Army sex-abuse 'preventer' accused
STORY HIGHLIGHTS
- Prostitution-related activity may have been involved, an official says
- Number of service members anonymously reporting sexual assault is up by more than 30%
- “No meaningful distinction between complacency or complicity,” says Rep . McKeon
- Soldier was assigned to a sexual harassment and assault response program
(CNN) — For the second time this month, a U.S . service member who worked in a military sexual assault prevention program has been accused of a sexual crime.
In the latest incident, an Army sergeant first class assigned to such a program at Fort Hood, Texas, is being investigated for alleged sexual assault, pandering, abusive sexual contact and maltreatment of subordinates .
Charges had not been filed as of Wednesday morning.
A Defense Department official says “initial indications” show that are at least one person may have been forced into prostitution activity, but the matter remains under investigation no conclusions have been drawn yet.
The sergeant has not been named . In a statement that does not use pronouns that would identify the gender of the service member, the Defense Department said that the person has been suspended from all duties.
The allegations come as the military is under intense scrutiny for sexual assaults within its ranks . The number of service members anonymously reporting a sexual assault grew by more than 30% in the past two years, according to a Pentagon report released last week.
More than 26,000 troops experienced “unwanted sexual contact,” a significant jump from 19,300 troops, a figure reported in a 2010 report on the topic.
The news of the Fort Hood case comes as the military prepares for a historic move: opening combat roles to women for the first time .
It’s unclear how that might affect the apparently increasing problem of sexual assault.
The department’s own research indicates that both genders are victimized . Consider that 10,700 of the 19,300 troops were men, according to the 2010 report.
On Wednesday, the investigation into the Fort Hood case continued as special agents from the U.S . Army Criminal Investigation Command were in charge.
Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel was told about the case Tuesday and met with Army Secretary John McHugh.
“I cannot convey strongly enough his frustration, anger and disappointment over these troubling allegations and the breakdown in discipline and standards they imply,” Defense Department spokesman George Little said of Hagel.
Hagel has ordered that all service members working in sexual assault prevention units be retrained and screened again .
If they pass, they will get new credentials.
That should also apply to personnel and military recruiters.
An Air Force officer who was arrested the first weekend in May1 on allegations that he attacked a woman and groped her buttocks and breasts in an Arlington, Virginia, parking lot was a personnel officer by training, said Gen . Mark Welsh, the Air Force chief of staff.
After top Air Force officer charged in sex assault, military faces questions2
In February, Lt . Col .
Jeffrey Krusinski was placed in charge of a branch of the Air Force’s Sexual Assault Prevention and Response program, and he oversaw a five-person office, an Air Force official told CNN after the incident . The official declined to be named, citing the ongoing law enforcement case.
Shortly after Krusinski’s arrest, military officials appeared before a congressional panel for an already scheduled hearing on sexual assault in the military . Welsh described Krusinski when he was asked what made him qualified to work in the sex assault prevention program.
Krusinski, 41, is a 1994 graduate of the Air Force Academy who served tours in both Iraq and Afghanistan .
He made an initial court appearance last week . He did not enter a plea.
During the hearing, lawmakers brought up yet another case that has made headlines involving sexual assault . Lt .
Col . James Wilkerson III was found guilty last year by a jury of Air Force officers of sexually assaulting a woman at his home outside Aviano Air Base in Italy.
General defends decision in Aviano case3
He spent four months in a Navy brig before Lt . Gen .
Craig Franklin, the convening authority in the case, threw out the verdict.
Franklin was the officer who ordered Wilkerson’s court-martial at Ramstein Air Base in Germany . But military law allowed him to have the final say.
“After considering all matters in the entire record of trial, I hold a genuine and reasonable doubt that Lt . Col .
Wilkerson committed the crime of sexual assault,” Franklin said in a letter to the Air Force secretary released publicly this week.
Pentagon officials told CNN that it is rare for charges to be dismissed in this manner . The decision angered victims’ rights groups and some members of Congress.
“I am extremely disturbed,” said Sen . Kirsten Gillibrand, D-New York, who chaired a hearing last month on the issue. “I don’t know how you can say that having 19,000 sexual assaults and rapes a year is discipline and order.”
Military rape victims: Stop blaming us4
Reports of sexual assault appear to be weighing heavily on higher-ranking officers.
