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Seven dirty words -- Hasanur Rahman, 22:33:27 02/11/16 Thu [1]

The seven dirty words (or "Filthy Words") are seven English-language words that American comedian George Carlin first listed in 1972 in his monologue "Seven Words You Can Never Say on Television".[1] The words are: shit, piss, fuck, cunt, cocksucker, motherfucker, and tits.[2]

At the time, the words were considered highly inappropriate and unsuitable for broadcast on the public airwaves in the United States, whether radio or television. As such, they were avoided in scripted material, and bleep censored in the rare cases in which they were used; broadcast standards differ in different parts of the world, then and now, although most of the words on Carlin's original list remain taboo on American broadcast television as of 2016. The list was not an official enumeration of forbidden words, but rather was compiled by Carlin. Nonetheless, a radio broadcast featuring these words led to a U.S. Supreme Court decision that helped establish the extent to which the federal government could regulate speech on broadcast television and radio in the United States.

Background

During one of Lenny Bruce's performances in 1966, he said he was arrested for saying nine words, and says them in alphabetical order: ass, balls, cocksucker, cunt, fuck, motherfucker, piss, shit, tits.[3] The last seven words are the same as George Carlin's.

In 1972, George Carlin released an album of stand-up comedy entitled Class Clown. One track on the album was "Seven Words You Can Never Say on Television", a monologue in which he identified these words, expressing amazement that these particular words could not be used, regardless of context. He was arrested for disturbing the peace when he performed the routine at a show at Summerfest in Milwaukee.

On his next album, 1973's Occupation: Foole, Carlin performed a similar routine titled "Filthy Words", dealing with the same list and many of the same themes. Pacifica station WBAI broadcast this version of the routine uncensored on October 30 that year.
Federal Communications Commission v. Pacifica Foundation
Main article: Federal Communications Commission v. Pacifica Foundation

John Douglas, an active member of Morality in Media, claimed that he heard the WBAI broadcast while driving with his then 15-year-old son and complained to the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) that the material was inappropriate for the time of day.[4][5]

Following the lodging of the complaint, the FCC proceeded to ask Pacifica for a response, then issued a declaratory order upholding the complaint. No specific sanctions were included in the order, but WBAI was put on notice that "in the event subsequent complaints are received, the Commission will then decide whether it should utilize any of the available sanctions it has been granted by Congress." WBAI appealed this decision, which was overturned by the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit in a 2–1 decision on the grounds that the FCC's definition of "indecency" was overbroad and vague and thus violated the First Amendment's guarantee of free speech. The FCC in turn appealed to the Supreme Court. As an independent federal agency, the FCC filed the appeal in its own name. The United States Department of Justice intervened in the case, supporting Pacifica's argument that the FCC's declaratory ruling violated the First Amendment and that it also violated the Fifth Amendment in that the FCC's definition of "indecency" was too vague to support criminal penalties.

In 1978 the Supreme Court, in a 5–4 decision, ruled that the FCC's Declaratory Ruling did not violate either the First or Fifth Amendments, but in so ruling it limited the scope of its ruling to the specific broadcast that gave rise to the Declaratory Ruling and declined to consider whether the FCC's definition of indecency would survive a First Amendment challenge if applied to the broadcast of other material containing the same or similar words which had been cited in Pacifica's brief (e.g., works of Shakespeare – "pissing conduits", "bawdy hand of the dial on the prick of noon"; the Bible – "he who pisseth against the wall"; the Watergate Tapes). It noted that while the Declaratory Ruling pertained to the meaning of the term indecency as used in a criminal statute (18 USC 1464), since the FCC had not imposed any penalty on Pacifica for the broadcast of words that came within the FCC's definition of "indecent", it did not need to reach the question as to whether the definition was too vague to satisfy the due process requirements of the Fifth Amendment.[6]

This decision formally established indecency regulation in American broadcasting. In follow-up rulings, the Supreme Court established the safe harbor provision that grants broadcasters the right to broadcast indecent (but not obscene) material between the hours of 10 pm and 6 am, when it is presumed many children will be asleep.[7][8] The FCC has never maintained a specific list of words prohibited from the airwaves during the time period from 6 am to 10 pm, but it has alleged that its own internal guidelines are sufficient to determine what it considers obscene.[citation needed]

The seven dirty words have been assumed to be likely to elicit indecency-related action by the FCC if uttered on a TV or radio broadcast, and thus the broadcast networks generally censor themselves with regard to many of the seven dirty words. The FCC regulations regarding "fleeting" use of expletives were ruled unconstitutionally vague by a three-judge panel of the U.S. 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals in New York on July 13, 2010, as they violated the First Amendment due to their possible effects regarding free speech.[9][10][11]
The words

The original seven words are:

Shit
Piss
Fuck
Cunt
Cocksucker
Motherfucker
Tits

In his comedy special Carlin commented that at one point, a man asked him to remove motherfucker because, as a derivative of fuck, it constituted a duplication:

"He says motherfucker is a duplication of the word fuck, technically, because fuck is the root form, motherfucker being derivative; therefore, it constitutes duplication. And I said, 'Hey, motherfucker, how did you get my phone number, anyway?'"[12]

He later added it back, claiming the bit's rhythm does not work without it.[12] In his comedy routine, Carlin would make fun of each word; for example, he would say that tits should not be on the list because it sounds like a nickname or a snack ("New Nabisco Tits! ...corn tits, cheese tits, tater tits!").
Availability

Carlin performed the routine many times and included it, in whole or in part on several of his records and HBO specials. Carlin noted in his 1983 speech at Cardinal Hayes High School, inducting Dean of Discipline Monsignor Stan Jablonski into the Hayes High Hall of Fame, that he was asked by the audience beforehand if he would be performing the seven dirty words skit at the ceremony. Parts or all of the performance appear on the following releases:

1972 - Class Clown - Audio recording - "Seven Words You Can Never Say on Television"
1973 - Occupation: Foole - Audio recording - "Filthy Words"
1977 - George Carlin at USC - HBO special - "Forbidden Words"
1978 - George Carlin: Again! - HBO special - "Dirty Words"
1983 - Carlin at Carnegie - HBO special - "Filthy Words"

The Carlin at Carnegie version can be heard as "An Incomplete List of Impolite Words" on the 1984 album Carlin on Campus (but not in the HBO special, Carlin on Campus). That version of the list features over 300 dirty words and phrases in an effort to stop people telling him that he left something off the list. Four days after Carlin's original Class Clown recording, the routine was performed again for students at University of California, Los Angeles. This would be months before its first official release. The recording was restored in December, 2013 and uploaded to YouTube by archivists at UCLA and can be accessed free of charge.[13]

The FCC ruling is referenced in "Offensive Language" from the album Parental Advisory: Explicit Lyrics and HBO special Doin' It Again, both 1990 recordings of the same performance; however, the routine that follows is entirely different.

The Class Clown version can also be heard on the vinyl/cassette only release Indecent Exposure (1978). The Occupation: Foole version can also be heard on Classic Gold (1992). Both versions were re-released again as part of The Little David Years (1971–1977).
In popular culture

American rock band Blink-182 released a thirty-five second song called "Family Reunion"; the lyrics contain all seven words from Carlin's list repeated four times.[14]

The 2008 installment of "Dead Letters", The Washington Post Style Invitational's annual collection of verse-form obituaries for persons who died in the previous year, included a Carlin obituary in whose text seven words were "blanked out" without explanation, leaving readers to use the poem's rhyme scheme, its meter, and their independent knowledge of the monologue and/or FCC v. Pacifica case to determine which words belonged where.[15]

The bit was featured in an episode of the Fox network TV show That '70s Show.[16]
H.R. 3687

On December 8, 2003, Rep. Doug Ose (R-CA) introduced a bill in Congress to designate a derivative list of Carlin's offensive words as profane in the U.S. Code. The stated purpose of the bill was "To amend section 1464 of title 18, United States Code, to provide for the punishment of certain profane broadcasts." In the text of the bill, the following eight words are specifically mentioned: 'shit', 'piss', 'fuck', 'cunt', 'asshole', and the phrases 'cock sucker', 'mother fucker', and 'ass hole'.[17]
Subscription services

The FCC obscenity guidelines have never been applied to non-broadcast media such as cable television or satellite radio. It is widely held that the FCC's authorizing legislation (particularly the Communications Act of 1934 and the Telecommunications Act of 1996) does not enable the FCC to regulate content on subscription-based services, which include cable television, satellite television, and pay-per-view television. Whether the FCC or the Department of Justice could be empowered by the Congress to restrict indecent content on cable television without such legislation violating the Constitution has never been settled by a court of law. Since cable television must be subscribed to in order to receive it legally, it has long been thought that since subscribers who object to the content being delivered may cancel their subscription, an incentive is created for the cable operators to self-regulate (unlike broadcast television, cable television is not legally considered to be "pervasive", nor does it depend on a scarce, government-allocated electromagnetic spectrum; as such, neither of the arguments buttressing the case for broadcast regulation particularly apply to cable television).

Self-regulation by many basic cable networks is undertaken by Standards and Practices (S&P) departments that self-censor their programming because of the pressure put on them by advertisers – also meaning that any basic cable network willing to ignore such pressure could use any of the Seven Dirty Words.

In recent years, many or all of the words on Carlin's list have come into common usage in many made-for-cable series and film productions.


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Fuck: Word Taboo and Protecting Our First Amendment Liberties -- Hasanur Rahman, 22:31:05 02/11/16 Thu [1]

Fuck: Word Taboo and Protecting Our First Amendment Liberties is a nonfiction book by law professor Christopher M. Fairman about freedom of speech, the First Amendment to the United States Constitution, censorship, and use of the word fuck in society. The book was first published in 2009 by Sphinx as a follow-up on the author's article "Fuck", published in 2007 in the Cardozo Law Review. It cites studies from academics in social science, psychoanalysis, and linguistics. Fairman establishes that most current usages of the word have connotations distinct from its meaning of sexual intercourse. The book discusses the efforts of conservatives in the United States to censor the word from common parlance. The author says that legal precedent regarding its use is unclear because of contradictory court decisions. Fairman argues that once citizens allow the government to restrict the use of specific words, this will lead to an encroachment upon freedom of thought.

The book received a mostly favorable reception from news sources and library trade publications. Library Journal described the book as a sincere analysis of the word and its history of censorship, Choice: Current Reviews for Academic Libraries called it stimulating, and the San Diego Law Review said it was thought-provoking. One reviewer said that the book, like the article, was a format for the author to repeatedly use "fuck", rather than actually analyze it from a rigorous perspective. After the book's release, Fairman was consulted by media sources including CNN and The New York Times, as well as the American Civil Liberties Union, on issues surrounding word taboo in society.

Background

Christopher M. Fairman graduated from the University of Texas at Austin. He taught high-school level history for nine years before returning to his alma mater where he ultimately received his Juris Doctor degree. He worked as a clerk on the Texas Court of Appeals for the Third District for Justice J. Woodfin Jones. Subsequently, he was a clerk on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit for Judge Fortunato P. Benavides, and worked for the law firm Weil Gotshal in their office in Dallas.[1] Fairman became a professor at Ohio State University's Moritz College of Law in 2000.[1] He specialized in areas of freedom of speech and word taboo,[2] and earned a reputation as an expert on the subject of legal ethics.[3][4]

Fairman was motivated to conduct research on "fuck" after learning of a Columbus, Ohio, man who was arrested for using the word in an email to a judge in 2004.[5] Fairman delayed writing the article until he received tenure because he was concerned its publication would adversely affect his professional reputation. Nevertheless, his supervisors did not try to convince him to cease research into the topic. Government funding helped finance Fairman's scholarship.[6]

His original 2006 article "Fuck" is an analysis of forbidden speech from linguistic and legal perspectives.[6] It covers use of the word in case studies about sexual harassment and education.[7] The article is 74 pages long,[8] and the word fuck appears over 560 times.[9] According to author Jesse Sheidlower in his book The F-Word, Fairman's work is the first academic article with the title of simply "Fuck".[10]

Fairman made his article available as a working paper on the Social Science Research Network website on April 17, 2006.[11] Initially the author unsuccessfully tried to have the article published by providing copies to multiple U.S. law reviews. The Kansas Law Review rejected his article 25 minutes after receipt.[6] It was published by the Cardozo Law Review in 2007.[12] The author wrote a follow-up piece in April 2007 titled "Fuck and Law Faculty Rankings".[13] Fairman died on July 22, 2015.[14] At the time of his death, Fairman's 2007 Cardozo Law Review article, "Fuck" was still classed with the 20 top downloaded works on the Social Science Research Network.[14]
Content summary

Fuck cites studies from academics in social science, psychoanalysis, and linguistics.[15][16] Of the sixteen chapters in the book, eight use the word "fuck" in their titles.[9] He discusses uses of the word from the 15th century onwards.[16] Fairman establishes that most current usages have connotations distinct from its denotation of sexual intercourse,[17] and asserts that rather than having sexual meaning, the word's use is most commonly associated with power.[9]

Fairman discusses the efforts of conservatives in the United States to censor the word from common parlance in the country, and says these acts are opposed to the First Amendment to the United States Constitution.[18] Fairman warns against a tendency toward self-censorship. He explains that those who choose to silence themselves tacitly encourage a process by which speech is forbidden through the legal process. He argues that this passivity has an impact of increasing the taboo nature of the word.[5]

Fairman writes that legal precedent regarding use of the word is unclear because of contradictory court decisions. He presents case studies of these contradictory applications of the law, and uses them to analyze public perceptions surrounding freedom of speech.[15] He provides examples of exceptions to the First Amendment, such as speech intended to cause violent acts, and discusses the manner in which federal and state governments sanction these exceptions.[15][18] Fairman draws parallels between protection of comedians' usage of taboo language to the ability of individuals in society to express ideas freely. He argues that once citizens allow the government to restrict specific words that can be used in speech, this will lead to an encroachment upon freedom of thought.[5]
Reception

Fuck: Word Taboo and Protecting Our First Amendment Liberties was first published in 2009 in paperback by Sphinx Publishing,[19] and in an electronic format for the Amazon Kindle the same year.[20] The Seattle Post-Intelligencer called Fairman's paper compelling and amusing.[21] The Horn Book Magazine described the paper as a contemplative scholarly work which was simultaneously an engaging read.[16] Writing in the San Diego Law Review, Orly Lobel called Fairman's article a thought-provoking analysis into how the law and the First Amendment address issues of sexual language.[22] In a 2011 article for the Federal Communications Law Journal, W. Wat Hopkins was critical of Fairman's article and subsequent book, writing that both appeared to be formats for the author to repeatedly use the word "fuck", rather than actually analyze the subject from a rigorous perspective.[9]

A review of the book in Publishers Weekly called it a vibrant extension of his article, and described it as educational and assertive in its promotion of freedom of speech, particularly in the face of the controversial language discussed.[18] Choice: Current Reviews for Academic Libraries reviewed Fuck and called it a stimulating book. The review concluded, "[h]ighly recommended. All readership levels."[15]

Library Journal described the book as a sincere analysis of "fuck" and its history of censorship. The review characterized the book as of a higher quality than The Compleat Motherfucker: A History of the Mother of all Dirty Words (2009) by Jim Dawson.[23] Ian Crouch of The New Yorker praised the cover design for the book. Crouch observed that the word Fuck was shown partially obscured by correction fluid but was still clearly evident in full. He concluded this was an appropriate image for a book on free speech and word taboo.[24]

After the book's publication, Fairman was consulted by media sources, including CNN, on issues involving word taboo.[25][26][27] The American Civil Liberties Union of Ohio invited Fairman to host its forum "Word Taboos" in 2010; his presentation was titled "Putting the 'F' in Free Speech".[5] In a 2012 article on the word "fuck", The New York Times characterized Fairman as the foremost legal scholar in the United States on the word "fuck"


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Freedom for the Thought That We Hate -- Hasanur Rahman, 22:28:58 02/11/16 Thu [1]

Freedom for the Thought That We Hate: A Biography of the First Amendment is a 2007 non-fiction book by journalist Anthony Lewis about freedom of speech, freedom of the press, freedom of thought, and the First Amendment to the United States Constitution. The book starts by quoting the First Amendment, which prohibits the U.S. Congress from creating legislation which limits free speech or freedom of the press. Lewis traces the evolution of civil liberties in the U.S. through key historical events. He provides an overview of important free speech case law, including U.S. Supreme Court opinions in Schenck v. United States (1919), Whitney v. California (1927), United States v. Schwimmer (1929), New York Times Co. v. Sullivan (1964), and New York Times Co. v. United States (1971).

