arrested for stealing. Miranda said she would hold a knife her son and say "thieves get their fingers cut off," according to the affidavit.

The same sister also told police that her brother is often made to sit and read by himself during dinner. She said Miranda has told her she hates her son and wants him out of the house, according to the affidavit.

Police put the boy's school under surveillance and arrested Miranda and Tovias when they arrived to pick up their kids on Friday, according to the affidavit.

Police said Miranda said she was disappointed with her actions and needed help, but was afraid to go to the police because she knew she'd face prison time. She also said she had threatened the other children not to tell authorities about the abuse.

Miranda said she'd thrown the handcuffs away after DHS officials visited her home, according to the affidavit.

Police said DHS has taken custody of the children.

Miranda and Tovias were being held Monday at the Washington County Detention Center on $50,000 bonds. Both have hearings set for Feb. 28 in Washington County Circuit Court.

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Arkansas Mother of 5 Starved, Handcuffed 8-Year-Old Son Out of Jealousy, Affidavit Says

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A mom and her boyfriend are accused of abusing one of her children because she was jealous her own mother loved the child more than her, according to a probable cause affidavit.

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She’s creating her own therapy, helping herself by helping others

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She’s creating her own therapy, helping herself by helping others

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Feb 4, 2018 - Daily Breeze
This article was one that showed me how resilient people can be, but also how out society needs to do a better job of helping immigrants and those who may not be documented, especially in todays climate. This student had a history of sexual assault but has been unable to afford services to help her cope. She instead meets with others like her and vents, being her own therapist. I believe therapy services should be more accessible for those in this position. 59% of victims of sexual abuse have repressed memories about their abuse, and these can be worked out, but therapy needs to be an option (Barnett, Miller-Perrin, & Perrin, 2011, p 205). This victim is a student, and believe that her school should offer services related to therapy, mental health, etc. I would find out what those services are and urge the student to go and talk with a professional - as school mental health is usually included in tuition costs.

Barnett, O. W., Miller-Perrin, C. L., & Perrin, R. D. (2011). Family violence across the lifespan:  an introduction. Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE.

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At age 21, Magaly Mendez has battled more challenges than most people ever will.

The fourth year sociology student at UC Irvine grew up poor in west Los Angeles, the daughter of an overworked and undocumented single mom. As a child, she said, she suffered multiple incidents of sexual abuse. But her family didn't understand the mental health consequences of that, she added, nor could they afford therapy.

Additionally, Mendez struggles with uncertainty about her immigration status. She came to the U.S. from Mexico at age 8 and is currently protected from deportation by a Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) permit. That program is now in limbo under President Donald Trump.

Unsurprisingly, all these stressors have put a strain on Mendez' mental health. In her freshman year, Mendez wrestled with depression. Sometimes she couldn't bring herself to get out of bed to work at the campus dining hall, though she needed the job to support herself through college.

"Many times I just wanted to cry," she said. "There were times that I couldn't focus, I wouldn't do homework or I wouldn't want to wake up in the morning."

Mendez sought therapy at the university counseling center but was referred out because she was told she needed long-term help. She tried that therapy briefly, but felt it didn't work. And as she already struggled to pay for rent, food and books, she found the $15-per-visit copay was too expensive.

Financial challenges have contributed to her mental health problems, Mendez said. She believes the same is true for other low-income and undocumented students.

"We have to buy all these books, and they're expensive. And then we have to pay rent, tuition hikes; like, oh my gosh, it's so much money," she said. "We have to get a job...that means so many hours. And then we can't do homework...

"It's just a lot of things that keep you from really focusing on school."

For two years, Mendez struggled. But she also found outlets. She got involved in student government and labor activism, fighting for the rights of workers on campus.

Focusing on the needs of others, she said, helped put her own struggles in perspective.

Activism also led Mendez to meet other students from a variety of backgrounds, including some who are dealing with their own mental health issues. That's helped her feel less alone, she said.

"We can vent together," she said. "So, essentially, we become our own therapists.

"Going out to drink wine and eat pizza, talking and de-stressing about the day and all these issues. That became another form of therapy."

