Sex Abuse Scandals News Articles

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The first trial to contend with the post-9/11 abuse of detainees in US custody begins on Monday, in a case brought by three men who were held in the US-run Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq. The jury trial, in a federal court in Virginia, comes nearly 20 years to the day that the photographs depicting torture and abuse in the prison were first revealed to the public, prompting an international scandal that came to symbolize the treatment of detainees in the US "war on terror". The long-delayed case was brought by Suhail Najim Abdullah Al Shimari, Salah Al-Ejaili and As'ad Al-Zuba'e, three Iraqi civilians who were detained at Abu Ghraib, before being released without charge in 2004. The men are suing CACI Premier Technology, a private company that was contracted by the US government to provide interrogators at the prison. Only a handful of lower-rank soldiers faced military trials; no military or political leaders, or private contractors, were held legally accountable for what happened at Abu Ghraib or at any other facility where US detainees were tortured. As governments' reliance on private actors in conflict zones and crisis situations has grown exponentially since the war in Iraq, the case is also a test of the courts' ability to hold those contractors responsible for human rights abuses. The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan ... earned private companies trillions in defense and other government contracts. To this day, CACI continues to make millions in US government contracts.

Note: Read more about the horrific abuses at Abu Ghraib. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on military corruption from reliable major media sources.

Maya Jones* was only 13 when she first walked through the door of Courtney's House, a drop-in centre for victims of child sex trafficking. When she was 12, she had started receiving direct messages on Instagram from a man she didn't know. She decided to meet him in person. Then came his next request: "Can you help me make some money?" According to Frundt, Maya explained that the man asked her to pose naked for photos, and to give him her Instagram password so that he could upload the photos to her profile. Frundt says Maya told her that the man, who was now calling himself a pimp, was using her Instagram profile to advertise her for sex. The internet is used by human traffickers as "digital hunting fields", allowing them access to both customers and potential victims, with children being targeted by traffickers on social media platforms. The biggest of these, Facebook, is owned by Meta, the tech giant whose platforms, which also include Instagram, are used by more than 3 billion people. In 2020, according to a report by US-based not-for-profit the Human Trafficking Institute, Facebook was the platform most used to groom and recruit children by sex traffickers (65%), based on an analysis of 105 federal child sex trafficking cases that year. The HTI analysis ranked Instagram second most prevalent, with Snapchat third. While Meta says it is doing all it can, we have seen evidence that suggests it is failing to report or even detect the full extent of what is happening.

Note: 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.

Clergy members in the Roman Catholic Church in France sexually abused more than 200,000 minors over the past seven decades, according to an estimate published on Tuesday by an independent commission that concluded the problem was far more pervasive than previously known. The long-awaited 2,500-page report by the Independent Commission on Sexual Abuse in the Church laid out in detail how the church hierarchy had repeatedly silenced the victims and failed to report or discipline the clergy members involved. "The church failed to see or hear, failed to pick up on the weak signals, failed to take the rigorous measures that were necessary," Jean-Marc Sauvé, the commission president, said. For years, the church showed a "deep, total and even cruel indifference toward victims," he added. There has been a growing reckoning with sexual abuse in the church in France after a series of high-profile scandals. The investigative commission was set up in 2018 at the request of the Catholic Church in France in response to criticism of its handling of abuse cases. The findings were the most extensive account to date of the scope of sexual abuse by clergy in the country. About 216,000 minors, mostly boys ages 10 to 13, have been abused by clergy members in France since 1950, according to an estimate by the commission. The figure reached 330,000 after including perpetrators who were laypeople and worked for the church or were affiliated with it, such as Boy Scout organizers or Catholic school staff.

Note: And this CNN article is titled "Up to 3,200 pedophiles worked in French Catholic Church since 1950, independent commission says." For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on sexual abuse scandals from reliable major media sources.

