Sex Abuse Scandals News Stories

Excerpts of Key Sex Abuse Scandals News Stories in Major Media

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Lady Butler-Sloss, the retired high court judge appointed as chair of the inquiry panel examining child abuse, faced a backlash on [July 9] as Labour MPs and a victims' lawyer called on her to stand down over conflict of interest. Critics pointed out that her brother, the late Lord Havers, was attorney general from 1979 to 1987 when some of the controversy over the failure to prosecute child abuse cases could have arisen. Havers, who later served briefly as lord chancellor, backed the decision of the director of public prosecutions not to prosecute Sir Peter Hayman, a diplomat and subscriber to the Paedophile Information Exchange. Hayman was caught sending paedophile literature through the post but was not prosecuted. Alison Millar, a lawyer ... who is representing some of the victims of child abuse, [told] BBC Radio 4: "Baroness Butler-Sloss ... has very close connections to the very establishment this inquiry will be investigating – namely her brother. Picking someone who will be seen at the start potentially by survivors as someone who is very much of the establishment, linked to the establishment at the time, is not going to give people any confidence to come forward and be frank and fearless in front of this inquiry." Butler-Sloss, 80, was appointed on [July 7] by the home secretary, Theresa May, to chair the panel of enquiry that will examine handling of child abuse allegations by public institutions.

Note: For more on this, see this Daily Mail article.

When Australia's Susie O'Neill claimed the gold medal at the 1996 Atlanta Olympics, she dedicated her victory to Scott Volkers, the swimming coach who had taken over her training two years earlier. By this time, three women who had been Volkers' students were losing belief in themselves and the swimming community. Julie Gilbert, Kylie Rogers and Simone Boyce took the stand at the royal commission into child abuse in Sydney this week to describe their mental breakdowns, eating disorders, anxiety and isolation from a swimming hierarchy that refused to believe them or failed to explore the possibility that Volkers molested them – as girls aged 12 to 18 – in the 1980s. Volkers remained on the payroll of elite Australian swimming institutions until 2010, when he was finally forced to move to Brazil, where he still works as a leading coach. Was it Australia's win-at-all-costs swimming culture that kept him in the presence of young athletes? An exasperated Andrew Boe, the lawyer representing Gilbert, Rogers and Boyce, pointed out: "This is not an examination of whether he was a good swimming coach or not." Nor is it an examination of the guilt or innocence of Volkers – against whom charges concerning these three alleged victims were dropped in 2002 – or other swimming coaches. It is an inquiry into the institutional responses to abuse. Swimming Australia's association with Volkers [ended] in 2005, when the coach's fourth accuser came forward with claims that Volkers had groped her breasts and attempted to stimulate her vagina in the late 1990s, when she was 15. The allegations were very similar to the earlier cases.

Note: For more on this, see concise summaries of deeply revealing sexual abuse scandals news articles from reliable major media sources.

A former Downing Street adviser has been charged with making and possessing indecent images of children. Patrick Rock ... was involved in Government policy on filtering online child abuse images. The 63-year-old has had a glittering career as a Conservative Party adviser spanning 30 years. On Friday, he was charged with three offences of making indecent images of children and one offence of possession of 59 indecent images of children. [He] resigned shortly before his arrest in February. Mr Rock has been an influential figure behind the scenes in the Conservative Party for decades and unsuccessfully stood as an MP three times. He met David Cameron when they were fellow advisers to the then Home Secretary, Michael Howard, in the 1990s and the Prime Minister brought him into the Downing Street policy unit in 2011. Judith Reed, a senior lawyer with the Crown Prosecution Service's organised crime division, said: “We have determined that there is sufficient evidence for a realistic prospect of conviction and that a prosecution is in the public interest.” Mr Rock has been bailed to appear at Westminster Magistrates' Court on 3 July.

Note: Why is it mentioned so casually that this man was involved in setting policy on child abuse images? For more on this, see concise summaries of deeply revealing sex abuse scandals news articles from reliable major media sources.

