Sex Abuse Scandals Media Articles

Excerpts of Key Sex Abuse Scandals Media Articles in Major Media

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Patients prescribed drugs for movement disorders - including restless leg syndrome (RLS) - say doctors did not warn them about serious side effects that led them to seek out risky sexual behaviour. Twenty women have told the BBC that the drugs - given to them for RLS, which causes an irresistible urge to move - ruined their lives. A report by drugs firm GSK - seen by the BBC - shows it learned in 2003 of a link between the medicines, known as dopamine agonist drugs, and what it described as "deviant" sexual behaviour. It cited a case of a man who had sexually assaulted a child while taking the drug for Parkinson's. Some of the women who described being drawn to risky sexual behaviour told us they had no idea of what was causing it. Others said they felt compelled to gamble or shop with no history of such activities. Impulsive behaviours, including gambling and increased sex drive, have long been listed as side effects in medicine leaflets for dopamine agonist drugs - and are thought to affect between 6% to 17% of RLS patients taking them, according to health guidance body NICE. The cases of what the GSK report from 2003 described as "deviant behaviour" involved two men who were prescribed Ropinirole for Parkinson's disease. In one, a 63-year-old-man sexually assaulted a seven-year-old girl, leading to a custodial sentence. In the second case, a 45-year-old man carried out "uncontrolled acts of exhibitionism and indecent behaviour".

Note: For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on Big Pharma corruption.

Of the 17 years that I've been incarcerated for killing an abusive boyfriend, I spent eight – from 2016 to last May – in what the state calls "restrictive housing," but I call "solitary confinement" or "the hole." In women's prisons, sexual intrusion, harassment, coercion and violence are daily realities. And in solitary confinement, this conduct is so routine that many women – particularly the younger ones – don't even think of it as abuse. They believe it's simply an inevitable part of their incarceration. In 2023, the Texas Department of Criminal Justice (TCDJ) reported over 700 allegations of staff-on-prisoner sexual abuse and harassment to the PREA Ombudsman, an independent office that tallies up and investigates complaints. Almost 90 of those cases involved sexual harassment, nearly 150 were categorized as voyeurism, and a little more than 500 were classified as sexual abuse. Of the 505 abuse claims, only 20% met the prison system's onerous criteria for sexual assault or "improper sexual activity with a person in custody." On the outside, fewer than half of sexual violence cases are reported to police. Given the power dynamics of prison, underreporting is likely more severe here. Guards use a variety of methods to retaliate against women who complain about their abuse. They can write bogus disciplinary infractions that can lead to ... a longer sentence. Officers can also turn off the electricity and running water in women's cells and refuse to serve them meals.

Note: For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on prison system corruption and sexual abuse scandals.

High-level executives with the NFL's New Orleans Saints football team and the NBA's Pelicans basketball team had a deeper role than previously known in connection with a list of priests and deacons faced with credible allegations of child molestation. According to highly sensitive emails ... one top executive even described a conversation with the New Orleans district attorney at the time that allowed them to remove clergy names from the list. The initial allegations about the emails led to local and national media investigations, including by Sports Illustrated and the Associated Press, that highlighted a fierce closeness between the sports franchises and the Catholic church in New Orleans. [Senior vice president of communications for the Saints and Pelicans Greg] Bensel sought to convince media outlets to limit their scrutiny of a list that turned out to be so incomplete it eventually precipitated a joint federal and state law enforcement investigation into whether the archdiocese spent decades operating a child sex-trafficking ring whose crimes were illegally covered up. After first seeing the so-called Saints emails in 2019 through a subpoena, abuse survivors' attorneys alleged that the two franchises' top officials had a significant hand in trying to minimize what was then a public-relations nightmare for the city's archdiocese – but has since triggered a full-blown child sex-trafficking investigation aimed at the church by law enforcement. A [2019] newspaper article about a local deacon and alleged serial child molester thrust [New Orleans archbishop Gregory] Aymond into the center of the global Catholic church's clergy-abuse scandal. The article questioned how the deacon, George Brignac, had been allowed to keep reading scripture at masses ... after he'd been arrested multiple times on child molestation charges.