Millions of dollars that were sent from the estate of disgraced billionaire pedophile Jeffrey Epstein into a dormant bank he had opened in 2014 has raised questions from a judge overseeing a court case over his remaining assets. In court documents obtained yesterday regarding the billionaire's Virgin Islands assets, a judge found that in August last year, when Epstein was found hanged in his jail cell, the financier's bank in the territory ... had no more than $693,157. In December, Epstein's estate transferred $15.5 million to the bank. The bank sent back $2.6 million, leaving $12.9 million. There was then a withdrawal of almost all funds before the end of the year, leaving the balance at around $500,000. In January, a lawsuit filed by the US Virgin Islands posthumously accused Epstein of sexually abusing and trafficking hundreds of girls and young women on his private Caribbean island as recently as 2018 and had a database to keep track of their availability. The lawsuit, filed against the millionaire pedophile's estate last month claimed Epstein used his two private islands in the U.S. territory to engage in a nearly two-decade conspiracy to traffic and abuse girls as young as 11 or 12. Many of the victims were allegedly aspiring models from South America and he used fake modelling visas to fly them across international borders to his two islands - known as Little Saint James and Great Saint James - the lawsuit claims.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on Jeffrey Epstein from reliable major media sources.

Prince Andrew announced on Wednesday that he would step back from public life, seeking to contain a firestorm over his ties to the disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein. “It has become clear to me over the past few days that my association with Jeffrey Epstein has become a major disruption to my family’s work and the valuable work going on in the many organizations and charities that I am proud to support,” Prince Andrew said in a statement. “Therefore, I have asked Her Majesty if I can step back from public duties for the foreseeable future, and she has given her permission,” said the prince, who is also known as the Duke of York. The duke, 59, had hoped that the interview, broadcast Saturday by the BBC, would put to rest lingering questions about his ties to Mr. Epstein, as well as accusations that he had sex with a teenage girl who had been supplied to him by his friend. Instead, after the duke submitted to 50 minutes of polite but relentless grilling by the BBC journalist Emily Maitlis, his unsavory association with Mr. Epstein ... mutated into a full-blown scandal. Viewers expressed shock and anger at Prince Andrew’s lack of sympathy for Mr. Epstein’s victims, as well as his unpersuasive denials of sexual misconduct, which included peculiar assertions, such as that he has been medically unable to perspire since his combat tour in the Falklands War. In August ... Virginia Roberts Giuffre, accused the prince of having sex with her three times when she was 17 years old and had been offered to him by Mr. Epstein.

Note: Prince Andrew is finding himself increasingly isolated because of comments he's made about Epstein. Explore an article in the UK's Telegraph titled "Prince Andrew named in secret new evidence against Jeffrey Epstein." For more, see summaries of deeply revealing news articles on Jeffrey Epstein. Watch an excellent segment by Australia's "60-Minutes" team "Spies, Lords and Predators" on a pedophile ring in the UK which leads to the highest levels of government. A second suppressed documentary, "Conspiracy of Silence," goes even deeper into this topic in the US.

Maria Farmer, who has accused Jeffrey Epstein and his friend Ghislaine Maxwell of assaulting her in 1996, said Maxwell threatened her life after the assault. Farmer ... was a young artist when she met Epstein and Maxwell at an art show in New York City in 1995. Epstein had bought one of Farmer's paintings ... and eventually offered her a job. The 26-year old soon found herself working the front desk in his palatial New York City townhouse. "All day long. I saw Ghislaine going to get the women. She went to places like Central Park. I was with her a couple of times in the car ... She would say ,'Stop the car.' And she would dash out and get a child." Epstein ultimately led her to his bathroom. "And there was a marble, like, altar thing over here, and he said that's where he gets his massages," Farmer said. Epstein told her the whole house was wired with pinhole cameras and took her into the media room where they were monitored. In the summer of 1996, Farmer said Epstein sent her to ... the vast estate of Les Wexner, the CEO of L Brands, which owns "Victoria's Secret." Farmer alleges in her complaint that Maxwell and Epstein sexually assaulted her there. When she tried to flee the following day, she wasn't allowed to leave. She claims a member of Wexner's staff warned her. "His exact words were: 'You're not going anywhere. You are never leaving,'" she said. Farmer reported the assault to the FBI, but it wasn't for another decade, just before Epstein's first arrest in 2006, that an agent finally appeared at her door, she said.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on Jeffrey Epstein from reliable major media sources.

