It all depends on whom is asked the question.

To Courtland Milloy of the Washington Post, the film is yet another negative portrayal of blackness for white consumption. He scoffs at the idea Precious is a relateable movie, saying:

The New York Times Magazine featured the movie as a cover story last month and declared: "Precious is a stand-in for anyone — black, white, male, female — who has ever been devalued or underestimated."

Let's see: I lose my job, so I take in a movie about a serially abused black girl and I go, "Oh, swell, she's standing in for me."

Maybe there is something to the notion that when human pathology is given a black face, white people don't have to feel so bad about their own. At least somebody's happy.

After pointing out that sexual abuse is an cross-cultural issue, he then turns his attention to Oprah:

Asked by Entertainment Weekly magazine why she got involved with the project, Oprah said: "I realized that, Jesus, I have seen that girl a million times. I see that girl every morning on the way to work, I see her standing on the corner, I see her waiting for the bus as I'm passing in my limo, I see her coming out of the drugstore, and she's been invisible to me."
ad_icon

Instead of making a movie about how she beat the odds, Oprah has taken to divining ugly life stories from black girls she passes in her limo. Maybe the Obama girls should stay off the sidewalk for a while.

In "Precious," Oprah and Perry have helped serve up a film of prurient interest that has about as much redeeming social value as a porn flick.

Milloy's contempt is counterbalanced by Sapphire's comments in today's New York Times. She tells Richard Bernstein a little more about how Precious is positioned in both the book and the movie:

There's a message in this, and Sapphire, whom I spoke to on the phone this week, wrote her book to get it across. There are many abused young women stuck in the hidden crevices of urban American life, and they need what Precious gets if they are to have a chance to turn their lives around.

"I really wanted to show a young woman who changes her life without falling in love and without getting married," Sapphire told me, "and without plastic surgery or a physical change."

In other words, she didn't want Precious to succeed via some sort of near magical and unlikely intervention, like losing a hundred pounds and actually looking like Cinderella. "I wanted to show how somebody can take concrete steps and work on her deficiencies and move her life forward," she said, "which is what millions of women are going to have to do."

Sapphire's take adds yet another dimension to the book that is often lost in the events of the plot - the reality of the matter is that unlike in a movie (where the perfect man will save you) or on a reality show (where if you lose weight or get plastic surgery, your whole life improves), most people do not have the luxury of waiting around for a savior. Sapphire then explains:

"She doesn't achieve this through romance," Sapphire said, "or through finding a boyfriend, or losing a hundred pounds, but through literacy, some friends, her loving relationship with her child. That's why it's the cultural event of the season."

True. But even seen though this lens, Precious has some detractors. Malika Saada Saar, founder of the Rebecca Project for Human Rights, provides a painful reality check when she writes "this movie is in many ways a fairy tale:"

The character Precious gets to be saved by a caring caseworker and a loving teacher. In real life, poor, undereducated and sexually victimized girls are most likely to end up in the juvenile justice system.

I see it all the time. There is the 13-year-old who became pregnant to stop her uncle from raping her — a girl whom I met not at an incest survivors group but in a girls' detention facility. Or the girl raped so many times by age 13 that she feels worthy of being prostituted and cannot see a life for herself beyond jail. Or the girl who was kidnapped by a pimp, repeatedly raped by him, prostituted by him — only to be arrested and placed behind bars for prostitution.

Girls in the United States are subject to violence with horrifying frequency. One in three American girls will experience sexual violence by age 18, regardless of race or class. Girls ages 16 to 19 across the ethnic and economic spectrum are four times more likely than others to be victims of rape, attempted rape or sexual assault. No girl is safe from being raped, exploited or abused.

Yet when girls in economically stable families are hurt by sexual violence, the protective layers of functional schools, safe neighborhoods and access to mental-health services tend to buffer them from further exploitation. For girls at the margins, sexual violence often funnels them into the criminal justice system.

So, what does one make of a film like Precious? It really depends on experiences within your own life.

A film as lost as the girl it glorifies [Washington Post]
A Movie With a New Message [New York Times]
Official Site [Rebecca Project for Human Rights]
'Precious' girls without a happy ending [Washington Post]

Related: Of Push, Precious, Percival, and "My Pafology" [Racialicious]

Sara Olkon of the LA Times tells the story of Kathy Cleaves-Milan, who called the police when her boyfriend threatened her and her daughter with a gun. Soon she'd been evicted from her Chicago apartment because a crime was committed there, even though she was the victim and not the perpetrator. She's now suing Aimco, the company that owned her complex, for discrimination. Aimco spokeswoman Cindy Duffy says, "As the safety of our residents is our top priority, we have a zero-tolerance policy for any criminal activity at our communities." She adds that "if there is an arrest or a violation, all of the occupants on that lease are subject to eviction," and that "the basis for that eviction was the fact the violence had occurred." But, somewhat inconsistently, she also claims that the reason Cleaves-Milan left was that she couldn't pay her rent without her boyfriend's help, an allegation Cleaves-Milan denies. Duffy said, "it certainly wasn't our attempt to penalize her in any way for her situation," but that's exactly what the company did.