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The Duke of York was in contact with the US sex offender Jeffrey Epstein longer than he had previously admitted, emails published in court documents appear to show. "Keep in close touch and we'll play some more soon!!!!" said an email sent to Epstein from a "member of the British Royal Family", believed to be Prince Andrew. The court documents, from the UK's Financial Conduct Authority (FCA), show the email as being sent in February 2011. In his BBC Newsnight interview, Prince Andrew had said he had not seen or spoken to Epstein after going to his house in New York in December 2010. Prince Andrew is believed to have first met Epstein in 1999, through Epstein's friend Ghislaine Maxwell. The following year, in June 2000, Epstein and Maxwell were among guests at a party at Windsor Castle. Later that year, Prince Andrew held a birthday party for Maxwell at Sandringham, with Epstein in attendance. The relationship appeared to continue, with Epstein attending another Windsor Castle party in July 2006. Between those times, in 2008, Epstein was convicted in the US for procuring a minor for prostitution and was sentenced to 18 months in prison. After Epstein left prison, Prince Andrew met him in New York in 2010. Andrew said this meeting was to end their relationship. In July 2019, Epstein was arrested on charges of the sex trafficking of minors. He died in prison. In November that year, Prince Andrew ... stepped down from royal duties.

Note: For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on Jeffrey Epstein's child sex trafficking ring.

A former policy adviser to Barack Obama's administration flew to Britain planning to rape a nine-year-old child. Rahamim "Rami" Shy, 47, an investment banker who helped co-ordinate the US government's counter-terror response, travelled from New York to Bedfordshire to meet an English schoolgirl. He spent more than a month planning the trip and had packed his suitcases with cuddly toys and condoms, Luton Crown Court heard. On an online forum and messaging apps, Shy described the "unspeakable acts" he was planning in graphic detail to someone he believed to be the girl's grandmother. But the grandmother, using the name Debbie, was in fact an online decoy created by an undercover officer from Bedfordshire Police. In his messages, Shy described the girl as a "tad late" in starting sexual activity at the age of nine, and said that it was an "honour" to be considered "her first", the court heard. He flew to Gatwick on Feb 23 last year then drove to Bedford to meet the undercover officer, and was promptly arrested. During the trial, the court heard Shy, after arriving in Britain, tried to delete the "depraved messages" he had sent. Other messages retrieved from his phone revealed he had discussed his sexual interest in children with others. A cache of indecent images of children were discovered on his phone by police. Shy was previously employed at banking group Citi, and had worked in a senior role at the US treasury department.

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A secret list of more than 300 people who belonged to a network that called publicly for the legalisation of sex with children has been handed to the BBC. A small number of those named on the list may still have contact with children. They were all members of a group called the Paedophile Information Exchange (PIE). The Metropolitan Police had the list for about 20 years from the late 1970s. Most PIE members were based in the UK - but there are also details of people in other parts of western Europe, Australia and the US. The BBC has established that a small number of the men are still alive and may currently be in contact with, or have care of, children through paid work or volunteering. PIE was formed in 1974. Its leaders sought to further their cause by attempting to align themselves with feminist, anti-racist and gay rights movements. It was not an illegal organisation and cost Ł4 a year to join, and to receive its members' magazine. Over a decade, PIE spokesmen gave interviews to the media arguing that adults and children had a human right to have sex with each other. Four years old, they argued, was an age at which most children could give consent. Records ... for 45% of the people on the list [showed] that half of them had been convicted or cautioned (or had been charged and died before trial) for sexual offences against children. Charges included distributing abuse images, kidnap and rape.

Note: Margaret Thatcher herself protected top diplomat Sir Peter Hayman from an investigation into his involvement with child sex abuse material. For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on sexual abuse scandals.

One day last spring, the investigative journalist Alex Renton received an unusual email. It contained a scan of a typewritten document marked with the dates 1983/1984, which appeared to be an authentic list of members of an organisation known as the Paedophile Information Exchange (PIE). PIE operated legally in the UK for a decade from 1974 until the mid-1980s, lobbying publicly for a change in the age of consent – proposing in 1977 that there shouldn't be one at all. PIE members received a magazine, Magpie, which included news, non-nude photographs of children and a "contact page". PIE was disbanded in 1984 after several prosecutions relating to child pornography and conspiracy to promote indecent acts via the contact page. There were more than 300 names on the member list that Renton now had in his possession, a number of which he already knew. The police had the list from the late 1970s, Renton says. He and his team were able to find further information for around 45 per cent of the names on the list and discovered that half of these had convictions or cautions, or had been charged and died before trial, for sexual offences against children. And 65 members, Renton notes, "worked in what we now call regulated professions, which are child facing. "We've got about 30 teachers, as well as social workers, clergy, doctors. There's a number of eminent psychologists and quite a large sector of people in youth work."