“This is so contrary to everything upon which the Army was built,” McHugh, the Army secretary, has said during testimony before the House Appropriations Committee defense subcommittee. “To see this kind of activity happening in our ranks is really heart-wrenching and sickening.”
He spoke generally about sex abuse crimes in the military.
Survey indicates troubling trend in military sexual assaults5
“As I said to our new Brigadier General Corps when I spoke to them about two weeks ago, ‘You can do everything from this point forward in your military career perfectly, but if you fail on this, you have failed the Army,’ ” McHugh reportedly said.
After assault case, Hagel seeks changes to military legal process6
There were 3,374 sexual crimes reported in the military in fiscal year 2012, a 6% increase over the previous year, according to the Defense Department report issued last week.
Military officials worry that many victims don’t come forward because they fear retaliation .
But the numbers might indicate that more victims are willing to report crimes than in the past.
On Monday, House Armed Services Committee Chairman Howard P. “Buck” McKeon said he was outraged and disgusted by the Fort Hood allegations.
He called the case the “latest chapter in a long, sordid history of sexual abuse” in the military.
The military was rocked in the early 1990s by the Tailhook scandal .
A female Navy lieutenant said she had been sexually assaulted at a military convention by other service members.
Revisiting the military’s Tailhook scandal7
McKeon, a California Republican, has a granddaughter in the Army.
“I see no meaningful distinction between complacency or complicity in the military’s latest failure to uphold their own standards of conduct,” he said. “Nor do I see a distinction between the service member who orchestrated this offense and the chain of command that was either oblivious to or tolerant of criminal behavior.”
CNN’s Barbara Starr, Dana Ford, Larry Shaughnessy and Steve Almasy contributed to this report.
References
- ^ arrested the first weekend in May (news.arlingtonva.us)
- ^ After top Air Force officer charged in sex assault, military faces questions (www.cnn.com)
- ^ General defends decision in Aviano case (security.blogs.cnn.com)
- ^ Military rape victims: Stop blaming us (www.cnn.com)
- ^ Survey indicates troubling trend in military sexual assaults (www.cnn.com)
- ^ After assault case, Hagel seeks changes to military legal process (www.cnn.com)
- ^ Revisiting the military’s Tailhook scandal (www.nytimes.com)
Review – Photographer's ginger army | City PressCity Press
Review – Photographer’s ginger army
I Collect Gingers by Anthea Pokroy
You haven’t come to terms with ginger people until you’ve had a walk through the horde of images Anthea Pokroy is presenting at CIRCA on Jellicoe in Rosebank.
Pokroy, a Joburg-based photographer, has been collecting gingers or redheads, to be politically correct, since 2010 and two and a half years on, she has photographed over 500 of them.
This creative, a redhead herself, has put together what easily amounts to an army of redheads as part of her debut solo exhibition titled I Collect Gingers.
The images on show are arranged and numbered onto panels. The collective opus focuses Pokroy’s audiences on gingers as a special section of the human race. She does this by implying a common collective will and aspiration by redheads of the world working towards a certain Utopia. A mission to transcend the discriminative stigma that follows them.
In Greek mythology, for instance, it is believed redheads turn into vampires after dying. The Egyptians regarded the colour as so unlucky that they had a ceremony in which they burned redheaded maidens alive to wipe out the tint. There’s even a Russian proverb that warns: “There was never a saint with red hair.”
Red hair was apparently a sign of witchcraft in Christian Europe. Consider that Judas, Christ’s betrayer, is said to have had red hair too.
However, in modern day Denmark it is an honour to have a redheaded child, just as biblical King David was ginger too. Malcolm X, the American civil rights icon once known as Detroit Red was another notable heroic ginger. It is on the strength of these great gingers of the world that the artists is galvanising redheads.
Pokroy provides a rallying document mounted in the gallery as The Ginger Manifesto. It’s a declaration of intent and a will to ginger superiority, accompanied by identity cards and goals to increase the ginger population.
Though the exhibition merely presents, physically, a vast collection of numbered mug shorts, Pokroy manages to casts its range further.
She constructs a narrative, a history and future, along with a system of classification around this self-identified identity group or race.