The title of the book is drawn from the dissenting opinion by Supreme Court Associate Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. in United States v. Schwimmer. Holmes wrote that "if there is any principle of the Constitution that more imperatively calls for attachment than any other, it is the principle of free thought—not free thought for those who agree with us but freedom for the thought that we hate."[1] Lewis warns the reader against the potential for government to take advantage of periods of fear and upheaval in a post-9/11 society to suppress freedom of speech and criticism by citizens.

The book was positively received by reviewers, including Jeffrey Rosen in The New York Times, Richard H. Fallon in Harvard Magazine, Nat Hentoff, two National Book Critics Circle members, and Kirkus Reviews. Jeremy Waldron commented on the work for The New York Review of Books and criticized Lewis' stance towards freedom of speech with respect to hate speech. Waldron elaborated on this criticism in his book The Harm in Hate Speech (2012), in which he devoted a chapter to Lewis' book. This prompted a critical analysis of both works in The New York Review of Books in June 2012 by former Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens.

Freedom for the Thought That We Hate analyzes the value of freedom of speech and presents an overview of the historical development of rights afforded by the First Amendment to the United States Constitution.[2] Its title derives from Justice Holmes' admonition, in his dissenting opinion in United States v. Schwimmer (1929),[1][3][4] that the First Amendment's guarantees are most worthy of protection in times of fear and upheaval, when calls for suppression of dissent are most strident and superficially appealing.[1][3][4] Holmes wrote that "if there is any principle of the Constitution that more imperatively calls for attachment than any other, it is the principle of free thought—not free thought for those who agree with us but freedom for the thought that we hate."[1][3][4]

The book starts by quoting the First Amendment, which prohibits the U.S. Congress from creating legislation that limits free speech or freedom of the press.[3][5] The author analyzes the impact of this clause and refers to the writer of the United States Constitution, James Madison, who believed that freedom of the press would serve as a form of separation of powers to the government.[5] Lewis writes that an expansive respect for freedom of speech informs the reader as to why citizens should object to governmental attempts to block the media from reporting about the causes of a controversial war.[5] Lewis warns that, in a state in which controversial views are not allowed to be spoken, citizens and reporters merely serve as advocates for the state itself.[5] He recounts key historic events in which fear led to overreaching acts by the government, particularly from the executive branch.[5] The author gives background on the century-long process by which the U.S. judicial system began defending publishers and writers from attempts at suppression of speech by the government.[4]

In 1798, the federal government, under President John Adams, passed the Alien and Sedition Acts, which deemed "any false, scandalous and malicious writing or writings against the government of the United States" a criminal act.[3][6] The Alien and Sedition Acts were used for political impact against members of the Republican Party in order to punish them for criticizing the government.[5] Thomas Jefferson was elected the next president in 1800; Lewis cites this as an example of the American public's dissatisfaction with Adams' actions against freedom of speech.[5][7] After taking office in 1801, Jefferson issued pardons to those convicted under the Alien and Sedition Acts.[3][7] Lewis interprets later historical events as affronts to freedom of speech, including the Sedition Act of 1918 which effectively outlawed criticism of the government's conduct of WW I; and the McCarran Internal Security Act and Smith Act, which were used to imprison American communists who where critical of the government during the McCarthy era.[5]

During World War I, with increased fear among the American public and attempts at suppression of criticism by the government, the First Amendment was given wider examination in the U.S. Supreme Court.[5] Lewis writes that Associate Justices Louis Brandeis and Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., began to interpret broader support for freedom of speech imparted by the First Amendment.[5] Holmes wrote in the case of Schenck v. United States that freedom of speech must be defended except for situations in which "substantive evils" are caused through a "clear and present danger" arising from such speech.[5][8] The author reflects on his view of speech in the face of imminent danger in an age of terrorism.[6] He writes that the U.S. Constitution permits suppression of speech in situations of impending violence, and cautions use of the law to suppress expressive acts including burning a flag or using offensive slang terms.[6] Lewis asserts that punitive measures can be taken against speech which incites terrorism to a group of people willing to commit such acts.[6]

The book recounts an opinion written by Brandeis and joined by Holmes in the 1927 case of Whitney v. California which further developed the notion of the power of the people to speak out.[4] Brandeis and Holmes emphasized the value of liberty, and identified the most dangerous factor to freedom as an apathetic society averse to voicing their opinions in public.[4][9]

"There will always be authorities who try to make their own lives more comfortable by suppressing critical comment. [...] But I am convinced that the fundamental American commitment to free speech, disturbing speech, is no longer in doubt."
—Anthony Lewis, Introduction,
Freedom for the Thought That We Hate[3]

In the 1964 Supreme Court case of New York Times Co. v. Sullivan, the court ruled that speech about issues of public impact should be unrestricted, vigorous and public, even if such discussion communicates extreme negative criticism of public servants and members of government.[3][10] Lewis praises this decision, and writes that it laid the groundwork for a press more able to perform investigative journalism concerning controversies, including the Watergate scandal and the Vietnam War.[3] He cites the New York Times Co. v. Sullivan decision as an example of "Madisonian" philosophy towards freedom of speech espoused by James Madison.[7] The author examines the 1971 U.S. Supreme Court case of New York Times Co. v. United States, and endorses the court's decision, which allowed the press to publish classified material relating to the Vietnam War.[5][11]

The author questions the actions of the media with respect to privacy. He observes that public expectations regarding morality and what constitutes an impermissible violation of the right to privacy has changed over time.[5] Lewis cites the dissenting opinion by Brandeis in Olmstead v. United States, which supported a right to privacy.[5][12]

Lewis warns that, during periods of heightened anxiety, the free speech rights of Americans are at greater risk: "there will always be authorities who try to make their own lives more comfortable by suppressing critical comment."[3] He concludes that the evolution of interpretation of the rights afforded by the First Amendment has created stronger support for freedom of speech.[3]
Themes

The book's central theme is a warning that, in times of strife and increased fear, there is a danger of repression and suppression of dissent by those in government who seek to limit freedom of speech.[13] In an interview with the author, Deborah Solomon of The New York Times Magazine wrote that American politics has frequently used fear to justify repression.[13] Lewis pointed out to Solomon that, under the Espionage Act of 1917 and the Sedition Act of 1918, individuals who protested against President Woodrow Wilson's sending of soldiers to Russia were tried and given a twenty-year jail sentence.[13] The author explained that his motivation for writing the book was to recognize the unparalleled civil liberties in the U.S., including freedom of speech and freedom of the press.[13] He identified reductions in freedoms of citizens as a result of governmental action taken after the September 11 attacks.[14]

Freedom for the Thought That We Hate discusses the capability and liberty of citizens to criticize their government.[15] Lewis asserts that the U.S. has the most unreserved speech of any nation.[15][16] Law professor Jeremy Waldron gave the example of his ability to criticize the president or call the vice president and Secretary of Defense war criminals, without fear of retribution from law enforcement for such statements.[15] The book contrasts present-day free speech liberties afforded to Americans and those possessed by citizens in earlier centuries.[15] The author argues that the scope of civil liberties in the U.S. has increased over time owing to a desire for freedom among its people being held as an integral value.[16] Lewis observes in contemporary application of the law, presidents are the subject of satire and denunciation.[15] He notes that it is unlikely a vociferous critic would face a jail sentence simply for voicing such criticism.

Freedom for the Thought That We Hate was first published by Basic Books, a member of the Perseus Books Group, in New York in 2007, with the subtitle, A Biography of the First Amendment.[18][19] For just the second printing, in both New York and London in 2008, the book's subtitle was simplified to Tales of the First Amendment. That change was reverted for the remaining printings, including the paperback edition in 2009 and a large print edition in 2010.[20][18][21] E-book versions were released for the first, third and fourth printings; an audiobook was released with the second printing, and re-released with the fourth.[18][22][23] The book has also been translated into Chinese, and was published in Beijing in 2010.[24]

The book was positively received by critics. Jeffrey Rosen, who reviewed the book for The New York Times, was surprised by the author's departure from traditional civil libertarian views.[25] Rosen pointed out that Lewis did not support absolute protection for journalists from breaking confidentiality with their anonymous sources, even in situations involving criminal acts.[25] Nat Hentoff called the book an engrossing and accessible survey of the First Amendment.[4] Kirkus Reviews considered the book an excellent chronological account of the First Amendment, subsequent legislation, and case law.[26]

Richard H. Fallon reviewed the book for Harvard Magazine, and characterized Freedom for the Thought That We Hate as a clear and captivating background education to U.S. freedom of speech legislation.[27] Fallon praised the author's ability to weave descriptions of historical events into an entertaining account.[27] Robyn Blumner of the St. Petersburg Times wrote that Lewis aptly summarized the development of the U.S. Constitution's protections of freedom of speech and of the press.[28] She observed that the book forcefully presented the author's admiration of brave judges who had helped to develop interpretation of the U.S. Constitution's protections of the rights of freedom of expression as a defense against censorship.[28]

Writing for the Hartford Courant, Bill Williams stated that the book should be mandatory reading for high school and college students.[3] Anne Phillips wrote in her review for The News-Gazette that the book is a concise and well-written description of the conflicts the country faces when grappling with the notions of freedom of expression, free speech, and freedom of the press.[29] Writing for The Christian Science Monitor, Chuck Leddy noted that the author helps readers understand the importance of freedom of speech in a democracy, especially during a period of military conflict when there is increased controversy over the appropriateness of dissent and open dialogue.[5]

Jeremy Waldron reviewed the book for The New York Review of Books, and was critical of Lewis' broad stance towards freedom of speech with respect to hate speech.[30] Waldron later elaborated this position in his 2012 book The Harm in Hate Speech, in which he devoted an entire chapter to Lewis' book.[31] Waldron emphasized that the problem with an expansive view of free speech is not the harm of hateful thoughts, but rather the negative impact resulting from widespread publication of the thoughts.[31] He questioned whether children of racial groups criticized by widely published hate speech would be able to succeed in such an environment.[31] Former U.S. Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens analyzed The Harm in Hate Speech and discussed Freedom for the Thought That We Hate, in a review for The New York Review of Books.[17] Justice Stevens recounted Lewis' argument that an acceptance of hate speech is necessary, because attempts to regulate it would cause encroachment upon expression of controversial viewpoints.[17] He pointed out that Lewis and Waldron agreed that Americans have more freedom of speech than citizens of any other country.[17] In his review, Stevens cited the 2011 decision in Snyder v. Phelps as evidence that the majority of the U.S. Supreme Court supported the right of the people to express hateful views on matters of public importance.[17] Stevens concluded that, although Waldron was unsuccessful in convincing him that legislators should ban all hate speech, The Harm in Hate Speech did persuade him that government leaders should refrain from using such language themselves.


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Female genital mutilation -- Hasanur Rahman, 22:23:14 02/11/16 Thu [1]

Female genital mutilation (FGM), also known as female genital cutting and female circumcision, is the ritual removal of some or all of the external female genitalia. Typically carried out by a traditional circumciser using a blade, with or without anaesthesia, FGM is concentrated in 27 African countries, Yemen and Iraqi Kurdistan, and found elsewhere in Asia, the Middle East, and among diaspora communities around the world.[8][n 1] It is conducted from days after birth to puberty and beyond; in half the countries for which national figures are available, most girls are cut before the age of five.[4]

The procedures differ according to the ethnic group. They include removal of the clitoral hood and clitoral glans, removal of the inner labia, and in the most severe form (known as infibulation) removal of the inner and outer labia and closure of the vulva. In this last procedure, a small hole is left for the passage of urine and menstrual fluid; the vagina is opened for intercourse and opened further for childbirth. Health effects depend on the procedure, but can include recurrent infections, chronic pain, cysts, an inability to get pregnant, complications during childbirth, and fatal bleeding.[11] There are no known health benefits.[12]

The practice is rooted in gender inequality, attempts to control women's sexuality, and ideas about purity, modesty and aesthetics. It is usually initiated and carried out by women, who see it as a source of honour and fear that failing to have their daughters and granddaughters cut will expose the girls to social exclusion.[n 2] Over 130 million women and girls have experienced FGM in the 29 countries in which it is concentrated.[3] The United Nations Population Fund estimates that 20 percent of affected women have been infibulated, a practice found largely in northeast Africa, particularly Djibouti, Eritrea, Somalia and northern Sudan.[15][16]

FGM has been outlawed or restricted in most of the countries in which it occurs, but the laws are poorly enforced.[17] There have been international efforts since the 1970s to persuade practitioners to abandon it, and in 2012 the United Nations General Assembly, recognizing FGM as a human-rights violation, voted unanimously to intensify those efforts.[18] The opposition is not without its critics, particularly among anthropologists. Eric Silverman writes that FGM has become one of anthropology's central moral topics, raising difficult questions about cultural relativism, tolerance and the universality of human rights.[19]

Until the 1980s FGM was widely known as female circumcision, which implied an equivalence in severity with male circumcision.[20] The Kenya Missionary Council began referring to it as the sexual mutilation of women in 1929, following the lead of Marion Scott Stevenson, a Church of Scotland missionary.[21] References to it as mutilation increased throughout the 1970s.[22] Anthropologist Rose Oldfield Hayes called it female genital mutilation in 1975 in the title of a paper,[23] and in 1979 Austrian-American researcher Fran Hosken called it mutilation in her influential The Hosken Report: Genital and Sexual Mutilation of Females.[n 3]

The Inter-African Committee on Traditional Practices Affecting the Health of Women and Children and the World Health Organization (WHO) began referring to it as female genital mutilation in 1990 and 1991 respectively.[25] In April 1997 the WHO, United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) and United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) issued a joint statement using that term. Other terms include female genital cutting (FGC) and female genital mutilation/cutting (FGM/C), preferred by those who work with practitioners.[26]
Local terms

The many variants of FGM are reflected in dozens of local terms in countries where it is common.[27] These often refer to purification. A common Arabic term for purification has the root t-h-r, used for male and female circumcision (tahur and tahara).[28] In Islamic texts the practice is referred to as khafḍ (Arabic: خفض‎)[29] or khifaḍ (Arabic: خِفَض‎).[30] In the Bambara language, spoken mostly in Mali, FGM is known as bolokoli ("washing your hands") and in the Igbo language in eastern Nigeria as isa aru or iwu aru ("having your bath" – as in "a young woman must 'have her bath' before she has a baby").[31]

Sunna circumcision usually refers to clitoridectomy, but is also used for the more severe forms; sunna means "path or way" in Arabic and refers to the tradition of Muhammad, although none of the procedures are required within Islam.[32] The term infibulation derives from fibula, Latin for clasp; the Ancient Romans reportedly fastened clasps through the foreskins or labia of slaves to prevent sexual intercourse.[33] The surgical infibulation of women came to be known as "pharaonic circumcision" in Sudan, but as "Sudanese circumcision" in Egypt.[33] In Somalia it is known simply as qodob ("to sew up")

Classification
Typologies

The WHO, UNICEF and UNFPA issued a joint statement in April 1997 defining FGM as "all procedures involving partial or total removal of the external female genitalia or other injury to the female genital organs whether for cultural or other non-therapeutic reasons."[41]

The procedures vary considerably according to ethnicity and individual practitioners. During a 1998 survey in Niger, women responded with over 50 different terms when asked what was done to them.[27] Translation problems are compounded by the women's confusion over which type of FGM they experienced, or even whether they experienced it. Several studies suggest survey responses are unreliable. A 2003 study in Ghana found that in 1995 four percent said they had not undergone FGM, but in 2000 said they had, while 11 percent switched in the other direction. In Tanzania in 2005, 66 percent reported FGM, but a medical exam found that 73 percent had undergone it.[42][n 5]

