Father held daughter in cellar for 24 years

Taken from the Independent, UK
Sunday, 27 April 2008

A woman has told police that she was held prisoner in a cellar for almost 24 years by her father, who repeatedly raped her and fathered her seven children.

Lower Austria police said in a statement that the 42-year-old woman had been missing since August 29, 1984 and was found by police in the town of Amstetten last night following a tip-off.

Franz Polzer, head of the Lower Austrian Bureau of Criminal Affairs, said the 73-year-old father had been taken into custody.

In a chronology of events outlined in a statement, police said the woman had apparently sent a letter a month after her disappearance asking her parents not to search for her.

During police questioning, she told police her father began sexually abusing her when she was 11 and locked her in a room in the cellar on August 28, 1984.

During the 24 years that followed, she said she was continually abused by her father and gave birth to six children, the statement said. In 1996, she gave birth to twins but one died several days later because it was not appropriately cared for. Her father had then apparently removed the corpse from the cellar and burned it, the statement said.

Police said the woman appeared "greatly disturbed" psychologically during questioning. She agreed to talk only after authorities assured her that she would no longer have to have contact with her father and that her children would be taken care of.

One of her children, a 19-year-old girl, is now in hospital the Lower Austrian town of Amstetten in very serious condition. Police said the father has been arrested but had not confessed.

Gerhard Sedlacek, spokesman for the public prosecutor's office in St Poelten, said the surviving children - three boys and three girls - are aged between five and 20.

DNA tests are expected to determine whether paternity of the children.

Woman, 38, charged with having sex with her young sons

Another incest incident. This sickening act seems to be happening in most part of the world these days...

Taken from Harretz, Israel, 13 April 2008
By Haaretz Service

The Be'er Sheva District Court on Sunday indicted a 38-year-old woman from the southern town of Netivot who allegedly had sexual relations with her two sons, 9 and 11.

The defendant is a religious woman and a divorcee. Her children were taken from her home last year by court order and put into boarding schools and foster care, upon recommendation of a social worker involved in their case.

One of the children, 11, was transferred to a boarding school in B'nei Barak, where he exhibited sexual behavior inappropriate for his age. When confronted, the boy told school counselors that his mother had forced him to have sex with her on one of the occasions he had come to visit her last year.

When arrested by police, the woman said she had committed the act as revenge against her former husband.

The charges state that the woman lay on her bed naked, with only her head covered and forced her children to undress and have sex with her. She then did the same thing with her other son, according to the indictment.

The woman is also suspected of watching pornographic films with her children. The Southern District Prosecution has requested that the woman remain in policy custody until the end of proceedings on the grounds that she could be a danger to her children.

Children removed from sect in Texas tell of girls forced into sex with older men

Taken from the Guardian, UK
Ed Pilkington, April 10 2008

Interviews with hundreds of children removed from a polygamist sect in Texas have revealed that several underage girls were forced into "spiritual marriage" with much older men as soon as they reached puberty and were then made pregnant, according to investigators.

A total of 416 children, mainly girls, have now been taken into state custody after five days of raids on the Yearn for Zion ranch in Eldorado, west Texas. Court documents reveal the children were removed for fear they were at risk of "emotional, physical and/or sexual abuse".

A further 139 women left the ranch voluntarily to accompany the girls, and are being held with them. A local court has granted state custody of all the children until a hearing later this month.

The 1,700-acre ranch is the retreat of a group from the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, a 10,000-strong splinter sect that broke with the main Mormon church when it denounced polygamy in the 1890s. The compound was built in 2004 in a remote location in the prairies by Warren Jeffs, the then "prophet" of the sect who is currently in jail in Arizona awaiting trial over charges relating to the arranged marriages of three teenage girls. He has already been sentenced to 10 years to life imprisonment in the state of Utah.

The raids were sparked by a telephone call from a 16-year-old girl inside the Yearn for Zion compound to a local family violence shelter on March 29. She said she had been forced to become the seventh "spiritual wife" of a man aged 50, who made her pregnant with a child, now aged eight months, and then made her pregnant for a second time. The girl said other girls, some as young as 13, had been forced to have sex with older men for procreation. She said she had been beaten by her "husband" so badly that on one occasion several of her ribs were broken. The beatings included hitting her on the chest and choking her, the affidavit says, while another woman held her baby.

The police are searching for the man, Dale Barlow. They are also continuing to search for the girl, whose identity has not been released and who has yet to be found among the 416 children taken into care.

The court papers give new details about the isolated life of the sect.

The compound is self-sufficient, in order to avoid contact with the "outsiders' world". In addition to a temple, the ranch includes a cement factory, a school, a cheese factory and medical centre.

Women wear home-sewn dresses and are not allowed to wear red, which Jeffs decreed was reserved for Jesus, or cut their hair. They live on a diet of dairy produce, vegetables, berries, nuts and honey.

Sect members were only allowed out of the compound for emergencies. The 16-year-old who sounded the alarm told the shelter that she had been warned that if she left the ranch, "outsiders will hurt her, force her to cut her hair, to wear makeup and to have sex with lots of men", the documents say.

Several of the teenage girls were found to have children or are pregnant. Many could not spell their last names or state their birth date.

The sect believes that polygamy for men is an essential religious practice. Underage girls were married to older men of the church's choosing, the affidavit says.

The leader of the ranch, Merrill Jessop, has called for a public outcry over the raids, saying the "hauling off of women and children matches anything in Russia or Germany".

Lawyers for the church have filed a court petition to quash the searches on the grounds they are unconstitutional as the authorities lack sufficient evidence to justify the intrusion.