Note: Margaret Thatcher herself protected top diplomat Sir Peter Hayman from an investigation into his involvement with child sex abuse material. For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on sexual abuse scandals.

The statistics behind the rape gang scandal – let's banish the wholly inadequate word "grooming" – are staggering. For over 25 years, networks of men, predominantly from Pakistani Muslim backgrounds, abused young white girls from Yeovil to London to Glasgow. Why did British police services turn a blind eye to the gang rape of tens of thousands of young girls? The answer, in the end, is simple. Racism, for police services from Chester to Penzance, remains the original sin. Institutional reticence over race goes beyond the police themselves: even the Independent Office for Police Conduct's (IOPC) review of the rape gang scandal tiptoed around the heritage and religion of offenders. Yet given the scale of the rape gang scandal, is it now unreasonable to ask if any babies were chucked out with the bathwater? I think they were. With ... many incentives to toe the line, no wonder more free-thinking coppers stayed away, with the remainder grimly susceptible to groupthink. We used to call it "having the CD Rom inserted" – whereby a reasonably competent copper would morph into a pound-shop commissar to achieve the next rank. The next time you watch a press conference with a senior officer, play "bullshit bingo" with the language they use, usually involving words like community, proportionality and diversity. Meanwhile, away from the TV cameras, thousands of young girls were raped, abused and treated like chattel in their own hometowns.

Note: Read more about the organized pedophile gangs that operated with impunity for decades in the UK. For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on police corruption and sexual abuse scandals.

Five men are given lengthy jail terms [in 2010] after they are found guilty of grooming teenage girls in Rotherham for sex. The same year, police finally act on sexual grooming in Rochdale – going back years – with a series of arrests. Police and child protection agencies in Rotherham had extensive knowledge of these activities for a decade, yet a string of offences went unprosecuted. [In 2014], Professor Alexis Jay publishes her devastating report on child sexual exploitation in Rotherham between 1997 and 2013. The report describes how more than 1,400 children were sexually exploited by gangs of mainly Asian males in the South Yorkshire town. It is scathing about a culture among police and council officials which ignored the industrial scale of abuse, instead treating the victims as troublesome teenagers. A gang of men who embarked on a "campaign of rape and other sexual abuse" against vulnerable teenage girls in Huddersfield were given lengthy jail sentences [in 2018]. The pattern of large-scale exploitation of mainly white girls by groups of men of mainly Pakistani heritage uncovered by West Yorkshire Police in Huddersfield mirrors what has happened in a number of other towns including Rotherham, Rochdale and Telford. Greater Manchester Police Chief Constable Ian Hopkins apologises [in 2020] to the children abused "in plain sight" by the grooming gangs his officers failed to bring to justice.

Note: Read more about the organized pedophile gangs that operated with impunity for decades in the UK. For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on sexual abuse scandals.

A decade ago, with the publication of an independent inquiry, Britain confronted the horror of the sexual abuse of children that had taken place in Rotherham over 16 years by organised gangs of men, mostly of Pakistani origin. The 2014 report conservatively estimated that 1,400 children – some as young as 11, many in the care of the state – were raped, abducted and sexually abused in Rotherham by groups of men. There have been many other reviews and inquiries in other towns and cities where children have been subjected to similar abuse by organised groups of men, including in Rochdale, Oxford, Telford and Bristol. Child victims of sexual abuse were not only routinely ignored by those whose job it was to protect them – including social workers and the police – but how young girls were viewed by child protection authorities as complicit in their own rape and abuse, as if it were something they could consent to. A further 2015 review into Rotherham led by Louise Casey was also clear that these abusers could hide behind their race to perpetrate their abuse: she uncovered what she called an "archaic culture of sexism, bullying and discomfort around race", with councillors and staff fearing being labelled racist if they mentioned the ethnicity of perpetrators. In suppressing an issue that should have been dealt with openly and properly, this was a factor in enabling the abuse to go on. As a society, we have a terrible track record of tackling child sexual abuse.

Note: Read more about the organized pedophile gangs that operated with impunity for decades in the UK. For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on sexual abuse scandals.

