CISOCA shocked by surge of child-on-child sex cases
‘Rude’ awakening
BY TANESHA MUNDLE Observer staff reporter [email protected]
Thursday, July 26, 2012

THE Centre for the Investigation of Sexual Offences and Child Abuse (CISOCA) says it is grappling with a recent explosion of cases of underage sex between young children, with over 30 reported cases in one week.
“When I say children having sex with children, I am talking about a four-year-old having sex with a six-year-old, eight and nine, 10 and 11, 12 and 12 , 13 and 13, 14 and 14 2024,” CISOCA’s head, Superintendent Gladys Brown, said yesterday at the launch of the Child Abuse Reporting System (CARS) at the Mona Visitors’ Lodge at the University of the West Indies.
Superintendent Gladys Brown, head of the Centre for the Investigation of Sexual Offences and Child Abuse, addressing yesterday’s launch of the Child Abuse Reporting System at the Mona Visitors’ Lodge at the University of the West Indies. (Photo: Michael Gordon)
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She said that her team had been tackling the sexual abuse of children by adults as a priority area, but recent revelations have forced them to rethink their focus.
“We have been wearing blinkers in one direction because we thought we knew what the problem was, and suddenly we got a rude awakening — 32 cases in seven days,” she said, her horror and disgust apparent.
“This is not something I am prepared to keep to myself. I had a case yesterday where a brother and sister were having both vaginal and anal sex and then the cousin joined the group and the party became bigger,” Brown noted.
“We are looking at a case of a 10-year-old girl willingly participating with her brother and cousin, who are both 12, and she goes to a prominent preparatory school in Jamaica. These are not some country children or some illiterate children who have no clue. They go to prominent prep schools,” she added.
“What is happening to our children? Can we now find a way today to focus on that area?” she asked.
According to Brown, reports of children having sex with children have been flooding her office over the past two weeks, with 32 cases having been reported the second week of July alone.
However, she said that the police have a hard time dealing with the cases as the law prohibits them from holding children under 12 years old personally accountable for their actions.
“A child under 12 cannot be charged for anything, and it is even worse when they are related to each other,” she said.
Brown made a strenuous appeal for civil society to curb this incestuous promiscuity among Jamaican children.
“Jamaica has to help. I am not going to lie in my bed at nights and can’t sleep.
“Adults can do what they want, but children must be guided and protected. They need counselling, and I am here to beg, to plead and seek assistance from those who can do something, let us do something,” she said.
The CISOCA chief also blamed adults for this depraved behaviour among their young and said that it points to a lack of proper parenting skills and supervision.
Noting that the issue is especially worrisome now that children are on their summer school break and have a lot of time on their hands, Brown urged parents and guardians to be more vigilant about keeping an eye on children under their care.
“This is not like when we were growing up in the country playing ‘dollie-house’, this ‘dollie-house’ is serious and is bigger. You have boys and girls having anal and vaginal sex, then you have the boys turning on their one another and it is all fun [for them]. They have lost their direction and some of you have to come and help,” Brown entreated her audience.
CARS was launched yesterday by Help JA Children, a newly-formed children’s advocate group. Owners of smartphones, specifically BlackBerrys, will be able to report cases of child sex-abuse directly to the Office of the Children’s Registry by downloading CARS from BlackBerry app world.

Read more: http://www.jamaicaobserver.com/news/CISOCA-shocked-by-surge-of-child-on-child-sex-cases_12034866#ixzz21kh8gsXp

By SHEILA MARIKAR (@SheilaYM)
July 25, 2012
Michael Jackson’s mother is “devastated” his children have been “taken away” from her while she was vacationing in Arizona and she’s returning to Los Angeles to be reunited with them today, she told ABC News exclusively.

“I am devastated that while I’ve been away, my grandchildren have been taken away from me, and I’m coming home,” Katherine Jackson said.

Watch the full story on “Nightline” tonight at 11:35 p.m. ET/PT

Speaking to ABC News from the Miraval Arizona Report & Spa in Tucson, Ariz., where the 82-year-old Jackson family matriarch had been resting for at least a week, Katherine Jackson also addressed the uncertainty concerning her whereabouts.

Katherine Jackson is the guardian of her late son Michael Jackson’s children — Paris Michael, Prince Michael, and Prince Michael II — but prior to Tuesday night, they had not heard from her in days. In the meantime, there are reports of disputes among Jackson family members at Katherine Jackson’s Calabasas, Calif., home.

RELATED: Who Are the Players in the Jackson Family Feud?

“There are rumors going around about me that I have been kidnapped and held against my will,” Katherine Jackson said. “I am here today to let everybody to know that I am fine.”

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“My children would never do a thing to me like that, holding me against my will,” she added. “It’s very stupid for people to think that.”