We learn from her curatorial notes that she, “uses this minority, which forms 2% of the world population and mythical group of redheaded people to highlight the obscurities of racial classification and discrimination which remain prevalent in South Africa”.
Pokroy explains that, “it was only after my first photography session with seven ‘gingers’ that I began exploring the innate sense of community and collective experience that emerged from the otherness of the gingers.”
So she has summoned them to take a unified a stand against this sense of otherness.
0036 is a Jewish boy wearing a yarmulke (skulcap).
0032 is a picture of a redhead as a cool guy with earrings and a pierced lower lip. These two belong to the orange gingers. Then in the red ginger group there are the likes of the subject numbered 0079. It’s a picture of a young boy, possibly in his teens who could be of African descent. However, the identity document panel identifies him as Seth Pimentel, a Jewish-Scottish redhead.
Pokroy sidesteps the obvious race identity designation like black, Indian or white in order to attempt a less emotionally charged examination of the subject.
Though, in the end she manages to fan up a fascination for gingers more than she delivers us to a better race discourse. We don’t walk away from the show with a particularly better grammar to discuss race and its ugly derivative, racism. The show doesn’t get less fun for it, though.
Pokroy has constructed a symphony of redheads that stand like a sea of faces in demonstration. In this scheme, it’s possible to imagine gingers carry a special trait, call it an inescapable ginger gene.
Think here of the tragic Hollywood starlet, Lindsay Lohan, who was once one of the most sought-after actresses in the world. Shortly after she dyed her red hair peroxide blonde, Lohan seems to have lost her magic.
These days, she’s often associated with court appearances and bad parties rather than acting.
» I Collect Gingers is on at Circa On Jellicoe until March 2 2013
Cars, Sex Toys, And Everything In Between: Live Streaming The …
Two days down, two days to go.
We’ve seen Samsung1, Sony and LG2. We’ve hit up Huawei, Parrot, and Verizon3.
We even met a few different celebrities like Xzibit, Nick Cannon, and Run of Run-DMC4. It’s been an eventful, hilarious, and overwhelming experience, and we’re only halfway through.
Today, it’s all about the connected cars, the outliers, and the case makers. The North Hall is where you easily find companies that nudge right up to the line between electronics companies and otherwise. We expect to see Chrysler, Ford, Chevy and Audi, along with Schick and a whole lot of case makers.
We’ll begin our journey at 9:10am PST/12:10pm EST, and shortly thereafter we’ll begin our Live Gadgets Webcast at 1pm PST/4pm PST.
So feel free to sit back, relax, and put on your seatbelt.
This is about to get very interesting.
References
- ^ Samsung (techcrunch.com)
- ^ Sony and LG (techcrunch.com)
- ^ Huawei, Parrot, and Verizon (techcrunch.com)
- ^ Xzibit, Nick Cannon, and Run of Run-DMC (techcrunch.com)
Swedish sex toys make global success
• More young men than women selling sex in Sweden1
Swedish maker of vibrators and massage devices Lelo2 is getting more and more international media attention for its innovative and fashionable products as the high-end segments is expected to grow further.
Technology blog TechCrunch said Lelo’s new Smart Wand is the “the best personal massage device on the market”.
3
XBIZ Network ranked the company as one of last year’s best innovators in the sex toy field. It said that Lelo has landed a new U.S. patent for a product described as the first remote controlled couples massager worn by women during sex.4
Cosmopolitan5 recently said that U.S. electronics retailer Brookstone has teamed up with “upscale” sex toy brand Lelo to sell and distribute its new line (with selling points like each product is designed to “bring the art of relaxation to vibrant life”).
Bloomberg6 said that high-end gadgets sex toys are an increasing consumer segment.
“If you work in the City and make good money, how would it look if you went into the special part of your cupboard and had something ugly?” says Allison England, a saleswoman at Coco de Mer, a chain of British lingerie and luxe sex toy boutiques that also has a shop in Manhattan.
Two years ago, Ad Week7 hailed the Swedish company and said: “If Apple made sex toys, they’d probably look something like this”.
Lelo was founded in 2003 by engineer Filip Sedic and industrial designers Eric Kalén and Carl Magnuson.
