News ArticlesExcerpts of Key News Articles in Major Media
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U.S. Border Patrol agents freely used the derogatory slur "tonk" to describe unauthorized migrants on government computers, at times while joking about killing or beating them, according to emails and text messages disclosed to HuffPost under the Freedom of Information Act. The documents, from 2017 to 2020, reveal yet another instance of the Border Patrol's use of a slang term that officials in Washington have condemned but have struggled to stamp out. This is the second disclosure that Border Patrol personnel used the word in internal communications since HuffPost first requested a global search of its use among Border Patrol agents four years ago. The origin of the term is uncertain, but most insiders believe it comes from the sound made by bashing an arrested migrant's head with a government-issued flashlight. Some of the records reference that origin story, with one agent writing: "ah, savor the sound." Use of the term remained surprisingly common among both rank-and-file agents and those in leadership positions, the records show. Many agents appeared to use the term as a synonym for unauthorized migrants, with little apparent derogatory intent. But the slur often appeared alongside expressions of raw contempt for the people whom Border Patrol officers police. Border Patrol agents who used the slur at times gloated about migrants' misfortunes or made references to beating them. In one instance, agents joked about killing migrant children in their custody.
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Federal and state Homeland Security grants allow local law enforcement agencies to surveil American citizens with technology more commonly found in war zones and foreign espionage operations. At least two Texas communities along the U.S.-Mexico border have purchased a product called "TraffiCatch," which collects the unique wireless and Bluetooth signals emitted by nearly all modern electronics to identify devices and track their movements. The product is also listed in a federal supply catalog run by the U.S. government's General Services Administration, which negotiates prices and contracts for federal agencies. Combining license plate information with data collected from wireless signals is the kind of surveillance the U.S. military and intelligence agencies have long used, with devices mounted in vehicles, on drones or carried by hand to pinpoint the location of cell phones and other electronic devices. Their usage was once classified and deployed in places like Afghanistan and Iraq. Today, similar devices are showing up in the streets of American cities. The Supreme Court has said that attaching a GPS tracking device to a car or getting historical location data from a cell carrier requires a search warrant. However, law enforcement has found ways around these prohibitions. Increasingly, as people walk around with headphones, fitness wearables and other devices ... their data can be linked to a car, even after they have ditched the car. Courts have not definitively grappled with the question: Under what circumstances can law enforcement passively capture ambient signal information and use it as a tracking tool?
Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on police corruption and the disappearance of privacy from reliable major media sources.
Scientists have developed a "self-digesting plastic", which, they say, could help reduce pollution. Polyurethane is used in everything from phone cases to trainers, but is tricky to recycle and mainly ends up in landfill. However, researchers have come up with a sci-fi like solution. By incorporating spores of plastic-eating bacteria they've developed a plastic that can self-destruct. The spores remain dormant during the useful lifetime of the plastic, but spring back to life and start to digest the product when exposed to nutrients in compost. There's hope "we can mitigate plastic pollution in nature", said researcher Han Sol Kim, of the University of California San Diego, La Jolla. And there might be an added advantage in that the spores increase the toughness of the plastic. "Our process makes the materials more rugged, so it extends its useful lifetime," said co-researcher, Jon Pokorski. "And then, when it's done, we're able to eliminate it from the environment, regardless of how it's disposed." The plastic is currently being worked on at the laboratory bench but could be in the real world within a few years, with the help of a manufacturer, he added. The type of bacteria added to the plastic is Bacillus subtilis, widely used as a food additive and a probiotic. Crucially, the bacteria has to be genetically engineered to be able to withstand the very high temperatures needed to make plastic.
Note: Explore more positive stories about healing the Earth.
At first glance there's nothing particularly remarkable about waxworms. The larval form of wax moths, these pale wriggling grubs feed on the wax that bees use to make their honeycomb. For beekeepers, the pests are something to swiftly get rid of without a second thought. But in 2017 molecular biologist Federica Bertocchini ... stumbled on a potentially game-changing discovery about these creatures. Bertocchini, an amateur beekeeper, threw some of the waxworms in a plastic bag after cleaning her hive, and left them alone. A short time later, she noticed the worms had started producing small holes in the plastic, which begun degrading as soon as it touched the worms' mouths. The worms were doing something that we as humans find remarkably difficult to do: break down plastic. Not only that, but the worms appeared to be digesting the plastic as though it was food. Bertocchini and her fellow researchers began collecting the liquid excreted from the worms' mouths. They found this "saliva" contained two critical enzymes, Ceres and Demeter – named after the Roman and Greek goddesses of agriculture, respectively – which were able to oxidise the polyethylene in the plastic, essentially breaking down that material on contact. Bertocchini is now chief technology officer at bioresearch startup Plasticentropy France, working with a team to study the viability of scaling up these enzymes for widespread use in degrading plastic.