Standard questionnaires ask women whether they have undergone the following: (1) cut, no flesh removed (pricking or symbolic circumcision); (2) cut, some flesh removed; (3) sewn closed; and (4) type not determined/unsure/doesn't know.[n 6] The most common procedures fall within the "cut, some flesh removed" category, and involve complete or partial removal of the clitoral glans.[45]

The WHO has created a more detailed typology, Types I–III, based on how much tissue is removed; Type III is "sewn closed." Type IV describes symbolic circumcision and miscellaneous procedures.[46]

Type I is subdivided into Ia, removal of the clitoral hood (rarely performed alone),[n 7] and the more common Ib (clitoridectomy), the complete or partial removal of the clitoral glans and clitoral hood.[48] (When discussing FGM, the WHO uses clitoris to refer to the clitoral glans, the visible tip of the clitoris.)[49] Susan Izett and Nahid Toubia write: "[T]he clitoris is held between the thumb and index finger, pulled out and amputated with one stroke of a sharp object."[50]

Type II (excision) is the complete or partial removal of the inner labia, with or without removal of the clitoral glans and outer labia. Type IIa is removal of the inner labia; IIb, removal of the clitoral glans and inner labia; and IIc, removal of the clitoral glans, inner and outer labia. Excision in French can refer to any form of FGM.[51]
Type III

Type III (infibulation or pharaonic circumcision), the "sewn closed" category, involves the removal of the external genitalia and fusion of the wound. The inner and/or outer labia are cut away, with or without removal of the clitoral glans. Type IIIa is the removal and closure of the inner labia and IIIb the outer labia.[n 8] The practice is found largely in Djibouti, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Somalia and Sudan (though not South Sudan) in northeast Africa. Estimates of numbers vary: according to one in 2008, over eight million women in Africa have experienced it.[n 9] According to UNFPA in 2010, 20 percent of women with FGM have been infibulated.[15]

Comfort Momoh, a specialist midwife, writes of Type III: "[E]lderly women, relatives and friends secure the girl in the lithotomy position. A deep incision is made rapidly on either side from the root of the clitoris to the fourchette, and a single cut of the razor excises the clitoris and both the labia majora and labia minora."[52] In Somalia the clitoral glans is removed and shown to the girl's senior female relatives, who decide whether enough has been amputated. After this the labia are removed.[53]

A single hole of 2–3 mm is left for the passage of urine and menstrual fluid by inserting something, such as a twig, into the wound.[n 10][55] The vulva is closed with surgical thread, agave or acacia thorns, or covered with a poultice such as raw egg, herbs and sugar.[56] The parts that have been removed might be placed in a pouch for the girl to wear.[57] To help the tissue bond, the girl's legs are tied together, often from hip to ankle, for anything up to six weeks; the bindings are usually loosened after a week and may be removed after two.[58] Momoh writes:

[The entrance to the vagina] is obliterated by a drum of skin extending across the orifice except for a small hole. Circumstances at the time may vary; the girl may struggle ferociously, in which case the incisions may become uncontrolled and haphazard. The girl may be pinned down so firmly that bones may fracture.[52]

If the remaining hole is too large in the view of the girl's family, the procedure is repeated.[59] The vagina is opened for sexual intercourse, for the first time either by a midwife with a knife or by the woman's husband with his penis. In some areas, including Somaliland, female relatives of the bride and groom might watch the opening of the vagina to check that the girl is a virgin.[60] Psychologist Hanny Lightfoot-Klein interviewed hundreds of women and men in Sudan in the 1980s about sexual intercourse with Type III:

The penetration of the bride's infibulation takes anywhere from 3 or 4 days to several months. Some men are unable to penetrate their wives at all (in my study over 15%), and the task is often accomplished by a midwife under conditions of great secrecy, since this reflects negatively on the man's potency. Some who are unable to penetrate their wives manage to get them pregnant in spite of the infibulation, and the woman's vaginal passage is then cut open to allow birth to take place. ... Those men who do manage to penetrate their wives do so often, or perhaps always, with the help of the "little knife." This creates a tear which they gradually rip more and more until the opening is sufficient to admit the penis.[61]

The woman is opened further for childbirth and closed afterwards, a process known as defibulation (or deinfibulation) and reinfibulation. Reinfibulation can involve cutting the vagina again to restore the pinhole size of the first infibulation. This might be performed before marriage, and after childbirth, divorce and widowhood.[n 11][63]
Type IV

The WHO defines Type IV as "[a]ll other harmful procedures to the female genitalia for non-medical purposes", including pricking, piercing, incising, scraping and cauterization.[1] It includes nicking of the clitoris (symbolic circumcision), burning or scarring the genitals, and introducing substances into the vagina to tighten it.[64] Labia stretching is also categorized as Type IV.[65] Common in southern and eastern Africa, the practice is supposed to enhance sexual pleasure for the man and add to the sense of a woman as a closed space. From the age of eight, girls are encouraged to stretch their inner labia using sticks and massage. Girls in Uganda are told they may have difficulty giving birth without stretched labia.[n 12][67]

A definition of FGM from the WHO in 1995 included gishiri cutting and angurya cutting, found in Nigeria and Niger. These were removed from the WHO's 2008 definition because of insufficient information about prevalence and consequences.[65] Gishiri cutting involves cutting the vagina's front or back wall with a blade or penknife, performed in response to infertility, obstructed labour and several other conditions. Over 30 percent of women with gishiri cuts in a study by Nigerian physician Mairo Usman Mandara had vesicovaginal fistulae. Angurya cutting is excision of the hymen, usually performed seven days after birth.[68]


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False positives and false negatives -- Hasanur Rahman, 22:18:36 02/11/16 Thu [1]

In medical testing, and more generally in binary classification, a false positive is an error in data reporting in which a test result improperly indicates presence of a condition, such as a disease (the result is positive), when in reality it is not, while a false negative is an error in which a test result improperly indicates no presence of a condition (the result is negative), when in reality it is present. These are the two kinds of errors in a binary test (and are contrasted with a correct result, either a true positive or a true negative.) They are also known in medicine as a false positive (respectively negative) diagnosis, and in statistical classification as a false positive (respectively negative) error.

In statistical hypothesis testing the analogous concepts are known as type I and type II errors, where a positive result corresponds to rejecting the null hypothesis, and a negative result corresponds to not rejecting the null hypothesis. The terms are often used interchangeably, but there are differences in detail and interpretation due to the differences between medical testing and statistical hypothesis testing.

False positive error

A false positive error, or in short false positive, commonly called a "false alarm", is a result that indicates a given condition has been fulfilled, when it actually has not been fulfilled. I.e. erroneously a positive effect has been assumed. In the case of "crying wolf" – the condition tested for was "is there a wolf near the herd?", the actual result was that there had not been a wolf near the herd. The shepherd wrongly indicated there was one, by calling "Wolf, wolf!".

A false positive error is a type I error where the test is checking a single condition, and results in an affirmative or negative decision usually designated as "true or false".
False negative error

A false negative error, or in short false negative, is where a test result indicates that a condition failed, while it actually was successful. I.e. erroneously no effect has been assumed. A common example is a guilty prisoner freed from jail. The condition: "Is the prisoner guilty?" is true (yes, the prisoner is guilty). But the test (a court of law) failed to realize this, and wrongly decided the prisoner was not guilty.

A false negative error is a type II error occurring in test steps where a single condition is checked for and the result can either be positive or negative.
Related terms
False positive and false negative rates
Main articles: Sensitivity and specificity and False positive rate

The false positive rate is the proportion of absent events that yield positive test outcomes, i.e., the conditional probability of a positive test result given an absent event.

The false positive rate is equal to the significance level. The specificity of the test is equal to 1 minus the false positive rate.

In statistical hypothesis testing, this fraction is given the Greek letter α, and 1−α is defined as the specificity of the test. Increasing the specificity of the test lowers the probability of type I errors, but raises the probability of type II errors (false negatives that reject the alternative hypothesis when it is true).[a]

Complementarily, the false negative rate is the proportion of events that are being tested for which yield negative test outcomes with the test, i.e., the conditional probability of a negative test result given that the event being looked for has taken place.

In statistical hypothesis testing, this fraction is given the letter β. The "power" (or the "sensitivity") of the test is equal to 1−β.
Receiver operating characteristic

The article "Receiver operating characteristic" discusses parameters in statistical signal processing based on ratios of errors of various types.
Consequences

Both types of errors are problems for individuals, corporations, and data analysis. In testing for a medical condition, a false positive in medicine (a condition being detected when none exists) causes unnecessary worry or treatment, while a false negative (a condition going undetected when it is present) gives the patient the dangerous illusion of good health and the patient might not get an available treatment. In testing for defective products, a false positive in manufacturing quality control (classifying a product as defective when it is well made) discards a product that is actually well made, while a false negative stamps a broken product as operational. A false positive in scientific research suggests an effect that is not actually there, while a false negative fails to detect an effect that is there.

Based on the real-life consequences of an error, one type may be more serious than the other. In many applications there is a trade-off between these errors, particularly when classifying based on a threshold: a lower threshold for positive results yields more false positives but fewer false negatives.

For example, in high-cost or life-and-death situations, like space exploration or military equipment, the cost of defects is very high (a mission fails or someone dies), and thus one has very strict tolerances. Thus NASA engineers would prefer to waste some money and throw out an electronic circuit that is really fine (false positive) than to throw out less but use one on a spacecraft that is actually broken (false negative). In this situation false positives use more money but increase mission safety, but a false negative would save some money but would risk the entire mission.

On the other hand, in many legal traditions there is a presumption of innocence, as stated in Blackstone's formulation that:

"It is better that ten guilty persons escape than that one innocent suffer",

that is, that false negatives (a guilty person is acquitted and escapes) are far preferable to false positive (an innocent person is convicted and suffers). This is not universal, however, and some systems prefer to jail many innocent, rather than let a single guilty escape – the tradeoff varies between legal traditions.


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Day-care sex-abuse hysteria -- Hasanur Rahman, 22:15:55 02/11/16 Thu [1]

Day-care sex-abuse hysteria was a moral panic that occurred primarily in the 1980s and early 1990s featuring charges against day-care providers of several forms of child abuse, including Satanic ritual abuse.[1][2] A prominent case in Kern County, California, first brought the issue of day-care sexual abuse to the forefront of the public awareness, and the issue figured prominently in news coverage for almost a decade. The Kern County case was followed by cases elsewhere in the United States as well as Canada, New Zealand, Brazil, and various European countries.

Significant cases
Kern County child-abuse cases
Main article: Kern County child abuse cases

The Kern County child abuse case was the first prominent instance of accusations of ritualized sex abuse of children. In 1982 in Kern County, California, Debbie and Alvin McCuan were accused of abusing their own children. The initial charges were made by Mary Ann Barbour, the children's step-grandmother, who had a history of mental illness. Coercive interviewing techniques were used by the authorities to elicit disclosures of parental sexual abuse from the children. In 1982, the girls further accused McCuan's defense witnesses: Scott Kniffen, his wife Brenda, and his mother. Mary Ann Barbour reported that the children had been used for prostitution, used in child pornography, tortured, and made to watch snuff films. In 1984, each of the McCuans and the Kniffens was sentenced to over 240 years in prison. Their convictions were overturned in 1996.[3]
McMartin Preschool
Main article: McMartin preschool trial

The case started in August 1983 when Judy Johnson, the mother of a 2½-year-old boy, reported to the police that her son was abused by Raymond Buckey at the McMartin Preschool in Manhattan Beach, California.[1] After seven years of criminal trials, no convictions were obtained, and all charges were dropped in 1990. As of 2006, it is the longest and most expensive criminal trial in the history of the United States.[1] The accusations involved hidden tunnels, killing animals, Satan worship, and orgies.[4] Judy Johnson was diagnosed with acute schizophrenia[5][6] and in 1986 was found dead in her home from complications of chronic alcoholism.[7] Buckey and his mother, Peggy McMartin, were eventually released without any charges. In 2005 one of the testifying children retracted his testimony and said he lied, to protect his younger siblings and to please his parents.[8][9]

In The Devil in the Nursery in 2001, Margaret Talbot for The New York Times summarized the case:

"When you once believed something that now strikes you as absurd, even unhinged, it can be almost impossible to summon that feeling of credulity again. Maybe that is why it is easier for most of us to forget, rather than to try and explain, the Satanic-abuse scare that gripped this country in the early 80s — the myth that Devil-worshipers had set up shop in our day-care centers, where their clever adepts were raping and sodomizing children, practicing ritual sacrifice, shedding their clothes, drinking blood and eating feces, all unnoticed by parents, neighbors and the authorities."[10]

The trial was the subject of Indictment: The McMartin Trial, a made-for-TV movie that originally aired on HBO on May 20, 1995, starring James Woods.
Country Walk

In 1985 Frank Fuster, the owner of the Country Walk Babysitting Service, in the Country Walk suburb of Miami, Florida, was found guilty of 14 counts of abuse.[11] He was sentenced to a prison with a minimum length of 165 years. Fuster's victims testified that his "unspeakable acts" included leading them in Satanic rituals and terrorizing them by forcing them to watch him mutilate birds, a lesson to children who might reveal the abuse.[11] Fuster had been previously convicted for manslaughter and for fondling a 9-year-old child.[1] Testimony from children in the case was extracted by Laurie and Joseph Braga, a husband-and-wife team who resorted to coercive questioning of the alleged victims when the desired answers were not forthcoming.[12] Fuster's wife recanted her court testimony in an interview with Frontline, saying that she was kept naked in solitary confinement and subjected to other forms of physical and psychological duress until she agreed to testify against her husband.[13] The case was prosecuted by Dade County state's attorney Janet Reno.[14] As of 2014, Fuster continues to serve a 165-year prison sentence.[14][15]

The incident later inspired a book and made-for-TV movie called "Unspeakable Acts".
Fells Acres Day Care Center
Main article: Fells Acres Day Care Center preschool trial

The incident began in 1984 when a 5-year-old boy told a family member that Gerald Amirault, administrator and handyman at the Fells Acres day care center in Malden, Massachusetts, had touched his penis.[1] The boy's mother notified the authorities, and Gerald was arrested. The children told stories that included being abused by a clown and a robot in a secret room at the day care center. They told of watching animals being sacrificed, and one girl claimed Gerald had penetrated her anus with the twelve-inch (30 cm) blade of a knife (which left no injuries).