At Katherine Jackson’s side during the taped statement, which she read from a paper, were her children Rebbie, Jermaine and Janet Jackson. Also sitting next to her was Rebbie Jackson’s daughter, Stacy, and a representative from the resort.

While reading the statement, Katherine broke off a couple of times and family members helped her find her place.

ABC News was not allowed to ask the family questions.

RELATED: TJ Jackson Named Temporary Guardian of MJ’s Kids

Katherine Jackson said a court ruling today that made TJ Jackson — the son of Michael Jackson’s brother, Tito Jackson, and grandson of Katherine Jackson — the temporary guardian of Michael Jackson’s children was “based on a bunch of lies.”

She said her stay in Arizona at the Miraval was a “short vacation and rest.”

“There’s a lot of lies that have been put out there and I am going home to straighten them out, and this kind of stuff doesn’t make sense,” she said.

As for not calling her grandchildren for days, Katherine Jackson said, “One reason I didn’t call is I just gave up my phone and I didn’t want to have any phone calls while I was here.”

Katherine Jackson’s son Randy said in an earlier interview that his sister, Rebbie, was with their mother at the resort and kept her cell phone with her. He said Michael Jackson’s children knew they could call their Aunt Rebbie’s phone to reach the group at any time.

AND IF A NEVA YOU AND JOHNJOHN THERE WOULD BE NO JMG…AND U FI GET PAY? ………..KIZZY A ME SEH DESIGN SCHOOL BECAUSE YUH CYAA TEK GOOD MEASUREMENT

New York man to pay fine for unauthorized 1998 Cuba visit
July 24, 2012|Jane Sutton | Reuters

MIAMI (Reuters) – A New York man agreed on Tuesday to pay a $6,500 fine to settle a long-running dispute with the U.S. Treasury Department over a trip he made to Cuba as an unauthorized tourist 14 years ago.

Zachary Sanders, now 38, said he was 23 and had been living and teaching English in Mexico when he decided to go to Cuba for a couple of weeks in 1998.

“I wanted to learn about how a socialist country worked in practice,” Sanders said in an interview. “I had no illusions. … I’m not like some diehard supporter of the (Cuban) government or anything like that.”

The United States has long restricted U.S. travel to Cuba as part of a 50-year-old trade embargo aimed at punishing Cuba’s communist government. The actual restrictions and the degree of enforcement have varied with different U.S. administrations and with the evolving state of U.S.-Cuba relations.

Sanders did not obtain the required U.S. Treasury license to visit Cuba and a U.S. Customs agent became suspicious when Sanders returned to the United States through the Bahamas without declaring that he had been to Cuba. The agent also seized an undeclared box of Cuban cigars from Sanders’ luggage.

Two years later, Sanders received a letter from the Treasury Department asking for details of his expenditures in Cuba. He said he was scared, had lost the receipts and missed the deadline to return the form.

Another two years went by and the department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) reviewed his case during a Bush administration crackdown on travel to Cuba, notifying Sanders of its intent to fine him for failing to return the form. In 2008, an administrative law judge fined him $1,000.

Both sides appealed, and on the final business day of the Bush administration in January 2009, a Treasury administrator raised the fine to $9,000. He reasoned that the original fine was too low to discourage people from ignoring OFAC forms.

Sanders had a constitutional right not to provide incriminating evidence against himself, said his lawyer, Shane Kadidal of the Center for Constitutional Rights.

By the time the fine was issued, Sanders had successfully battled cancer, completed law school and been admitted to law practice in New York, where he is a sole practitioner who mainly represents poor immigrants.

He also passed the bar exam in New Jersey, but was denied admission to that state’s bar because he acknowledged that he had gone to Cuba knowing it was illegal.

Sanders sued OFAC, the Treasury Department and the Justice Department in federal court in 2009, appealing the fine as arbitrary and capricious. He lost and then turned to the U.S. Court of Appeals in New York, where Tuesday’s settlement agreement was filed.

Kadidal said Sanders’ fine was still far greater than most Americans pay for violating the travel ban, and suggested he had been singled out because he was “an ideological traveler.”

Civil penalties for tourist travel to Cuba can range up to $7,500 for the first trip and $10,000 for subsequent trips.

OFAC resolved more than 200 such cases for “a standard $1,000 settlement” from 2001 to 2004, Kadidal said, and dismissed many others with no fine at all.

Under the Obama administration, which has relaxed restrictions on travel to Cuba, OFAC has generally pursued cases against financial institutions and manufacturers that violate the embargo, rather than individual travelers.

The case is Sanders vs. Szuben, Case No. 12-601 cv in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit.

(Reporting by Jane Sutton; Editing by David Adams and Will Dunham)