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At CIA, we find inspiration in all kinds of places. From robotic catfish to real-life spy birds, animals and their look-alikes have helped Agency officers perform a variety of critical duties, including eavesdropping, intelligence gathering, security, covert communications, and photo surveillance. During the Cold War ... CIA's Office of Research and Development created a camera so tiny and lightweight that a pigeon could carry it. The camera was strapped to the bird's chest with a little harness, and the bird would be released over a secret area ... that we wanted to know more about. The camera would snap pictures as the bird flew back home to us. During the Vietnam War ... CIA scientists invented what is known as the seismic intruder detection device. It could be strategically placed to monitor movements up to 300 meters away. However, our scientists had to disguise the technology. Since tigers are native to Vietnam ... they provided the ideal cover. The detection device was designed to look like tiger droppings. In the 1970s, CIA's Office of Research and Development created "Insectothopter," the first insect-sized unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) of its kind! It was disguised as an everyday dragon fly. CIA's Office of Technical Services thought rats would be a great way to conceal things during the Cold War. They treated the rat's carcass with a preservation agent, cut it open, and created a hollow cavity where our officers could hide things like money, notes, or even film. The rat would then be sewn back up, placed at a pre-determined dead drop location, and then left for the asset to retrieve. During testing phases, the rats went missing because stray cats had stolen them.
Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on intelligence agency corruption and the disappearance of privacy from reliable major media sources.
A 30-second commercial seems harmless. However, new research from my lab shows that food marketing to kids is more than a nuisance: it's a key driver of poor diets. Food marketing impacts what kids like, buy and eat – increasing the risk of dental caries, obesity and type 2 diabetes. Like tobacco, tighter regulation of junk food marketing to children is needed to protect their health. This week, a bill introduced in the Senate, the Childhood Diabetes Reduction Act, proposes a crucial step forward by proposing limits on the types of techniques used to target kids ... as well as limits on where such ads can appear. The bill would cut kids' exposure to the most harmful types of food marketing. Companies spend $14 billion each year on marketing to children, over 80 percent of which is for fast food and other ultraprocessed foods like snacks, candy and sodas. In 2016, Chile restricted child-directed appeals and placement of ads on children's programming for unhealthy products and banned their sale and promotion in schools. In 2018, the country began prohibiting unhealthy food ads on any television program between 6am – 10pm. These regulations cut kids' exposure to unhealthy food marketing by over two-thirds. While the Chilean regulation is much more comprehensive than what is being proposed in the U.S., the Senate bill would still achieve important progress by reducing kids' exposure to the types of targeted marketing most likely to hook them on products.
Note: Big Food profits immensely as American youth face a growing health crisis, with close to 30% prediabetic, one in six youth obese, and over half of children facing a chronic illness. Nearly 40% of conventional baby food contains toxic pesticides. For more along these lines, explore concise summaries of news articles on food system corruption from reliable major media sources.
SpaceX recently secured a classified contract to build an extensive network of "spy satellites" for an undisclosed U.S. intelligence agency, with one source telling Reuters that "no one can hide" under the prospective network's reach. The U.S. is funding or otherwise supporting a range of defense contractors and startups working to create a new generation of space-bound weapons, surveillance systems, and adjacent technologies. In other words, America is hell-bent on a new arms race – in space. The Space Force, an entirely new branch of the military "focused solely on pursuing superiority in the space domain," was launched in 2019, signaling renewed emphasis on space militarization as U.S. policy. Space Force's Space Development Agency recently granted defense contractors L3Harris and Lockheed Martin and space company Sierra Space contracts worth $2.5 billion to build satellites for the U.S. military's Proliferated Warfighter Space Architecture (PWSA), a constellation of hundreds of satellites, built out on tranches, that provide various warfighting capabilities, including the collection and transmission of critical wartime communications, into low-Earth orbit. The PWSA will serve as the backbone of the Pentagon's Joint All-Domain Command and Control project, an effort to bolster warfighting capacities and decision-making processes by facilitating "information advantage at the speed of relevance." Other efforts are just as sci-fi-esque.