In the 1986 trial, Gerald was convicted of assaulting and raping nine children and sentenced to thirty to forty years in state prison; in a separate trial his mother, Violet Amirault, and sister, Cheryl Amirault LeFave, were convicted and sentenced to jail for eight to 20 years. He was released in 2004.[16]

In 1995, a critical series of articles in The Wall Street Journal by Dorothy Rabinowitz alleged that the convictions relied entirely on testimony from the children that had been coerced by dubious interrogation techniques, with no corroborating evidence.[17][18] Current Massachusetts Attorney General Martha Coakley, the chief prosecutor of both of the Amirault cases, responded to the articles with statements that "the children testified to being photographed and molested by acts that included penetration by objects" and "the implication … that the children's allegations of abuse were tainted by improper interviewing is groundless and not true."[19]
Bernard Baran
Main article: Bernard Baran

The first day care worker convicted was Bernard Baran. On October 4, 1984, a drug addicted couple who were police informants[20][21] called their contact in the Pittsfield, Massachusetts, police department to accuse Bernard Baran of molesting their son. The child had been attending the government operated Early Childhood Development Center (ECDC) where Baran, an openly gay 19-year-old, worked as a teacher's aide. These parents had previously complained to the board of directors that they "didn't want no homo" around their son.[22][23] In granting Baran a new trial in 2006, the court equated homophobia in the Baran case with the other two prominent forces in day care panic cases, hysteria and suggestion.[24]

Within days of the first allegation, ECDC hosted a puppet show and delivered letters to parents notifying them about a child at the day care with gonorrhea. Five other allegations emerged. Baran was tried in the Berkshire County courthouse 105 days after the first allegation, a swiftness noted in the later court rulings. The courtroom was closed during the children's testimony, which Baran claimed violated his right to a public trial. Baran's defense attorney was later ruled ineffective. Baran was convicted on January 30, 1985, on three counts of rape of a child and five counts of indecent assault and battery. He was sentenced to three life terms plus 8 to 20 years on each charge. He maintained his innocence throughout his case.[25] In 1999 a new legal team took up his case. In 2004 hearings began in a motion for a new trial. In 2006, Baran was granted a new trial and released on $50,000 bail. In May 2009, the Massachusetts Appeals Court affirmed the new trial ruling, setting aside the 1985 convictions. The Berkshire County District Attorney's office dismissed the original charges and Baran's record was cleared.[26]
The Bronx Five

In The Bronx, prosecutor Mario Merola convicted five men, including Nathaniel Grady, a 47-year-old Methodist minister, of sexually abusing children in day care centers throughout the Bronx.[1][27] Rev. Grady spent ten years in prison before being released in 1996.
Praca Day Care

Three employees of a Bronx day-care center were arrested in August 1984 on the charges of abusing at least ten children in their care.[28] Federal and city investigators then questioned dozens of children at the day care. They used 'dolls, gentle words and a quiet approach.'[29] More children reported being sexually abused, raising the total to 30.[30] "Three more city-financed day care centers" also were investigated for sexual abuse.[31]

On 11 August 1984, federal funds were cut off to the Head Start preschool program at the Praca Day Care Center and four employees had been arrested.[32] In June 1985, the day care center was reopened with new sponsorship.[33]

In January 1986, Albert Algarin, employed at the Praca Day Care center, was sentenced to 50 years in prison for 'raping and sexually abusing five children.'[34] In May 1986, Jesus Torres, a former teacher's aide at the Praca Day Care "was sentenced to 40 years in prison yesterday for sexually assaulting two boys at the center.'[35]

Franklin Beauchamp, who had been 'convicted of nine counts of rape, sexual abuse and sodomy involving three children at Praca,' had his case overturned in New York state's highest state court in May 1989. 'The State Court of Appeals ruled that the indictment used to obtain his 1986 conviction was duplicitous, or not specific enough.'[36]

On the web page from Frontline 'Innocence Lost: Other Well-Known Cases, PBS stated that the "remaining defendants eventually had their convictions overturned as well."[1]
Wee Care Nursery School
Main article: Wee Care Nursery School

In Maplewood, New Jersey, in April 1985,[1] Margaret Kelly Michaels was indicted for 299 offenses in connection with the sexual assault of 33 children.[37] Michaels denied the charges.[38] "The prosecution produced expert witnesses who said that almost all the children displayed symptoms of sexual abuse."[39] Prosecution witnesses testified that the children "had regressed into such behavior as bed-wetting and defecating in their clothing. The witnesses said the children became afraid to be left alone or to stay in the dark."[39] Some of the other teachers testified against her.[39] "The defense argued that Miss Michaels did not have the time or opportunity to go to a location where all the activities could have taken place without someone seeing her."[39] Michaels was sentenced to 47 years in the "sex case."[40] Michaels "told the judge that she was confident her conviction would be overturned on appeal."[40] After five years in prison her appeal was successful and sentence was overturned by a New Jersey appeals court. The New Jersey Supreme Court upheld the appellate court's decision and declared "the interviews of the children were highly improper and utilized coercive and unduly suggestive methods."[41] A three judge panel ruled she had been denied a fair trial, because "the prosecution of the case had relied on testimony that should have been excluded because it improperly used an expert's theory, called the child sexual abuse accommodation syndrome, to establish guilt."[42] The original judge was also criticized "for the way in which he allowed the children to give televised testimony from his chambers."[42]
Glendale Montessori

James Toward and Brenda Williams were accused of kidnapping and sexually abusing six boys who attended Glendale Montessori in Stuart, Florida as preschoolers in 1986 and 1987. Investigators claimed to know up to 60 victims, mostly from the ages 2 to 5.[43]

In 1988, office manager Brenda Williams was convicted and sentenced to 10 years in prison. She pled no contest to sex and attempted kidnapping charges involving five boys and she was released from prison in 1993 after serving five years.

In 1989, Toward, owner of Glendale Montessori School, entered an Alford plea to child sexual abuse charges and received a 27-year sentence. While technically maintaining his innocence, he allowed a guilty plea to be entered against him, convicting him of molesting or kidnapping six boys.

James Toward was placed in involuntary commitment due to the Jimmy Ryce Act. Hearsay testimony was admitted at trial, and although he maintained his innocence, Toward plea-bargained to avoid an almost certain life sentence.

Many parents and former co-workers supported Toward's assertions of innocence. Several of the victims had the same doctor (Allan Tesson), and the first child to make the claim was his secretary's and Tesson's patient. Tesson was sued in 1996 for $650,000 for implanting false memories of satanic ritual abuse and child pornography in an adult patient. During this lawsuit, it was proven that Dr. Tesson frequently consulted with self-proclaimed experts in satanic ritual abuse including Corydon Hammond, Catherine Gould and Judianne Denson Gerber, on the subject of satanic ritual abuse and mind control.[44]
Friedman Cases
Main article: Capturing the Friedmans

In Great Neck, Long Island, New York, Arnold, his son Jesse Friedman, and Jesse's friend Ross Goldstein pled guilty to charges that they sexually abused various children who attended computer classes Arnold ran in his home. Arnold and Jesse proclaimed their innocence despite their guilty pleas. Arnold committed suicide in prison; Jesse served 13 years. Legal proceedings continue (2014), as Jesse tries to establish his innocence. Testimony is contradictory, but the Nassau County Court, after commissioning an unprecedented independent review of the case, reasserted Jesse's guilt in a lengthy report. The cases were the subject of a controversial 2003 documentary, Capturing the Friedmans.
Little Rascals
Main article: Little Rascals day care sexual abuse trial

In Edenton, North Carolina, in January 1989, a parent accused Bob Kelly of sexual abuse. Over the next several months, investigations and therapy led to allegations against dozens of other adults in the town, culminating in the arrest of seven adults.[45] Allegations included rape, sodomy, fellatio and bizarre acts characteristic of satanic ritual abuse.

Despite the severity of some of the alleged acts, parents noticed no abnormal behaviour in their children until after initial accusations were made. Bob Kelly's trial lasted eight months and on April 22, 1992, he was convicted of 99 out of 100 counts against him. On 2 May 1995, all convictions were unanimously reversed by the North Carolina Court of Appeals.

The remainder of the defendants received a variety of sentences.[46]
Dale Akiki
Main article: Faith Chapel Church ritual abuse case

Dale Akiki was a developmentally-delayed man accused of satanic ritual abuse in 1991. Akiki, who has Noonan syndrome, was along with his wife a volunteer baby-sitter at Faith Chapel in Spring Valley, California. The accusations started when a young girl told her mother that "[Akiki] showed me his penis", after which the mother contacted the police.

After interviews, nine other children accused Akiki of killing animals, such as a giraffe and an elephant, and drinking their blood in front of the children. He was found not guilty of the 35 counts of child abuse and kidnapping in his 1993 trial.[1]

In 1994, the San Diego County Grand Jury reviewed the Akiki cases and concluded there was no reason to pursue the theory of ritual abuse.[47] On August 25, 1994, he filed a suit against the County of San Diego, Faith Chapel Church, and many others, which was settled for $2 million.[48] Akiki's public defenders received the Public Defender of the Year award for their work defending Akiki.
Oak Hill satanic ritual abuse trial
Main article: Oak Hill satanic ritual abuse trial

Austin residents Frances Keller and her husband, Dan Keller, convicted of sexually abusing a 3-year-old girl in their care, spent 21 years in prison until their release in 2013.[49]

The case began Aug. 15, 1991, when a 3-year-old girl told her mother that Dan Keller had hurt her. The mother and daughter were on their way to a scheduled appointment with the girl’s therapist, who drew out details that included Keller defecating on her head and sexually assaulting her with a pen. During the time leading up to the trial, two other children from the day care offered similar accusations. According to the children, the couple served blood-laced Kool-Aid and forced them to have videotaped sex with adults and other children. The Kellers, they said, sometimes wore white robes and lit candles before hurting them. The children also accused the Kellers of forcing them to watch or participate in the killing and dismemberment of cats, dogs and a crying baby. Bodies were unearthed in cemeteries and new holes dug to hide freshly killed animals and, once, an adult passer-by who was shot and dismembered with a chain saw. The children recalled several plane trips, including one to Mexico, where they were sexually abused by soldiers before returning to Austin in time to meet their parents at the day care.[50]

The only physical evidence of abuse in the case was presented by Dr. Michael Mouw, an emergency room physician at Brackenridge Hospital who examined the 3-year-old girl in 1991 on the night she first accused Dan Keller of abuse. Mouw testified at the Kellers’ trial that he found two tears in the girl’s hymen consistent with sexual abuse and determined that the injuries were less than 24 hours old. Three years after the trial, while attending a medical seminar, Mouw said a slide presentation on “normal” pediatric hymens included a photo that was identical to what he had observed in the girl.[50][51]

On November 26, 2013, the Travis County district attorney's office announced that Fran Keller, now 63, was being released on bond and her husband, Dan Keller, who was convicted at the same time, would be released within a week in a deal reached with lawyers. "There is a reasonable likelihood that (the medical expert's) false testimony affected the judgment of the jury and violated Frances Keller's right to a fair trial," said the district attorney.[49]
Wenatchee child abuse prosecutions
Main article: Wenatchee child abuse prosecutions

In Wenatchee, Washington, in 1994 and 1995, police and state social workers undertook what was then called the nation's most extensive child sex-abuse investigation.[1] Forty-three adults were arrested on 29,726 charges of child sex abuse involving 60 children. Parents, Sunday school teachers and a pastor were charged, and many were convicted of abusing their own children or the children of others in the community. However, prosecutors were unable to provide any physical evidence to support the charges. The main witness was the 13-year-old foster daughter of a police officer, Robert Perez, who had investigated the cases.[52] A jury found the city of Wenatchee and Douglas County, Washington, negligent in the 1994–1995 investigations. They awarded $3 million to a couple who had been wrongly accused in the inquiry.[53]
Christchurch Civic Crèche
Main article: Peter Ellis (childcare worker)

Peter Ellis, a child-care worker at the Christchurch Civic Crèche in New Zealand, was found guilty on 16 counts of sexual abuse against children in 1992 and served seven years in jail. Parents of the alleged abuse victims were entitled to claim NZ$10,000 (equivalent to about US$11,000 in 2010) in compensation for each allegation from the Accident Compensation Corporation, regardless of whether the allegations were proved or not. Many victims' families made multiple allegations. Four female co-workers were also arrested on 15 charges of abuse, but were released after these charges were dropped. Together with six other co-workers who lost their jobs when the centre was closed, they were awarded $1 million in compensation by the Employment Court in 1995, although this sum was reduced on appeal. Peter Ellis has consistently denied any abuse, and the case is still considered controversial by many New Zealanders.[54]
Martensville satanic sex scandal
Main article: Martensville satanic sex scandal

In 1992, a mother in Martensville, Saskatchewan, alleged that a local woman who ran a babysitting service and day care center in her home had sexually abused her child. Police began an investigation and allegations began to snowball. More than a dozen persons, including five police officers from two different forces, ultimately faced over 100 charges connected with running a Satanic cult called The Brotherhood of The Ram, which allegedly practiced ritualized sexual abuse of numerous children at a "Devil Church".[55]

The son of the day care owner was tried and found guilty, then a Royal Canadian Mounted Police task force took over the investigation. It concluded the original investigation was motivated by "emotional hysteria."[56] In 2003, defendants sued for wrongful prosecution.[57] In 2004, Richard and Kari Klassen received $100,000 each, their share of the $1.5 million compensation package awarded for the malicious prosecution.[58]
Escola Base (Brazil)

In São Paulo, Brazil, in March 1994, several newspapers and broadcasters published a series of reports stating that six people had sexually abused children, all students of Escola Base, a day care center and school located in the neighborhood of Aclimação. The six defendants were the owners of the school: Maria Aparecida Shimada, Ichshiro Shimada, their employees, and Paula Monteiro Maurício de Alvarenga, plus Saulo da Costa Nunes and Mara Cristina France, parents of one of the students.

According to the complaints made by parents, Maurício Alvarenga, who worked as a school bus driver, took the children during the day to Nunes and France's home, where the abuses were committed and filmed. The police chief Edélcio Lemos, without verifying the veracity of the allegations and based on preliminary reports, released the information to the press.

The disclosure of the case led to the destruction and looting of the school. Its owners were arrested. However, the police investigation was dropped for lack of evidence. There were no signs that the allegations were in any way well founded. No film was ever found.

With the closing of the investigation, the accused initiated a successful legal battle for compensation. Newspapers, broadcasters, and the government of São Paulo state were obliged to pay compensation.[59] Some of the cases were not decided until 2014.[60]
Schools in Brescia, Italy

In Brescia, Italy, in December 2001 a mother whose child had trouble sleeping contacted a psychologist who worked with abused children. The psychologist believed that the child had been abused. The teachers suspected a janitor at the child's school, Asilo Abba, who was jailed. The news spread, and there were additional accusations, involving teachers. Various teachers went to jail. Many children were moved by their parents to the nearby school Sorelli. After a few months these children, supported by the same experts on child abuse, made accusations against their new teachers. Some parents moved their children to a third school, Carboni. After a few months teachers at Carboni were accused of abuse. The children were again moved, to San Filippo Neri. Again, the children and parents made accusations against the teachers. Finally, judges recognized the collective hysteria, and the accused started to be released. The full innocence of all of those accused was not recognized until 2008.[citation needed]
Outreau child abuse prosecutions

The Outreau trial was a 2004 criminal trial in Northern France on various counts of sexual abuse against children. The affair began when some school teachers and social workers noticed “strange sexual behavior” from four children in a local school. The trial and the appeal trial revealed that the main witness for the prosecution, convicted for the abuse, had lied about the involvement of other suspects, who were in fact innocent. Several innocent suspects had nevertheless spent years jailed on remand and one had committed suicide. On April 24, 2009, the Conseil supérieur de la magistrature sentenced the public accuse officer Fabrice Burgaud to a reprimand. The Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin, the minister of justice Pascal Clément and President Chirac officially apologised to the victims in the name of the government and of the judicial institutions.[61]
Causes
Anxiety

In the late 1970s and early 1980s, more and more mothers were working outside of the home, resulting in the opening of large numbers of day-care centers. Anxiety and guilt over leaving young children with strangers may have created a climate of fear and readiness to believe false accusations.[10][62]
Suggestions and false allegations when interviewing children

Children are vulnerable to outside influences that lead to fabrication of testimony.[63] Their testimony can be influenced in a variety of ways. Maggie Bruck in her article published by the American Psychological Association wrote that children incorporate aspects of the interviewer's questions into their answers in an attempt to tell the interviewer what the child believes is being sought.[64] Studies also show that when adults ask children questions that do not make sense (such as "is milk bigger than water?" or "is red heavier than yellow?"), most children will offer an answer, believing that there is an answer to be given, rather than understand the absurdity of the question.[65] Furthermore, repeated questioning of children causes them to change their answers. This is because the children perceive the repeated questioning as a sign that they did not give the "correct" answer previously.[66] Children are also especially susceptible to leading and suggestive questions.[67]

Some studies have shown that only a small percentage of children produce fictitious reports of sexual abuse on their own.[68][69][70][71] Some studies have shown that children understate occurrences of abuse.[72][73][74]

Interviewer bias also plays a role in shaping child testimony. When an interviewer has a preconceived notion as to the truth of the matter being investigated, the questioning is conducted in a manner to extract statements that support these beliefs.[66] As a result, evidence that could disprove the belief is never sought by the interviewer. Additionally, positive reinforcement by the interviewer can taint child testimony. Often such reinforcement is given to encourage a spirit of cooperation by the child, but the impartial tone can quickly disappear as the interviewer nods, smiles, or offers verbal encouragement to "helpful" statements.[66] Some studies show that when interviewers make reassuring statements to child witnesses, the children are more likely to fabricate stories of past events that never occurred.[64]