According to Olkon, federal law protects public housing residents from being evicted because of violence, and some states have enacted laws to protect the housing of domestic abuse victims, but no across-the-board protection for these victims exists — yet another reason for them not to speak out. Complicating the abuse picture further is the status of people who know about it but don't speak up. Feministe pointed us to the story of Fannie Schwartz, an Amish woman charged with failing to report her husband Johnny's sexual abuse of two teenage girls. Coverage of the case is a little confusing — prosecutor Danette Padgett says that though Schwartz didn't go to the police, she "did, at different points in time, report it to the church and the church took care of that situation, in their opinion." But according to another statement in the case, she "said it wasn't bothering her like it should have been." If convicted, she could serve several years in prison.

Feministe links Schwartz's case to a recent Times article on sexual abuse within Orthodox Jewish communities. In that article, some members of these communities expressed the fear that trying to handle abuse accusations internally protected criminals and allowed them to hurt more victims. And the fact that Fannie Schwartz had to go to church elders "at different points in time" suggests that they weren't effective at stopping the abuse the first time. Clearly religious communities aren't always capable of protecting their own, and those who conceal an abuser's actions deserve to face consequences. But Jill of Feministe handily sums up the complexities of Schwartz's case:

[I]t's rare to see criminal charges brought against non-abusers who knew about the abuse and didn't interfere. Again, I don't think it's wrong to prosecute those who aid and abet abuse; I just wonder where we draw the line when it comes to knowing about and ignoring abuse, and how much we factor in obligation to the abused (i.e., in my opinion, it matters more if the person doing the ignoring had some degree of responsibility for the abused - a teacher, a doctor, a parent, etc), and the relative power of the abuser over the person who knew and did nothing.

The power of the abuser is an important concern here — someone who molests two teenage girls might well be capable of severely threatening his wife. And, says Sheriff Roye Cole, there are cultural issues at play in cases of abuse within the Amish community:

Do they even know they need to report it? Who's going to report it? And how do they report it? I don't think the Amish community's going to have a list of phone numbers so they know to call the hotline. They need to know how to help children when they need it.

This last line applies not just to the Amish, but to Orthodox Jewish communities as well, and really to anyone who's in a position to learn about child and domestic abuse. Both Schwartz's story and the Times piece reveal the need for better relationships between law enforcement and religious groups, and for these groups to create an atmosphere where it's easier for victims and those who know about abuse to come forward. As Cleaves-Milan's case makes clear, this remains difficult, whether you're a member of a religious minority or not. Many obstacles remain between reporting abuse and actually getting justice, and if our legal system is serious about reducing domestic violence and sexual assault, it needs to eliminate these obstacles.

Image via LA Times.

Domestic-Abuse Victim Says She Was Evicted For Reporting Crime [LA Times]
Amish Wife Is Accused Of Not Reporting Husband's Sexual Abuse Of Girls [KY3.com]
Amish Wife Accused Of Not Reporting Sex Abuse [Feministe]
Orthodox Jews Rely More On Sex Abuse Prosecution [NYT]

Banks, a pastor at the Word of Life Apostolic Church in Riverside, California, kept the girls in an unheated room in her garage, where she "beat them daily with cords, sticks, high-heeled shoes, extension cords and belts, fed them spoiled food, made them take sleeping pills, and sexually abused two of them with paint sticks," according to the San Jose Mercury News. She has been sentenced to 36 years and 8 months plus two consecutive life terms for her crimes.

Banks denies the charges, stating that her daughters are "mentally disabled" and are lying about the way they were treated. One of the daughters (all of them are now in new foster homes) wrote a letter to Banks, noting ""Mom, I know somewhere in your heart you were a nice person. It was not right what you did to me and my sisters. Mom, I want you to know that I forgive you and I will be praying for you. But mom, It will never be OK what you did to me and my sisters."

SoCal Pastor Gets Life Term For Abusing 5 Girls [Mercury News]
Female Pastor Jailed For Drugging, Abusing 5 Girls [MSNBC]

A decade ago, reports of clerical sex abuse were virtually unknown, but the "tsunami" of cases—as Vatican prosecutor Charles Scicluna calls it—brought to light in the past seven years in the U.S. may have encouraged Italian victims to come forward. A recent Associated Press tally has documented 73 cases with allegations of sexual abuse against minors in the past decade, with more than 235 victims. The information was gathered from local media reports, linked to by victims groups websites and blogs, reports Nicole Winfeld for the Associated Press. Perhaps even more tellingly, almost all of the victims came forward since the allegations of sexual abuse forced the U.S. Catholic Church to deal with the staggering number of sexual crimes committed by its priests and clergy.