Note: Learn more about emerging warfare technology in our comprehensive Military-Intelligence Corruption Information Center. For more, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on military corruption from reliable major media sources.
Experienced professionals are increasingly scared to openly discuss their views on the treatment of children questioning their gender identity. This was the conclusion drawn by Hilary Cass in her review of gender identity services for children this week, which warned that a toxic debate had resulted in a culture of fear. Her conclusion was echoed by doctors, academic researchers and scientists. Some said they had been deterred from pursuing what they believed to be crucial studies, saying that merely entering the arena would put their reputation at risk. Others spoke of abuse on social media, academic conferences being shut down, biases in publishing and the personal cost of speaking out. Sallie Baxendale, a professor of clinical neuropsychology ... received abuse after publishing a systematic review of studies that investigated the impact of puberty blockers on brain development. Her review found that "critical questions" remained around the nature, extent and permanence of any arrested development of cognitive function linked to the treatment. The paper, which summarised the state of relevant research, was met with an immediate backlash. "I've been accused of being an anti-trans activist, and that now comes up on Google and is never going to go away," Baxendale said. "Imagine what it's like if that is the first thing that comes up when people Google you? Anyone who publishes in this field has got to be prepared for that."
Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on health and corruption in science from reliable major media sources.
A robust British review found guidelines for the treatment of children with gender dysphoria ignored standards and are based on flimsy foundations. Pediatrician Hilary Cass' much-anticipated report found no reliable evidence on which to base gender-affirming care for youth; the rationale for blocking puberty in young children remains unclear and muddled and that the use of cross-sex hormones in the under-18s presents numerous unknowns. Cass said published studies suffer from "remarkably weak evidence," that results are "exaggerated or mispresented" by people on both sides of the debate over transgender health care to bolster their own viewpoint. Cass found that there is no solid evidence on the long-term outcomes of any of the interventions. Cass said the toxicity of the debate has been exceptional. "There are few other areas of healthcare where professionals are so afraid to openly discuss their views, where people are vilified on social media and where name-calling echoes the worst bullying behaviour. This must stop," Cass wrote. The systematic review on puberty blockers found no evidence the drugs improve body image or dysphoria. The drugs might temporarily or permanently disrupt adolescent brain maturation, "which could have a significant impact on the young person's ability to make complex risk-laden decisions, as well as having possible longer-term neuropsychological consequences," according to the Cass report.
Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on health and corruption in science from reliable major media sources.
By the time I was 24 years old, my life was in complete shambles. I had long-standing substance abuse problems. I sold drugs and trafficked guns. My addiction and illegal business culminated in an incident in which an innocent bystander was killed. I was convicted of second-degree murder and sentenced to just under 30 years to life. Once in prison ... I lost even more of myself in drugs, violence and jailhouse politics. I knew that I had to change, but I didn't think it was possible. Furthermore, I didn't know how to start. Then one day, at age 30, I did the most benign-seeming thing that changed everything: I quit drinking soda. I had read some articles about how soda can contribute to health issues like diabetes and obesity, and how it can weaken tooth enamel. This was the first time in my life that I had made that kind of change. Quitting soda was my step one. That simple act allowed me to trace the catastrophic outcomes of my life back to my lack of self-discipline, and it convinced me that change was possible. Step two was to make more behavioral changes related to self discipline, like lifting weights and learning to play chess. By choosing relatively minor changes at first, and implementing them incrementally, they were easy for me to sustain. This led to step three: My new behaviors becoming habits, and those habits elevating my level of self-discipline. This elevation allowed me to tackle more significant behavioral changes like quitting smoking and drugs.
Note: Explore more positive human interest stories and find out how people are repairing criminal justice.
