Child Sexual Abuse
Another Female Paedophile Walks Free
A “RESPECTED” former Queensland Health employee has avoided jail despite pleading guilty to repeatedly having sex with alcohol or drug-addled boys aged 14 and 15.
Lawyers for former QH indigenous health care worker Pandela Carmel Salmon claim the acts were committed when she was deeply depressed at work – from alleged bullying – and suffering rare side effects of prescription medication.
Prosecutor Andrew Lossberg told the Brisbane District Court Salmon lured the boys into sex after alcohol and drug-fuelled parties at her Kallangur home, north of Brisbane, more than four years ago.
Mr Lossberg said that the morning after a night of sex Salmon told one boy: “This could be our little secret. Whenever you want some (more sex) you can come here and get it.”
Father Placed on Child Protection Register for Marrying Young
Lyn and Neville Cox were childhood sweethearts who had grown up in the same street. They were very much in love. When she became pregnant at 15, Lyn’s father was furious and reported 16-year-old Neville to police, who charged the boy with carnal knowledge.
The half-hour court hearing that followed seemed inconsequential, but more than 40 years later it revealed its lasting legacy, branding Mr Cox a child sex offender who should not be around children.
The couple married soon after his conviction, with nothing but a cup of tea and Vegemite sandwich with Mr Cox’s family to celebrate.
They moved away and had two more children, both of whom became police officers, and are respected members of the community in Wagga Wagga.
Mr Cox’s only brush with the law since has been two speeding fines.
Over the years he didn’t give his juvenile record any thought.
”I just presumed that when I turned 18 it was all over red rover,” he said.
It was not until a few years ago he learnt it wasn’t.
Fraud in Australia’s plan to reduce violence against women
The 2009 Australian project a ‘Time for Action: The National Council’s Plan for Australia to Reduce Violence against Women and their Children, 2009-2021′, was approved for implementation by the Council of Australian Governments (COAG). The Plan, which is split into several parts, puts forth recommendations for new legislation, changes to judicial processes, requests for funding and ideas for domestic programs targeted at reducing domestic and sexual violence against women. The advisory council has some powers to implement programs through the Office of Women among other agencies, but much of what the government funded program calls for requires approval by Parliament.
The entire premise of the National Plan was underpinned by the belief in this statement:“While a small proportion of men are victims of domestic violence and sexual assault, the majority of people who experience this kind of violence are women in a home, at the hands of men they know.”[27-pg1] But a quick examination of the statistics and data shows a much different picture to the rather sweeping indictment of Australian men the National Council paints.
Child Abuse by Mothers in Australia – A case study
Nobody believed ‘Frank’ when he tried to protect his son from bureaucratic bungling. John Stapleton reports that, nearly 20 years on, Frank has been proved right, even though he lost in court.
The boy was eight weeks old when his father called welfare authorities and pleaded with them to take his son into foster case. He alleged that the mother was being violent towards the child, throwing him against walls and trying to smother him. The authorities ignored him, as they did for years to come, but the father persevered.
Twenty years, 550 days in court and tens of millions of dollars of public funds later, the matter which has just run across the civil, criminal and family law jurisdictions, reached its final chapter this week.
Another Woman guilty of sex act with boys
A Goldfields woman has been granted bail after being found guilty of sexually penetrating a teenage boy and attempting to encourage him to engage in sexual behaviour.
But Donna-Marie Farrell, 34, was acquitted of three similar allegations made by another boy concerning the same incident.
They jury deliberated for five hours before handing down its verdicts on the charges.
Ms Farrell was found not guilty of two counts of indecent dealings with a child under 16, not guilty of one count of sexual penetration or oral sex of a child under 16 and not guilty of encouraging a child under 16 to engage in sexual behaviour.
Womens groups push to support new bill (to protect children): Yeah right!
Editor: Before accepting much of the article below at face value, you may want to review the litany of anti-male articles written by this particular journalist.
You would in fact be forgiven for thinking that this was the work of a malicious divorced mother with an axe to grind against her ex-husband, rather than an objective journalist wishing to simply portray the facts on family law reform. Perhaps the above description hits closer to home than Adele Horin is willing to admit, (;-), but this obsessive shrill against shared parenting, which Adele would make you believe equates to sexual abuse of children, is nothing more than a disgraceful attempt to ensure that women maintain sole custody rights of their children, and as a result ‘control’ of their ex-husband, regardless of the genuine needs of children.