The Vatican's former ambassador to the Dominican Republic has been convicted by a church tribunal of sex abuse and has been defrocked, the first such sentence handed down against a top papal representative. The Vatican said [on June 27] that Monsignor Jozef Wesolowski was found guilty by the Vatican's Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith in recent days, and sentenced to the harshest penalty possible against a cleric: laicization, meaning he can no longer perform priestly duties or present himself as a priest. He also faces other charges by the criminal tribunal of Vatican City, since as a papal diplomat he is a citizen of the tiny city state. The Holy See recalled the Polish-born Wesolowski on Aug. 21, 2013, and relieved him of his job after the archbishop of Santo Domingo, Cardinal Nicolas de Jesus Lopez, told Pope Francis about rumors that Wesolowski had sexually abused teenage boys in the Dominican Republic. Wesolowski is the highest-ranking Vatican official to be investigated for alleged sex abuse, and his case raised questions about whether the Vatican, by removing him from Dominican jurisdiction, was protecting him and placing its own investigations ahead of that of authorities in the Caribbean nation. The case is particularly problematic for the Vatican since Wesolowski was a representative of the pope, accused of grave crimes that the Holy See has previously sought to distance itself from by blaming the worldwide sex abuse scandal on wayward priests and their bishops who failed to discipline them, not Vatican officials.

Note: For more on this, see concise summaries of deeply revealing sex abuse scandals news articles from reliable major media sources.

Rolf Harris, then a trusted and beloved entertainer, strolls into [the] shot flanked by four youngsters [in] what is now an unsettling 20-minute long anti-child-abuse video that prosecutors planned to play for the jury at Harris’ indecent assault trial. Overnight, Harris was declared guilty of all 12 charges of indecent assault against four girls, from 1968 to 1986. The video, called 'Kids Can Say No', was developed in the mid-1980s, when he was indecently assaulting young women and girls - including one as young as seven or eight. Harris had commissioned and fronted the child protection video, with endorsement from the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children, after being inspired by similar programs in Australia. In the period when the video began to be widely shown in schools, youth clubs and health institutes in the United Kingdom, the court found he was also having sexual encounters with his daughter’s best friend. In 1986, he had sexually abused an eight-year-old girl at a community centre near her home when Harris performed ‘Two Little Boys’ for the children.

Note: For more on this, see concise summaries of deeply revealing sex abuse scandals news articles from reliable major media sources.

Detainees wrested from sleep every 30 minutes, the lights in their frigid cells never turned off. One detainee told by officials, don't lie or you'll be raped. Another detainee sexually abused by guards. Detainees forced to stand in stress positions. Others denied adequate food, water, and medical treatment and held in dehumanizing conditions. "Welcome to hell," one guard told a detainee, a good metaphor for what occurs across these sites of torment. These incidents don't come from military prisons in Iraq or Afghanistan or CIA black sites. This has been happening for years along the Southwest border in U.S. government facilities run by U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) and its Border Patrol. The victims: children, some as young as infants. Government agencies have known about these abuses for a long time, but [have] failed to take action. One in four detained children reported physical abuse at the hands of CBP, including sexual assaults and beatings. More than half reported verbal abuse, including racist and sexist insults and even death threats, as well as the denial of urgent medical care. Seven out of ten interviewed reported detentions lasting longer than the 72-hour period mandated by law. Three out of ten children reported that their belongings were confiscated and never returned. Many others reported being shackled during transport, the metal restraints excruciatingly digging into their wrists and ankles. Eighty percent reported CBP personnel denied them adequate food and water. The tolerance of child abuse by federal authorities violates our laws and our values -- it is both inhumane and immoral. Now is the time to put an end to it.

Note: For more on this, see concise summaries of deeply revealing sexual abuse scandals news articles from reliable major media sources.

Tens of thousands of paedophiles are using the so-called dark net to trade images of sexual abuse, an investigation by BBC News indicates. Brits are heavily involved in producing and distributing illegal obscene images. Britain's National Crime Agency warned in its 2014 threat assessment that abusers were turning to anonymous sites and encryption technology. The dark net is the term used to refer to parts of the internet that are hidden and can be hard to access without special software. One of the most popular products used to access such areas is called the TorBrowser. It allows people to use Tor, an "onion-routing" system which makes a PC's net address untraceable by bouncing the encrypted data it sends through several randomly selected computer servers on a volunteer network - each of which removes a level of encryption - before it reaches its destination. There are also many hidden sites on the network ending in the .onion suffix, which cannot be found using Google or other regular search engines. Tor was first created by the US military but is now also used by pro-democracy campaigners, whistleblowers and journalists operating under repressive regimes. It was used by activists during the Arab Spring to avoid detection. But criminals are also taking advantage of its anonymity. IT experts are divided as to whether it's possible to create a workable "backdoor" into Tor, which would allow users to be identified. But some security specialists believe there are innovative ways to unmask the users of paedophile sites.