The cases also in Italy follow a similar pattern to those reported in the U.S. and in Ireland. The victims are often poor, physically or mentally disabled, or struggling with drug addiction. These vulnerable kids are appealing targets to priests, who needed to intimidate their victims into silence. Several of the cases reported in Italy came out of a Catholic-run institute for the deaf (which were omitted from the AP survey because by the time the victims went public, the statute of limitations had already expired). Along with 14 other former students, Alessandro Vantini has come with the story of his abuse. He says he was sodomized repeatedly by the priests, until he began to feel "as if I were dead." The abuse took place in the priests' bedrooms, in the bathroom, and sometimes in the confessional. As Winfeld says, the deaf students were targeted particularly because their speech impairments "made the priests' admonition 'never to tell' all the more easy to enforce."

Although 67 former students from Verona's Antonio Provolo institute for the deaf signed a statement accusing 24 priests, lay religious men, and religious brothers of participating in a pattern of abuse that took place from the 1950s to the 1980s, the investigation conducted by the Verona diocese has chosen not to interview any of the alleged victims. Gianni Bisoli, 60, named Verona's late bishop, Giuseppe Carraro (image above), of molesting him on five separate occasions. A diocesan probe cleared Carraro of all charges—again, without interviewing Bisoli—and Carraro is currently being considered for sainthood.

While the fact that Verona bishop Giuseppe Zenti even ordered the investigation is encouraging (although they were originally dismissed as a publicity stunt), the way in which the probe was conducted is incredibly questionable. Advocates have criticized the diocese's investigation because they only interviewed people with links to the school, the very people most likely to try and cover up a scandal of this magnitude. "If they had wanted to shed full light on it, they wouldn't have only heard from priests and lay brothers, but from the deaf as well," said Marco Lodi Rizzini, a spokesman for the victims.

Scicluna says he sees the increased public awareness of clerical abuse in Italy as a bright spot in a whole mess of darkness. "There is a change of mentality, and we find that to be very positive," he told the Associated Press. He continued: "[sexual abuse] has always happened. It's important that people talk about it, because otherwise we cannot bring the healing which the church can offer to people who need it - both the victims and perpetrators."

Italy Grapples With Priest Sex Abuse [MSNBC]

Charlotte Philby looks at this, "society's last taboo," in a long and disturbing article for The Independent. It's clear from her report that sexual abuse by women can be just as devastating as abuse by men. She interviews Sharon Hall, who suffered "sustained sexual violence," and as a result became anorexic, agoraphobic, and unable to bond with her own daughter. Hall says, "the worst thing about it is that even though my mother is now dead – and never even met her granddaughter – she has managed to ruin my daughter's childhood too." Compounding her pain is the fact that doctors didn't believe she was abused, saying, "Don't be silly, mothers don't sexually abuse children." According to Philby, this response is common.

Reliable data on the prevalence of sexual abuse by women is almost impossible to come by. Philby cites one UK abuse hotline, ChildLine — 11% of its callers in 2004 reported being abused by a woman. But women make up only 1% of convicted sex offenders in England and Wales. The picture is just as complicated in the US, according to an article by Lisa Lipshires in Moving Forward Newsjournal. One report found that women were responsible in 20% of US abuse cases between 1973 and 1987, but states report their data differently, and not all divide abusers by gender. And Philby's research indicates that people may not want hard data on female sexual abusers. Anonymous sources in the British justice system told her, "they just aren't being given the tools they need to address this issue, or even being made aware that it is an issue at all." And Zoe Hilton, a policy advisor at the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children, said, "Professionals in all areas of the system tend to be disbelieving of cases of female sexual abuse."

One therapist who studied victims of maternal incest found they suffered many of the same after-effects as those who have been abused by men: "depression, anxiety, low self-esteem, and high rates of eating disorders and substance abuse." They also had "a nearly universal wish to tell society that 'this really happens.'" So why don't the US or the UK want to address sexual abuse by women? One possible reason Philby proposes is the fact that most abuse by women seems to take place in the home, and that mothers are often the perpetrators. She quotes a spokeswoman for the Child Exploitation and Online Protection Services, who says, "women are perceived as the nurturers, those who are there to look after our young people." Then there's the idea (bandied about a lot in cases of teacher-student sex like that of Mary Kay LeTourneau, pictured) that sex with an older woman is a welcome experience for boys. And, Philby says, "sexual abuse is usually understood as something bound up with issues of male aggression and power."