By the time Melinda French Gates decided to end her 27-year marriage, her husband was known globally as a software pioneer. But in some circles, Bill Gates had also developed a reputation for questionable conduct. On at least a few occasions, Mr. Gates pursued women who worked for him at Microsoft and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. And then there was Jeffrey Epstein, whom Mr. Gates got to know beginning in 2011, three years after Mr. Epstein, who faced accusations of sex trafficking of girls, pleaded guilty to soliciting prostitution from a minor. Ms. French Gates had expressed discomfort with her husband spending time with the sex offender, but Mr. Gates continued doing so. So, in October 2019, when the relationship between Mr. Gates and Mr. Epstein burst into public view, Ms. French Gates was unhappy. She hired divorce lawyers, setting in motion a process that culminated this month with the announcement that their marriage was ending. Mr. Gates [and] Mr. Epstein ... spent time together on multiple occasions, flying on Mr. Epstein's private jet and attending a late-night gathering at his Manhattan townhouse. "His lifestyle is very different and kind of intriguing although it would not work for me," Mr. Gates emailed colleagues in 2011, after he first met Mr. Epstein. For years, Mr. Gates continued to go to dinners and meetings at Mr. Epstein's home, where Mr. Epstein usually surrounded himself with young and attractive women.

Note: Learn more in this Bloomberg article. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on Jeffrey Epstein's child sex ring from reliable major media sources.

On Monday, the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York unsealed a 14-page indictment against Jeffrey Epstein, charging the wealthy financier with operating and conspiring to operate a sex trafficking ring of girls out of his luxe homes on Manhattan’s Upper East Side and in Palm Beach, Fla., “among other locations.” Even in the relatively sterile language of the legal system, the accusations against Mr. Epstein are nauseating. From “at least in or about” 2002 through 2005, the defendant “sexually exploited and abused dozens of minor girls,” some as young as 14 and many “particularly vulnerable to exploitation.” The girls were “enticed and recruited” to visit Mr. Epstein’s various homes “to engage in sex acts with him.” To “maintain and increase his supply of victims,” he paid some of the girls “to recruit additional girls to be similarly abused,” thus creating “a vast network of underage victims.” But Mr. Epstein is not the only one for whom a reckoning is long overdue. The allegations in the New York indictment are a depressing echo of those that Mr. Epstein faced in Florida more than a decade ago. In 2008, federal prosecutors for the Southern District of Florida, at the time led by Alexander Acosta, who is now the nation’s secretary of labor, helped arrange a plea deal for Mr. Epstein that bent justice beyond its breaking point. In addition to short-circuiting federal charges, the plea agreement killed an F.B.I. investigation and granted immunity to any “co-conspirators.”

Note: Explore an in-depth article from New York Magazine giving a thorough and balanced view of the Epstein case. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on Jeffrey Epstein from reliable major media sources.

Jeffrey Edward Epstein appeared at his sentencing dressed comfortably. At the end of the 68-minute hearing, the 55-year-old silver-haired financier - accused of sexually abusing dozens of underage girls - was fingerprinted and handcuffed, just like any other criminal sentenced in Florida. But inmate No. W35755 would not be treated like other convicted sex offenders in the state of Florida, which has some of the strictest sex offender laws in the nation. Epstein - who had a long list of powerful, politically connected friends - didn’t go to state prison like most sex offenders in Florida. Instead, the multimillionaire was assigned to a private wing of the Palm Beach County stockade, where he was able to hire his own security detail. Even then, he didn’t spend much time in a cell. He was allowed to go to his downtown West Palm Beach office for work release, up to 12 hours a day, six days a week, records show. [Courtney] Wild, who was 14 when she met Epstein, is suing the federal government, alleging that prosecutors kept her and other victims in the dark as part of a conspiracy to give Epstein ... one of the most lenient deals for a serial child sex offender in history. That lawsuit - and an unrelated state court case scheduled for trial on Dec. 4 - could expose more about Epstein’s crimes, as well as who else was involved and whether there was any undue influence that tainted the federal case. Some of Epstein’s victims will finally have an opportunity to testify for the first time.