When Bank of America alerted financial regulators in 2020 to potentially suspicious payments from Leon Black, the billionaire investor, to Jeffrey Epstein, the disgraced financier, the bank was following a routine practice. The bank filed two "suspicious activity reports," or SARs, which are meant to alert law enforcement to potential criminal activities like money laundering, terrorism financing or sex trafficking. One was filed in February 2020 and the other eight months later, according to a congressional memorandum. SARs are expected to be filed within 60 days of a bank spotting a questionable transaction. But the warnings in this case ... were not filed until several years after the payments, totaling $170 million, had been made. By the time of the first filing, Mr. Epstein had already been dead for six months. The delayed filings have led congressional investigators to question if Bank of America violated federal laws against money laundering. Bank of America is not the only big bank to have been questioned about suspicious transactions involving Mr. Epstein. In litigation involving hundreds of Mr. Epstein's sexual abuse victims, it was disclosed that JPMorgan Chase had filed several SARs after the bank kicked him out as a client in 2013. Deutsche Bank, which subsequently became Mr. Epstein's primary banker, paid a $150 million fine to New York bank regulators, in part because of its due diligence failures in monitoring Mr. Epstein's financial affairs.

Note: Read about the connection between Epstein's child sex trafficking ring and intelligence agency sexual blackmail operations. For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on financial industry corruption and Jeffrey Epstein's trafficking and blackmail ring.

An independent review found Father Thaddeus Kotik, who died in 1992, lured young girls and boys into the monastery garden, where he would sexually abuse, including rape, them over the course of many years – and that leaders within the order and abbey repeatedly failed to report allegations of his abuse to authorities. Father Jan Rossey, who last year became the Abbot of Caldey Abbey, which sits on an island off the coast of Pembrokeshire in west Wales and is home to Cistercian Order monks, admitted that "it is clear opportunities were missed to stop the abuse of children" on Tuesday after he commissioned the review into alleged historical child sex abuse by monks. The review, led by former assistant police and crime commissioner at South Wales Police, Jan Pickles, examined allegations dating from the late 1960s to 1992, made by people who experienced abuse on the remote Welsh island as children, some who lived there and others who visited. The review concluded that Kotik, who sexually abused girls and boys while he was a monk at the abbey, used a tortoise and "other attractive treats" to entice children into the monastery garden, where he would sexually abuse them. The report also said he "groomed" parents by "overwhelming" them with attention, offering babysitting help and giving small gifts. The abuse in the case of some victims persisted over a period of many years, as children returned to Caldey with their families for holidays.

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In 2024 WIRED conducted an investigation uncovering the data of mobile devices belonging to almost 200 of his visitors. How strong was the data? So precise that we followed visitor's movements to and from Epstein Island to within centimeters–tracking their countries, neighborhoods, and even buildings of origin. These digital trails document the numerous trips of wealthy and influential individuals seemingly undeterred by Epstein's status as a convicted sex offender. Little St. James is a private island that is part of the U.S. Virgin Islands, an unincorporated territory of the United States in the Caribbean Sea. Epstein purchased little St. James in 1998 for $7.95 million. It's about 71 acres, the size of 54 football fields. He made the island his primary residence and soon after began welcoming visitors and throwing infamous parties where he was accused of having groomed, sexually assaulted, and trafficked untold numbers of women and girls. The tracking of phones wasn't contained to Little St. James surveillance continued long after the visitors left. The Near Intelligence data we uncovered pinpoints 166 locations throughout the United States and 80 cities across 26 states. Topping the list were Florida, Massachusetts, Texas, Michigan, and New York. Many of the visitors were likely wealthy, as indicated by coordinates pointing to gated communities in Michigan, as well as homes in Martha's Vineyard, and Nantucket in Massachusetts.

Note: Read about the connection between Epstein's child sex trafficking ring and intelligence agency sexual blackmail operations. For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on Jeffrey Epstein's trafficking and blackmail ring.