But women can exert power and express aggression too, and viewing sexual abuse as solely a tool of the patriarchy may prevent some victims from getting help. Stereotyping women as nurturing and men as dangerous isn't just bad for men (every dad on the playground becomes a potential rapist) and women (every mom is expected to be an angel), but for children too. We need to be able to recognize when they are at risk from the women in their lives, and protect them from abuse even when it comes from unexpected places. Sexual abuse is often linked with violence against women, and while the two are frequently connected, we need to be aware of violence by women as well. Assuming every woman is a saint does no one any favors.

Female Sexual Abuse: The Untold Story Of Society's Last Taboo [The Independent]
Female Perpetration Of Child Sexual Abuse: An Overview Of The Problem [Canadian Children's Rights Council]

The 2,600 page report details the casual and ritualized abuse that occurred in more than 200 schools from the 1930s to the 1990s. The report was produced by a a state-run commission which has been hearing testimony from 1,060 former students and studying church records of unreported abuse cases for the past nine years.

The mostly church-run schools were established to care for neglected, orphaned or abandoned children, but the report reveals that the roughly 30,000 children who attended the schools were often sent there by priests who put pressure on their families. Children who were born out of wedlock, whose parents couldn't afford them, or had committed a petty crime like stealing food were often sent away to the reformatories. Many of the victims, who are now 50 to 80 years old, say they did not learn who their parents were until they were adults, and many said their parents tried unsuccessfully to reclaim them.

"A climate of fear, created by pervasive, excessive and arbitrary punishment, permeated most of the institutions," the report says. Sexual abuse was "endemic" in the boys schools, and the report describes dozens of ways the boys were physically abused on a regular basis, including:

Punching, flogging, assault and bodily attacks, hitting with the hand, kicking, ear pulling, hair pulling, head shaving, beating on the soles of the feet, burning, scalding, stabbing, severe beatings with or without clothes, being made to kneel and stand in fixed positions for lengthy periods, made to sleep outside overnight, being forced into cold or excessively hot baths and showers, hosed down with cold water before being beaten, beaten while hanging from hooks on the wall, being set upon by dogs, being restrained in order to be beaten, physical assaults by more than one person, and having objects thrown at them.

Though the abuse was more severe in the boys' schools, girls were also subjected to routine sexual abuse, often by more than one person at a time, and ritualized beatings. Some of the schools were essentially workhouses, and at one girls were given daily quotas of how many hundreds of rosaries they had to string per day.

The report reveals that the government and the Catholic Church conspired to cover up the abuse, creating a "culture of silence." Ireland's Department of Education would announce their cursory inspections and let the church handle accusations of abuse internally. Perpetrators were usually just transferred to other institutions. The Washington Post reports that in one school two people charged with abuse continued to care for children for 14 years without the authorities taking steps to remove them.

The report was delayed because the Christian Brothers, the religious order that ran many of the boys' schools, sued successfully to have the abusers' names omitted. Many victims are furious, because the omission means that the report can't be used as a basis for prosecutions. According to The Los Angeles Times, leaders of the religious orders have claimed that victims exaggerated the abuse, and argued that according to the standards of the day, the sexual abuse of children wasn't considered a criminal offense but a moral failing. However, the report points out that when laypeople were accused of child abuse the clergy would turn the cases over to the police.

The Irish government has paid $87,000 on average to 12,000 victims in compensation so far, but many of the former students have refused the money because it would require them to waive their right to sue their abusers.

"We expected that these people would be named and shamed and that some of them would be convicted," said John Barrett, who testified before the commission about the abuse he suffered at a school for boys with learning disabilities in the 1960s. He added, "At the end of the day, some of us won't sleep tonight. We're still nowhere near the truth."

Report Details Abuses In Irish Reformatories [The New York Times]
Irish Panel Documents Physical, Sexual Abuse At Schools From 1930 To 1990 [The Washington Post]
Irish Church: Children Beaten, Abused At Catholic-Run Schools In Ireland [The Los Angeles Times]

Related: 'Endemic' Rape And Abuse Of Irish Children In Catholic Care, Inquiry Finds [Guardian]
Brutality And Dire Conditions In Climate Of Fear [Irish Times]

Of the 35,000 black women between the ages of 21 and 69 profiled in the study, 43% had been physically abused in childhood and 18% had been sexually abused. Those who were sexually abused (as Oprah was) were more likely to start menstruating before age 12. The effect was stronger the more frequently they were abused — girls who were abused up to three times were 26% more likely to start menstruating early, while those abused four or more times were 34% more likely to have early menarche. There was a weaker, but still present, correlation between physical abuse and early periods.