Jaye Rochon struggled to lose weight for years. But she felt as if a burden had lifted when she discovered YouTube influencers advocating "health at every size" – urging her to stop dieting and start listening to her "mental hunger." In two months, she regained 50 pounds. As her weight neared 300 pounds, she began to worry about her health. The videos that Rochon encountered are part of the "anti-diet" movement, a social media juggernaut that began as an effort to combat weight stigma and an unhealthy obsession with thinness. But now global food marketers are seeking to cash in on the trend. General Mills, maker of Cocoa Puffs and Lucky Charms cereals, has launched a multipronged campaign that capitalizes on the teachings of the anti-diet movement. General Mills has toured the country touting anti-diet research it claims proves the harms of "food shaming." It has showered giveaways on registered dietitians who promote its cereals online with the hashtag #DerailTheShame, and sponsored influencers who promote its sugary snacks. The company has also enlisted a team of lobbyists and pushed back against federal policies that would add health information to food labels. Since the 1980s, the U.S. obesity rate has more than doubled, according to federal data. Nearly half a million Americans die early each year as a result of excess body weight, according to estimates in a 2022 Lancet study. The anti-diet approach essentially shifts accountability for the health crisis away from the food industry for creating ultra-processed junk foods laden with food additives, sugars and artificial sweeteners.
Note: For more along these lines,explore summaries of news articles on health and food system corruption from reliable major media sources.
Americans are constantly told we are hopelessly divided. Our politicians relentlessly accuse the other side of undermining democracy and endangering the vulnerable, while our legacy media, which no longer even pretends to be objective, consistently portrays its side's enemies in the starkest of terms. A 2019 study by James Druckman and Matthew Levendusky in Public Opinion Quarterly found that individuals harbor more animus toward the other party's elites than they do toward people who vote for the other party. I spent one year interviewing working-class Americans across the country from every political persuasion for my new book, and what I found was a remarkable consensus on the issues. The partisan claims of a polarized America ring especially false to working-class Americans. Two-thirds of Americans agree that abortion should be rare and also legal. This is because–unlike the college-educated elites who run the country–they don't identify with the full list of policy proposals produced by either party. Working-class Americans across the country ... want higher wages. They want better healthcare–or really, just affordable healthcare. They want stable jobs that reward their immense efforts with [what] top income brackets take for granted: a home. And yet, neither political party represents these positions that unify most Americans. They know that the way they vote reflects only a portion of their political views, and extremely little of their larger identities. There is no party that represents the American Dream, in which a life of hard work is rewarded by a home, retirement, the occasional vacation, and a better life for one's kids. In other words, a life free from the precariousness that plagues the working class today. It's led to a working-class electorate that feels alienated from both parties.
Note: A groundbreaking 2022 study by More in Common revealed that Americans significantly overestimated the extremity of the beliefs held by those with differing viewpoints. Read our powerful Substack on healing the polarization poisoning our conversations. For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on financial inequality.
Hardware that breaks into your phone; software that monitors you on the internet; systems that can recognize your face and track your car: The New York State Police are drowning in surveillance tech. Last year alone, the Troopers signed at least $15 million in contracts for powerful new surveillance tools. Surveillance technology has far outpaced traditional privacy laws. In New York, lawmakers launched a years-in-the-making legislative campaign last year to rein in police intrusion. None of their bills have made it out of committee. A report from the U.S. Office of the Director of National Intelligence, put it succinctly: "The government would never have been permitted to compel billions of people to carry location tracking devices on their persons at all times, to log and track most of their social interactions, or to keep flawless records of all their reading habits." That report called specific attention to the "data broker loophole": law enforcement's practice of obtaining data for which they'd otherwise have to obtain a warrant by buying it from brokers. The New York State Police have taken greater and greater advantage of the loophole in recent years. They've also spent millions on mobile device forensic tools, or MDFTs, powerful hacking hardware and software that allow users to download full, searchable copies of a cellphone's data, including social media messages, emails, web and search histories, and minute-by-minute location information.
Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on police corruption and the disappearance of privacy from reliable major media sources.
Have you heard about the new Google? They "supercharged" it with artificial intelligence. Somehow, that also made it dumber. With the regular old Google, I can ask, "What's Mark Zuckerberg's net worth?" and a reasonable answer pops up: "169.8 billion USD." Now let's ask the same question with the "experimental" new version of Google search. Its AI responds: Zuckerberg's net worth is "$46.24 per hour, or $96,169 per year. This is equivalent to $8,014 per month, $1,849 per week, and $230.6 million per day." Google acting dumb matters because its AI is headed to your searches sooner or later. The company has already been testing this new Google – dubbed Search Generative Experience, or SGE – with volunteers for nearly 11 months, and recently started showing AI answers in the main Google results even for people who have not opted in to the test. To give us answers to everything, Google's AI has to decide which sources are reliable. I'm not very confident about its judgment. Remember our bonkers result on Zuckerberg's net worth? A professional researcher – and also regular old Google – might suggest checking the billionaires list from Forbes. Google's AI answer relied on a very weird ZipRecruiter page for "Mark Zuckerberg Jobs," a thing that does not exist. The new Google can do some useful things. But as you'll see, it sometimes also makes up facts, misinterprets questions, [and] delivers out-of-date information. This test of Google's future has been going on for nearly a year, and the choices being made now will influence how billions of people get information.
Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on AI technology from reliable major media sources.
A federal appeals court in the US has killed a ban on plastic containers contaminated with highly toxic PFAS "forever chemicals" found to leach at alarming levels into food, cosmetics, household cleaners, pesticides and other products across the economy. Houston-based Inhance manufactures an estimated 200m containers annually with a process that creates, among other chemicals, PFOA, a toxic PFAS compound. The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) in December prohibited Inhance from using the manufacturing process. But the conservative fifth circuit court of appeals court overturned the ban. The judges did not deny the containers' health risks, but said the EPA could not regulate the buckets under the statute it used. The rule requires companies to alert the EPA if a new industrial process creates hazardous chemicals. Inhance has produced the containers for decades and argued that its process is not new, so it is not subject to the regulations. The EPA argued that it only became aware that Inhance's process created PFOA in 2020, so it could be regulated as a new use, but the court disagreed. PFAS are a class of about 15,000 compounds [that] have been linked to cancer, high cholesterol, liver disease, kidney disease, fetal complications and other serious health problems. A peer-reviewed study in 2011 found Inhance's containers leached the toxic compounds into their contents.
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Private donors including big-box stores, fossil fuel companies, and tech giants are secretly giving hundreds of millions of dollars annually to law enforcement agencies and related foundations, allowing police to buy specialized weapons and technology with little public oversight. Experts say this huge deluge of police "dark money" funding, detailed in a new University of Chicago working paper ... leaves law enforcement beholden to the companies and powerful donors bankrolling them, rather than the communities that officers are sworn to serve. The study, which analyzed a database of nonprofit tax returns, found that from 2014 to 2019, more than 600 private donors and organizations collectively funneled $461 million to police and to other nonprofits supporting police. The Baltimore Police Department for years used private money to fund a secret aerial surveillance program that could track the locations of people throughout the city in real time. The program ... was eventually ruled unconstitutional in court. In Los Angeles, the city's police department used money from Target ... routed through a local police foundation – to purchase software from Palantir, venture capitalist Peter Thiel's data analytics company, that provides police massive amounts of sensitive data and purports to identify crime "hot spots." For the most part, the millions in dark-money funding that police agencies receive each year is perfectly legal. There are largely no laws or policies governing foundation donations to the police.
Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on police corruption and the disappearance of privacy from reliable major media sources.
The FBI spends "every day, all day long" interrogating people over their Facebook posts. At least, that's what agents told Stillwater, Oklahoma, resident Rolla Abdeljawad when they showed up at her house to ask her about her social media activity. Three FBI agents came to Abdeljawad's house and said that they had been given "screenshots" of her posts by Facebook. Her lawyer Hassan Shibly posted a video of the incident. "Facebook gave us a couple of screenshots of your account," one agent in a gray shirt said in the video. "So we no longer live in a free country and we can't say what we want?" replied Abdeljawad. "No, we totally do. That's why we're not here to arrest you or anything," a second agent in a red shirt added. "We do this every day, all day long. It's just an effort to keep everybody safe and make sure nobody has any ill will." Shibly says that he doesn't know which Facebook post caught the agents' attention, and that it was the first time he had heard of Facebook's parent company, Meta, preemptively reporting posts to law enforcement. [Abdeljawad] made multiple angry posts per day about the war in Gaza, referring to Israel as "Israhell." But none of the posts on her feed call for violence. Ironically, Abdeljawad had also posted a warning about exactly the kind of government monitoring she was later subjected to. "Don't fall for their games. Our community is being watched & they are just waiting for any reason to round us up," Abdeljawad wrote.
Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on government corruption and the erosion of civil liberties from reliable major media sources.