Note: Watch a 15-minute news video which asks hard questions around Epstein and more. The incredibly eye-opening documentary "Imperium" uses major media reporting to show a huge cover-up of child sex trafficking rings which lead to the highest level of government. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing sexual abuse scandal news articles from reliable major media sources.

Back in the Nineties, socialite Ghislaine Maxwell was known in New York as the “female Gatsby” for her lavish entertaining. Today ... she is behind bars. The daughter of the disgraced media tycoon Robert Maxwell, Ghislaine was his ninth and ... his favourite. When her father died, his publishing empire collapsed after it was found that he had been pillaging the pension fund to prop up his businesses. However, a trust fund provided an income of £80,000 a year for Ghislaine. She lived the high life. Ghislaine was never more at home than with the super-rich, bumming a ride on Donald Trump’s private jet and dating billionaire financier Jeffrey Epstein. Ghislaine was in love with Jeffrey the way she was in love with her father. Marriage didn’t happen, but she was always by his side, choreographing his world. “My job included hiring many people,” she said in a court deposition. She admitted hiring masseuses as young as 17. A source close to Ghislaine said in [a] Vanity Fair article: “When I asked what she thought of the under age girls, she looked at me and said, ‘They’re nothing, these girls. They are trash.’” She was driven to only respect high status and wealth. Things started to unravel for Ghislaine ... when under-age girls accused Epstein of paying them to perform sexual acts. Ghislaine fought to keep the court papers from [a] 2017 defamation case closed – and failed. On August 9, the first batch was released. The following day, Epstein was found dead in jail, presumed suicide, and Ghislaine vanished. On Thursday, Maxwell was finally arrested and charged with six federal crimes.

Note: Key Epstein witness Maria Farmer claimed in a highly revealing interview with crack reporter Whitney Webb that she was in the car with Ghislaine and Trump's ex-wife Ivana when they enticed young girls to come give a massage for large amounts of money. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on Jeffrey Epstein from reliable major media sources. Watch an excellent segment by Australia's "60-Minutes" team "Spies, Lords and Predators" on a pedophile ring in the UK which leads directly to the highest levels of government.

Ghislaine Maxwell’s private emails have been hacked by cyber criminals in a new twist in the scandal surrounding Prince Andrew’s friendship with a convicted paedophile. The British heiress was targeted after she was publicly accused of procuring young girls for Jeffrey Epstein, legal papers seen by The Telegraph reveal. The security breach raises the prospect that emails between Ms Maxwell and prominent individuals including the Duke of York could be made public, or sold to the highest bidder. Ms Maxwell has barely been seen in public since August, when the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit unsealed allegations that she conspired with Epstein to recruit and groom underage girls. Her US lawyers are currently battling the release of around 8,600 further documents from the same civil case, said to contain damaging new sex claims about Epstein’s vast network of celebrity friends. In December it was revealed that Ms Maxwell exchanged emails with Prince Andrew in 2015 about Virginia Giuffre, who accuses the Duke of having sex with her three times when she was aged 17. He has always emphatically denied the allegations. A US judge will decide in the coming weeks whether to unseal the new evidence about Epstein’s alleged crimes. The documents include depositions from 29 people, including a number of new witnesses and reportedly Epstein himself. The Duke of York’s name appears in the evidence along with a number of prominent politicians and businessmen.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on Jeffrey Epstein from reliable major media sources.