Researchers think that it might actually be possible that sexual abuse causes earlier menstruation, as opposed to a simple correlation. The idea that sexual abuse actually changes girls' bodies, rushing them into physical maturity and making them vulnerable to pregnancy at a younger age, is perhaps even scarier than the sheer prevalence of physical and sexual abuse among African-American women. This possibility reveals, in the most upsetting way possible, that social as well as genetic factors may influence menstruation. The study's findings, along with the sheer number of women who report suffering abuse, underscore the need for better detection of abusive situations, more social services for girls, and more study of the underlying psychological and social problems that cause sexual abuse and allow it to continue.

Sex abuse linked to early menstrual period [UPI.com]
Higher Prevalence Of Early Onset Of Menstrual Periods Among Survivors Of Childhood Sexual Abuse [ScienceDaily]

Prosecutor Nancy O'Malley, who wrote California's sexually exploited minors law, tells Christina Hoag of the Associated Press: "This is an institutional shift. It's about getting people to shift their attention and judgment from the minor and seeing what's beyond this criminal behavior." Several other states, including New York, are following suit, offering rehabilitation programs rather than jail time for children caught up in the sex trade.

Sadly, Hoag notes, pimps are becoming more sophisticated, using the internet to attempt to avoid the authorities, and even when teen prostitutes DO look for help, there aren't many programs well-funded enough to truly help them. Lois Lee, founder of Children of the Night, a rehabilitation program that has four centers across the country, often sees most of these girls sent to one of her programs, as there aren't any other resources available to these young women anywhere else. As she tells Hoag, "Programs that build the girls' self-esteem, push them to finish high school and heal their trauma are ideal, but funding is always short for a cause that generally doesn't engender public sympathy." Children Of The Night relies on 2 million dollars a year in private donations to keep running.

"Amanda" a 15 year old who is currently going through the Children of the Night program after being abused at 8, selling crack at 12, and starting prostitution at 14 (during which she was beaten on a weekly basis by her pimp), has high praise for the program: ""All my life my plate was like overfilled with problems. I always asked God to give me something good, and this is it." One hopes that lawmakers consider better funding for such programs, to ensure that other young girls will find the same sense of hope and a chance at a better life.

New Laws Treat Teen Prostitutes As Abuse Victims [ABCNews]

According to Maia Szalavitz, writing for Time:

But according to 10 students, two separate parents, and a current part-time employee interviewed by TIME - some of whom are involved in the state inquiry - Mount Bachelor Academy regularly uses intensely humiliating tactics as treatment. For instance, in required seminars that the school calls Lifesteps, students say staff members of the residential program have instructed girls, some of whom say they have been victims of rape or sexual abuse in the past, to dress in provocative clothing - fishnet stockings, high heels and miniskirts - and perform lap dances for male students, as therapy.

The school, naturally, denies the charges.

Mount Bachelor's executive director, Bitz, says her school uses widely accepted psychological treatments to help children overcome their problems. "We also use a psychodrama treatment approach designed to do one or both of two things," said Bitz in her statement, "get a student to embrace qualities of their character (such as beauty or courage) about which they have doubt, or assist them in recognizing qualities that are unproductive (such as selfishness or conceit) about which they have little insight."

One student described the "psychodrama" treatment.

One 18-year-old former student and victim of rape wept while recounting what happened to her during a Lifestep seminar. Jane, who asked not to be identified with her real name, left the school in March. "They had me dress up as a French maid," she said, describing an outfit that included fishnet stockings and a short skirt. "I had to sit on guys' laps and give them lap dances," while sexually suggestive songs, such as "Milkshake" by Kelis, played at high volume.

"They told me I was dirty and I had to put mud on myself for being raped," she said, in reference to a separate Lifestep session. "They basically blamed me for getting raped."

Unfortunately, slut-shaming for the enjoyment of the male students is hardly a new therapeutic technique at Mount Bachelor.

[Melissa] Maisa attended Mount Bachelor between 1992 and 1994 under largely the same management that runs the school today, and graduated the school with honors. She was sent there in part because of promiscuous behavior as a teen, which Maisa associates with being a victim of child sexual abuse and date rape. "Mount Bachelor made me feel even more dirty and more shameful than either one of those experiences ever did. I just want to make sure the things I suffered through there never happen again," Maisa says.

She describes a Lifestep in which she says she was required to perform an exercise called "the holidays." "I had to stand up in the sluttiest way possible and strut over to every male in the room," including the counselors, Maisa says. She was instructed to sit on the floor before each man, place her left foot on his right knee and say, "This foot is Christmas." She then placed her right foot on his left knee and said, "This foot is New Year's. Do you want to meet me between the holidays?"

Maisa says she performed the holidays more than 250 times. When she failed to show sufficient enthusiasm, Maisa says she and her peers were punished, each having to repeat their own humiliating skit.

The bad treatment plans aren't limited to rape and abuse survivors either. One girl, who turned to drugs and alcohol after the death of her sister, describes what counselors put her through.