Note: Another BBC article reveals that over 100 million files containing images of child abuse have been reviewed. And this only counts the ones authorities have found and monitored. For more on this, see concise summaries of deeply revealing sexual abuse scandals news articles from reliable major media sources.

Although roughly 1 in 6 women nationwide are victims of sexual assault -- with the rate being higher for women in college, according to the National Crime Victimization Survey -- rapists often escape jail time. Only between 8 percent and 37 percent of rapes ever lead to prosecution, according to research funded by the Department of Justice, and just 3 percent to 18 percent of sexual assaults lead to a conviction. The likelihood of conviction inevitably factors into the decision of whether or not to pursue a case, explained Michelle J. Anderson, dean and professor of law at the City University of New York. The reasoning is based in how to spend limited time and resources. "What you don't want is the police and prosecutor's office to be more concerned with the win-loss record rather than justice," Anderson said. Recent legislation proposed in California and New York would require colleges to submit all reports of sexual assault to local police. The bill in California was developed at the urging of LAPD officers after it was revealed that USC and Occidental had underreported the number of assaults on campus. [But] the reality is [that] the criminal justice system often decides against prosecuting cases of acquaintance rape and date rape. An analysis of the National Violence Against Women Survey by the group End Violence Against Women International concluded that roughly 5 percent of rapes are ever prosecuted. Conviction rates present a "perverse incentive" for prosecutors to pursue only the strongest cases that offer the highest probability that a DA can win the case.

Note: For more on this, see concise summaries of deeply revealing sexual abuse scandals news articles from reliable major media sources.

The St. Louis archbishop embroiled in a sexual abuse scandal testified last month that he didn’t know in the 1980s whether it was illegal for priests to have sex with children, according to a court deposition released [on June 9]. Archbishop Robert Carlson, who was chancellor of the Archdiocese of Minneapolis and St. Paul at the time, was deposed as part of a lawsuit against the Twin Cities archdiocese and the Diocese of Winona, Minnesota. In a video released by the St. Paul law firm Jeff Anderson & Associates, the Catholic archbishop is asked whether he had known it was a crime for an adult to engage in sex with a child. “I’m not sure whether I knew it was a crime or not,” Carlson responded. “I understand today it’s a crime.” When asked when he first realized it was a crime for an adult — including priests — to have sex with a child, Carlson, 69, shook his head. “I don’t remember,” he testified. Attorney Jeff Anderson, who is representing an alleged clergy abuse victim, also released documents ... indicating Carlson was aware in 1984 of the seriousness of child abuse allegations. He admitted in his deposition that he never personally went to police, even when a clergy member admitted to inappropriate behavior. In last month’s testimony, Carlson responded 193 times that he did not recall abuse-related conversations from the 1980s to mid-1990s. Anderson provided a report from a previous deposition in 1987 in which now-deceased Bishop Loras Watters said he advised Carlson to answer “I don’t remember” if questioned in court. Carlson responded last month that he had “no knowledge of the discussion.”

Note: For more on this, see concise summaries of deeply revealing sexual abuse scandals news articles from reliable major media sources.

The discovery of a grave containing the remains of as many as 800 babies at a former home for unmarried mothers in Ireland is yet another problem for the Irish Catholic Church. The mother and baby home at Tuam in County Galway was run by the nuns of the Sisters of Bon Secours and operated between 1925 and 1961. It took in thousands of women who had committed the “mortal sin” of unwed pregnancy, delivered their babies and was charged with caring for them. But unsanitary conditions, poor food and a lack of medical care led to shockingly high rates of infant mortality. Babies’ bodies were deposited in a former sewage tank. Sadly, the mass grave at Tuam is probably not unique. Tuam was only one of a dozen mother and baby homes in Ireland in the years after the Second World War, all of which treated their inmates in a similar fashion. During 10 years of research into the Catholic Church’s treatment of “fallen women” — [a] book, Philomena: A Mother, Her Son, and a Fifty-Year Search, later turned into a feature film starring Dame Judi Dench — [revealed] that the girls were refused medical attention, including painkillers, during even the most difficult births; the nuns told them the pain was the penance they must pay for their sin. Philomena and thousands like her were forced to look after their babies for up to four years, bonding with them before they were taken away to be adopted. Many went to families in the United States in return for substantial “donations”; lack of proper vetting meant some were handed over to abusive parents.

Note: For more on this, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on child abuse scandals from reliable major media sources.