A Canadian billionaire is facing allegations he sexually abused more than five dozen women when they were children – with the victims alleging they were recruited and paid to participate in his chilling sex ring. Robert Miller, the founder of Future Electronics, is accused of repeatedly giving underage girls money and gifts in exchange for sex between 1994 and 2016. The alleged abuse happened in hotels throughout Montreal. Miller was ordered on Friday to fork over two of his million-dollar Montreal homes as part of a lawsuit filed by four of his accusers. The women accused the alleged predator of recruiting them as high school students to have sex in exchange for money, describing his prostitution scheme as a "planned system of sexual exploitation" of girls and teens, according to court documents. One victim alleged she had sex with Miller more than 30 times over two years starting in 1999 when she was 14 years old. On one occasion, she was given $1,000 to have sex with Miller – who allegedly refused to wear a condom due to a latex allergy – at the Queen Elizabeth Hotel. The victim said the alleged sexual abuse left her suicidal as she struggled with alcohol and drugs. Miller, who has denied the allegations, is also facing a separate proposed lawsuit by more than 50 women who reported that he gave them money and gifts in exchange for sex between 1996 and 2006, CBC reported. He was also arrested in May on sexual abuse and exploitation charges involving 10 victims.

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Public understanding of paedophiles has not improved over the past 30 years, according to the founder of the pioneering charity Circles, which offers support to some of society's most reviled offenders. While the Rev Harry Nigh says child protection must always be paramount, he stresses the importance of breaking the isolation and shame that often leads people who commit child sexual abuse to reoffend, arguing that "anything that drives people underground even further endangers the community itself". The Circles programme provides a local network of volunteers who support and hold accountable their "core member", a child sexual offender who wants to reintegrate into the community after serving their sentence. The core model of grassroots community support – and accountability – has remained the same for the past three decades: "It's not just about risk management, it has to be about affirmation," Nigh said. "Just to reinforce the humanity of the person is really important. "That's a very powerful thing for a person to be able to find a new narrative of his life that can lead him forward. But it's not all hugs and kisses. There can be some very hard conversations in the Circle and confrontations. But the studies show that men with a Circle are 70 to 80% less likely to reoffend than a control group. The underlying principles of restorative justice are what's guiding this work, that harm cannot be remedied completely by locking people up."

Note: For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on sexual abuse scandals, repairing our criminal justice system, and healing social division.

The Church of England is facing its biggest crisis in modern times, and there is no clear pathway to recovery. The archbishop of Canterbury has been forced to resign, other senior figures are facing calls to quit and the church is reeling from its shameful failures over a prolific and sadistic child abuser. A 253-page report detailing the appalling brutality of the late barrister John Smyth, repeated cover-ups and omissions by church figures, and the lifelong trauma suffered by victims has triggered an "existential crisis" for the C of E, according to Linda Woodhead ... at King's College London. "It's seismic," said Tim Wyatt, who writes ... a weekly newsletter about the Church of England. The context to the report on Smyth was, he said, "more than 10 years of damning investigations into C of E abuse failures. Bishops, clergy and senior lay volunteers have been exposed as abusers, and church figures knew about the abuse in some instances and failed to stop it or report it to the police." In the C of E, since Welby became archbishop of Canterbury almost 12 years ago, report after report has detailed sexual, psychological and spiritual abuse stretching back half a century or more. Welby has made repeated apologies for the church's failures, and under his watch millions of pounds have been pumped into improving safeguarding. In 2012 ... average weekly church attendance was more than a million people. By 2023, the figure had fallen to 685,000.

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[Larry] Clay was the law until one day in the fall of 2020, when a teenage girl ... reported that her stepmother sold her to be raped for $100 when she was 17 years old. The buyer, she told the sheriff's department, wasn't just anyone – it was Police Chief Larry Clay. While he was in uniform and on duty. The first time, against his department-issued vehicle. The second, inside a police office. Clay, 55, and the stepmother, 27, were both charged with sex trafficking of a minor. When law enforcement officers are charged with crimes involving child sexual abuse, they usually avoid trials. The Post examined the cases of 1,800 of these officers. The majority of those convicted took plea deals, which frequently allowed them to evade lengthy sentences and public reckonings over their crimes. Other cases quietly fell apart when children said they were too afraid to continue. Sgt. James Pack ... led child sex crimes investigations for the [Fayette County] sheriff's department. Pack knew that sex trafficking rarely looked like it did in the movies, with strangers abducting kids. Far more often, it involved people who knew each other, one taking advantage of the other's vulnerabilities. Did selling her stepdaughter strike her, the prosecutor [in Clay's case] asked, as something out of the ordinary? "It was done to me," [stepmother] Naylor-Legg said. "My mom used to sell me for money or for drugs if we needed something." "And how old were you at the time?" "It started at 10," Naylor-Legg answered.