“We admit that we’re all overwhelmed and incredibly grateful for all the media coverage we are getting, as well as the great feedback from customers who can’t wait to see what 2013 has in store”, Lelo’s PR manager María Pérez Muñiz told The Swedish Wire in an e-mail.
DateHouse: Military Dating Services
There are tons of single Military personnel in all branches of the armed services including the Army, Marines, Air Force, Coast Guard and Navy. Single enlisted men and women sometimes have a hard time dating since there call of duty usually keeps them busy traveling or defending our country.
Military admirers have become increasingly popular with support of our troops overseas. With this recent rise in popularity, niche military dating sites have been on the rise as well and civilian and military singles are connecting through email correspondence and chat on these sites.
Dating a person in the service can be a difficult but rewarding experience. I was raised as a military brat and my father was in the Army for 20+ years which allowed me to travel extensively in Europe and all across the US. I lived in small German towns and learned the native language and culture. I have a good friend who is in the Navy and has gotten the opportunity to travel all through the South Pacific. If you are a single civilian or a service personnel and interested in dating men and women that are admirers of the military then you should give one of these sites a try below:
Military Singles – Recommended.
Military Love Links
Military Friends
Uniform Dating – UK Military Dating
Military Singles Connection
MilitaryDate.com
-Brian R.
No related posts.
Tags: Online Dating
View the original article here1
References
- ^ View the original article here (www.lovesites.com)
Court rules on Romanian army sex discrimination complaint …
Judges have awarded €8,000 to a Romanian army serviceman after agreeing that he suffered sex discrimination over paternity leave.
Today’s European Court decision in the case Hulea v. Romania (no. 33411/05) found a Violation of Article 14 taken together with Article 8. As Just Satisfaction, the court awarded EUR 8 000 (non-pecuniary damage).
The applicant, Gabriel Hulea, is a Romanian national who was born in 1969 and lives in Bacău (Romania). He was an electrician in the Romanian army. His second son was born on 17 December 2001 and, for the first ten months his wife, a teacher, enjoyed parental leave.
On 9 September 2002 the applicant lodged a request for parental leave with his superior, arguing that his wife had to go back to work so as not to lose the benefit of her permanent teacher status. This request was made on several occasions. The Defence Ministry refused to grant him parental leave on the ground that by law such leave was granted only to female personnel.
Hulea brought proceedings before a court, which dismissed his claim. The Constitutional Court, which also heard the case, found that the law in question infringed the principle of equality before the law and that of discrimination on grounds of sex, both enshrined in the Constitution.
However, on 16 March 2005 the Court of Appeal dismissed the applicant’s appeal on points of law with final effect. Hulea argued that the refusal to grant him parental leave constituted discrimination on grounds of sex. He relied in particular on Article 14 (prohibition of discrimination) taken together with Article 8 (right to respect for private and family life) in respect of the proceedings that had led to the rejection of his claims in this connection.
Real-Life Stories: One man reveals what it is like to date a model …
For men everywhere, dating a model is their ultimate fantasy. But, one man has come forward to reveal the reality is more of a nightmare.
An anonymous male blogger has penned a piece on the website Slate1, where he details the nuisances that come from being with a woman, whose worth is based on her looks.
From body hang-ups and financial problems, the life of a model is far from glamorous 24/7, he explains. And, in the end, the looks that the woman in question was blessed with, ultimately tore them apart as a couple as her insecurities started to poison their relationship.
Here is his eye-opening tale in its entirety….
There are a lot of interesting aspects to it, and I’m sure my experience is different from that of others, but I’ll relate my story here since I was asked to answer this.
I dated a model during what you might call her “declining” years. I put that in quotes because to a normal person the idea is absurd. Models have a shelf-life of maybe 10 years, 15 if they are lucky. Once a model hits 30, the modeling industry considers her old and used up, and there is no shortage of eager 15- and 26-year-olds from Eastern Europe who are willing to work longer hours, fly more places, and get paid far less. Almost every model in her late 20s (including the woman I dated) begins to worry incessantly (when she isn’t worrying about nonexistent eye wrinkles) about how to make herself into a “brand” and transition into being a supermodel, which is pretty much the only postmodeling career available to you in this line of work.