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Latest Update - 25th May 08: Members of a polygamist sect in Texas were overjoyed after an appeal court ordered the state authorities to return 440 children taken from a church compound during a raid. The Third Court of Appeals in Austin said on Thursday that the state had failed to show that the children were in any immediate danger – the only justification under Texas law for taking children from their parents without a court order. Child-protection officials argued that five of the girls had become pregnant under the age of 16 and that the sect was essentially a paedophile ring. Warren Jeffs, the “prophet” of the church, is serving a ten-year sentence in Utah for rape. The decision to return the children was seen as an embarrassment for the child welfare authority and as vindication for members of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (FLDS), who claim that they are being subjected to religious persecution.

Storm in a shot glass as advert redraws map of Americas

Taken from The Independent, UK
By David Usborne, 8 April 2008

A whimsical ad by the makers of Absolut vodka aimed solely at consumers in Mexico has drawn the ire of some sovereignty-sensitive Americans, forcing the company to issue an unusual apology.

The storm in a shot glass was provoked by advertisements that depict an antique map of North America dating back to before the 1848 Mexican-American War, when large swaths of what is now the United States, including all of California and other south-western states, belonged to Mexico. One of a series of ads that run under the tag-line "In an Absolut World", the spot was a cheeky attempt to tap into simmering nationalistic sentiments in Mexico, which chafes at its status as the "poor neighbour" of a country that it once partly owned.

If in Mexico they smiled at the notional re-conquering of their lost lands, the reaction in El Norte has been more mixed than a dirty martini. The company has been assailed by American vodka fans, mostly writing in blogs on the internet, accusing it of inflaming passions about an already touchy political subject: illegal immigration and plans to erect a fence along the existing border.

The Swedish beverage giant, which was bought last week by the French group Pernod Ricard, has even been charged with encouraging Mexicans to enter the US without proper papers.

"We are sorry if we offended anyone," the company said in its own blog on the Absolut website. "This was not our intention. In no way was this meant to offend or disparage, nor does it advocate an altering of borders, nor does it lend support to any anti-American sentiment, nor does it reflect immigration issues. Instead, it hearkens to a time which the population of Mexico may feel was more ideal." Also on the defensive was the company's spokesman in New York, Jeffrey Moran. "This ad certainly has nothing to do with immigration issues or anti-Mexican sentiments," he insisted. "It's based on a historical perspective on what Mexico was once. That's all."

The blogospheric bashing of Absolut was set off by the conservative commentator Michelle Malkin, who posted the Mexican ad on michellemalkin.com, her blog site. From there it quickly migrated to other US sites, including the influential drudgereport.com, further kindling criticism.

"I find this ad deeply offensive and needlessly divisive," one blogger simply named "New Yorker" said on MexicoReporter.com: "I will now make a point of drinking other brands."

Another Outraged of the US added: "Absolut is pandering to ignorance, historical illiteracy and Mexican national chauvinism. I'll never drink Absolut again."

That Absolut may have touched a sweet and a sour nerve simultaneously on each side of the border may now seem obvious. While history classes in America teach that the territories were legally purchased from Mexico after the conclusion of the war, many Mexicans still feel they were stolen.

"This advertising basically taps into a very painful episode of Mexico's history, so the cultural code for understanding that is, 'We were robbed,'" commented Eduardo Caccia, an executive at Mindcode, a Mexico City advertising consultancy. "For the US it's different. The understanding for that episode is 'We bought some land. We made a deal.' The same event, but with different meanings."

The loss of what was once Alta California and the other states to the US, including Texas (although it had broken away in 1836 after its own war of independence with Mexico), Arizona and New Mexico, was sealed with the signing of the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo at the end of the war.

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The land grab by the United States will eventually be offset by the demographic change that is taking place in America - where it's estimated that within 10 years, hispanics will become the majority in these parts of the United States - Hola!

Father and daughter have child

Taken from Sydney Morning Herald, Australia
APP - April 7, 2008

A South Australian woman has given birth to her father's daughter after the couple had sex.



John and Jenny Deaves reunited 30 years after Mr Deaves separated from Jenny's mother.

Jenny was 31 and, just two weeks after meeting, father and daughter had sex.

"John and I are in this relationship as consenting adults," Mrs Deaves told the Nine Network last night.

"We are just asking for a little bit of respect and understanding."

Their 11-month-old daughter Celeste, shown on TV, appears fit and healthy.

Ms Deaves said soon after reuniting with her father she began to see him as a man first and her father second.

"I was looking at him, sort of going, 'Oh, he's not too bad.'

"Like you might look at a man across the bar at a nightclub."

Ms Deaves brought two children, Samantha and Alex, into the relationship after splitting from her former partner.

Mr Deaves admitted that he "initially" thought having sex with his daughter was wrong.

"Emotions take over. As people no doubt realise, there are times during your life where emotions do rule the heart, it rules the head," he said.

"I knew it was illegal. Of course I knew it was illegal but you know, so what."

Ms Deaves said the physical relationship with her father was like "a sexual relationship with any other man".

For Mr Deaves the sexual relationship was "absolutely fantastic".

A South Australian police media spokesman said: "The couple is being monitored."

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LATEST UPDATE 08.04.08: latest court transcripts have revealed that the father and daughter had another baby seven years ago, who died from a congenital heart defect.

I just hope that the new baby does not have the same defects. This is why it is very wrong to marry family members - firstly it is morally wrong but also there is a big chance that the genes of the two parenst will be too close and the ofspring will have defects/ suffer from mutations.