Peer pressure also influences children to fabricate stories. Studies show that when a child witness is told that his or her friends have already testified that certain events occurred, the child witness was more likely to create a matching story.[75] The status of the interviewer can also influence a child's testimony — the more authority an interviewer has such as a police officer, the more likely a child is to comply with that person's agenda.[76]

Concern about adults' status and influence on children had at least one notable cultural effect, in the wake of the Praca day care scandal. The makers of the children's show "Sesame Street", in 1985, had decided to have Snuffleupagus revealed to the adult characters of that show. Snuffleupagus had been main character Big Bird's closeted friend, which the adults had considered imaginary.[77]

Finally, while there are supporters of the use of anatomically correct dolls in questioning victims of sexual abuse/molestation, there are also critics of this practice.[78] Critics argue that because of the novelty of the dolls, children will act out sexually explicit acts with the dolls even if the child has not been sexually abused.[78] Another criticism is that because the studies that compare the differences between how abused and non-abused children play with these dolls are conflicting (some studies suggest that sexually abused children play with anatomically correct dolls in a more sexually explicit manner than non-abused children, while other studies suggest that there is no correlation), it is impossible to interpret what is meant by how a child plays with these dolls.[78]
Timeline

1982 Kern county child abuse case
1983 McMartin preschool trial in California
1984 Fells Acres Day Care Center
1984 Bernard F. Baran, Jr., convicted January 30, 1985. The first known conviction of a day care worker
1985 Bronx Five case
1985 Wee Care Nursery School in New Jersey in April
1987 Cleveland child abuse scandal in England
1987 Friedman cases begin
1989 Glendale Montessori sexual abuse case in Stuart, Florida
1989 Little Rascals Day Care Center scandal in Edenton, North Carolina
1990 All charges dropped in McMartin preschool trial
1991 Christchurch Civic Creche, New Zealand, involving Peter Hugh McGregor Ellis
1992 Martensville Scandal, Martensville, Saskatchewan, Canada
1994 start of Wenatchee Sex Rings case
1996 Convictions in the Kern county child abuse case overturned


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Sexual abuse -- Hasanur Rahman, 22:13:11 02/11/16 Thu [1]

Sexual abuse, also referred to as molestation, is forcing undesired sexual behavior by one person upon another. When that force is immediate, of short duration, or infrequent, it is called sexual assault. The offender is referred to as a sexual abuser or (often pejoratively) molester.[1] The term also covers any behavior by any adult or older adolescent towards a child to stimulate any of the involved sexually. When the victim is younger than the age of consent, it is referred to as statutory rape or child sexual abuse.

Forms
Spousal
See also: Domestic violence and Marital rape

Spousal sexual abuse is a form of domestic violence. When the abuse involves forced sex, it may constitute rape upon the other spouse, depending on the jurisdiction, and may also constitute an assault.
Child sexual abuse
Main article: Child sexual abuse

Child sexual abuse is a form of child abuse in which a child is abused for the sexual gratification of an adult or older adolescent.[2][3] It includes direct sexual contact, the adult or otherwise older person engaging indecent exposure (of the genitals, female nipples, etc.) to a child with intent to gratify their own sexual desires or to intimidate or groom the child, asking or pressuring a child to engage in sexual activities, displaying pornography to a child, or using a child to produce child pornography.[2][4][5]

Effects of child sexual abuse include shame and self-blame,[6] depression, anxiety, post-traumatic stress disorder, self-esteem issues, sexual dysfunction, chronic pelvic pain, addiction, self-injury, suicidal ideation, borderline personality disorder, and propensity to re-victimization in adulthood.[7] Child sexual abuse is a risk factor for attempting suicide.[8] Much of the harm caused to victims becomes apparent years after the abuse happens.

Sexual abuse by a family member is a form of incest, and results in more serious and long-term psychological trauma, especially in the case of parental incest.[9]

Globally, approximately 18–19% of women and 8% of men disclose being sexually abused when they were children.[10][11] The gender gap may be caused by higher victimization of girls, lower willingness of men to disclose abuse, or both.[10] Most sexual abuse offenders are acquainted with their victims; approximately 30% are relatives of the child, most often fathers, uncles or cousins; around 60% are other acquaintances such as friends of the family, babysitters, or neighbors; strangers are the offenders in approximately 10% of child sexual abuse cases. Most child sexual abuse is committed by men; women commit approximately 14% of offenses reported against boys and 6% of offenses reported against girls.[12] Child sexual abuse offenders are not pedophiles unless they have a primary or exclusive sexual interest in prepubescent children.[13]
Abuse of people with developmental disabilities
Main article: Sexual abuse of people with developmental disabilities

People with developmental disabilities are often victims of sexual abuse. According to research, people with disabilities are at a greater risk for victimization of sexual assault or sexual abuse because of lack of understanding (Sobsey & Varnhagen, 1989). Yet most of these cases will go unnoticed.
Treatment

In the emergency room, emergency contraceptive medications are offered to women raped by men because about 5% of such rapes result in pregnancy.[14] Preventative medication against sexually transmitted infections are given to victims of all types of sexual abuse (especially for the most common diseases like chlamydia, gonorhea, trichomoniasis and bacterial vaginosis) and a blood serum is collected to test for STIs (such as HIV, hepatitis B and syphilis).[14] Any survivor with abrasions are immunized for tetanus if 5 years have elapsed since the last immunization.[14] Short-term treatment with a benzodiazepine may help with acute anxiety and antidepressants may be helpful for symptoms of PTSD, depression and panic attacks.[14]
Survivor

The term survivor is sometimes used for a living victim, even of usually non-fatal harm, to honor and empower the strength of an individual to heal, in particular a living victim of sexual abuse or assault.[15] For example, there are the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests and The Survivors Trust.
Positions of power
See also: Power and control in abusive relationships, Power harassment and Rankism

Sexual misconduct can occur where one person uses a position of authority to compel another person to engage in an otherwise unwanted sexual activity. For example, sexual harassment in the workplace might involve an employee being coerced into a sexual situation out of fear of being dismissed. Sexual harassment in education might involve a student submitting to the sexual advances of a person in authority in fear of being punished, for example by being given a failing grade.

Several sexual abuse scandals have involved abuse of religious authority and often cover-up among non-abusers, including cases in the Southern Baptist religion,[16] Catholic Church, Episcopalian religion,[17] Islam,[18] Jehovah's Witnesses, Lutheran church,[19] Methodist Church,[20] The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints,[21] the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, Orthodox Judaism,[22] other branches of Judaism,[23] and various cults.

Sexual abuse is a problem in some minority communities. In 2007, a number of Hispanic victims were included in the settlement of a massive sexual abuse case involving the Los Angeles archdiocese of the Catholic Church.[24] To address the issue of sexual abuse in the African-American community, the prestigious Leeway Foundation[25] sponsored a grant to develop www.blacksurvivors.org,[26] a national online support group and resource center for African-American sexual abuse survivors. The non-profit group was founded in 2008 by Sylvia Coleman, an African-American sexual abuse survivor and national sexual abuse prevention expert.


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Cleveland child abuse scandal -- Hasanur Rahman, 22:10:47 02/11/16 Thu [1]

The Cleveland child abuse scandal refers to a 1987 wave of suspected child sexual abuse cases in Cleveland, England.

Background

At this time, the county of Cleveland, established in 1974, included three main towns: Stockton-on-Tees, Hartlepool and Middlesbrough.[1] In 1996 the former county was broken into four local authorities with only one retaining, in part, the name of Cleveland.[1]
History

In the years prior to the scandal, levels of reported child abuse in the Cleveland area were consistent with those of other parts of the United Kingdom.[1] However, in 1987, during the period of February to July, many children living in Cleveland were removed from their homes by social service agencies and diagnosed as sexually abused.[2] The 121 diagnoses were made by two paediatricians at a Middlesbrough hospital, Dr Marietta Higgs and Dr Geoffrey Wyatt, using a "controversial diagnostic practice" called reflex anal dilation.[2] When there were not enough foster homes in which to place the allegedly abused children, social services began to house the children in a ward at the local hospital.[1]

Later, the test being used to establish child abuse was contested by the area police surgeon and cooperation between the social workers, police and hospital doctors involved in diagnosis began to disintegrate.[1] In addition, there was public concern regarding the practices being used by the local social service agency, such as the removal of children from their homes in the middle of the night.[1] In May 1987, parents marched from the hospital where their children were being held to the local newspaper. The resulting media coverage caused the social service agency's practices to receive public scrutiny and criticism.[1] In response, the Butler-Sloss report was commissioned by the Secretary of State for Social Services in July 1987 and published in 1988.[2] The report was led by Elizabeth Butler-Sloss and it concluded that most of the diagnoses were incorrect.[2] As a result, 94 of the 121 children were returned to their homes.[2][3]

On 14 October 1991, the Children Act was implemented in full as a result of the Cleveland child abuse scandal[4] and other child related events that preceded it.[1] A TV documentary called The Death of Childhood was broadcast in 1997 and alleged that "independent experts under the guidance of the Department of Health later found that at least 70 per cent of the diagnoses" were correct.[5] According to the documentary, two years after the scandal a number of children were again referred to social services and determined to be at risk for child abuse.[5] In February 2007, the Chief Medical Officer, who was the regional medical officer at the time of the scandal, admitted that "mistakes were made". [6] A few days later, two of the children who had been the focus of the scandal asked the Middlesbrough police for an investigation of their 1987 experience.


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Child sexual abuse accommodation syndrome -- Hasanur Rahman, 22:08:58 02/11/16 Thu [1]

Child sexual abuse accommodation syndrome (CSAAS) is a syndrome developed by Roland C. Summit in 1983 to describe how he believed sexually abused children responded to ongoing sexual abuse.

Summit described how children try to resolve the experience of sexual abuse in relation to the effects of disclosure in real life. He posited five stages:[1]

Secrecy
Helplessness
Entrapment and accommodation
Delayed disclosure
Retraction

According to Mary de Young, CSAAS featured heavily in the day-care sex-abuse hysteria of the 1980s and 90s, because it purports to explain both delayed disclosures and withdrawals of false allegation of child sexual abuse. De Young argued that CSAAS is used to justify any statement made by a child as an indication that sexual abuse had occurred, because immediate disclosure could be an indication of abuse, but also delayed disclosure, withdrawal and sustained denial.[2]

Margaret Shiu wrote in 2009 that "There is empirical evidence to support both the scientific validity of CSAAS and the tendency for sexually abused children to recant their allegations of CSA (Child Sexual Abuse)."[3] Shiu concluded that "It is therefore time for courts to stop doubting the scientific validity of CSAAS."


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False allegation of child sexual abuse -- Hasanur Rahman, 22:06:58 02/11/16 Thu [1]

A false allegation of child sexual abuse is an accusation that a person committed one or more acts of child sexual abuse when in reality there was no perpetration of abuse by the accused person as alleged. Such accusations can be brought by the alleged victim, or by another person on the alleged victim's behalf. Studies of child abuse allegations suggest that the overall rate of false accusation is under 10%.[1][2][3][4] Of the allegations determined to be false, only a small portion originated with the child, the studies showed; most false allegations originated with an adult bringing the accusations on behalf of a child, and of those, a large majority occurred in the context of divorce and child-custody battles.[1][5] Another possible motive is revenge by the person making the allegation against the accused person. There is also evidence that the UK (and formerly the New Zealand) systems of paying substantial compensation to alleged victims and their parents without requiring proof of the allegation, can provide a motive for making false allegations.

Types

When there is insufficient supporting evidence to determine whether an accusation is true or false, it is described as "unsubstantiated" or "unfounded". Accusations that are determined to be false based on corroborating evidence can be divided into three categories:[1]

An allegation that is completely false in that the events that were alleged did not occur; It could be done to get back at a teacher or employer who denied them a grade for coursework, a pay raise or promotion. It could also be done for the purposes of extortion or blackmail.
An allegation that describes events that did occur, but were perpetrated by an individual who is not accused, and in which the accused person is innocent. When a child makes this type of allegation it is termed "perpetrator substitution";
An allegation that is partially true and partially false, in that it mixes descriptions of events that actually happened with other events that did not occur.

A false allegation can occur as the result of intentional lying on the part of the accuser;[6] or unintentionally, due to a confabulation, either arising spontaneously due to mental illness[6] or resulting from deliberate or accidental suggestive questioning, coaching of the child, or faulty interviewing techniques.[7] Researchers Poole and Lindsay suggested in 1997 applying separate labels to the two concepts, proposing the term "false allegations" be used specifically when the accuser is aware they are lying, and "false suspicions" (weasel word phrase; dissimulation) for the wider range of false accusations in which suggestive questioning may have been involved.[8]

False accusations can be prompted, aggravated or perpetuated by law enforcement, child protection or prosecution officials who become convinced of the guilt of the accused.
See also: False allegations when interviewing children

Disconfirming evidence can lead to cognitive dissonance on the part of these individuals, and lead them to deliberately or unconsciously attempt to resolve dissonance by ignoring, discounting or even destroying the evidence. Once any steps are taken to justify the decision that the accused is guilty, it becomes very difficult for the official to accept disconfirming evidence, and this can continue during appeals, retrials or any other effort to revisit a verdict.[9]
Prevalence

Denial of child sexual abuse by the accused, or by others, is common and its reality is not easily accepted (though such a denial should never be interpreted as evidence of guilt).[10][11] Reporting rates may also be substantially below actual rates of abuse as many victims do not disclose their abuse,[12][13] which may result in an overrepresentation of false allegations due to the inaccurate estimation of actual cases of abuse.[14] Of the millions of reports of child sexual abuse each year to state protective agencies in the USA (including both substantiated and unsubstantiated reports), there is no formal determination as to what portion of those represent false allegations.

Findings of multiple studies performed between 1987 and 1995 suggested that the rate of false allegations ranged from a low of 6% to a high of 35% of reported child sexual abuse cases[verification needed].[8] Experts have argued that the reason for the wide range of differences in the rates resulted from different criteria used in various studies. In particular, a lower rate was found in studies that considered false allegations to be based on intentional lying, whereas the higher rates were reported in studies that also added unintentional false allegations resulting from suggestive questioning.[8] A 1992 meta-analysis suggests that false allegations represent between two and ten percent of all allegations.[6]

False reports are more common in custody disputes.[15][16][17] Children appear to rarely make up false allegations of their own accord[16][17][18] but will make false allegations if coercively questioned by individuals who believe abuse has occurred but refuse to accept children's statements that they were not abused (as was common practice during the satanic ritual abuse moral panic).[7]

Wrongful allegations involving alleged child victims may not be confined to sexual abuse. A prominent British paediatric neuropathologist, Dr Waney Squier, made headlines in 2011 by stating she believed that 'half or even more of those who have been brought to trial in the past for SBS have been wrongly convicted'.[19]
False retractions

False retractions of accusations by children who have been abused are suggested to occur for one or more of several reasons: out of shame or embarrassment, fear of being sent to a foster home, due to the reaction of adults leading them to feel their behavior was "wrong" or "bad", a desire to protect the perpetrator who may be a close family member, fear of destroying the family, coaching by an adult family member insisting the child withdraw the accusation, and more.[20][21] False retractions are less common when the child receives timely and appropriate support following the statement of the allegation.[21]
Effect of changes to legal tests (UK)

According to support group Falsely Accused Carers and Teachers (FACT), in 2000 there was a 90% conviction rate for alleged child sex abusers as compared to just 9% for cases of adult rape.[22] In the UK, all the post-1970 court cases that are recognized as authorities on evidence of disposition "concern charges of sexual abuse of minors".[23] In 1991, the House of Lords judgment in Director of Public Prosecutions versus P significantly lowered the barrier to admission of similar fact evidence of disposition to commit a crime.