According to Ozier and others, in a Lifestep called "Forever Young," students were placed on a mattress and taunted with painful information about their childhood that they had previously revealed, an apparent attempt to trigger regression to infancy. Once more, Ozier was instructed to recall her sister's death against her will. "That was probably the thing that traumatized me the most," she says, describing how she thrashed on the mattress until she vomited. "They prey on people who have already been hurt."

Sounds more like aversion therapy than regression — and certainly it's probably made her rather averse to therapy.

So where the fuck does this kind of "therapy" come from?

Synanon began as a drug rehabilitation program before morphing into a controversial cult and is credited with putting forth the idea that confrontation and boot-camp-style breakdown tactics could cure teen misbehavior and addiction. Synanon's confrontational techniques influenced est and LifeSpring, which began selling weekend seminars designed to prompt emotional breakthroughs in participants.

Food, sleep and access to the outside world - sometimes even to the bathroom - were strictly controlled. Using intense role-playing, humiliation and physical experience, the seminars attempted to liberate people from victimhood by teaching them that they are ultimately responsible for everything that happens to them, including being a victim of child abuse or rape.

Mount Bachelor's Lifesteps appear to share these tactics and philosophy. Several of its top employees formerly worked at a now defunct chain of troubled-teen programs known as CEDU, which was founded by former Synanon members.

I think that's known as "a cult."

As an aside, Szalavitz posts in a related piece on the Huffington Post that Mount Bachelor's parent company — through Aspen Education, owned by U.S. Aspen, owned by CRC Health — is actually Bain Capital. Does that name sound familiar to you? It might, since it's the company founded by former (and possibly future) Presidential candidate Mitt Romney. And while he's been retired from the company since 1998 (before it took over CRC Health), he still receives income from Bain, which it is getting by charging parents to dress their daughters up in slutty costumes to make them accept responsibility for their rapes.

The state of Oregon is reportedly investigating the abuses — but this isn't even the first time they've done so.

In 1998, Mount Bachelor was investigated by the Oregon DHS based on claims by several former employees that students were "subjected to frequent obscenity-laced screaming sessions by staff members; students were deprived of sleep; a group of girls emerged from one group therapy session with bruising on their arms after they were ordered to clasp their hands in front of them and pound a mattress for an extended period," according to the Bend Bulletin. The Oregon DHS cleared the program following the investigation.

Of course they did. Because, after all, it's a bunch of fucked up kids — and mostly girls — making the allegations.

An Oregon School For Troubled Teens Is Under Scrutiny [Time]

Related: Do Lap Dances and Humiliation Treat ADHD— and Should Public Schools Pay? [Huffington Post]
Millionaires-in-Chief [CNN]

[Picture via Buy Costumes]

On a side note, anchor Robin Roberts telling the interpreter he can stop signing right after Matlin explains that she's never let being deaf hold her back is a nice touch. Clip at left.

• According to The Independent, Fritzl once again entered court holding a blue folder in front of his face, and held it up for 10 minutes until cameramen were ordered to leave the courtroom.
• Prosecutor Christians Burkheiser told the jury the ceiling of Fritzl's cellar was only five feet from the ground and that the cellar itself had no heat, no shower, no warm water, and hardly any ventilation for the first nine years Elisabeth was imprisoned there. Burkheiser said:
  

  He kept his daughter in a room that measured only 11sq meters for nine years. That is just about the size of the jury box you are sitting in .... In the summer it was blisteringly hot. In the winter it was freezing cold. Nobody can really imagine what went on down there.

• Burkheiser said that during the first few years of her imprisonment, Frtizl never spoke to his daughter, he just randomly entered the room and raped her. "He would turn down the lights, rape her and then turn the lights back up," she said. After the children were born, Fritzl raped her repeatedly in front of them. Elisabeth was kept in the cellar in complete darkness and without electricity for periods of up to 10 days.
• Fritzl told Elisabeth that he had installed three locking doors and electronically operated light barriers which would flood the cellar with gas if she tried to escape.
• A few weeks before Elisabeth was due to give birth to their first child, Fritzl gave her a dirty mattress, a filthy blanket, and an old book about childbirth.
• The Guardian reports that Burkheiser told the jury she didn't feel the full impact of the cellar prison until she visited it herself. She said:
  

  I've seen the cellar dungeon twice. It has a morbid atmosphere, which starts with having to crawl in on your hands and knees through the 83cm entranceway. And it's sinister. It's really bad. It's incredibly damp, a damp that creeps into you after just a few minutes.

  She continued:
  

  "But do you know what the worst thing was? The uncertainty: when will he return, when will he turn on the electricity, when will he go again, what will happen if he doesn't return?"