Note: Read more on the Washington Post's investigation into the 1,800 officers charged with sexually abusing children. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on police corruption and sexual abuse scandals from reliable major media sources.

Guards are using prison work assignments at correctional facilities across the United States to lure and rape female inmates, a shocking investigation by the Associated Press has found. Many complaints follow a similar pattern: Accusers are retaliated against, while those accused face little or no punishment. In all 50 states, the AP found cases where staff allegedly used inmate work assignments to lure women to isolated spots, out of view of security cameras. The prisoners said they were attacked while doing jobs like kitchen or laundry duty inside correctional facilities or in work-release programs that placed them at private businesses like national fast-food restaurants and hotel chains. Things were so bad at FCI Dublin in California that prisoners and staff named it 'the rape club,' a 2022 AP investigation found. At least two men who pleaded guilty to sexual abuse were work supervisors: Nakie Nunley targeted at least five female prisoners who worked at the federal government's call center ... and Andrew Jones abused women who worked for him in the kitchen. A civil lawsuit filed in September said that officer Jose Figueroa-Lizarraga moved cameras in an Arizona state facility and raped a prisoner who was on a job assignment, forcing her inside the guard's control room. After reporting the incident, the woman was attacked again. She became pregnant and nearly died after hemorrhaging during childbirth.

Note: For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on prison system corruption and sexual abuse scandals.

Suge Knight, co-founder and former CEO of Death Row Records tells [Chris Cuomo] that Sean "Diddy" Combs is "not the only one" to put younger artists through humiliating sexual acts, describing various industry practices throughout the decades. Combs, who has gone by various aliases including P. Diddy, Diddy, Puffy and Puff Daddy, was arrested on Sept. 16 following a grand jury indictment for several felonies, including sex trafficking and racketeering. The arrest came as the producer faced a mounting list of civil lawsuits alleging abuse and assault spanning over three decades. Knight claims Diddy "was taught from people before him, and he did it to the younger people after him." It's an industry that, according to Knight, has a long history of sexually abusing and assaulting its newest members. Without attending "those butt naked parties," it's hard to comprehend what happened – but that doesn't mean it was a secret, according to Knight. Knight also said he believes Diddy's allegations stem from his own experiences. "You know, hurt people hurt people … Someone was sexually abused, they wind up being a perpetrator. Is that what you're suggesting about Sean Combs, that he was sexually abused, and he now sexually abuses?" NewsNation's Chris Cuomo asked. "Yeah, I think that's absolutely right. I think it was done to him," Knight said. He also mentioned artists by name who should have been "whistleblowers," including Jay-Z, Snoop Dogg and Rick Ross, among others.

Note: Diddy has been called the Jeffrey Epstein of the entertainment industry. Read more about the disturbing history of child sex abuse in Hollywood from the courageous voices of actor Corey Feldman and Lord of the Rings star Elijah Wood.

Border Patrol agents are warning that kids as young as 8 are being drugged and smuggled into the US by traffickers posing as their parents or family members – and nobody knows how common the horrifying practice is. Authorities have rescued children caught up in two different instances of such smuggling in recent weeks – including one instance in which the alleged traffickers had birth certificates for multiple kids to whom they weren't related, according to the Border Patrol. Authorities say it's not clear what is happening to the children once they are smuggled into the US – but many are vulnerable to being exploited for child labor and child sex trafficking. "Sometimes we encounter criminal actions so horrendous, they defy human decency," said Gregory Bovino, the Border Patrol chief of California's El Centro sector in the southeast of the state, in response to the case. In one case, border agents rescued a child at the California border who had been "heavily dosed with sleep aids to prevent him from talking" to authorities, Bovino said Friday. Those agents found that the traffickers had birth certificates for more children. Under the Biden-Harris administration, the number of children crossing illegally into the US alone and without relatives has skyrocketed. Thousands of those children have also gone unaccounted for after they've been released to sponsors, who whistleblowers say aren't properly vetted, in the US.

Note: Why is this horrific issue not being discussed on a significant mainstream level? According to a report by The Center for Public Integrity, thousands have disappeared from sponsors' homes after the federal government placed them there. Watch our Mindful News Brief video on how the US government facilitates child trafficking at the border.

Important Note: Explore our full index to key excerpts of revealing major media news articles on several dozen engaging topics. And don't miss amazing excerpts from 20 of the most revealing news articles ever published.