News StoriesExcerpts of Key News Stories in Major Media
Note: This comprehensive list of news stories is usually updated once a week. Explore our full index to revealing excerpts of key major media news stories on several dozen engaging topics. And don't miss amazing excerpts from 20 of the most revealing news articles ever published.
In October, the Washington Post's Greg Miller reported that the administration was instituting a "disposition matrix" to determine how terrorism suspects will be disposed of, all based on this fact: "among senior Obama administration officials, there is broad consensus that such operations are likely to be extended at least another decade." As Miller puts it: "That timeline suggests that the United States has reached only the midpoint of what was once known as the global war on terrorism." The polices adopted by the Obama administration ... leave no doubt that they are accelerating, not winding down, the war apparatus that has been relentlessly strengthened over the last decade. In the name of the War on Terror, the current president has diluted decades-old Miranda warnings; codified a new scheme of indefinite detention on US soil; plotted to relocate Guantanamo to Illinois; increased secrecy, repression and release-restrictions at the camp; minted a new theory of presidential assassination powers even for US citizens; renewed the Bush/Cheney warrantless eavesdropping framework for another five years, as well as the Patriot Act, without a single reform; and just signed into law all new restrictions on the release of indefinitely held detainees. Does that sound to you like a government anticipating the end of the War on Terror any time soon? Or does it sound like one working feverishly to make their terrorism-justified powers of detention, surveillance, killing and secrecy permanent? There's a good reason US officials are assuming the "War on Terror" will persist indefinitely: namely, their actions ensure that this occurs.
Note: For deeply revealing reports from reliable major media sources on the War on Terror, click here.
A federal judge in Manhattan refused on [January 2] to require the Justice Department to disclose a memorandum providing the legal justification for the targeted killing of a United States citizen, Anwar al-Awlaki, who died in a drone strike in Yemen in 2011. The ruling, by Judge Colleen McMahon, was marked by skepticism about the antiterrorist program that targeted him, and frustration with her own role in keeping the legal rationale for it secret. “I can find no way around the thicket of laws and precedents that effectively allow the executive branch of our government to proclaim as perfectly lawful certain actions that seem on their face incompatible with our Constitution and laws while keeping the reasons for their conclusion a secret,” she wrote. “The Alice-in-Wonderland nature of this pronouncement is not lost on me,” Judge McMahon wrote, adding that she was operating in a legal environment that amounted to “a veritable Catch-22.” Judge McMahon’s opinion included an overview of what she called “an extensive public relations campaign” by various government officials about the American role in the killing of Mr. Awlaki and the circumstances under which the government considers targeted killings, including of its citizens, to be lawful. The government’s public comments were as a whole “cryptic and imprecise,” Judge McMahon said. Even as she ruled against the plaintiffs, the judge wrote that the public should be allowed to judge whether the administration’s analysis holds water.
Note: For analysis of the significance of this reluctant court ruling upholding continued secrecy of the drone assassinations, click here.
A defense contractor whose subsidiary was accused in a lawsuit of conspiring to torture detainees at the infamous Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq has paid $5.28 million to 71 former inmates held there and at other U.S.-run detention sites between 2003 and 2007. The settlement in the case involving Engility Holdings Inc. of Chantilly, Va., marks the first successful effort by lawyers for former prisoners at Abu Ghraib and other detention centers to collect money from a U.S. defense contractor in lawsuits alleging torture. Another contractor, CACI, is expected to go to trial over similar allegations this summer. The defendant in the lawsuit, L-3 Services Inc., now an Engility subsidiary, provided translators to the U.S. military in Iraq. The former detainees filed the lawsuit in federal court in Greenbelt, Md., in 2008. L-3 Services "permitted scores of its employees to participate in torturing and abusing prisoners over an extended period of time throughout Iraq," the lawsuit stated. The company "willfully failed to report L-3 employees' repeated assaults and other criminal conduct by its employees to the United States or Iraq authorities." A military investigation in 2004 identified 44 alleged incidents of detainee abuse at Abu Ghraib. No employee from L-3 Services was charged with a crime in investigations by the U.S. Justice Department.
Note: For deeply revealing reports from reliable major media sources on corporate corruption, click here.
Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is convinced that a lone gunman wasn’t solely responsible for the assassination of his uncle, President John F. Kennedy. Kennedy and his sister, Rory, spoke about their family [on January 11] while being interviewed in front of an audience ... in Dallas. The event comes as a year of observances begins for the 50th anniversary of the president’s death. Their uncle was killed on Nov. 22, 1963, while riding in a motorcade through Dallas. Five years later, their father was assassinated in a Los Angeles hotel while celebrating his win in the California Democratic presidential primary. Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said his father spent a year trying to come to grips with his brother’s death, reading the work of Greek philosophers, Catholic scholars, Henry David Thoreau, poets and others “trying to figure out ... the existential implications of why a just God would allow injustice to happen of the magnitude he was seeing.” He said his father thought the Warren Commission, which concluded Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone in killing the president, was a “shoddy piece of craftsmanship.” He said that he, too, questioned the report. “The evidence at this point I think is very, very convincing that it was not a lone gunman,” he said, but he didn’t say what he believed may have happened. He said his father had investigators do research into the assassination and found that phone records of Oswald and nightclub owner Jack Ruby, who killed Oswald two days after the president’s assassination, “were like an inventory” of mafia leaders the government had been investigating. He said his father, later elected U.S. senator in New York, was “fairly convinced” that others were involved.
Note: The History Channel produced a nine-part series tellingly titled "The Men Who Killed Kennedy." For a five-minute clip of this excellent piece, click here. For the powerful final episode with incredible evidence implicating a US president and others, click here. For other deeply revealing reports from reliable major media sources on the JFK, RFK and other political assassinations, click here.
This week saw the 100th birthday of America's 37th president, Richard Milhous Nixon. Here was the man who "went to China", spurred détente with the Soviets, signed into law the establishment of the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), took America off the gold standard and ended the Vietnam war. Of course, on the flip side, he also prolonged the Vietnam war, obstructed justice from the Oval Office, used the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) to go after his political enemies, launched an illegal war in Cambodia, waged a dirty tricks campaign against his opponents, ... kept an "enemies list", ... ended the Vietnam war with neither peace nor honor, was impeached by Congress, resigned the presidency and left a permanent stain on American democracy. Oh, and also, he committed treason. That is ... the view of President Lyndon B Johnson, who, in the final days of the 1968 presidential election, became convinced that Richard Nixon... and his campaign associates were working surreptitiously with the South Vietnamese government to obstruct peace talks between the US and North Vietnam. It is one of the most duplicitous and pernicious moments in Nixon's political career – which, considering his larger crimes, is really saying something.
Note: For deeply revealing reports from reliable major media sources on government corruption, click here.
A Texas school district can transfer a student who is citing religious reasons for her refusal to wear an identification card that is part of an electronic tracking system, a federal judge ruled on [January 8]. The parents of 15-year-old Andrea Hernandez had requested a preliminary injunction that would have prevented the school district from transferring their daughter from her San Antonio high school while the lawsuit on whether she should be forced to wear the tracking badge went through federal court. Last fall, the Northside Independent School District began experimenting with ‘‘locator’’ chips in student ID badges on two campuses, allowing administrators to track the whereabouts of 4,200 students with GPS-like precision. Hernandez’s suit against Northside — the fourth-largest school district in Texas — argues that the ID rule violates her religious beliefs. Her family says the badge is a ‘‘mark of the beast’’ that goes against their religion. But U.S. District Judge Orlando Garcia ... denied a request to stop her from being transferred, saying the badge requirement ‘‘has an incidental effect, if any, on (Hernandez's) religious beliefs.’’ Garcia said that if Hernandez does not accept the school district’s accommodation of wearing a badge without the tracking chip, the district can transfer her to another campus. John Whitehead, president of The Rutherford Institute, a Virginia-based civil rights group that is representing Hernandez and her family in court, said his organization plans to appeal the judge’s ruling.
Note: For deeply revealing reports from reliable major media sources on ID tracking technologies, click here.
An appeal by organic farmers [of] a court ruling last year turned into a wide-ranging protest this morning with speakers skewering Monsanto Co. for its policies and demanding labeling of genetically modified food. About 200 people, many from organic seed companies, rallied in a park directly across from the White House. The protest suggested an uptick in efforts to demand labeling, which was defeated in a California ballot initiative in November. Monsanto spent at least $8 million in an industry-wide effort to sink the California proposition. Organic farmers, who are pressing a lawsuit against Monsanto, often complain that their products are threatened by wind-blown pollen from genetically altered crops. "We want and demand the right of clean seed not contaminated by a massive biotech company that's in it for the profit," Carol Koury, who operates Sow True Seeds in Asheville, N.C., said at the rally. The gathering was held in conjunction with an appeal heard today before a three-judge U.S. Court of Appeals panel in Washington. The suit questions the legality of Monsanto's seed patents and seeks protection from patent-infringement suits against farmers in the event their fields are found to contain genetically modified seed. Last February, U.S. District Judge Naomi Buchwald in the Southern District of New York dismissed the suit.