This, combined with the police practice of "trawling" for child abuse victims using door-to-door interviews and the potential for monetary compensation, has created opportunities and incentive for false allegations to occur:[24]

Normally, an allegation of a criminal offence has to stand or fall on its own merits: if a witness accusing someone of sexual abuse was sufficiently credible, or could adduce supporting evidence, then an abuser would be convicted. Until 1991, multiple allegations against the same person could only be held to be mutually corroborating if there were 'striking similarities' between the alleged crimes, indicating a criminal's 'signature,' a distinct modus operandi. But the judgment removed this protection. In effect, the courts have accepted the idea of 'corroboration by volume'.

In 2002, the Home Affairs Select Committee (Fourth report, 2001/2), which dealt with police trawling practices and referred to the 'enormous difficulties' faced by those accused of child sexual abuse, recommended that the requirement for similar fact evidence to be linked by 'striking similarities' be restored in cases involving allegations of historical child abuse. However this recommendation contradicted the Government White Paper Justice for All (2002), which proposed lowering the threshold for the admission of similar fact evidence still further. The UK Government rejected the recommendation.[clarification needed][25]
Effect on the child and the accused

Allegations of sexual abuse can be inherently traumatic to the child when false.[26] People falsely charged with sexual abuse often face numerous problems of their own. The heinous nature of the crime leveled at them often evokes an overwhelming sense of betrayal. In highly publicized cases, the general public has a strong tendency to summarily assume the accused is guilty, leading to very serious social stigma. The accused, even if acquitted, risks being fired from their job, losing their friends and other relationships, having their property vandalized, and being harassed by those believing them to be guilty.
Support groups

In 2001 there were 18 support and lobby groups extant in the UK "set up to redress the injustice suffered by those who, they claim, have been wrongly convicted in abuse cases".[22] Groups currently active in the UK include False Allegations Against Carers and Teachers (FACT), False Allegations Support Organization (FASO), People Against False Allegations of Abuse (PAFAA with SOFAP), and SAFARI.
Media

Take Me To The River (2015 film) An American drama about a young boy who plans to come out to his family at a reunion runs into trouble when he is falsely accused of sexually abusing his cousin.[27]
The Hunt (Danish: Jagten) Danish drama film by Thomas Vinterberg about a man who becomes the target of mass hysteria after being wrongly accused of sexually assaulting a child (2012).[28]
Witch Hunt is a documentary produced and narrated by Sean Penn about the Kern County child abuse cases (2008).
Goodbye Daddy (Farvel Far) is a documentary about false incest charges in Denmark (Danmarks Radio, 2006).
Capturing the Friedmans (Dir. Andrew Jarecki) is a 2003 HBO documentary about Arnold and Jesse Friedman, who both pled guilty to child abuse but claimed the charges were false and the guilty pleas coerced.
In the Name of the Children (Panorama) is a documentary investigating the conviction of a former boy's home worker of child sexual abuse using similar fact evidence obtained by police trawling (2000).
Just Ask My Children (Dir. Arvin Brown) is a movie based on the true story of Brenda and Scott Kniffen,[29] who were falsely accused of sexually abusing their children and served 12 years in prison before their convictions were quashed (2001).
Snap Decision (Dir. Alan Metzger) is a made-for-TV drama inspired by the true story of Kathryn Mayers,[30] a professional photographer who was arrested and tried for child endangerment for taking allegedly pornographic photos of children, one of whom was her daughter (2001).
Seduction in a Small Town (a.k.a. Harvest of Lies) (Dir. Charles Wilkinson) is a drama about a small town mother falsely accused of abusing her children, who are taken from her and placed into foster care. She and her husband struggle to prove their innocence (1997).
Say Uncle (Dir. Peter Paige) is a satire about a naive young man who adores children and is unjustly labelled by the local community as a pedophile (2005).
A Map of the World (1994), a novel that was turned into a film (1999), about a school nurse falsely accused of molesting a student.


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False accusation of rape -- Hasanur Rahman, 22:04:18 02/11/16 Thu [1]

A false accusation of rape is the intentional reporting of a rape where no rape has occurred. It is difficult to assess the prevalence of false accusations because they are often conflated with non-prosecuted cases under the designation "unfounded."[1][2] However, in the United States, the FBI Uniform Crime Report in 1996 and the United States Department of Justice in 1997 stated 8% of rape accusations in the United States were regarded as unfounded or false.[3][4][5] Studies in other countries have reported their own rates at anywhere from 1.5% (Denmark) to 10% (Canada).[6] Due to varying definitions of a "false accusation", the true percentage remains unknown.[7]

Estimates of prevalence

It is extremely difficult to assess the prevalence of false accusations. Not all jurisdictions have a distinct classification of false accusation, resulting in these cases being combined with other types of cases (e.g. where the accuser did not physically resist the suspect or sustain injuries) under headings such as "unfounded" or "unproved". There are many reasons other than falsity that can result in a rape case being closed as unfounded or unproven.[1][2] DiCanio (1993) states that while researchers and prosecutors do not agree on the exact percentage of false allegations, they generally agree on a range of 2% to 10%.[8]
Crown Prosecution Service report (2011–2012)

A report by the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) examined rape allegations in England and Wales over a 17-month period between January 2011 and May 2012. It showed that in 35 cases authorities prosecuted a person for making a false allegation, while they brought 5,651 prosecutions for rape. Keir Starmer, the head of the CPS, said that the "mere fact that someone did not pursue a complaint or retracted it, is not of itself evidence that it was false" and that it is a "misplaced belief" that false accusations of rape are commonplace.[9] He added that the report also showed that a significant number of false allegations of rape (and domestic violence) "involved young, often vulnerable people. About half of the cases involved people aged 21 years old and under, and some involved people with mental health difficulties. In some cases, the person alleged to have made the false report had undoubtedly been the victim of some kind of offence, even if not the one that he or she had reported."[10][11][12]
Lisak (2010)

David Lisak's study, published in 2010 in Violence Against Women, classified as false 8 out of the 136 (5.9%) reported rapes at an American university over a ten-year period.[13]

Applying IACP guidelines, a case was classified as a false report if there was evidence that a thorough investigation was pursued and that the investigation had yielded evidence that the reported sexual assault had in fact not occurred. A thorough investigation would involve, potentially, multiple interviews of the alleged perpetrator, the victim, and other witnesses, and where applicable, the collection of other forensic evidence (e.g., medical records, security camera records). For example, if key elements of a victim's account of an assault were internally inconsistent and directly contradicted by multiple witnesses and if the victim then altered those key elements of his or her account, investigators might conclude that the report was false. That conclusion would have been based not on a single interview, or on intuitions about the credibility of the victim, but on a "preponderance" of evidence gathered over the course of a thorough investigation."[14]

Police in Victoria, Australia (2006)

A study of 850 rape accusations made to police in Victoria Australia between 2000 and 2003 found that 2.1% were ultimately classified by police as false, with the complainants then charged or threatened with charges for filing a false police report.

A 2006 paper by Philip N.S. Rumney in the Cambridge Law Journal offers a review of studies of false reporting in the US, New Zealand and the UK.[5] Rumney draws two conclusions from his review of literature. First, the police continue to misapply the "no-crime" or "unfounding" criteria. Studies by Kelly et al. (2005), Lea et al. (2003), HMCPSI/HMIC (2002), Harris and Grace (1999), Smith (1989), and others found that police decisions to no-crime were frequently dubious and based entirely on the officer's personal judgment. Rumney notes that some officers seem to "have fixed views and expectations about how genuine rape victims should react to their victimization." He adds that "qualitative research also suggests that some officers continue to exhibit an unjustified scepticism of rape complainants, while others interpret such things as lack of evidence or complaint withdrawal as 'proof' of a false allegation."

Rumney's second conclusion is that it is impossible to "discern with any degree of certainty the actual rate of false allegations" because many of the studies of false allegations have adopted unreliable or untested research methodologies. He argues, for instance, that in addition to their small sample size, the studies by Maclean (1979) and Stewart (1981) used questionable criteria to judge an allegation to be false. MacLean deemed reports "false" if, for instance, the victim did not appear "dishevelled" and Stewart, in one instance, considered a case disproved, stating that "it was totally impossible to have removed her extremely tight undergarments from her extremely large body against her will".[16]
British Home Office study (2005)

A 2005 study, "A gap or a chasm? Attrition in reported rape cases" was the largest and most rigorous study to date commissioned by the British Home Office on UK rape crime, from the initial reporting of a rape through to legal prosecutions. The study was based on 2,643 sexual assault cases (Kelly, Lovett, and Regan, 2005). Of these, police departments classified 8% as false reports.[17]

The researchers noted that some of these classifications were based simply on the personal judgments of the police investigators and were made in violation of official criteria for establishing a false allegation. Closer analysis of this category applying the Home Office counting rules for establishing a false allegation and excluding cases where the application of the cases where confirmation of the designation was uncertain reduced the percentage of false reports to 3%. The researchers concluded that "one cannot take all police designations at face value" and that "[t]here is an over-estimation of the scale of false allegations by both police officers and prosecutors." Moreover, they added:

The interviews with police officers and complainants' responses show that despite the focus on victim care, a culture of suspicion remains within the police, even amongst some of those who are specialists in rape investigations. There is also a tendency to conflate false allegations with retractions and withdrawals, as if in all such cases no sexual assault occurred. This reproduces an investigative culture in which elements that might permit a designation of a false complaint are emphasised (later sections reveal how this also feeds into withdrawals and designation of 'insufficient evidence'), at the expense of a careful investigation, in which the evidence collected is evaluated.[17][18][19]

FBI statistics

FBI reports from 1996 consistently put the number of "unfounded" rape accusations around 8%. In contrast, the average rate of unfounded reports for "Index crimes" tracked by the FBI is 2%.[3] This estimate was criticised as meaningless by academic Bruce Gross:

Many of the jurisdictions from which the FBI collects data on crime use different definitions of, or criteria for, "unfounded." That is, a report of rape might be classified as unfounded (rather than as forcible rape) if the alleged victim did not try to fight off the suspect, if the alleged perpetrator did not use physical force or a weapon of some sort, if the alleged victim did not sustain any physical injuries, or if the alleged victim and the accused had a prior sexual relationship. Similarly, a report might be deemed unfounded if there is no physical evidence or too many inconsistencies between the accuser's statement and what evidence does exist. As such, although some unfounded cases of rape may be false or fabricated, not all unfounded cases are false.[2]

Kanin (1994)

In 1994, Eugene J. Kanin of Purdue University investigated the incidences of false rape allegations made to the police in one small urban community in the Midwest United States (population 70,000) between 1978 and 1987. He states that unlike in many larger jurisdictions, this police department had the resources to "seriously record and pursue to closure all rape complaints, regardless of their merits." He further states each investigation "always involves a serious offer to polygraph the complainants and the suspects" and "the complainant must admit that no rape had occurred. She is the sole agent who can say that the rape charge is false."

The number of false rape allegations in the studied period was 45; this was 41% of the 109 total complaints filed in this period.[20] The researchers verified, whenever possible, for all of the complainants who recanted their allegations, that their new account of the events matched the accused's version of events.

After reviewing the police files, Kanin categorized the false accusations into three broad motivations: alibis, revenge, and attention-seeking. These motivations were assigned prevalence of roughly 50%, 30%, and 20% respectively. This categorization was supported by the details of complainant recantations and other documentation of their cases.

Kanin also investigated the combined police records of two large Midwestern universities over a three-year period (1986-1988), and found that 50% of the reported forcible rapes were determined to be false accusations (32 of the total 64). No polygraphs were utilized, the investigations were the sole responsibility of a ranking female officer, and a rape charge was only counted as false under complainant recantation. In this sample, the motivations mentioned above were roughly evenly split between alibi and revenge, with only one case characterized as attention-seeking.
Criticism

Critics of Kanin's report include David Lisak, an associate professor of psychology and director of the Men's Sexual Trauma Research Project at the University of Massachusetts Boston. He states, "Kanin's 1994 article on false allegations is a provocative opinion piece, but it is not a scientific study of the issue of false reporting of rape. It certainly should never be used to assert a scientific foundation for the frequency of false allegations."[21]

According to Lisak, Kanin's study lacked any kind of systematic methodology and did not independently define a false report, instead recording as false any report which the police department classified as false. The department classified reports as false which the complainant later said were false, but Lisak points out that Kanin's study did not scrutinize the police's processes or employ independent checkers to protect results from bias.[14]

Kanin, Lisak writes, took his data from a police department which used investigation procedures (polygraphs) that are discouraged by the U.S. Justice Department and denounced by the International Association of Chiefs of Police. These procedures include the "serious offer", in this department, of polygraph testing of complainants, which is viewed as a tactic of intimidation that leads victims to avoid the justice process[14] and which, Lisak says, is "based on the misperception that a significant percentage of sexual assault reports are false."[21] The police department's "biases...were then echoed in Kanin's unchallenged reporting of their findings."[21] While also noting some of the same criticisms of Kanin, Rumney's 2006 metastudy of US and UK false rape allegation studies adds that "if, indeed, officers did abide by this policy then the 41% could, in fact, be an underestimate given the restrictive definition of false complaints offered by the police in this study. The reliability of these findings may be somewhat bolstered by the fact that the police appeared to record the details and circumstances of the fabrications."[22]

Bruce Gross writes in the Forensic Examiner that Kanin's study is an example of the limitations of existing studies on false rape accusations. "Small sample sizes and non-representative samples preclude generalizability."[2] Philip N.S. Rumney questions the reliability of Kanin's study stating that it "must be approached with caution". He argues that the study's most significant problem is Kanin's assumption "that police officers abided by departmental policy in only labeling as false those cases where the complainant admitted to fabrication. He does not consider that actual police practice, as other studies have shown, might have departed from guidelines."


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Racial hoax -- Hasanur Rahman, 22:01:44 02/11/16 Thu [1]

A racial hoax is a hoax that occurs "when someone fabricates a crime and blames it on another person because of [his or her] race or when an actual crime has been committed and the perpetrator falsely blames someone because of [his or her] race".[1] The term was popularised by Katheryn Russell-Brown in her book The Color of Crime: Racial Hoaxes, White Fear, Black Protectionism, Police Harassment and Other Macroaggressions (1998). A racial hoax can be performed by a person of any race, against a person of any race. According to Russell-Brown racial hoaxes against African Americans are most likely to receive media attention and create a more acute social problem due to the criminal black man stereotype.[1]
Concept

Patricia L. Brougham argued that the common stereotype of criminal black men has enabled the use of racial hoaxes against this group. Brougham writes that these stereotypes cause law enforcement agencies to believe that a black perpetrator exists when in reality the allegation is false.[2]

Russell-Brown argues that racial hoaxes are devised, perpetrated, and successful because they take advantage of fears and stereotypes.[3] According to her, white-on-black hoaxes are the most likely to receive media attention and to cause social and economics problems.[1] She argues that anyone performing a racial hoax should face criminal charges, particularly if a black person is targeted,[4] and that hoaxes targeting black people create more severe problems than those against other racial groups.[3] Letha A. See in Violence as Seen Through a Prism of Color (2001) sees the hoax as a unique method used against specific racial groups, rather than against individuals.[5] Sally S. Simpson and Robert Agnew suggests that the unusual nature of some racial hoaxes can cause them to be dismissed.[6]

Between 1987 and 1996 in the United States, Russell-Brown documented 67 racial hoax cases, and notes the following: 70 percent were white-on-black hoaxes; more than half were exposed within a week; hoaxes are most frequently used to allege assault, rape, or murder; hoax perpetrators were charged with filing a false report in about 45 percent of cases.[7] These cases represent only a fraction of the total number of cases because racial hoaxes are not reported as such and most crimes are not covered in the media.[3] According to her, a high proportion of the white-on-black cases were performed by police and judicial officers; she documents seven such cases.[8] Historically the most common type of hoax performed against black males was rape. Because of fears over the 'black rapist', Russell-Brown suggests "it is not surprising that so many White women have created Black male rapists as their fictional criminals".[9]

In the United States there has been little legal response to racial hoaxes.[10] Russel-Brown wrote that (at the time of the book written) only New Jersey considered legislation to criminalize racial hoaxes.[11]
Cases
Jesse Anderson
Main article: Jesse Anderson