  She said Elisabeth's life in the cellar could be encapsulated in the sentence: "Light out. Rape. Light on. Mould. Rape. In front of the children. The uncertainty. Birth. Death. Rape."

• Fritzl's defense attorney, Rudolf Mayer, shocked the court by claiming that Fritzl was a caring family man, according to The Mirror. Mayer said:
  

  A man who put so much effort into keeping two families cannot be called a monster. If I only want a daughter as a sex slave, I don't let her bring children into the world. You'd let them starve.

  He continued:
  

  "This is a man who had wanted to have two families. If he had not wanted children he could have used contraceptives.

  "If he didn't care about children he could have disposed of them. He had the power. But he slept in the cellar with his children and spent time with them over Christmas. He cared for his second family.

  "When his oldest daughter was ill, what would a monster do? What would a killer do?

  "What this man did was take her to hospital. He could have killed her and everyone else."

  "He could have claimed that he was mentally unstable and tried to escape these proceedings. But he did not do so. He's not trying to say he was mentally ill."

• The Guardian reports that Elisabeth's 11 hours of videotaped testimony is so harrowing it's being played for the four-woman, four-man jury in small portions and other jurors are standing by in case the eight main jurors decide they can't cope.
• According to the Daily Mail, Elisabeth agreed to testify on the condition that she would never have to see her father again.
• Elisabeth said Fritzl would come in the cellar with boxes of pornographic videotapes and make her reenact scenes in them. She says she suffered serious internal injuries from oversized sex toys he used on her.
• The defense presented information about Fritzl's childhood. As the Daily Mail reports:
  

  Fritzl said: "I did not have a good relationship with my mother. She tried to stop me having any friends. But I had one she didn't know about and that friend bitterly let me down. So I decided that I would not have any friends after that."

  "I had a very difficult childhood. My mother didn't want me. She was 42 when she had me. She simply didn't want a child and she treated me correspondingly. I was beaten."

  He told the jury that, at the age of 12, he had made it clear to his mother that he would not tolerate being beaten any longer and would defend himself.

  'From that point on, I was Satan personified for her,' he said.

• Fritzl's wife Rosemarie now lives alone and has begun divorce proceedings.
• The rest of the trial will be conducted in secret until a verdict scheduled for Friday. The judge's decision has angered the Austrian public. One Austrian lawyer is quoted as saying: "I thought secret trials ended with Stalin, but obviously I was wrong."

  'Herr Fritzl, Can You Just Answer One Thing – Why?' [The Independent]
  'Light out. Rape. Light On. Rape. In Front Of The Children. Birth. Death. Rape' [The Guardian]
  Josef Fritzl Trial: Lawyer Insists Dungeon Fiend Was A Caring Family Man [The Mirror]
  Josef Fritzl Trial Judge Clears Court For Daughter's Evidence [The Guardian]
  Elisabeth Fritzl Tells The World How Her Father Forced Her To Re-Enact Porn Films With Him In The Cellar Dungeon [Daily Mail]

  Earlier: Austrian Abuser Admits To Rape But Denies Murder On First Day In Court

Today, Mr. Fritzl's first day in court, the abuser held up a blue folder to hide his face and spoke only to confirm his name. He pleaded "partially" guilty to rape because he doesn't agree with how the charge is worded, and fully guilty of depriving his children of their liberty, reports Reuters. He pled innocent to charges that he enslaved his daughter Elisabeth since the age of 18 and to murdering their infant son in 1996. Prosecutors say he is guilty of murder by negligence for not taking their son to the hospital when he developed breathing problems. Fritzl is accused of burning the three day old baby's body in the furnace.

In her opening statement, prosecutor Christiane Burkheiser said, "Josef Fritzl treated his daughter as his property, he made her completely dependent," according to the BBC. She added that Fritzl, "showed no sign of regret or any consciousness of wrongdoing."

Fritzl's daughter Elisabeth, now 42, and her six surviving children, are now living in a secret location with new identities and will not testify in person. The Times of London reports that 11 hours of Elisabeth's videotaped testimony will be shown to the eight jurors in the coming days. According to excerpts, Elisabeth says that she was initially chained to an iron pole behind her bed and couldn't get to the bathroom in the cramped windowless dungeon Fritzl built under the family's home. He is accused of raping his daughter on average three times a week since imprisoning her in the basement.

Of the six surviving children she gave birth to while underground, three were kept underground their entire lives, and three were taken upstairs and raised by Fritzl and his wife. According to CNN, Fritzl explained his daughter's disappearance in 1984 by saying she ran away from home and forcing her to write letters to back up his story. The then said she left three of her children on his doorstep throughout the years. His wife Rosemarie supposedly didn't know what was going on in her basement.