Note: For deeply revealing reports from reliable major media sources on the risks from genetically modified organisms, click here.
Harvard University researchers' review of fluoride/brain studies concludes "our results support the possibility of adverse effects of fluoride exposures on children's neurodevelopment." It was published online July 20 in Environmental Health Perspectives, a US National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences' journal, reports the NYS Coalition Opposed to Fluoridation. "The children in high fluoride areas had significantly lower IQ than those who lived in low fluoride areas," write Choi et al. Further, the EPA says fluoride is a chemical "with substantial evidence of developmental neurotoxicity." Fluoride (fluosilicic acid) is added to US water supplies at approximately 1 part per million attempting to reduce tooth decay. Choi et al. write, "Although fluoride may cause neurotoxicity in animal models and acute fluoride poisoning causes neurotoxicity in adults, very little is known of its effects on children's neurodevelopment." They recommend more brain/fluoride research on children and at individual-level doses. "It's senseless to keep subjecting our children to this ongoing fluoridation experiment to satisfy the political agenda of special-interest groups," says attorney Paul Beeber, NYSCOF President. "Even if fluoridation reduced cavities, is tooth health more important than brain health? It's time to put politics aside and stop artificial fluoridation everywhere," says Beeber.
Note: For deeply revealing reports from reliable major media sources on health issues, click here.
When she was in high school, Lizzie Velasquez was dubbed "The World's Ugliest Woman" in an 8-second-long YouTube video. Born with a medical condition so rare that just two other people in the world are thought to have it, Velasquez has no adipose tissue and cannot create muscle, store energy, or gain weight. She has zero percent body fat and weighs just 60 pounds. In the comments on YouTube, viewers called her "it" and "monster" and encouraged her to kill herself. Instead, Velasquez set four goals: To become a motivational speaker, to publish a book, to graduate college, and to build a family and a career for herself. Now 23 years old, she's been a motivational speaker for seven years and has given more than 200 workshops on embracing uniqueness, dealing with bullies, and overcoming obstacles. She's a senior majoring in Communications at Texas State University in San Marcos, where she lives with her best friend. Her first book, Lizzie Beautiful, came out in 2010 and her second, Be Beautiful, Be You, was published earlier this month. She's even reclaimed YouTube, video blogging about everything from bullying to hair-styling tips to staying positive. Of course, the horrible comments left on that old YouTube video stung. "I'm human, and of course these things are going to hurt," she said. "Their judgments of me isn't who I am, and I'm not going to let these things define me. I didn't sink down to their level," she said in a follow-up video on YouTube last year. "Instead, I got my revenge through my accomplishments and determination. In the battle between the 'World's Ugliest Woman' video vs. me, I think I won."
Note: Though looking at this woman can be disturbing for some, consider that you can see beneath the surface to the beauty within. Watch Lizzie share some of her wisdom in a popular TEDx Talk at this link.
When Kelvin Doe, a then-13-year-old from Sierra Leone, saw that off-the-shelf batteries were too expensive for the inventions he was working on, he made his own at home. Kelvin did not have the privilege to do his project in a school environment. Rather, he was compelled to act by necessity and for the joy of solving practical problems. Kelvin combined acid, soda, and metal, dumped those ingredients in a tin cup, waited for the mixture to dry and wrapped tape around the cup to make his first battery. He hasn’t purchased a battery since. Next up: A generator. Kelvin made one of those by hacking an old rusty voltage stabilizer he found in a dustbin. In addition to providing electricity to his home, where neighbors come to charge their mobile phone batteries, the generator powers Kelvin’s homemade FM radio station, fully equipped with a custom music mixer, recycled CD player and antenna that allow his whole neighborhood to tune in. Now 16, Kelvin has expanded operations: he employs his friends as reporters and station managers, tasking them to interview spectators at local soccer games and keep the calendar of requests for his DJ services at parties and events. The average age of his crew is 12. Kelvin ... was at the 2012 World Maker Faire held in New York at the end of September. He was invited to participate in a “Meet the Young Makers” panel with four other amazing young makers from America. He is the youngest person in history to be invited to the “Visiting Practitioner’s Program” at MIT, and he presented his inventions to undergraduate students at Harvard College and MIT.
Note: For a popular video on this amazing, young genius from Africa, click here.