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She's creating her own therapy, helping herself by helping others

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At age 21, Magaly Mendez has battled more challenges than most people ever will. The fourth year sociology student at UC Irvine grew up poor in west Los Angeles, the daughter of an overworked and undocumented single mom. As a child, she said, she suffered multiple incidents of sexual abuse.

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Why child abuse like the Turpin family horrors is so hard to prevent or halt

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Why child abuse like the Turpin family horrors is so hard to prevent or halt

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Hard cases make bad law. That may be the disturbing but difficult-to- avoid lesson from the stomach-turning abuse suffered by the 13 children of David and Louise Turpin for at least a decade.

The Turpins, who are set to return to court Feb. 23, are an extreme example. It's not only the number of children they allegedly mistreated or even the length of time for which the abuse went on. It's also the fact that - so far as authorities can figure and despite what seems like a thorough search by the media - no one appears to have reported the Turpins to the police or child services. This fact alone makes the Turpin family unlike almost every other case of extreme neglect or abuse that has been uncovered in the last few decades. And it's why any attempt to pass new legislation based on this tragedy will be at best ineffective at preventing similar situations and at worst unnecessarily infringe on the freedom of millions of decent families.

Our system for child protection is hardly foolproof. Those in Southern California will recognize the name of Gabriel Fernandez, the 8-year-old boy killed by his mother and her boyfriend in Los Angeles in 2013 after multiple reports of abuse. In Philadelphia, there was Danieal Kelly, the cerebral palsy-stricken girl who died in 2006 at age 14 after almost a decade of investigations by city caseworkers. In Florida, there was Tariji Gordon, who was removed from her home after her twin brother suffocated,then returned to her mother. She was later found dead and buried in a suitcase.

Political leaders responded to each crime with policy changes of one sort or another. In some instances, they hired more caseworkers or increased penalties for child abuse. They publicized hotlines to call when someone suspected abuse. Something had gone wrong inside our child welfare bureaucracy - between the moment a report of abuse was made and the time a caseworker decided not to remove a child from his or her home. The changes had limited, if any, effect on the overall success of the systems.

The Turpins weren't even on the radar of that system. It didn't fail them as much as it simply didn't apply. Cut off from extended family years ago, they successfully isolated themselves in Riverside County and other locales. After one of the daughters ran away from home when they lived in Fort Worth, a former neighbor told the Los Angeles Times that he considered reporting them to authorities but decided against it because he knew that David Turpin had a gun. Others who noticed odd behavior simply decided to respect the family's privacy.

The children's isolation was partly a function of homeschooling. The Turpins met California's minimal requirements for the practice. Since their arrest, there have been calls for tightening those regulations. If only the children had been forced to report to authorities in some way, the thinking goes, surely someone would have realized what was going on. But there are reasons to question whether this would have solved the problem.

In her 2013 memoir, "Etched in Sand," Regina Calcaterra describes growing up on Long Island during the 1970s and '80s with a mother who beat her and her siblings regularly. Cookie, as Regina and her siblings called their mother, left them alone for weeks at a time with no food and sometimes no heat. While Cookie was using the state's payments for housing and food to buy drugs and alcohol, Regina and her siblings were regularly enrolled in school.

Do we really want to encourage people to report on their neighbor's parenting practices more than they already do?

Occasionally the police or child services would realize something was wrong. The siblings went to live with foster families more than once. But Cookie was a great liar and the siblings - who did not want to be split up into different foster homes - learned to lie as well. The abuse went on for two decades.

More contact with authorities might have reduced the isolation of the Turpin children. But, as sociologist Richard Gelles, an expert on child welfare systems, told me, "it doesn't confront the issue that some people are able to put up a good front." That the eldest Turpin son attended community college, earning A's in many classes, bears this out.

Gelles, who is the former dean of the School of Social Policy and Practice at the University of Pennsylvania, notes that teachers and administrators - like neighbors and relatives - often engage in "selective inattention." The research, according to Gelles, suggests that people are less likely to report those who look like them and seem to be from the same socioeconomic group. This is particularly true for white, middle-class families. "The more people are like me, the more reluctant I am to report their deviant behavior," Gelles explained.