Thirty years ago ... began one of the longest, most expensive and notorious criminal investigations in American history. A Los Angeles grand jury charged Raymond Buckey, a 25-year-old teacher at the [McMartin] preschool, and six others with 321 counts of sexual abuse involving 48 children. In the end, after seven years and $15 million, the case fell of its own weight, ending without a single conviction. McMartin was the first of a series of prosecutions in the 1980s that have come to be seen as a collective witch hunt, in which panicked parents and incompetent investigators led children to make up stories of abuse by adults at day care centers and preschools. But what if the skeptics went too far? What if some of the children were really abused? And what if the legacy of these cases is a disturbing tendency to disbelieve children who say they are being molested? Those are the questions that frame The Witch-Hunt Narrative, [a] new book by Ross E. Cheit, a political scientist at Brown University who spent nearly 15 years on research, poring over old trial transcripts and interview tapes. His conclusion about the McMartin case is that the outcome was “doubly unjust.” While he acknowledges that some defendants were falsely accused, he argues that Mr. Buckey was probably guilty, meaning that some of the children were not only sexually abused but “have been demeaned by the witch-hunt narrative’s assertion that the entire case was a ‘hoax.’ ” He thinks the continued treatment of these cases as a modern-day episode of mass hysteria does disservice to children and even puts them in danger.

Note: For more on this, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on child abuse scandals from reliable major media sources.

Reports that nearly 800 dead babies were discovered in the septic tank of a home run by nuns [have] sparked calls for accountability from government and Catholic Church officials. Some 796 children were secretly buried in the sewage tank of the home in Tuam, County Galway, where unmarried pregnant women were sent to give birth in an attempt to preserve the country's devout Catholic image. The home was run by nuns from the Bon Secours Sisters congregation between 1925 and 1961. People who lived near the home said they have known about the unmarked mass grave for decades, but a fresh investigation was sparked this week after research by local historian Catherine Corless ... showed that of the hundreds of children who died at the home, only one was buried at a cemetery. She also said that health board records from the 1940s said conditions at the home were dire, with children suffering malnutrition and neglect and dying at a rate four times higher than in the rest of Ireland. The claims came to light after Corless obtained death records for the home and cross checked them with local cemetery records. According to Eoin O'Sullivan, associate professor at Trinity College Dublin, "Tuam was a former workhouse and conditions were pretty bleak," said O'Sullivan, co-author of the 2001 book Suffer the Little Children: The inside Story of Ireland's Industrial Schools. "Ireland's first mother and baby home, at Bessborough, in Cork, had an even worse infant mortality rate of around 82 percent: In the year ending March 31, 1944, 124 children were born or admitted there, and 102 died."

Note: For more on institutional abuse of children, see the deeply revealing reports from reliable major media sources available here.

[Linda] MacDonald and fellow [Nova Scotian] registered nurse Jeanne Sarson are the founders of Persons Against NST (Non-State Torture). They say their first foray into looking at domestic torture began in 1993 when Sarson took a call from a woman in her late [twenties] who goes by the name Sara. Sara, who is now 50 years old and uses a pseudonym to protect her identity, alleges she was starved, drugged, confined, beaten and raped by her own parents from the time she was a young child. "I remember so often being rented out and I remember the statement, 'Bring her back when you're done.' And I remember feeling like a thing," Sara says. "But also the whole time is so confusing, because you don't understand. I was so young and ... you think it's normal." Sarson and MacDonald say the violence suffered by Sara amounts to torture. They say being unable to find "torture-informed support" for Sara led them to start Persons Against NST. Over the years, Sarson and MacDonald say they've helped more than 3,000 victims of NST around the globe. MacDonald says counselling can continue for two to three years. In some cases, they work with victims for over a decade. Canada does not recognize "torture" under the law, unlike Michigan, California, France and Queensland, Australia, which do. Sarson and MacDonald say their goal is to have NST recognized as a "specific and distinct human rights violation." Sarson and MacDonald say they won't give up until police and politicians recognize that more resources are needed to help victims of torture.

Note: Bravo to CBC for reporting this, and if you want to know much more, read an excellent summary on the topic at this link. To understand the big picture behind this kind of torture, see our section revealing the deepest aspects of mind control.