Via the Clean Energy Act of 2007, the new "go-green" eco-friendly standards are set to thrust mandatory use of CFLs (compact fluorescent light bulbs) upon American citizens by the year 2013 or 2014. Some reports say the mercury-filled CFLs are harmful to humans. Are CFL bulbs eco-friendly but human hazards? What about the economy of cleaning up the the new bulbs, and the erosion of our American "choices"? Information has circulated that CFLs will be dangerous to humans due to mercury content. It seems to have started with a 2007 claim by a family who was gung-ho to "go green." They installed CFLs in their home but broke one, resulting in various illnesses for a child and a $2,000 clean-up process that could only be done by experts. According to EPA guidelines [in 2007] there were 16 steps to cleaning up a broken, mercury-filled CFL bulb and then cleaning up the cleaning materials used. According to the EPA website today, there are only eight steps. The process appears toned down. The EPA claims that breakage of one bulb is not dangerous to occupants. Clean-up doesn't have to cost $2,000. Energy Star, a division of the EPA, ... acknowledges certain health and environmental hazards, stating "we must be responsible in cleaning up." They offer several sheets of directions, including this: Humans must leave the premises for three hours after removing a broken bulb. Livestrong.com is a leading go-to health and wellness website. Its research about CFLs shows that prolonged exposure to fluorescent lighting causes migraines, eye strain and other eye discomfort.
Note: For a CBS affiliate report confirming these hazards, click here.
Scientists have known for some time that the Earth's magnetic field is fading. Its strength has steadily and mysteriously waned, leaving parts of the planet vulnerable to increased radiation from space. Some satellites already feel the effects. What is uncertain is whether the weakened field is on the way to a complete collapse and a reversal that would flip the North and South Poles. It is not a matter of whether it will happen, but when, said scientists who presented the latest research on the subject at a recent meeting of the American Geophysical Union in San Francisco. But when is hard to pinpoint. The dipole reversal pattern is erratic. "We can have periods without reversals for many millions of years, and we can have four or five reversals within one million years," said Yves Gallet, from Institut de Physique du Globe de Paris, France, who studies the palaeomagnetic record and estimates that the current decay started 2,000 years ago. Over the last century and a half, since monitoring began, scientists have measured a 10% decline in the dipole. At the current rate of decline it would take 1,500 to 2,000 years to disappear. The last major pole flip appears to have been about 780,000 years ago. A particular weakness in the field has been observed off the coast of Brazil in the so-called Southern Atlantic Anomaly. Here, eccentricities in the Earth's core have caused a "dip" in the field, leaving it 30% weaker than elsewhere. The extra dose of radiation creates electronic glitches in satellites and spacecraft that fly through it. Even the Hubble telescope has been affected.
Lawmakers accused the CIA of misleading the makers of the Osama bin Laden raid film “Zero Dark Thirty” by allegedly telling them that harsh interrogation methods helped track down the terrorist mastermind. The film shows waterboarding and similar techniques as important, if not key, to finding bin Laden in Pakistan, where he was killed by Navy SEALs in 2011. A Senate Intelligence Committee investigation into the CIA’s detainee program found that such methods produced no useful intelligence. In a letter to the CIA this week, Sens. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., John McCain, R-Ariz., and others asked [the CIA] to share documents showing what the filmmakers were told. The senators contend that that the CIA detainee who provided the most accurate information about the courier who was tracked to bin Laden’s hiding place “provided the information prior to being subjected to coercive interrogation techniques,” according to a statement ... from Feinstein. The CIA says it will cooperate.
Note: Note that this "critique" of the CIA by US Senators serves to maintain the claim that Osama bin Laden was killed by the Navy SEALs raid in Pakistan in 2011. But there have been numerous reports of bin Laden's death before the "official" killing. Click here and here for two intriguing BBC reports on this. WantToKnow team member David Ray Griffin's book establishing the likelihood that Osama bin Laden died in December 2001, Osama bin Laden: Dead or Alive?, is available here.
