Posts in category ‘Real Real Bad’
A teenage girl was locked up on theft charges in an Amazon jail for weeks with 21 men who she said would only let her eat in return for sex, according to authorities, setting off a national scandal over the treatment of women by Brazil’s justice system.
The 15-year-old said she was required to have sex with at least two inmates, police spokesman Walrimar Santos said by telephone Thursday from Belem, at the mouth of the Amazon River, where the victim was transferred after nearly a month living with male inmates.
She said her only reprieve from obligatory sex was on Thursdays — when intimate visits were allowed — and things “calmed down,” Estado reported.
Police and human rights officials said the girl was out of touch in Belem and would not speak to reporters. The Associated Press generally does not identify people who may have been victims of sexual assault.
The girl was arrested Oct. 21 on accusations of breaking and entering a house and jailed with male inmates in Abaetetuba, a city of 78,000 outside the Para state capital of Belem.
She was transferred to a jail for women in Belem on Nov. 17, although police claim they requested her transfer earlier but were ignored.
Santos said separate jails for men and women do not exist in most towns in Para — a sprawling, largely lawless state twice the size of France.
Days after the case was divulged, the Brazilian Bar Association announced that a 23-year-old woman had been obliged to share a cell with 70 men in a police detention center in Parauapebas, in southern Para. It was not clear if she was forced to have sex.
Para Gov. Ana Julia Carepa said she was outraged by the alleged abuse at Abaetetuba. She suspended three top police officials pending an investigation and promised that the guilty parties would be “punished in exemplary fashion.”
“There’s no excuse for what happened,” she said in a statement. “I’m also shocked and indignant, as a woman and as governor. … A woman can never be jailed in the same cell as men.”
The federal government on Friday sent a task force of human rights officials to Belem to accompany the investigation after the girl and her family reported receiving death threats.
“First we will guarantee the safety of the minor, who will be included in the program for the Protection of Children and Adolescents threatened with death,” Marcia Ustra Soares, a director of the program, told reporters.
The victim’s father insisted in a televised interview that she was 15, and that police threatened to arrest him unless he produced a certificate showing she was 20.
“I want justice. The situation can’t stay like this,” he said.
Amnesty International said Brazilian women “are the hidden victims of a crumbling detention system,” and many cases of women abused under government custody go unreported or uninvestigated.
“We receive extensive reports of women in detention who suffer sexual abuse, torture, substandard health care and inhuman conditions,” said Tim Cahill, Amnesty’s researcher on Brazil.
Carepa said the government also was investigating reports that the girl was arrested purposely for the sexual gratification of the prisoners.
“This is an unfortunate practice that regrettably has been occurring for some time,” she said. “But it would be good to make this public, so that all society will be mobilized and we can end these practices. … We won’t allow this to happen again.”
The Brazilian Bar Association voiced skepticism that officials would take effective action.
“What has happened in the state of Para’s prison system shows that for authorities the concept of human dignity is only useful as a rhetorical instrument, not something to be taken seriously,” Britto said.
If police did not have the required separate cells, the government “must recognize its inefficiency and … release those citizens it cannot hold,” he said.
By her account, officials did nothing — until the story erupted in the national media and outraged Brazilians demanded her transfer.
“Throwing a 15-year-old girl into a cell with 20 men was a heinous and intolerable act,” Brazilian Bar Association president Cezar Britto said in an interview. “It is a serious case of criminal negligence against women, who in Brazil continue to be victims of prejudice.”
Santos said the girl was not beaten or injured. But the newspaper O Estado de S. Paulo, which said it had access to private testimony after her transfer from the jail, reported she was tortured with lit cigarettes on her fingers and bare feet to force her to have sex. Her cellmates cut her hair to make her look more like a boy and difficult to recognize, Estado said.
[Via - USA Today]
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It may not be the most appetizing reading before a hearty holiday meal, but the New England Journal of Medicine is devoting part of its Thanksgiving issue to a giant hairball — and not the feline kind.
The prestigious journal details the case of a previously healthy 18-year-old woman who consulted a team of gastrointestinal specialists.
She complained of a five-month history of pain and swelling in her abdomen, vomiting after eating and a 40-pound weight loss.
After a scan of the woman’s abdomen showed a large mass, doctors lowered a scope through her esophagus.
It revealed “a large bezoar occluding nearly the entire stomach,” wrote Drs. Ronald M. Levy and Srinadh Komanduri, gastroenterologists at Rush University Medical Center in Chicago, Illinois.
For the uninitiated, a bezoar is a hairball.
“On questioning, the patient stated that she had had a habit of eating her hair for many years — a condition called trichophagia,” they wrote.
“It seemed like she’d been doing this for several years,” Levy told CNN.
The woman underwent surgery to remove the mass of black, curly hair, which weighed 10 pounds and measured 15 inches by 7 inches by 7 inches, the doctors said.