In 1992, Jesse Anderson became infamous for stabbing his wife Barbara E. Anderson thirty-seven times while in the parking lot of a T.G.I. Friday's in Milwaukee. Anderson blamed two African-American men for attacking him and his wife, and even presented police with a Los Angeles Clippers basketball cap he claimed to have knocked off the head of one of the assailants. When details of the crime were made public, a university student told police Anderson had purchased the hat from him a few days earlier. According to employees at a military surplus store, the red-handled fishing knife which was used to murder Barbara was sold to Anderson only a few weeks earlier. Police stated that the store was the only one in Milwaukee that sold that type of knife. Anderson was shortly thereafter charged with murder, found guilty, and sentenced to life imprisonment.[12]
Charles Stuart
Main article: Charles Stuart (murderer)

The case of Charles Stuart is often cited as an example of a racial hoax.[1][13] On 23 October 1989, in Boston, Stuart and his pregnant wife Carol were driving when, according to Stuart, a black gunman forced his way into the car and shot them both, hitting Carol in the head and Stuart in the body. Carol died later that night; the baby, delivered by caesarean section, died 17 days later. Still alive, Stuart drove away and called the police, who conducted a search of Mission Hill, Boston, a mostly black area. Stuart picked out Willie Bennett, a black man, from a photo lineup. The police shifted their attention onto Stuart when Stuart's brother Matthew told them that Stuart had committed the murder, and when they noted inconsistencies in Stuart's account. On 4 January 1990, Stuart committed suicide. The police later learned that Stuart had committed the murder to cash in on his wife's insurance policy.[1][14]
Susan Smith
Main article: Susan Smith

In October 1994, in South Carolina, Susan Smith drowned her sons by putting them in her car and letting it roll into John D. Long Lake. She called the police and stated that an armed black man had hijacked her car with her two sons inside. After an extensive manhunt, Smith confessed that she had killed her sons, and, in July 1995, was sentenced to life imprisonment.[15][16][17]
Tawana Brawley
Main article: Tawana Brawley rape allegations

Tawana Glenda Brawley gained notoriety in 1987-88 for falsely accusing six white men of having raped her. The charges received widespread national attention because of her age (15), the persons accused (including police officers and a prosecuting attorney), and the shocking state in which Brawley was discovered after the rape (naked and covered with feces). Brawley's accusations were given widespread media attention in part from the involvement of her advisers, including the Reverend Al Sharpton and attorneys Alton H. Maddox and C. Vernon Mason, three other African-Americans).[18] After hearing evidence, a grand jury concluded in October 1988 that Brawley had not been a victim of rape and that she herself may have created the appearance of an attack.[19] Steven Pagones, the New York prosecutor whom Brawley had accused as being one of her assailants, successfully sued Brawley and her three advisers for defamation.[20]
Duke lacrosse case
Main article: Duke lacrosse case

The Duke lacrosse case was a criminal investigation into a 2006 false accusation of rape made against three members of the men's lacrosse team at Duke University in Durham, North Carolina by Crystal Gail Mangum, an African American student at North Carolina Central University[21][22] who worked as a stripper,[23] dancer and escort.[24] Many people involved in, or commenting on the case, including prosecutor Mike Nifong, called the alleged assault a hate crime or suggested it might be one.[25][26][27][dead link][28]

The fallout from the case's resolution led to, among other things, the disbarment of prosecutor Mike Nifong.
Ashley Todd mugging hoax
Main article: Ashley Todd mugging hoax

In October 2008, Ashley Todd, a volunteer for the U.S. presidential campaign of Republican John McCain,[29] falsely claimed to have been the victim of robbery and politically motivated physical assault by a supporter of McCain's Democratic opponent Barack Obama.[30] The story broke less than two weeks before the 2008 United States presidential election on November 4. Todd later confessed to inventing the story after surveillance photos and a polygraph test were presented. She was charged with filing a false police report, and entered a probation program for first-time offenders.


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Fahd of Saudi Arabia -- Hasanur Rahman, 21:58:54 02/11/16 Thu [1]

Fahd bin Abdulaziz Al Saud, Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques, (Arabic: فهد بن عبد العزيز السعود‎ Fahd ibn ‘Abd al-‘Azīz Āl Sa‘ūd) (16 March 1921 – 1 August 2005) was the King of Saudi Arabia from 1982 to 2005.

One of thirty-seven sons of Saudi founder Ibn Saud, and the fourth of his six sons who have ruled the Kingdom (Saud, Faisal, Khalid, Fahd, Abdullah and Salman), Fahd ascended to the throne on the death of his half-brother, King Khalid, on 13 June 1982.

Fahd was appointed Crown Prince when Khalid succeeded their half-brother King Faisal, who was assassinated in 1975. Fahd was viewed as the de facto Prime Minister during King Khalid's reign in part due to the latter's ill health.

Fahd suffered a debilitating stroke in 1995, after which he was unable to continue performing his full official duties. His half-brother, Abdullah, the country's Crown Prince, served as de facto regent of the kingdom and succeeded Fahd as monarch upon his death in August 2005.

King Fahd is credited for having introduced the Basic Law of Saudi Arabia in 1992.

Early political positions

Prince Fahd was made a member of the royal advisory board at his mother's urging.[10] In 1945, Prince Fahd traveled on his first state visit to San Francisco for the signing of the UN charter.[11] On this trip he served under his brother, Prince Faisal, who was at the time Saudi Arabia's foreign minister.[9] In 1953, Fahd led his first official state visit, attending the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II on behalf of the House of Saud.[8][12][13] On 24 December 1953, Prince Fahd was appointed education minister, being the first person holding this post in the country.[14][15]

Prince Fahd led the Saudi delegation to the League of Arab States in 1959, signifying his increasing prominence in the House of Saud—and that he was being groomed for a more significant role. In 1962, Fahd was given the important post of interior minister.[7] As interior minister he headed the Saudi delegation at a meeting of Arab Heads of State in Egypt in 1965.[9] He was named second deputy prime minister in 1967, which was created for the first time by King Faisal.[9][16]
Crown Prince

After the death of King Faisal in 1975, Fahd was named first deputy prime minister and concurrently crown prince in 1975.[17][18] Although Prince Fahd had two elder brothers, Prince Nasser and Prince Saad, who had prior claims to the throne, both were considered unsuitable candidates.[17] By contrast, Prince Fahd had served as minister of education from 1954 to 1960 and minister of interior from 1962 to 1975.[17]

Appointment of Prince Fahd as both crown prince and first deputy prime minister made him a much more powerful figure in contrast to the status of King Khalid when he had been crown prince during King Faisal's reign.[19]

Foreign policy

Fearing that the 1979 Revolution in Iran could lead to similar Islamic upheaval in Saudi Arabia, Fahd spent considerable sums, after ascending the throne in 1982, to support Saddam Hussein's Iraq in its war with Iran.[22]

Fahd was a supporter of the United Nations. He supported foreign aid and gave 5.5% of Saudi Arabia's national income through various funds especially the Saudi Fund for Development and the OPEC Fund for International Development. He also gave aid to foreign groups such as the Bosnian Muslims in the Yugoslav Wars, as well as the Nicaraguan Contras, providing "a million dollars per month from May to December 1984".[23] King Fahd was also a strong supporter of the Palestinian cause and an opponent of the State of Israel.[24] Fahd was staunch ally of the United States, and has been quoted by the CIA as saying, "After Allah, we can count on the United States."[25] He did however at times distance himself from the US, declining to allow US to use Saudi airbases to protect naval convoys after the attack on the USS Stark, and in 1988 agreed to buy between fifty and sixty nuclear-payload-capable CSS-2 intermediate-range ballistic missiles.[26]

King Fahd developed a peace plan in order to resolve Arab differences particularly between Algeria and Morocco.[27][28] He also actively contributed to the Taif accord in 1989 that ended conflict in Lebanon.[15][27] In addition, he led the Arab world against the invasion of Kuwait by Iraq.[27] He developed a special bond with both Syrian President Hafez Assad and Egyptian President Hosni Mobarak during his reign.[29]
Islamic activities

He took steps to support the conservative Saudi religious establishment, including spending millions of dollars on religious education,[30] strengthened separation of the sexes and power of the religious police, publicly endorsed Sheikh Abd al-Aziz ibn Baz's warning to young Saudis to avoid the path of evil by not to travel to Europe and the United States.[31]

This further distanced him from his inconvenient past.[30]
Persian Gulf War, 1991
Main article: Gulf War

In 1990, Iraqi forces under Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait, placing the Iraqi army (then the largest in the Middle East) on the Saudi-Kuwaiti border. King Fahd agreed to host American-led coalition troops in his Kingdom, and later allowed American troops to be based there.[32] This decision brought him considerable criticism and opposition from many Saudi citizens, who objected to the presence of foreign troops on Saudi soil;[33] this was a casus belli against the Saudi royal family prominently cited by Osama bin Laden and Al Qaeda. His decision was also objected to by his full brothers or the Sudairi Seven.[32]
Reform and industrialization

In regard to reform, King Fahd showed little tolerance for reformists. In 1992, a group of reformists and prominent Saudi intellectuals petitioned King Fahd for wide ranging reforms, including widening political representation, and curbing the royal family's wasteful spending. King Fahd first responded by ignoring their requests and when they persisted, reformists were harshly persecuted, imprisoned and fired from their jobs.

During King Fahd's rule, the royal family's lavish spending of the country's wealth reached its height. In addition, the biggest and most controversial military contract of the century, the Al-Yamamah arms deal was signed on his watch.[34] The contract has cost the Saudi treasury more than $90 billion. These funds were originally allocated to building hospitals, schools, universities and roads. As a result, Saudi Arabia endured a stagnation in infrastructure development from 1986 till 1999 when the new King, Abdullah, fully came into power.

Like all the countries bordering the Persian Gulf, Saudi Arabia under King Fahd has focused its industrial development on hydrocarbon installations. Up to this day, the country is reliant on imports for nearly all its light and heavy machinery.

King Fahd established a Supreme Council of Islamic Affairs directed by senior family members and technocrats in 1994. The council was planned to function as an ombudsman of Islamic activity concerning educational, economic and foreign policy matters. The chairman of the council was Prince Sultan. Prince Nayef, Prince Saud and a technocrat Mohammed Ali Aba al Khayl were appointed to the newly established council. One of the covert purposes of the council was thought to be to reduce the power of the Ulemas Council had been increasing its power.[35]
Succession mechanism

In an effort to institutionalize succession King Fahd issued a decree on 1 March 1992.[36] The decree expanded the criteria for succession, which had been only seniority and family consensus, and led to speculations.[36] The most significant change by the edict was that the King did acquire the right to appoint or dismiss his heir apparent based on suitability rather than seniority and that the grandsons of Abdulaziz became eligible for the throne.[36]
Rule after the 1995 stroke

King Fahd was a heavy smoker, overweight for much of his adult life, and in his sixties began to suffer from arthritis and severe diabetes.[5] He suffered a debilitating stroke on 29 November 1995[15] and became noticeably frail, and decided to delegate the running of the Kingdom to Crown Prince Abdullah on 2 January 1996.[33][36][37] On 21 February, King Fahd resumed official duties.[38]

After his stroke King Fahd was partly inactive and had to use a cane and then a wheelchair,[39] though he still attended meetings and received selected visitors. In November 2003, according to government media, King Fahd was quoted as saying to "strike with an iron fist" at terrorists after deadly bombings in Saudi Arabia, although he could hardly utter a word because of his deteriorating health. However, it was Crown Prince Abdullah who took official trips; when King Fahd traveled it was for vacations, and he was sometimes absent from Saudi Arabia for months at a time. When his oldest son and International Olympic Committee member Prince Faisal bin Fahd died in 1999, the King was in Spain and did not return for the funeral.[40]

In a speech to an Islamic conference on 30 August 2003, King Fahd condemned terrorism and exhorted Muslim clerics to emphasize peace, security, cooperation, justice, and tolerance in their sermons.[41]
Wealth

Forbes estimated Fahd's wealth to be $25 billion in 2002,[42] Fortune Magazine reported his wealth in 1988 at $18 billion, (making him the second richest person in the world at that time).[43] In addition to residences in Saudi Arabia he had a palace on Spain's Costa del Sol which made Marbella a famous place.[44]
Recreational activities

At the same time as King Fahd presided over a more strict Islamic policy at home he was known to enjoy luxurious living abroad, even in ways that would not be allowed in his own kingdom. He visited the ports of the French Riviera, in his 147-metre (482 ft) yacht, the $100 million Abdul Aziz. The ship featured two swimming pools, a ballroom, a gym, a theatre, a portable garden, a hospital with an intensive-care unit and two operating rooms, and four American Stinger missiles.[45] The king also had a personal $150 million Boeing 747 jet, equipped with his own fountain. In his visits to London he reportedly lost millions of dollars in the casinos and was even known to circumvent the curfew imposed by British gaming laws by hiring his own blackjack and roulette dealers to continue gambling through the night in his hotel suite.[46]
Family

King Fahd was married at least four times. The spouses of King Fahd were as follows:

HH Princess Al Anood bint Abdulaziz bin Mousad Al Saud (Deceased), mother of his eldest four sons, Prince Faisal, Prince Saud, Prince Sultan and Prince Khalid.[47][48]
HH Princess Al Jawhara bint Ibrahim Al Ibrahim, mother of Prince Abdulaziz bin Fahd
HH Princess Jawza bint Abdallah bin Abdul Rahman Al Saud (Divorced), mother of Prince Mohammad[49]
HH Princess Al Jowhara bint Abdullah Al Sudairi (Deceased)
HH Princess Modhi bint Turki bin Abdullah Al Saud (Divorced)
HH Princess Joza'a bint Sultan Al Adgham Al Subaie (Divorced)
HH Princess Turfa bint Abdulaziz bin Mo'amar (Divorced)
HH Princess Watfa bint Obaid bin Ali Al Jabr Al Rasheed (Divorced)
HH Princess Lolwa al Abdulrahman al Muhana Aba al Khail (Divorced)
HH Princess Shaikha bint Turki bin Mariq Al Thit (Divorced)
HH Princess Seeta bint Ghunaim bin Sunaitan Abu Thnain (Divorced)
Janan Harb (Widowed)[50]

King Fahd had six sons and four daughters.[7] His sons are:

Faisal bin Fahd (1945–1999) Died of a heart attack. Director-general of Youth Welfare (1971–1999), director-general at ministry of planning and minister of state (1977–1999)
Muhammad bin Fahd (born January 1950), former governor of the Eastern province
Saud bin Fahd (born 8 October 1950), former deputy president of the General Intelligence Directorate[51]
Sultan bin Fahd (born 1951), army officer. Elevated to ministerial rank in November 1997. Former head of Youth Welfare
Khalid bin Fahd (born February 1958)[51]
Abdulaziz bin Fahd, (born 1973), Fahd's favorite and youngest son and minister of state without portfolio. He is the son of Princess Jawhara Al Ibrahim, Fahd's fourth and, reportedly, favorite wife.

Death

King Fahd was admitted to the King Faisal Specialist Hospital in Riyadh on 27 May 2005 for unspecified medical tests.[53] An official (who insisted on anonymity) told the Associated Press unofficially that the king had died at 7:30 EDT on 1 August 2005. King Fahd was 84.[54] Official statement was announced on state television at 10:00 am by then information minister Iyad Madani.[54]
Funeral

King Fahd was buried in the last thawb (traditional Arab robe) he wore. Fahd’s body was carried to Imam Turki bin Abdullah Mosque, and funeral prayers were held at around 3:30pm local time (12:30 GMT) on 2 August.[54] The prayers for the late monarch were led by the Kingdom’s grand mufti, Sheikh Abdul Aziz Al Sheikh.

The "funeral prayer", during which worshipers remain standing, was performed after afternoon prayers. The ceremony was replicated in other mosques across the Kingdom, where the "prayers for the absentee" were held.

The body was carried by King Fahd's son, Abdul Aziz bin Fahd to the mosque and to the Al Oud cemetery some two kilometres away, a public cemetery where Fahd’s four predecessors and other members of the Al Saud ruling family are buried.[55][56]

Arab and Muslim dignitaries who attended the funeral were not present at the burial. Only ruling family members and Saudi citizens were on hand as the body was lowered into the grave.