Do not be fooled into thinking that this is about protecting children from child abuse. Given that almost 80% of all child abuse happens in single mother households, and the overwhelming perpetrators of child abuse being mothers themselves, then removing the transparency of shared parenting is hardly a solution now, is it?
Whether the likes of Adele Horin will admit it or not, this battle is not about children, it is about women’s rights, above and beyond the equal rights of men, or the best interests of children.
If we were to be fair-dinkum about protecting children, then we would take head of figures from the Institute of Criminology which lists sole custody of the highest risk factor for child abuse in Australia.
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Changes to child custody laws will be put under the spotlight today, writes Adele Horin.
A WOMAN whose ex-husband was jailed for sexually abusing her daughter is resisting Family Court orders to allow him contact visits with their son.
The man was sentenced to three years’ jail and served 18 months for the aggravated indecent assault of a minor – his then 13-year-old stepdaughter. He was freed on a good behaviour bond and has been granted supervised access visits with the younger child. The visits, which were supposed to start last October, were intended to lead to unsupervised access after seven weeks.
Now the mother is fearful she might end up in jail because she is in contravention of court orders. ”The day he molested my daughter he lost his rights as a parent,” she said. ”My son says he’s scared of him and I won’t make him go.”
The executive officer of the NSW Women’s Refuge Movement, Cat Gander, says the case highlights the bind women are in under the Family Law Act.
”State child protection authorities insist women protect their children from danger but Family Court orders insist women facilitate access.”
A rally today outside Federal Parliament will be the first step in a campaign to ensure passage of a new family law bill that seeks to give greater protection to children in access and custody disputes. More than 170 agencies, including Lifeline, the YWCA, the Benevolent Society and Headspace, the youth mental health agency, have formed an unprecedented alliance to push for even stronger protections for children in the proposed legislation.
After several government-commissioned studies into family violence that showed children were insufficiently protected under the 2006 Family Law Act, the federal government proposed a new family violence bill. A public inquiry starts on June 9 in Canberra.
Some men’s groups claim the government’s proposed changes to family law may weaken shared parental responsibility provisions. However, Kylie Temple, project co-ordinator for a mid-north coast domestic violence service, said the 2006 law, in emphasising children’s rights to a relationship with both parents, had compromised children’s safety: ”If this mother complies with the federal court order and leaves her child with a convicted sex offender, under state law I am mandated to report the child to the child welfare department for being at significant risk.”
The new alliance wants the committee to take up the recommendations of the former family court judge Richard Chisholm to drop the presumption of equal shared parenting responsibility and the obligation to consider equal time in favour of treating all cases that come before the court on their merits.
The government has proposed more modest changes that will give greater weight to the protection of children above the benefit of children having a meaningful relationship with both parents where family violence was a concern. As well, it proposes to delete the ”friendly” parent provision which obliged judges to have regard to whether a parent encouraged the child’s relationship with the other parent.
Ms Gander said that at this stage it was unclear whether the proposed changes would have a smooth passage through Parliament.
Adele Horin
23 Women charged with Child Porn
TWENTY-THREE women from across Sweden have been charged with involvement in what investigators call a unique child pornography case because most of the suspects are female.
A 43-year old man today was charged with having provided them with 510 films and photos of children being exploited in “especially ruthless” manner.
The women, aged between 38 and 70, allegedly met the man online and received and accepted the files he sent them. Seven of them have confessed. Some of them are also suspected of having spread the material and two of producing child pornographic photographs themselves.
Detective Inspector Bjorn Sellstrom says it’s the first time, in both Sweden and the world, that so many women have been involved in such a case.
Female teacher arrested for having sex with five students
A 27 year old married teacher with three children, has been jailed after being accused of having sex with five of her students during an orgy at her home.
Police said Brittni Nicole Colleps also exchanged sexually-explicit text and picture messages with the students prior to her arrest.
Brittni Colleps, invited the boys to her home for the sex romp and the encounter was filmed on their cell phones.
The 27-year-old’s husband was away overseas on duty serving with the US military.
Colleps, an English teacher and girl’s basketball coach, faces up to ten years in jail after being charged with five felony counts of inappropriate relationships between a student and a teacher.
Although all five of the teens involved with Colleps were 18 years of age or older, Texas law prohibits sex between a teacher and a student, regardless of the student’s age.
According to a police arrest warrant affidavit, the investigation into Colleps began after a 19-year-old student told investigators about his sexual relationship with his English teacher.