If you've ever suspected politics is increasingly being run in the interests of big business, ... Jeffrey Sachs, a highly respected economist from Columbia University, agrees with you - at least in respect of the United States. In his book, The Price of Civilization: Reawakening American Virtue and Prosperity, he says the US economy is caught in a feedback loop. ''Corporate wealth translates into political power through campaign financing, corporate lobbying and the revolving door of jobs between government and industry; and political power translates into further wealth through tax cuts, deregulation and sweetheart contracts between government and industry. Wealth begets power, and power begets wealth,'' he says. Sachs says four key sectors of US business exemplify this feedback loop and the takeover of political power in America by the ''corporatocracy''. First is the well-known military-industrial complex. Second is the Wall Street-Washington complex, which has steered the financial system towards control by a few politically powerful Wall Street firms, notably Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan Chase, Citigroup, Morgan Stanley and a handful of other financial firms. Third is the Big Oil-transport-military complex, which has put the US on the trajectory of heavy oil-imports dependence and a deepening military trap in the Middle East, he says. Fourth is the healthcare industry, America's largest industry, absorbing no less than 17 per cent of US gross domestic product.
Note: For deeply revealing reports from reliable major media sources on corporate and government corruption, click here and here.
In [the] bustling [Greek port city Volos], in the heart of Greece's most fertile plain, locals have come up with a novel way of dealing with austerity – adopting their own alternative currency, known as the Tem. As the country struggles with its worst crisis in modern times, with Greeks losing up to 40% of their disposable income as a result of policies imposed in exchange for international aid, the system has been a huge success. Organisers say some 1,300 people have signed up to the informal bartering network. The currency – a form of community banking monitored exclusively online – is not only an effective antidote to wage cuts and soaring taxes but the "best kind of shopping therapy". Greece's deepening economic crisis has brought new users. With ever more families plunging into poverty and despair, shops, cafes, factories and businesses have also resorted to the system under which goods and services – everything from yoga sessions to healthcare, babysitting to computer support – are traded in lieu of credits. "For many it plays a double role of supplementing lost income and creating a protective web at this particularly difficult moment in their lives," says Yiannis Grigoriou, a UK-educated sociologist among the network's founders. "The older generation in this country can still remember when bartering was commonplace. In villages you'd exchange milk and goat's cheese for meat and flour." Other grassroots initiatives have appeared across Greece.
Charlie Matulka, who lost to Senator Chuck Hagel of Nebraska [in 2002], does not trust the results in his election. Most of the votes were cast on paper ballots that were scanned into computerized vote-counting machines, which happen to have been manufactured by a company Mr. Hagel used to run. Mr. Matulka, suspicious of Senator Hagel's ties to the voting machine company, demanded a hand recount of the paper ballots. Nebraska law did not allow it, he was informed. In his primary race in 1996, Mr. Hagel, who had lived in Virginia for 20 years, beat the state attorney general by nearly two to one. In the general election, he defeated the governor, who had been elected two years earlier in a landslide. In 2002, against Mr. Matulka, he won more than 80 percent of the vote. What gets conspiracy theorists excited is not just Mr. Hagel's prodigious wins, but his job before jumping into the 1996 race: heading American Information Systems, the manufacturer of the machines that count 85 percent of Nebraska's votes. Rob Behler ... who helped prepare Georgia's machines for the 2002 election, says secret computer codes were installed late in the process. Votes ''could have been manipulated,'' he says, and the election thrown. Among the growing ranks of electronic-voting skeptics ... Mr. Hagel's wins in 1996 and 2002 have taken on mythic status. The problem is, there is no way to prove the right man was elected. A healthy democracy must avoid even the appearance of corruption. [The] Nebraska elections fail this test.
Note: For more clear evidence Hagel was directly involved in voting machine manipulation which lead to an illegal victory for him, click here and here.
The FBI suspected within days of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks that the American Muslim cleric Anwar al-Awlaki may have purchased tickets for some of the hijackers for air travel in advance of the attacks, according to newly released documents. The heavily redacted records – obtained by Judicial Watch through a [FOIA] request – suggest the FBI held evidence tying the American-born cleric to the hijackers just 16 days after the attack that killed nearly 3,000 Americans. “We have FBI documents showing that the FBI knew that al-Awlaki had bought three tickets for three of the hijackers to fly into Florida and into Las Vegas, including the lead hijacker, Mohammad Atta,” Tom Fitton, president of Judicial Watch, told Fox News. He added that the records show the cleric, killed in September 2011 by a U.S. drone strike in Yemen, “was a central focus of the FBI's investigation of 9/11. They show he wasn't cooperative. And they show that he was under surveillance.” The cleric was a guest speaker on moderate Islam at a Pentagon executive dining room in February 2002. The newly released documents now suggest the FBI knew five months earlier of al-Awlaki’s probable link to the hijackers. Al-Awlaki was held at New York City’s JFK airport on Oct. 10, 2002, under a warrant for passport fraud, a felony punishable by 10 years. However, ... an FBI agent, Wade Ammerman, from the bureau’s Washington field office ordered the cleric be released from custody, even though there was an active warrant for his arrest.