Police discovered the dungeon last April when 19-year-old Kerstin, one of the children in the cellar, got sick and Elisabeth persuaded her father to take her to the hospital. Elisabeth now lives with her youngest child, 6, and is in contact with her other children. The two older children from the basement, who are 19 and 20, are still receiving therapy. They never left the basement or saw sunlight and as a result have a stoop, restricted spatial awareness, rotting teeth and gums, skin problems, weak immunity and difficulty communicating.

Officials at St. Pölten prison where Fritzl is being held say he on suicide watch, according to The Guardian. "He's under constant watch. We're aware of the possibility he might self-harm," said Günther Mörwald, head of the prison. A verdict is expected on Thursday or Friday and Fritzl faces life in prison if convicted.

Austrian Admists Rape But Not Murder [Reuters]
Fritzl Admits Rape, Denies Murder [BBC]
Josef Fritzl To Tell Court He Was Good Father To Dungeon Family [The Times of London]
Austrian To Plead Guilty To Rape And Incest, Lawyer Says [CNN]
Josef Fritzl Cellar Trial Begins In Austria [The Guardian]

Sarah's parents are divorced, and it seems like their situation is an acrimonious one (her dad insists he is a victim of parental alienation), so her mother certainly didn't give him Sarah's digits. Could it be that Real World producers contacted him and gave him the house number in order to create a storyline and to get Sarah to reveal her history of abuse to her roommates? (Sarah was molested by a daycare employee when she was younger and is extra vigilant about inappropriate behavior, which led to her current situation with her father.) If that's the case, then that is supremely fucked up. Anyway, it was extremely telling when Sarah was pouring her heart out to her roommate Devyn, Devyn was way more taken with her own reflection and makeup application than she was about hearing Sarah's troubled past.

In other news, Chet says he's never masturbated or touched a boob.

The Department of Family and Protective Services in Texas reports that 12 girls between the ages 12 to 15 were sexually abused "with the knowledge of their parents" and spiritually "married" to older men within the Mormon breakaway group. Of the girls, 7 of them had one or more children:

The report, an unusual step taken to help satisfy expected questions from the state Legislature when it convenes in January, summarized individual investigations and the history of the case. The findings, though shared with law enforcement, are separate from the ongoing criminal cases.

The individual investigations, which covered 146 families, concluded that 91 families had children who were abused or neglected. Crimmins said that conclusion confirmed what investigators initially suspected — that girls were being forced into underage marriages and other children were exposed to that harm.

The case "is about sexual abuse of girls and children who were taught that underage marriages are a way of life," the agency said in its report. "It is about parents who condoned illegal underage marriages and adults who failed to protect young girls — it has never been about religion."

Authorities say that an additional 262 children were listed as neglected because their parents failed to remove their children from a situation where the child would be exposed to sexual abuse.

Meanwhile, FLDS spokesman Willie Jessop said that the the department has made "many allegations that it's never been able to back up" and that the department "needs to learn how to say we're sorry instead of trying to justify their actions."

So far a dozen FLDS men, including the sect's prophet—Warren Jeffs— face charges of sexual abuse and bigamy based on evidence gathered from the ranch. The agency has also identified 124 "perpetrators" who were either parents who arranged illegal child marriages or men who married a young child.

Abuse, Neglect At Polygamist Ranch [MSNBC]

Earlier: Authorities Take 400 More Kids From Polygamist Sect In Texas
Polygamist Sect Raided On Charges Of Abuse Of Girls

Unsurprisingly, rapes were more common in poorer communities than richer and committed by people known to the victims more often than not. Nearly thirty percent of victims were assaulted by their fellow students, while 20 percent were assaulted by teachers and another 20 percent were assaulted by family members. The remaining 30 percent were assaulted by non-family members who weren't teachers.

Neil Andersson and Ari Ho-Foster, who co-authored the study, rightly point out that the sheer volume of sexual abuse is likely to multiply given that children who are abused are more likely to become abusers — and, in fact, 10% of the victims in the study admit to also being perpetrators. They also suggest that the actual rate of abuse might be much higher given the continuing stigma associated with rape. One thing they don't delve into is how much the rate of assaults today has to do with the rate of assaults in previous generations — is this a multi-generational problem now multiplied by the sheer number of adult victims? Is the onset of widespread abuse associated with a specific period of time or has this been acceptable behavior for generations of schoolboys? It's hard to say.

Until 2007, raping a boy was not classified as a rape but as an "indecent assault," a legal change that the authors applaud. They additionally note that decreasing the rape of young boys could pay serious dividends in reducing the rate of HIV infection in South Africa, which then makes one consider the possibility that older people are preying on too-young children in order to satisfy sexual urges without fear of disease. How is is even possible that using a condom has less of a stigma than raping a child?

South African Epidemic Of Schoolboy Sexual Abuse [Science Daily]
Oprah School Abuse Trial Starts [BBC]