If the now-viral video of Fort Worth City Council member Joel Burns' extraordinary address during an otherwise routine meeting ... does not move you to tears, you surely have a tough, leathery little peanut for a heart. Burns, who is gay, spoke directly to young victims of anti-gay bullying. He shared his own teenage experience of ugly, mindless victimization, and he made the promise to kids enduring similar torment: "It gets better." That's "It Gets Better" - with caps - since it's the name for an informal online video project of adults sharing their coming-out stories to teens who are struggling with their sexual orientation and especially vulnerable to harassment. Burns' statement ... could save somebody's life. It might already have [done so]. Burns first showed photos and told stories of a half-dozen teens whose recent suicides have been linked to ridicule they received for being - or being thought to be - gay. As cruel as these stories are, they are the most poignant evidence there is against the absurd notion that sexual orientation is a "lifestyle choice" instead of a biological reality. Burns deliberately sought the attention of scared, isolated kids who fear their misery is permanent. "I know that life can seem unbearable … but I want you to know that it gets better," he said. "You will get out of the household that doesn't accept you. You will get out of that high school, and you don't ever have to deal with those jerks again, if you don't want to."

Note: For the beautiful, touching 12-minute video where this courageous city council member talks about stopping school bullying which is killing innocent children, click here. And watch a touching seven-minute video about a very tough decision made by a caring couple about the gender of their child. For a treasure trove of great news articles which will inspire you to make a difference, click here.

Hundreds of people have contacted the FBI about a teacher suspected of drugging and molesting boys during a four-decade career at international schools on four continents, greatly expanding the potential number of suspected victims. The FBI said last month that William Vahey had molested at least 90 boys, whose photos were found on a memory drive stolen by his maid. Vahey killed himself at age 64 after evidence of molestation was found. He was one of the most beloved teachers in the world of international schools that serve the children of diplomats, well-off Americans and local elites. The discovery of his molestation has set off a crisis in the community of international schools, where parents are being told their children may have been victims, and administrators are scurrying to close loopholes exposed by Vahey's abuses. There were decades of missed opportunities to expose Vahey, starting with an early California sex-abuse conviction that didn't prevent him taking a series of jobs exposing him to children. Vahey began his international teaching career at the American School in Tehran, the first in a series of stays around the Middle East and Europe. He taught history, social studies and related subjects in Lebanon, Spain, Iran, Greece, Indonesia and Saudi Arabia, almost always to middle school students. In addition to teaching, he coached basketball and led school trips to Bahrain, Turkey and Africa.

Note: If you are ready to see how investigations into a massive child sex abuse ring have led to the highest levels of government, watch the suppressed Discovery Channel documentary "Conspiracy of Silence," available here. For more on sexual abuse scandals, see the deeply revealing reports from reliable major media sources available here.

There is a national crisis of federal employees engaged in the child porn industry and a related epidemic at the state level. Two states, Vermont and Maine, ... appear to be running state-protected child trafficking rings, with evidence of cops, judges, lawyers, clergy and government employees covering for each other. This kind of racketeering creates powerful, and extremely profitable, pedophile rings. Money drives the crime. Half of all global child porn is produced in America. Estimates of the global profits from child porn range from $3-20 billion. The Department of Justice (DOJ)’s Child Exploitation and Obscenities unit has been, by many accounts, totally disabled under. With so many police, judges, clergy, state and federal employees across America involved in the child porn industry Americans should be able to turn to the IRS’s Whistleblower program. Richard Weber, Chief of IRS’s Criminal Division in Washington DC, is one point of contact. Apparently, the IRS cares about trafficked children. Child trafficking and porn are the fastest growing crimes in America. With billions being laundered in black money it makes solid economic sense for the IRS to focus on the child porn industry. The IRS should be given substantial resources to compensate for DOJ’s disgraceful failure.

Note: If you are ready to see how investigations into a massive child sex abuse ring have led to the highest levels of government, watch the suppressed Discovery Channel documentary "Conspiracy of Silence," available here. For more on sexual abuse scandals, see the deeply revealing reports from reliable major media sources available here.

The Vatican revealed [on May 6] that over the past decade, it has defrocked 848 priests who raped or molested children and sanctioned another 2,572 with lesser penalties, providing the first ever breakdown of how it handled the more than 3,400 cases of abuse reported to the Holy See since 2004. The Vatican's U.N. ambassador in Geneva, Archbishop Silvano Tomasi, released the figures during a second day of grilling by a U.N. committee monitoring implementation of the U.N. treaty against torture. Tomasi insisted that the Holy See was only obliged to abide by the torture treaty inside the tiny Vatican City State, which has a population of only a few hundred people. But significantly, he didn't dispute the committee's contention that sexual violence against children can be considered torture. Legal experts have said that classifying sexual abuse as torture could expose the Catholic Church to a new wave of lawsuits since torture cases in much of the world don't carry statutes of limitations. The Vatican in 2001 required bishops and religious superiors to forward all credible cases of abuse to Rome for review after determining that they were shuffling pedophile priests from diocese to diocese rather than subjecting them to church trials. Only in 2010 did the Vatican explicitly tell bishops and superiors to also report credible cases to police where local reporting laws require them to. The Vatican statistics ... showed that far from diminishing in recent years, the number of cases reported annually to the Vatican has remained a fairly constant 400 or so since 2010.