Note: Click here to view the more than 200 pages of documents obtained by Judicial Watch. Isn't it quite strange that the continuously monitored Al-Awlaki was breakfasting with the Pentagon brass and was released from custody by the FBI, after the 9/11 attacks? Could his assassination by drone have been for the purpose of keeping him quiet about what he knew concerning 9/11?
The death of a woman popularly named Damini – “lightning” in Hindi – has provoked thousands to take to India’s streets, furious at endemic and unchecked violence against women. Some have been met with police batons, tear gas and water cannon. But, in the West, Damini’s death has triggered a different response: a sense that this is an Indian-specific problem. “The crime has highlighted the prevalence of sex attacks in India,” says the Daily Telegraph; “India tries to move beyond its rape culture,” says Reuters. It’s comforting to think that this is someone else’s problem. It is an assumption that is as wrong as it is dangerous. Rape and sexual violence against women are endemic everywhere. Shocked by what happened in India? Take a look at France. In 1999, two then-teenagers – named only as Nina and Stephanie – were raped almost every day for six months. Young men would queue up to rape them, patiently waiting for their friends to finish in secluded basements. After a three-week trial this year, 10 of the 14 accused left the courtroom as free men; the other four were granted lenient sentences of one year at most. Shocked? According to the [UK] Government’s Action Plan on Violence Against Women and Girls, 80,000 women are raped a year, and 400,000 women are sexually assaulted [in the UK]. It is a pandemic of violence against women that – given its scale – is not discussed nearly enough.
Note: For deeply revealing reports from reliable major media sources on sexual abuse, click here.
In just over a month, more than 120 sexually exploited children -- one just 19 days old -- were identified in an international operation that found them depicted in child pornography on the Internet, U.S. officials said. In Operation Sunflower, led by agents from Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s Homeland Security Investigation unit from Nov. 1 to Dec. 7, 123 victims of child sexual exploitation were identified, ICE Director John Morton said at a press conference in Washington. Of that group, 44 children had been living with their abusers, and 79 children were exploited by people outside of their home or were victimized as children and are now adults. Seventy female and 53 male victims [were] rescued; 110 of the victims were identified in 19 U.S. states and the rest were identified in six foreign countries. Of the victims identified during Operation Sunflower, five were under the age of 3, and one of those was just 19 days old. Thirty others were below the age of 10, officials said. Younger children were more often abused and more women were directly involved in carrying out the abuse. Additionally, the victims of child sexual exploitation increasingly have an international nexus, said John Ryan, CEO of the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children. “The problem of child exploitation is hardly confined to the United States,” Ryan said.
Note: If you are ready to look at just how ugly this gets, watch the Discovery Channel documentary showing child sex abuse rings at the highest levels of government, available here. For deeply revealing reports from reliable major media sources on sexual abuse, click here.
A liberal professor of psychology who studied in the late 1970s will see [pedophilia] very differently from someone working in child protection, or with convicted sex offenders. There is, astonishingly, not even a full academic consensus on whether consensual paedophilic relations necessarily cause harm. So what, then, do we know? A paedophile is someone who has a primary or exclusive sexual interest in prepubescent children. But not all paedophiles are child molesters, and vice versa: by no means every paedophile acts on his impulses, and many people who sexually abuse children are not exclusively or primarily sexually attracted to them. In fact, "true" paedophiles are estimated by some experts to account for only 20% of sexual abusers. Nor are paedophiles necessarily violent: no firm links have so far been established between paedophilia and aggressive or psychotic symptoms. Psychologist Glenn Wilson, co-author of The Child-Lovers: a Study of Pedophiles in Society, argues that "The majority of paedophiles, however socially inappropriate, seem to be gentle and rational." Legal definitions of paedophilia, needless to say, have no truck with such niceties, focusing on the offence, not the offender. The Sex Offenders Act 1997 defined paedophilia as a sexual relationship between an adult over 18 and a child below 16. There is much more we don't know, including how many paedophiles there are: 1-2% of men is a widely accepted figure. Even less is known about female paedophiles, thought to be responsible for maybe 5% of abuse against pre-pubescent children in the UK.
Note: For deeply revealing reports from reliable major media sources on sexual abuse, click here.
Important Note: Explore our full index to revealing excerpts of key major media news stories on several dozen engaging topics. And don't miss amazing excerpts from 20 of the most revealing news articles ever published.