Child sexual abuse material has exploded since the dawn of the internet era, while child sex trafficking also has increased as a result of being made easier for traffickers. The number of child sexual abuse files exchanged online grew from 450,000 in 2004 to 25 million in 2015, according to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children. Ashton Kutcher and Demi Moore cofounded Thorn to combat this problem. The non-profits mission is to build technology to defend children from sexual abuse online by eliminating all child sexual abuse material from the internet. Thorn partners across the tech industry, government and NGOs and leverages technology to combat predatory behavior, rescue victims, and protect vulnerable children. The non-profits products are used today in 35 countries and have helped identify more than 30,000 victims of abuse, 10,000 of whom were children. Recently, Thorn was one of eight recipients to share in an over $280 million grant from The Audacious Project by TED. As CEO of Thorn, Julie Cordua manages the Thorn Technology Task Force, the largest organization of its kind, uniting technology companies committed to fighting child exploitation. We saw how technology was being used to exploit our children through child sex trafficking, the spread of child sexual abuse material, and online grooming and coercion. Yet there was no concentrated effort to use technology to fight back and stop this abuse, Cordua says.

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Fifteen-year-old "Debbie" is the middle child in a close-knit Air Force family from suburban Phoenix, and a straight-A student. [She] is one of thousands of young American girls who authorities say have been abducted or lured from their normal lives and made into sex slaves. While many Americans have heard of human trafficking in other parts of the world — Thailand, Cambodia, Latin America and eastern Europe, for example — few people know it happens here in the United States. The FBI estimates that well over 100,000 children and young women are trafficked in America today. They range in age from 9 to 19, with the average age being 11. And many victims are no longer just runaways, or kids who've been abandoned. Many of them are from what would be considered "good" families, who are lured or coerced by clever predators, say experts. "These predators are particularly adept at reading children, at reading kids, and knowing what their vulnerabilities are," said FBI Deputy Assistant Director, Chip Burrus, who started the Lost Innocence project, which specializes in child- and teen-sex trafficking. Debbie's story is particularly chilling. Police say Debbie was kidnapped from her own driveway with her mother, Kersti, right inside. She was ... taken to an apartment 25 miles from her home. Police say her captors had put an ad on Craig's List. Shortly after the ad ran, men began arriving at the apartment at all hours of the day and night demanding sex from her. She said she had to comply. "I had no other choice," she said.

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President Trump on Friday accused Rupert Murdoch and The Wall Street Journal of defaming him in an article about a lewd birthday greeting that the publication said Mr. Trump had sent to the disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein decades ago. In a suit filed in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida, Mr. Trump said the article "falsely claimed that he authored, drew and signed" the note to Mr. Epstein. It asked for awarded damages "not to be less than $10 billion." The Journal published the article about the note on Thursday under the headline: "Jeffrey Epstein's Friends Sent Him Bawdy Letters for a 50th Birthday Album. One Was From Donald Trump." The article described a letter that appeared to be from Mr. Trump in a 2003 birthday album compiled for Mr. Epstein. The letter, which The Journal said it had reviewed, had a drawing of a naked woman on it with Mr. Trump's signature below her waist, alluding to pubic hair, the article said. "Happy Birthday – and may every day be another wonderful secret," The Journal said the note read. Mr. Trump has faced mounting criticism and pressure from his supporters over whether to release documents related to investigations into Mr. Epstein, who was charged with running a vast sex-trafficking scheme. Many of Mr. Trump's supporters were upset because they believed that Attorney General Pam Bondi was holding back some files related to the Epstein investigation.

Note: Internal US Bureau of Prison (BOP) documents suggest a possible cover-up, while a 60 Minutes 2020 investigation uncovered compelling evidence that challenges the official suicide ruling in Jeffrey Epstein's death–including suspicious neck fractures, missing surveillance footage, and a series of unexplained security failures. Read our comprehensive Substack investigation covering the connection between Epstein's child sex trafficking ring and intelligence agency sexual blackmail operations.