Unfortunately, this tendency isn't something that state or local governments can easily fix. Indeed, despite the horrors of the Turpin case, it's not clear that we'd want them to try. We are already living in a country where more than a third of children under 18 years old come into contact with child services. Some of these are no doubt instances of real neglect and abuse but others involve kids who have been left in the car while their parent runs into the dry cleaner. Do we really want to encourage people to report on their neighbor's parenting practices more than they already do?

The Supreme Court has said that parents have the right to raise children without unwarranted government intervention. As Gelles notes, we have created "a legal moat around the house, which very few of us would want to give up." The Turpins are the terrible but extremely rare price we pay for this liberty. It's hard to imagine what kind of state intervention would have prevented or halted the abuse.

Naomi Schaefer Riley is a visiting fellow at the American Enterprise Institute studying child welfare issues.

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Why child abuse like the Turpin family horrors is so hard to prevent or halt

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Hard cases make bad law. That may be the disturbing but difficult-to- avoid lesson from the stomach-turning abuse suffered by the 13 children of David and Louise Turpin for at least a decade. The Turpins, who are set to return to court Feb. 23, are an extreme example.

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Judge awards father custody of daughter's body in abuse case

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Judge awards father custody of daughter's body in abuse case

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Feb 28, 2018  - latimes.com
This was a really interesting read for me. The mother caused the death of the daughter, so her biological father, a father who was never in the daughters life, fought for her remains. Although he had never paid child support and was never there for the child, the judge gave the father custody of her body and stated that he must give her a proper funeral. The family is muslim, a fact that the judge took into consideration. The father wanted to cremate the daughter for religious reasons, but if he did not get custody, she would be buried.
Through my reading, I learned that there was about 211 cases of Filicide in 2010 (Barnett, Miller-Perrin, & Perrin, 2011, p 264). The number is high, yet I do not believe it is even being reported accurately. I would want to do some research as to why this is happening, and ways to prevent family murders.

Barnett, O. W., Miller-Perrin, C. L., & Perrin, R. D. (2011). Family violence across the lifespan:  an introduction. Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE.

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According to a criminal complaint, Amina Krouser and her two siblings lived with their mother in a house that had no heat or running water. The teen became ill with cold-like symptoms Nov. 26, and Ababneh believed her daughter was being lazy and beat her with a belt and a plastic pipe, according to the criminal complaint and medical examiner's report. The girl was taken to a hospital and died Dec. 10.

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Judge awards father custody of daughter's body in abuse case

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According to a criminal complaint, Amina Krouser and her two siblings lived with their mother in a house that had no heat or running water. The teen became ill with cold-like symptoms Nov. 26, and Ababneh believed her daughter was being lazy and beat her with a belt and a plastic pipe, according to the criminal complaint and medical examiner's report.

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Woman arrested for child abuse causing death to daughter of boyfriend in Montclair

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Woman arrested for child abuse causing death to daughter of boyfriend in Montclair

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A 28-year-old woman was arrested in the death of her boyfriend's 18-month-old daughter, according to the Montclair Police Department.

On Jan 17, officers responded to a call of a child not breathing shortly after 7 a.m. in the 4600 block of Bandera Street.

The young girl was airlifted to a local trauma center due to a head injury, but she succumbed to her injuries and died the next morning, police said.

After an extensive investigation, the Montclair Police Department obtained an arrest warrant for Alma Gonzalez, who was the girlfriend of the victim's father.

Gonzalez was arrested Jan. 30 at a home in an unincorporated area of San Bernardino County for assault on a child causing death. She was then booked at the West Valley Detention Center.

Additional details on the incident were not released.

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Woman arrested after boyfriend's 18-month-old child dies in Montclair

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Today's Top Stories WATCH NOW TOP VIDEOS A 28-year-old woman was arrested in the death of her boyfriend's 18-month-old daughter, according to the Montclair Police Department. On Jan 17, officers responded to a call of a child not breathing shortly after 7 a.m. in the 4600 block of Bandera Street.

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Conway on Ex-White House Staffer’s Alleged Domestic Abuse: ‘I Have No Reason Not to Believe the Women’

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Conway on Ex-White House Staffer’s Alleged Domestic Abuse: ‘I Have No Reason Not to Believe the Women’

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White House adviser Kellyanne Conway says she was "horrified" by recent claims that White House staff secretary Rob Porter abused his ex-wives, adding that she has "no reason not to believe" the women who came forward with the allegations.