Note: For more on sexual abuse by Catholic priests, see the deeply revealing reports from reliable major media sources available here.

The CDC estimates that 1 in 4 girls and 1 in 6 boys are sexually abused before the age of 18. Worldwide 550 million children are survivors of child abuse according to the Center for Advanced Studies in Child Welfare. The National Center for Missing and Exploited Children reports that there are currently 617,000 registered sex offenders in the United States, and typically 100,000 of those are unaccounted for. Other pedophiles are not on records or in databases. Research has shown that an average victim of child sex abuse has to tell at least seven adults before being believed. According to the Journal for the American Medical Association only 1 in 20 cases of child abuse are reported. It is critically important that every parent and adult responsible for the care of a child educate and empower themselves with the knowledge to stop predators. If we work together we can stop the stolen innocence of our children and that of others by spending a few hours educating ourselves. There is no greater tragedy than to live a life plagued by the shattered hopes and dreams of a vandalized childhood. To learn more about the education and prevention of child abuse go to the following websites: Joyful Heart Foundation, Childhelp, Stop Abusing Your Children and Arrow Child and Family Ministries.

Note: For more on what is being done to fight against the sexual abuse of children, see the deeply revealing reports from reliable major media sources available here.

The sexual abuse scandal that festered under [Pope John Paul's] watch remains a stain on his legacy. Pope Francis has inherited John Paul's most notorious failure on the sex abuse front — the Legion of Christ order, which John Paul and his top advisers held up as a model. The Legion admitted that its late founder sexually abused his seminarians and fathered three children. Yet the Legion's 2009 admission about the Rev. Marcial Maciel's double life was by no means news to the Vatican. Documents from the archives of the Vatican's then-Sacred Congregation for Religious show how a succession of papacies ... simply turned a blind eye to credible reports that Maciel was a con artist, drug addict, pedophile and religious fraud. The documents show the Holy See was well aware of Maciel's drug abuse, sexual abuse and financial improprieties as early as 1956, when it ordered an initial investigation and suspended him for two years to kick a morphine habit. Maciel's fraud, one of the greatest scandals of the 20th-century Catholic Church, raises uncomfortable questions for today's Vatican about how so many people could have been duped for so long. [This] brings into question how the church's own structure, values and priorities enabled a cult-like order to grow from within and how far accountability for all the harm done should go. It begs the question of whether the order has really been purged of the abuses that allowed generations of priests to subject themselves to blind obedience to a false prophet.

Note: It is all too clear that a succession of popes and cardinals of the Catholic church were well aware of these severe child sex abuse scandals for decades, yet took no serious steps to stop the harm being inflicted on innocent children. To learn how child sex-abuse rings lead to top levels of both political and religious leadership around the world, watch the powerful Discovery Channel documentary "Conspiracy of Silence" at this link and read the astounding news reports available here.

The federal government’s spy-satellite agency failed to alert authorities after some of its employees and contractors admitted during polygraph tests to crimes including child molestation and lying on security-clearance questionnaires, according to a watchdog. The intelligence community’s inspector general released two reports ... saying the National Reconnaissance Office did not refer some of the cases because of confusion about reporting expectations and requirements. According to one of the reports, an Air Force lieutenant colonel admitted during a 2010 lie-detector test to touching a child in a sexual way and downloading child pornography on his work computer. The NRO only reported that case to the Air Force division that oversees security clearances instead of the Justice Department or the Air Force’s special-investigations office, the inspector general said. The NRO is not legally required to report certain state crimes such as child molestation. Thirty individuals who took NRO lie-detector tests from 2009 through 2012 admitted to child abuse or using child pornography, according to the report. The NRO failed to report three of those cases. Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), who requested the review after a McClatchy news investigation raised concerns about the matter in 2012, said the NRO showed a “complete lack of common sense in failing to require reporting of serious state crimes of this sort.”

Note: The NRO is the agency that was running a drill on the morning of 9/11 of an airplane crashing into one of its Washington, DC buildings, as reported in this USA Today article. It has also allegedly been involved in the UFO cover-up, as reported in this testimony.

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.