Muslim leaders offered condolences at the mosque, while other foreign dignitaries and leaders who came after the funeral paid their respects at the royal court.

In accordance with regulations and social traditions, Saudi Arabia declared a national mourning period of three days during which all offices were closed. Government offices remained closed for the rest of the week.[54] The state flag was not lowered (since the flag of Saudi Arabia bears the Shahada, the Islamic declaration of faith, the flag's protocol requires the flag not to be lowered)

After his death, many Arab countries declared mourning periods.[6] Algeria, Egypt, Iraq, Kuwait, Lebanon, Morocco, Oman, Qatar, Syria, Yemen, the Arab League in Cairo, and the Palestinian Authority all declared three-day mourning periods.[6] Pakistan and the United Arab Emirates declared a seven-day mourning period and ordered all flags flown at half-staff.[57] In Jordan, a national three-day mourning period was declared and a 40-day mourning period was decreed at the Royal Court.

Many foreign dignitaries attended the funeral, such as US Vice President Dick Cheney, French President Jacques Chirac, King Juan Carlos of Spain, Prince Charles of the United Kingdom, Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf, King Abdullah II of Jordan, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, Singapore Senior Minister Goh Chok Tong, and President of Mauritania Maaouya Ould Sid'Ahmed Taya (under deposition).


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Ethiopian wolf -- robin, 00:48:15 02/11/16 Thu [1]

The Ethiopian wolf (Canis simensis) is a canid native to the Ethiopian Highlands. It is similar to the coyote in size and build, and is distinguished by its long and narrow skull, and its red and white fur.[5] Unlike most large canids, which are widespread, generalist feeders, the Ethiopian wolf is a highly specialised feeder of Afroalpine rodents with very specific habitat requirements.[6] It is one of the world's rarest canids, and Africa's most endangered carnivore.[7]

The species' current range is limited to seven isolated mountain ranges at altitudes of 3,000–4,500 m, with the overall adult population estimated at 360-440 individuals in 2011, more than half of them in the Bale Mountains.[2]

The Ethiopian wolf is listed as endangered by the IUCN, on account of its small numbers and fragmented range. Threats include increasing pressure from expanding human populations, resulting in habitat degradation through overgrazing, and disease transference from free-ranging dogs. Its conservation is headed by Oxford University's Ethiopian Wolf Conservation Programme, which seeks to protect wolves through vaccination and community outreach programs.

Original Translation
Lupos Ethiopia mittit, cervice iubatos et tanto varios ut nullum eis colorem dicunt abesse. Ethiopicis lupis proprium est, quod in saliendo ita nisus habent alitis, ut non magis proficient cursu quam meatu. Homines tamen numquam impetunt. Bruma comati sunt, aestate nudi. Ethiopes eos vocant theas. Ethiopia produces wolves with manes, so diversely coloured, men say, that no hue is lacking. A characteristic of Ethiopian wolves is that they leap so high that they seem to have wings, going further than they would by running. They never attack men, however. In winter, they grow long hair; in summer, they are hairless. The Ethiopians call them theas.

The species was first scientifically described in 1835 by Eduard Rüppell,[14] who provided a skull for the British Museum.[10][15] European writers traveling in Ethiopia during the mid-19th century (then called Abyssinia) wrote that the animal's skin was never worn by natives, as it was popularly believed that the wearer would die should any wolf hairs enter an open wound,[16] while Charles Darwin hypothesised that the species gave rise to greyhounds.[17][c] Since then, it was scarcely heard of in Europe up until the early 20th century, when several skins were shipped to England by Major Percy Horace Gordon Powell-Cotton during his travels in Abyssinia.[10][15]

The Ethiopian wolf was recognised as requiring protection in 1938, and received it in 1974. The first in-depth studies on the species occurred in the 1980s, with the onset of the American-sponsored Bale Mountains Research Project. Ethiopian wolf populations in the Bale Mountains National Park were negatively affected by the political unrest of the Ethiopian Civil War, though the critical state of the species was revealed during the early 1990s after a combination of shooting and a severe rabies epidemic decimated most packs studied in the Web Valley and Sanetti Plateau. In response, the IUCN reclassified the species from endangered to critically endangered in 1994. The IUCN/SSC Canid Specialist Group advocated a three-front strategy of education, wolf population monitoring, and rabies control in domestic dogs. The establishment of the Ethiopian Wolf Conservation Programme in Bale soon followed in 1995 by Oxford University, in conjunction with the Ethiopian Wildlife Conservation Authority (EWCA).[7]

Soon after, a further wolf population was discovered in the Central Highlands. Elsewhere, information on Ethiopian wolves remained scarce; although first described in 1835 as living in the Simien Mountains, the paucity of information stemming from that area indicated that the species was likely declining there, while reports from the Gojjam plateau were a century out of date. Wolves were recorded in the Arsi Mountains since the early 20th century, and in the Bale Mountains in the late 1950s. The status of the Ethiopian wolf was reassessed in the late 1990s, following improvements in travel conditions into northern Ethiopia. The surveys taken revealed local extinctions in Mount Choqa, Gojjam, and in every northern Afroalpine region where agriculture is well developed and human pressure acute. This revelation stressed the importance of the Bale Mountains wolf populations for the species' long-term survival, as well as the need to protect other surviving populations. A decade after the rabies outbreak, the Bale populations had fully recovered to pre-epizootic levels, prompting the species' downlisting to endangered in 2004, though it still remains the world's rarest canid, and Africa's most endangered carnivore.[7]

Taxonomy and evolution
The earliest fossil carnivores that can be linked with some certainty to canids are the Eocene miacids, which lived some 38 to 56 million years ago. The miacids later diverged into caniforms and feliforms, with the former line leading to such genera as the coyote-sized Mesocyon of the Oligocene (38 to 24 million years ago), the fox-like Leptocyon, and the wolf-like Tomarctus, which inhabited North America some 10 million years ago.[20] Although fossil records exist of wolf-like canids from Late Pleistocene Eurasia, no fossil records are known for the Ethiopian wolf. The species may have evolved from a wolf-like ancestor crossing into North Africa from Eurasia as recently as 100,000 years ago.[21] Due to the high density of rodents in their new Afroalpine habitat, the ancestors of the Ethiopian wolf gradually developed into specialised rodent hunters. This specialisation is reflected in the animal's skull morphology, with its very elongated head, long jaw, and widely spaced teeth. During this period, the species likely attained its highest abundance, and had a relatively continuous distribution. This changed about 15,000 years ago with the onset of the current interglacial, which caused the species' Afroalpine habitat to fragment, thus isolating Ethiopian wolf populations from each other.[6]

The Ethiopian wolf is one of five Canis species present in Africa, and is readily distinguishable from jackals by its larger size, relatively longer legs, distinct reddish coat, and white markings. John Edward Gray and Glover Morrill Allen originally classified the species under a separate genus, Simenia,[21] and Oscar Neumann considered it to be "only an exaggerated fox".[22] Juliet Clutton-Brock refuted the separate genus in favour of placing the species in the genus Canis, upon noting cranial similarities with the side-striped jackal.[23]

In 2015, a study of mitochondrial genome sequences and whole genome nuclear sequences of African and Eurasian canids indicated that extant wolf-like canids have colonised Africa from Eurasia at least five times throughout the Pliocene and Pleistocene, which is consistent with fossil evidence suggesting that much of African canid fauna diversity resulted from the immigration of Eurasian ancestors, likely coincident with Plio-Pleistocene climatic oscillations between arid and humid conditions. According to a phylogeny derived from nuclear sequences, the Eurasian golden jackal (Canis aureus) diverged from the wolf/coyote lineage 1.9 million years ago, and with mitochondrial genome sequences indicating the Ethiopian wolf diverged from this lineage slightly prior to that.

Social and territorial behaviours

The Ethiopian wolf is a social animal, which lives in family groups containing up to 20 individuals older than one year, though packs of six wolves are more common. Packs are formed by dispersing males and a few females, which with the exception of the breeding female, are reproductively suppressed. Each pack has a well-established hierarchy, with dominance and subordination displays being common. Upon dying, a breeding female can be replaced by a resident daughter, though this increases the risk of inbreeding. Such a risk is sometimes circumvented by multiple paternity and extra-pack matings. The dispersal of wolves from their packs is largely restricted by the scarcity of unoccupied habitat.[26]

These packs live in communal territories, which encompass 6 km2 (2.3 sq mi) of land on average. In areas with little food, the species lives in pairs, sometimes accompanied by pups, and defends larger territories averaging 13.4 km2 (5.2 sq mi). In the absence of disease, Ethiopian wolf territories are largely stable, but packs can expand whenever the opportunity arises, such as when another pack disappears. The size of each territory correlates with the abundance of rodents, the number of wolves in a pack, and the survival of pups. Ethiopian wolves rest together in the open at night, and congregate for greetings and border patrols at dawn, noon, and evening. They may shelter from rain under overhanging rocks and behind boulders. The species never sleeps in dens, and only uses them for nursing pups. When patrolling their territories, Ethiopian wolves regularly scent-mark, and interact aggressively and vocally with other packs. Such confrontations typically end with the retreat of the smaller group.[26]
Reproduction and development

The mating season usually takes place between August and November. Courtship involves the breeding male following the female closely. The breeding female only accepts the advances of the breeding male, or males from other packs. The gestation period is 60–62 days, with pups being born between October and December.[27] Pups are born toothless and with their eyes closed, and are covered in a charcoal-grey coat with a buff patch on the chest and abdomen. Litters consist of two to six pups, which emerge from their den after three weeks, when the dark coat is gradually replaced with the adult colouration. By the age of five weeks, the pups feed on a combination of milk and solid food, and become completely weaned off milk at the age of 10 weeks to six months.[5] All members of the pack contribute to protecting and feeding the pups, with subordinate females sometimes assisting the dominant female by suckling them. Full growth and sexual maturity are attained at the age of two years.

Unlike most social carnivores, the Ethiopian wolf tends to forage and feed on small prey alone. It is most active during the day, the time when rodents are themselves most active, though they have been observed to hunt in groups when targeting mountain nyala calves.[28] Major Percy-Cotton described the hunting behaviour of Ethiopian wolves as thus:

... they are most amusing to watch, when hunting. The rats, which are brown, with short tails, live in big colonies and dart from burrow to burrow, while the cuberow stands motionless till one of them shows, when he makes a pounce for it. If he is unsuccessful, he seems to lose his temper, and starts digging violently; but this is only lost labour, as the ground is honeycombed with holes, and every rat is yards away before he has thrown up a pawful.[29]

The technique described above is commonly used in hunting big-headed mole-rats, with the level of effort varying from scratching lightly at the hole to totally destroying a set of burrows, leaving metre-high earth mounds.

Wolves in Bale have been observed to forage among cattle herds, a tactic thought to aid in ambushing rodents out of their holes by using the cattle to hide their presence.[5] Ethiopian wolves have also been observed forming temporary associations with troops of grazing gelada baboons.[30] Solitary wolves hunt for rodents in the midst of the monkeys, ignoring juvenile monkeys, though these are similar in size to some of their prey. The monkeys, in turn, tolerate and largely ignore the wolves, although they take flight if they observe feral dogs, which sometimes prey on them. Within the troops, the wolves enjoy much higher success in capturing rodents than usual, perhaps because the monkeys' activities flush out the rodents, or because the presence of numerous larger animals makes it harder for rodents to spot a threat.


Northern Ethiopian wolf in the Simien Mountains

The Ethiopian wolf is restricted to isolated pockets of Afroalpine grasslands and heathlands inhabited by Afroalpine rodents. Its ideal habitat extends from above the tree line around 3,200 to 4,500 m, with some wolves inhabiting the Bale Mountains being present in montane grasslands at 3,000 m. Although specimens were collected in Gojjam and northwestern Shoa at 2,500 m in the early 20th century, no recent records exist of the species occurring below 3,000 m. In modern times, subsistence agriculture, which extends up to 3,700 m, has largely restricted the species to the highest peaks

The Ethiopian wolf uses all Afroalpine habitats, but has a preference for open areas containing short herbaceous and grassland communities inhabited by rodents, which are most abundant along flat or gently sloping areas with poor drainage and deep soils. Prime wolf habitat in the Bale Mountains consists of short Alchemilla herbs and grasses, with low vegetation cover. Other favourable habitats consist of tussock grasslands, high-altitude scrubs rich in Helichrysum, and short grasslands growing in shallow soils. In its northern range, the wolf's habitat is composed of plant communities characterised by a matrix of Festuca tussocks, Euryops bushes, and giant lobelias, all of which are favoured by the wolf's rodent prey. Although marginal in importance, the ericaceous moorlands at 3,200-3,600 m in Simien may provide a refuge for wolves in highly disturbed areas.[32]
Diet

In the Bale Mountains, the Ethiopian wolf's primary prey are big-headed mole-rats, though it also feeds on grass rats, black-clawed brush-furred rats, and highland hares. Other secondary prey species include vlei rats, yellow-spotted brush-furred rats, and occasionally goslings and eggs. Ethiopian wolves have twice been observed to feed on rock hyraxes and mountain nyala calves. In areas where the big-headed mole-rat is absent, the smaller East African mole-rat is targeted. In the Simien Mountains, the Ethiopian wolf preys on Abyssinian grass rats. Undigested sedge leaves have occasionally been found in Ethiopian wolf stomachs. The sedge possibly is ingested for roughage or for parasite control. The species may scavenge on carcasses, but is usually displaced by dogs and African golden wolves. It typically poses no threat to livestock, with farmers often leaving herds in wolf-inhabited areas unattended.[5]
Range and populations

Six current Ethiopian wolf populations are known. North of the Rift Valley, the species occurs in the Simien Mountains in Gondar, in the northern and southern Wollo highlands, and in Guassa Menz in north Shoa. It has recently become extinct in Gosh Meda in north Shoa and Mount Guna, and has not been reported in Mount Choqa for several decades. Southeast of the Rift Valley, it occurs in the Arsi and Bale Mountains.

The Ethiopian wolf is not listed on the CITES appendices, though it is afforded full official protection under Ethiopia's Wildlife Conservation Regulations of 1974, Schedule VI, with the killing of a wolf carrying a two-year jail sentence.[2]

The species is present in several protected areas, including three areas in South Wollo (Bale Mountains National Park, Simien Mountains National Park, and Borena Saiynt Regional Park), one in north Shoa (Guassa Community Conservation Area), and one in the Arsi Mountains Regional Park. Areas of suitable wolf habitat have recently increased to 87%, as a result of boundary extensions in Simien and the creation of the Arsi Mountains Regional Park.[2]

Steps taken to insure the survival of the Ethiopian wolf include dog vaccination campaigns in Bale, Menz, and Simien, sterilization programs for wolf-dog hybrids in Bale, rabies vaccination of wolves in parts of Bale, community and school education programs in Bale and Wollo, contributing to the running of national parks, and population monitoring and surveying. A 10-year national action plan was formed in February 2011.[2]

The species' critical situation was first publicised by the Wildlife Conservation Society in 1983, with the Bale Mountains Research Project being established shortly after. This was followed by a detailed, four-year field study, which prompted the IUCN/SSC Canid Specialist Group to produce an action plan in 1997. The plan called for the education of people in wolf-inhabited areas, wolf population monitoring, and the stemming of rabies in dog populations. The Ethiopian Wolf Conservation Programme was formed in 1995 by Oxford University, with donours including the Born Free Foundation, Frankfurt Zoological Society, and the Wildlife Conservation Network.[2]

The overall aim of the EWCP is to protect the wolf's Afroalpine habitat in Bale, and establish additional conservation areas in Menz and Wollo. The EWCP carries out education campaigns for people outside the wolf's range to improve dog husbandry and manage diseases within and around the park, as well as monitoring wolves in Bale, south and north Wollo. The program seeks to vaccinate up to 5,000 dogs a year to reduce rabies and distemper in wolf-inhabited areas


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