"In this case, you have contemporaneous police reports, you have women speaking to the FBI under threat of perjury ... you have photographs, and when you look at all of that pulled together, Rob Porter did the right thing by resigning," Conway said on CNN's "State of the Union" on Sunday.

"I have no reason not to believe the women," Conway added.

Conway's comments stand in stark contrast to remarks from President Donald Trump, who tweeted Saturday: "Peoples lives are being shattered and destroyed by a mere allegation. ... There is no recovery for someone falsely accused - life and career are gone. Is there no such thing any longer as Due Process?"

Trump also told reporters on Friday that Porter's departure was "very sad" and that "he did a very good job while he was in the White House," but he did not express sympathy for the women Porter allegedly abused, instead focusing on Porter's claim of innocence.

Conway, however, said Trump is "very disturbed" by Porter's alleged behavior, a remark that White House legislative affairs director Marc Short echoed on Sunday.

"In talking with the president, I think he's saddened about what happened with Rob," Short told NBC's "Meet the Press" on Sunday. "I think he's very disturbed by it, and I think he's very disappointed. I think he believes that the resignation was appropriate."

The allegations of domestic abuse against Porter first came to light last Tuesday. Two of Porter's ex-wives say they suffered years of abuse, including physical altercations. Porter said he would be resigning from his role at the White House shortly after and has called the allegations "outrageous" and "simply false."

Porter's ex-wives detailed the allegations to the FBI over the course of a routine background check, they told CNN. By early fall of 2017, it was widely known among Trump's top aides - including chief of staff John Kelly - that Porter was facing troubles in obtaining his security clearance and that his ex-wives claimed he had abused them. No action was taken to remove him from the staff, and instead, Kelly and others oversaw an elevation in Porter's standing.

Both Conway and Short defended how the White House handled the situation. Short told "Meet the Press" that Kelly had learned the full extent of the allegations last Tuesday, "and by Wednesday Rob Porter was out." Conway said people "should look at the result of how this (was) handled."

"The result is that, one week ago, Rob Porter was a top aide to President Trump, and today he is out of the White House," she said.

Last Friday, Kelly made it clear that he would resign if the president wanted him to, a source with knowledge of the matter told CNN.

However, Short told "Meet the Press" that Kelly had not offered his resignation, and Conway told CNN anchor Jake Tapper that Kelly's job is not in jeopardy.

"I spoke to the president last night, and I told him I would be with you today," Conway said on "State of the Union." He said, 'Tell Jake I have full faith in Chief of Staff John Kelly and that I am not actively searching for replacements.' He said, 'I saw that all over the news today - I have faith in him,' and he does."

She later said of the President: "He says Gen. Kelly is doing a great job and that he has full faith in him, and I think he looks at the full measure of all of us."

Former Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson said on "State of the Union" later Sunday morning that Kelly, whom he considers a friend, should try to stay out of the press as Porter's story unfolds.

"I encourage John to hunker down and do his job, fewer public statements," Johnson said.

Johnson refused to say whether he would have fired Porter if he were in a similar situation, but noted that "sometimes you have to make the hard choice to move on and find somebody else."

"When you're in public office, you have to assume that sooner or later everything is going to get out ... and some sort of calculation was made there," he added.

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Conway on Ex-White House Staffer's Alleged Domestic Abuse: 'I Have No Reason Not to Believe the Women'

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White House adviser Kellyanne Conway says she was "horrified" by recent claims that White House staff secretary Rob Porter abused his ex-wives, adding that she has "no reason not to believe" the women who came forward with the allegations. "In this case, you have contemporaneous police reports, you have women speaking to the FBI under threat of perjury ...

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Baby boy dies after being found unresponsive in OC; mother's boyfriend arrested for abuse

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Baby boy dies after being found unresponsive in OC; mother's boyfriend arrested for abuse

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Feb 13, 2018 - abc7 Los Angeles
Although it is still unknown if this was a murder, it is being treated as so. This article broke my heart. The babies mother left him in the care of her boyfriend, and in the short time she was gone, the baby became unresponsive at the hands of this man. He was known to be a drug user, something that does lead to abuse, and did not seem to have experience with children. A deficit in parenting skills and a lack of education can lead people to get frustrated at young children (Barnett, Miller-Perrin, & Perrin, 2011, p. 181). Something that may have happened in this case. As I have mentioned before, I would urge education. Letting parents know to be careful of who they leave their children with, coping mechanisms, and just proper parenting techniques.