Five days later, she was eating normally and was sent home.
A year later, the pain and vomiting were gone, the patient had regained 20 pounds “and reports that she has stopped eating her hair.”
Reached at his home in Chicago, Levy said he had no idea whether the journal’s timing of the publication on Thanksgiving was intentional.
Either way, he said, it would not affect the gastroenterologists’ holiday dinner plans — “We don’t get fazed by much.”
Source - The New England Journal Of Medicine
Officials seized 2,400 bottles late last month during warehouse raids in Nashville and Lynchburg, the southern Tennessee town where the whiskey is distilled.
“Punish the person, not the whiskey,” said an outraged Kyle MacDonald, 28, a Jack Daniel’s drinker from British Columbia who promotes the whiskey on his blog. “Jack never did anything wrong, and the whiskey itself is innocent.”
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Investigators are also looking into whether some of the bottles had been stolen from the distillery. No one has been arrested.
Authorities are still determining how much of the liquor will be disposed of, and how much can be sold at auction.
Tennessee law requires officials to destroy whiskey that cannot be sold legally in the state, such as bottles designed for sale overseas and those with broken seals.
“We’d pour it out,” said Danielle Elks, executive director of the Tennessee Alcoholic Beverage Commission.
The estimated value of the liquor is $1 million, possibly driven up by the value of the antique bottles, which range from 3-liter bottles to half-pints.
One seized bottle dates to 1914, with its seal unbroken. Elks said it is worth $10,000 on the collectors market. Investigators are looking into whether the liquor was being sold for the value of the bottles rather than the whiskey.
“Someone was making a great deal of profit,” she said.
Tennessee whiskeys age in charred white oak barrels, but the maturing process that gives them character mostly stops when it is bottled. A bottled whiskey can deteriorate over a long period of time, especially if it is opened or exposed to sunlight and heat.
Christopher Carlsson, a spirits connoisseur and collector in Rochester, N.Y., said old vintages of whiskey in their original containers are highly prized.
“A lot of these bottles are priceless,” he said. “It’s like having a rare painting. It’s heavily collected.”
The raids, prompted by a tip, were conducted at two warehouses and a home in Lynchburg, about 65 miles southeast of Nashville. Another raid was at a Nashville hotel room where drinks were being served and bottles were being sold.
For now, the whiskey is being stored in a Nashville vault.
Elks acknowledged that pouring out the whiskey would not be a happy hour for her.
“It’d kill me,” she said.
[Via - MadConomist.Com]
Many people claim that being put in jail for jaywalking is just another urban myth. In fact, it’s not. Here is actual AP article that writes of one such incident.
BRADENTON, Fla. (AP) - A man was in jail Saturday after refusing to sign a $15 jaywalking ticket two days earlier.
Leroy Franklin Cladd Jr. was cited for not using a crosswalk late Thursday night. He balked at signing the ticket, a misdemeanor that landed him in jail. He was not under the influence of drugs or alcohol at the time, police said.
Cladd was being held at the Manatee County jail on $250 bond.
Welcome to United Police States Of America.
Four-year-old Long Branch Elementary School student Zacari found himself in the home of a different family and in the middle of an unusual mix-up Tuesday, WJXT-TV in Jacksonville reported.
After school Tuesday, a grandfather went to Long Branch to pick up his grandson but wound up taking Zacari home by mistake.”I went to his house,” Zacari told Channel 4.Zacari’s mother, Latoia Gillis, said “They don’t have the same name. They don’t even look alike.”Apparently,to the 77-year-old grandfather, the boy did look like his grandson, and the man put Zacari on his bike and rode home.”We were riding a bicycle, and he had to pick me up and put me in the middle,” Zacari said.
“All the way from Long Branch to Main Street on a bicycle with a man who is 77 years old?” Gillis said, still in shock.Zacari said that when they got to the man’s house, it was the man’s wife who realized the mistake.”She said, ‘You got the wrong kid,’” Zacari said.Back at the school, Zacari’s aunt had come to pick him up and was panicked to learn her nephew was already gone.”
I was thinking the worst. I was crying. I was shaking,” said Zacari’s aunt.Fortunately, the man who picked up the 4-year-old was on his way back to the school with an unharmed Zacari.Zacari’s family said it wants to make sure another such mix-up never happens again.”I just want it to be a wake-up call. I’m very lucky to have my son back,” Gillis said.
Gillis said that at the beginning of the school year, she filled out a form that included a list of names and contact numbers of the people with whom her son was allowed to go home.A school district representative said protocol was not followed in Tuesday’s mix-up, and that the teachers involved would face disciplinary action.As a result of Zacaris’s ride with a stranger, district policy was immediately changed. Pre-K teachers will be required to check identification before allowing people to collect their youngsters from school.
[Via - WSBTV]
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