The Haitian Bald Headed Party (PHTK) has tyrannically ruled Haiti since 2011. The U.S. State Department, who unilaterally picked Ariel Henry to be Haiti's prime minister in July of 2021, has now decided Henry no longer fits their interests and has forced him to step down. Henry was prevented from returning to Haiti on March 5 by paramilitary gangs who attempted to take the Toussaint Louverture International Airport, opening fire and hitting a plane bound for Cuba. The imperial forces responsible for over half a million illegal U.S. guns in Haiti that fuel this unparalleled violence are now preparing their next move to keep Haiti subdued. For the past 18 months, the Biden administration has sought to facilitate what will be the fourth U.S.-led foreign invasion and occupation of Haiti in the last 100 years by deputizing Kenya, Benin, the Bahamas, and other western neocolonies to carry out the occupation. The CIA remains active as well seeking a neocolony the U.S. can deputize to carry out this invasion. The only Haitian representatives that can be considered for the U.S.-led transitional government have to agree to the occupation. U.S. policy empowers and works with corrupt political leadership in Haiti because they can be relied upon to do the U.S.'s bidding. Meanwhile, those leaders who refuse to sell out to imperial interests are repressed and murdered. The ruling PHTK [has] bragged about being "legal bandits" above the law and employing ... government death squads armed with hundreds of thousands of U.S. weapons.
Note: The US government wants Ariel Henry out to purportedly prevent a full scale civil war. Is the US now trying to address Haitian stability and violence that US policies have helped create? Read about US involvement in the assassination of Haitian President Jovenel MoĂŻse. Learn more about the role the arms industry plays in global conflicts in our comprehensive Military-Intelligence Corruption Information Center.
A Silicon Valley defense tech startup is working on products that could have as great an impact on warfare as the atomic bomb, its founder Palmer Luckey said. "We want to build the capabilities that give us the ability to swiftly win any war we are forced to enter," he [said]. The Anduril founder didn't elaborate on what impact AI weaponry would have. But asked if it would be as decisive as the atomic bomb to the outcome of World War II he replied: "We have ideas for what they are. We are working on them." In 2022, Anduril won a contract worth almost $1 billion with the Special Operations Command to support its counter-unmanned systems. Anduril's products include autonomous sentry towers along the Mexican border [and] Altius-600M attack drones supplied to Ukraine. All of Anduril's tech operates autonomously and runs on its AI platform called Lattice that can easily be updated. The success of Anduril has given hope to other smaller players aiming to break into the defense sector. As an escalating number of global conflicts has increased demand for AI-driven weaponry, venture capitalists have put more than $100 billion into defense tech since 2021, according to Pitchbook data. The rising demand has sparked a fresh wave of startups lining up to compete with industry "primes" such as Lockheed Martin and RTX (formerly known as Raytheon) for a slice of the $842 billion US defense budget.
Note: Learn more about emerging warfare technology in our comprehensive Military-Intelligence Corruption Information Center. For more, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on corruption in the military and in the corporate world from reliable major media sources.
It prides itself on offering an "assortment of family-friendly programming." For Alexa Nikolas, however, Nickelodeon's claims concealed a darker truth. She says young stars were exploited into taking part in sexually suggestive scenes. "Kids are groomed into thinking that the lines that they're doing are pretend, that it's not real life," the star, who played Nicole Bristow on the Nickelodeon TV series Zoey 101, [said]. Nikolas spoke out in the wake of docuseries Quiet on Set: The Dark Side of Kids TV, which aired on the Investigation Discovery channel ... and exposed the "toxic culture" and alleged abuse on the set of some of Nickelodeon's biggest shows. In addition to Nikolas, several former child stars have spoken out, claiming sexual assault and harassment while working for the channel. Drake & Josh star Drake Bell speaks publicly for the first time about being repeatedly molested by his dialogue coach, Peck, when he was 15. "I was sleeping on the couch where I usually sleep and I woke up to him... I opened my eyes and I woke up and he was...he was sexually assaulting me." Bell claimed the abuse occurred more than once and said he was scared to report it. He explained: "And it just got worse, and worse, and worse, and worse, and I was just trapped. I had no way out. The abuse was extensive and it got pretty brutal." The four-part docuseries documents the child sexual abuse committed by assistant Jason Handy, dialogue coach Brian Peck, and studio freelancer Ezel Channel, as well as the alleged abusive and misogynistic behavior of showrunner Dan Schneider.
Note: 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. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on corporate corruption and sexual abuse scandals from reliable major media sources.
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