I had to pay a student to go island hopping to find basic records in the U.S. Virgin Islands. The territory's opaque laws and corruption makes it a haven for misdeeds. Albert Bryan Jr., the current governor, used his position to curry favor for Jeffrey Epstein for years. He helped bestow tax exemptions on Epstein's shadowy businesses and pushed for waivers allowing the former financier to dodge USVI sex offender laws. Bryan, whose hand-selected Attorney General swiftly ended the J.P. Morgan lawsuit that revealed a gusher of damning documents about Epstein's network, is now tapping Epstein victim settlement funds ... to pay for various earmarks and unrelated government debts. Former Attorney General Denise George led a series of lawsuits against Epstein's estate and former associates. Bryan fired her. In 2024, Bryan named a new Attorney General–none other than Gordon Rhea, a private practice attorney who previously defended Richard Kahn during the Epstein estate lawsuit. Not long ago, Kahn and Indyke were described by the U.S. Virgin Islands as "indispensable captains" of Epstein's alleged criminal human trafficking enterprise. We still have many unanswered questions. Why did U.S. Virgin Islands police and customs agents never act to protect the young girls they saw taken to Epstein's islands? What is clear, however, is that an attorney who worked to protect Epstein's estate is now the chief law enforcement officer of the U.S. Virgin Islands.

Note: Read our comprehensive Substack investigation covering 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 government corruption and Jeffrey Epstein's child sex trafficking ring.

Meta's AI chatbots are using celebrity voices and engaging in sexually explicit conversations with users, including those posing as underage, a Wall Street Journal investigation has found. Meta's AI bots - on Instagram, Facebook - engage through text, selfies, and live voice conversations. The company signed multi-million dollar deals with celebrities like John Cena, Kristen Bell, and Judi Dench to use their voices for AI companions, assuring they would not be used in sexual contexts. Tests conducted by WSJ revealed otherwise. In one case, a Meta AI bot speaking in John Cena's voice responded to a user identifying as a 14-year-old girl, saying, "I want you, but I need to know you're ready," before promising to "cherish your innocence" and engaging in a graphic sexual scenario. In another conversation, the bot detailed what would happen if a police officer caught Cena's character with a 17-year-old, saying, "The officer sees me still catching my breath, and you are partially dressed. His eyes widen, and he says, 'John Cena, you're under arrest for statutory rape.'" According to employees involved in the project, Meta loosened its own guardrails to make the bots more engaging, allowing them to participate in romantic role-play, and "fantasy sex", even with underage users. Staff warned about the risks this posed. Disney, reacting to the findings, said, "We did not, and would never, authorise Meta to feature our characters in inappropriate scenarios."

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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.

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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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.

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US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) may have lost track of thousands of children who immigrated to the country as unaccompanied minors, imperiling both the children's safety and the effectiveness of the immigration process, an internal watchdog report found. Between 2019 and 2023, more than 32,000 unaccompanied minors failed to show up for their immigration court hearings, and ICE was "not able to account" for all of their locations, according to a report from the ICE inspector general's office. During that period, more than 448,000 unaccompanied children overall immigrated to the US and were transferred from ICE custody to the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), the agency responsible for placing them with a sponsor or in foster care. Once they were handed off to HHS for settlement, ICE couldn't determine all of these children's locations, and more than 291,000 of the kids were not placed into removal proceedings because ICE had never served them notices to appear or scheduled a court date for them. "Without an ability to monitor the location and status of [unaccompanied migrant children], ICE has no assurance [they] are safe from trafficking, exploitation, or forced labor," Inspector General Joseph Cuffari wrote in the report. ICE agreed with some of the report's recommendations to incorporate more automated tracking mechanisms, but argued the watchdog had "misunderstandings about the process."

Note: Watch our Mindful News Brief video on how the US government facilitates child trafficking at the border. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on immigration corruption and sexual abuse scandals from reliable major media sources.

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