Dating a model is pretty interesting. As a couple and as a man, you are immediately accorded utterly absurd amounts of social consideration. Any time we were out, we’d get special treatment. Not just from service people but just regular people. People would regularly offer to let us cut in front of them in lines at restaurants, grocery stores, even once at the DMV(!) when we happened to go together. Of course we could get into clubs, although this is not as great as it seems because every two-bit wannabe pickup artist would try to chat “us” (really just her) up when we were just there to dance and have a good time with friends. Probably the biggest benefit is that we always stood an extremely good chance of being offered upgrades to first class when flying. Airlines look for well-dressed people to offer first-class upgrades to when seats are open, and dating my girlfriend had led me to up my game in terms of dress so I always wore a jacket and tie when flying, so we were a pretty good-looking couple (well, she was—I was a chump in a nice suit), and we would
Army mobilizes for first financial audit in its history | Article | The …
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The Army is gearing up for an audit of its “Statement of Budgetary Resources” by 2014 and an audit of all financial statements by 2017. The SBR is the statement that shows the money the Army has received in a fiscal year and outlines how it spent that money. In fiscal year 2011, for instance, the Army had more than $335 billion dollars in budgetary resources to account for.
WASHINGTON (Army News Service, Aug. 29, 2012) — The Army is gearing up for an audit of its “Statement of Budgetary Resources” by 2014 and an audit of all financial statements by 2017.
“Gearing up for an audit affects more than just the resource management community,” said James Watkins, deputy assistant secretary of the Army for Financial Operations. “It affects contracting, payroll, acquisition, logistics and other business functions. The Army is changing the way it does business and people all over the organization are seeing the impact.”
The Statement of Budgetary Resources, or SBR, is the statement that shows the money the Army has received in a fiscal year and outlines how it spent that money. In fiscal year 2011, for instance, the Army had more than $335 billion in budgetary resources to account for.
The Department of Defense is the last remaining federal agency with financial operations that cannot muster an independent audit. Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta has described the situation as “unacceptable” in testimony to Congress.
In 2009, Congress mandated that DOD obtain a clean audit opinion of all of its financial statements by 2017. In October 2011, Panetta announced that DOD, including all of the services, would move up the timeline to obtain a clean opinion on its SBR by 2014.
The Office of the Assistant Secretary of the Army (Financial Management & Comptroller) is leading the effort to get the Army audit ready and to meet all of the deadlines.
“Responsible stewardship of taxpayer resources and operating business processes within an effective control environment are consistent with high standards of military readiness and support Army values,” said Chief of Staff of the Army Gen. Ray Odierno in a message sent to general officers in April. The message stressed the importance of audit readiness efforts.
In order to meet the deadlines, the Army is testing and improving the internal controls it has in place to ensure business processes are executed properly and to minimize a risk of error on the financial statements. Examples of internal controls are:
– signing and dating a receiving report or invoice to prove goods or services actually received were compared to the items or invoice ordered
– reviewing standard operating procedures for certain business processes annually to ensure they align with generally accepted accounting principles and DOD and Army policies
– having the proper forms on file to show that someone has the authority to sign off on a business transaction
When it comes time for a financial statement audit, auditors will select a sample of transactions for each business process, request documentation to support the transactions, and review the documentation to ensure that transactions were executed properly. If the documented evidence does not exist or the documentation does not properly support the transactions, the result could be an unfavorable audit opinion.
“We know people are doing good work. But they need to have the documentation in place to prove it,” said Watkins.
Teams from the Assistant Secretary of the Army (Financial Management & Comptroller) Office of the Secretariat, or OASA(FM&C), have been visiting installations and evaluating business processes. Along with the SBR business processes, teams have been looking at the management of assets, including military equipment, general equipment, operating materials and supplies, and real property. Teams coordinate with internal review offices to examine business processes and implement corrective actions.
The OASA(FM&C) has rolled out a series of resources, including checklists, handbooks, and training courses. The resources are meant to help everyone across the Army understand the importance of audit readiness and review the internal controls that need to be in place to obtain a clean audit opinion.
Online training courses through the Army Learning Management System have also begun to roll out. Currently the overview module is available explaining audit readiness efforts in more detail.
One-day training sessions are held each month in the Washington, D.C., area. Upcoming training sessions are scheduled for Sept. 24, Oct. 16, Nov. 15, and Dec. 20. For more information, email [email protected]