Barnett, O. W., Miller-Perrin, C. L., & Perrin, R. D. (2011). Family violence across the lifespan:  an introduction. Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE.

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A 1-year-old boy died one day after he was found unresponsive at a Santa Ana motel due to suspected child abuse, authorities said. His mother's 25-year-old boyfriend was arrested in the case.

Officers responded shortly before 8 a.m. to a report of a baby not breathing at the Royal Roman Motel in the 1500 block of First Street, according to the Santa Ana Police Department. The infant was found unresponsive in the shower and CPR was administered.

Witnesses said they heard a man freaking out and running around the motel. That's when one of the guests called 911.

Paramedics were summoned to the scene and the child was rushed to Orange County Global Medical Center in nearby Tustin and taken to Children's Hospital Orange County, where he was placed on life-support and listed in critical condition.

On Tuesday afternoon, police announced the baby died.

"The initial investigation and evidence revealed possible child neglect and/or abuse," police said in a statement, adding that homicide detectives were assigned to the case.

After the baby's mother and her boyfriend, Eduardo Centeno, were questioned by investigators, Centeno was arrested Monday and booked on suspicion of child abuse, the news release said. The suspect has two outstanding warrants for narcotics violations, according to police.

Authorities later said the case has become a murder investigation.

"What happened between the time the mother left and when we arrived on scene? What actually occurred? There are injuries to the victim in this case that lead us to believe that he is a victim of this homicide. Now it's piecing it all together," Cpl. Anthony Bertagna said.

The boy's mother was released from custody pending an ongoing investigation.

Centeno's bail is set at $210,000. He is due in court Wednesday.

Anyone with information about the case is asked to call Homicide Detective Eddie Nunez of the Santa Ana Police Department at (714) 245-8390.

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OC abuse case: Baby dies day after being found unresponsive

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A 1-year-old boy died one day after he was found unresponsive at a Santa Ana motel due to suspected child abuse, authorities said. His mother's 25-year-old boyfriend was arrested in the case. Officers responded shortly before 8 a.m.

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USC Football Receiver Arrested After Domestic Violence Incident

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USC Football Receiver Arrested After Domestic Violence Incident

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Feb 13, 2018 - CBS Los Angeles
I enjoyed this read because I believe their is an issue with IPV regarding those in the NFL and other big league sports. I was happy to read that the school decided to take a stand against domestic violence and suspend this player from all activities. I believe that I would want to learn more about the situation, and then would be able to know how to move forward with the situation. There is a lot that can cause dating violence, many of which come from patriarchal beliefs and attitudes, which may have come into play in this instance (Barnett, Miller-Perrin, & Perrin, 2011, p. 310).

Barnett, O. W., Miller-Perrin, C. L., & Perrin, R. D. (2011). Family violence across the lifespan:  an introduction. Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE.

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LOS ANGELES (CBSLA) - A USC football player has been arrested on suspicion of domestic violence.

Joseph Lewis IV, 19, was arrested at 2 p.m. Monday and booked at the Los Angeles Police Department's 77th Community Police Station. He was freed at about 1 a.m. Tuesday after posting $50,000 bail.

Lewis was arrested in connection with an incident Sunday, but police would not give more details.

A spokesman for USC's athletic department said Lewis has been suspended from all team activities following his arrest.

"USC takes all reports of domestic abuse seriously and is cooperating fully with the law enforcement investigation," the school said in a statement.

Lewis caught four passes for 39 yards in 11 games as a freshman in the 2017 season.
(© Copyright 2018 CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved. City News Service contributed to this report.)

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USC Football Receiver Arrested After Domestic Violence Incident

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LOS ANGELES (CBSLA) - A USC football player has been arrested on suspicion of domestic violence. Joseph Lewis IV, 19, was arrested at 2 p.m. Monday and booked at the Los Angeles Police Department's 77th Community Police Station. He was freed at about 1 a.m. Tuesday after posting $50,000 bail.