The student told police the relationship began with sexually explicit text messages and photos that they sent to each other for about a week in late April.
Later that month the student drove to Colleps home in Arlington, Texas where they had sex.
He later received a text message from the teacher saying they ‘had fun’ and an invite back to the house.
When he arrived there were four other students from Kennedale High School present and they told police they all had sex with Colleps.
When police analyzed the teen’s phone they found video footage of him and Colleps having sex. They also found sexually explicit photos and text messages the pair had sent each other.
Police later interviewed a second student who said he was present when the sex romp took place.
School officials learned about the teacher’s alleged relationships and put her on leave with pay.
Schools Superintendent Gary Dugger posted a letter on the school’s website saying that the district was cooperating with investigators.
‘As the alleged acts occurred off campus, once Kennedale ISD personnel were put on notice, immediate action was taken,’ the letters says.
Colleps is being held in the Arlington jail on $125,000 bail after turning herself into police on Monday.
Ms Colleps could face a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison and a fine of up to $10,000 if convicted.
8 Years Jail for Sexually Abusive House Mistress
A “WICKED, terrible” woman who sexually abused six boys at the school where she worked was yesterday jailed for at least five years.
The school house mistress, now 42, told a psychiatrist her conduct with the 11 and 12-year-old boys made her feel like “a child, a rock star, a goddess”.
In sentencing her in the District Court, Judge Anthony Garling said that the naive boys were in “no position to deal with this predatory behaviour”.
“She did it for her own sexual gratification,” he said, before setting a maximum term of eight years.
Last December the judge rejected the woman’s defence of mental illness and found her guilty of 21 sex offences carried out over a five-month period in 2009. The judge referred to a statement by a victim’s mother, who described the teacher as a “wicked, terrible woman” who was being paid in her job as she was carrying out her sexual offending.
The mother said she would never be able to forgive the teacher for what she had done “to my beautiful little boy”.
She will be eligible for release on parole in March 2016.
By Margaret Scheikowski
School mistress offered boys oral sex
A SCHOOL house mistress who sexually abused six boys should be sentenced on the basis of her crimes, not her gender, a Sydney judge has been told.
Crown prosecutor Kara Shead told Judge Anthony Garling his sentencing approach should be the same as if the perpetrator was a man.
Defence lawyer, Christopher Watson, said while the boys suffered harm, the damage was “unlikely to be as significant” as if the perpetrator was male and the victims female, “because of the actual nature of the act”.
The youthful-looking 41-year-old woman was facing a sentencing hearing today in the NSW District Court.
In December, Judge Garling rejected her defence of mental illness, finding her guilty of 21 sex offences involving boys, aged 11 or 12, who attended the NSW school where she worked.
The 2009 offences included 18 counts of sexual intercourse, involving fellatio and penile-vaginal penetration.
In one incident when five boys were in the tent, she was naked and asked: “Does anyone want a blow job?”.
One victim later said the woman had pressured the boys, saying: “Come on, let’s go, don’t be a puss”, and he had “felt like a wimp” until he agreed to oral sex.
The judge found the woman was suffering from bipolar disorder at the time, but that she knew her actions were legally and morally wrong.
On Monday, the woman’s psychiatrist Mike Richardson said he did not think she had been operating in a predatory manner.
“Rather, it was the environment that allowed her to pursue a promiscuous approach to these boys,” he said, agreeing with the judge that it was an “ideal” environment.
Dr Richardson said the woman, who now had a partner a little older than herself, received sexual gratification from the boys.
Ms Shead said the woman occupied a “privileged position”, being an adult from whom the victims sought care, solace and comfort.
“The crown submits that she took advantage of the situation to form highly inappropriate sexual relationships with multiple child victims over an extensive period of time,” she said.
“She engaged in frequent criminal behaviour of the gravest kind.”
Ms Shead said the woman exploited the victims’ age and their vulnerable situation, noting most of them were away from their parents.
“Aged 11 or 12, these were little boys who were exposed to significant depravity,” she said.
Mr Watson said the woman had not disputed the facts in the case and the only live issue had been her mental state.
He submitted that a lengthy jail term would institutionalise her.
“I suggest a short period of incarceration would allow her to come out and not lose contact with the rehabilitation programs currently put in place,” he said, referring to her ongoing psychiatric treatment.
The judge revoked her bail and adjourned sentencing to Thursday.
