California ramping up school-based sexual harassment education

It’s really not hard to understand, say school officials, advocates promoting harassment-free school environments, many parents and other interested parties. Here’s the deal, in a nutshell: Much harmful and unlawful sexual conduct hat manifests itself in adulthood owes centrally to a perpetrator’s wrongful behaviors learned — and, importantly, not discouraged — years earlier. As in…

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Federal regulators concerned with U.S. traffic fatality numbers

Dismal. That is the clear and unadorned assessment of U.S. safety regulators who have culled and closely examined 2015 data relating to motor vehicle accidents across the country that resulted in fatalities. And here’s what is especially troubling to transportation and highway safety officials: Fatal accident-related numbers are up for virtually every type of crash.…

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Calabasas School Faces Lawsuit After Shielding Inappropriate Teacher

Viewpoint School, a K-12 grade school in Calabasas, California, will potentially face a civil suit after several accusations were made against the school for helping a former employee, Joseph Koetters, land another job after he demonstrated inappropriate behavior as one of the school’s teachers. Joseph Koetters, who was employed by Viewpoint from 1998-1999, later transferred…

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Opinion: LAUSD on wrong track re teachers’ sexual abuse of kids

Two guest commentators in a recent media article on the Los Angeles Unified School District’s response to the problem of predatory sexual behavior committed by teachers initially note what they say was the response to child molestation first structured by the Catholic Church and the Los Angeles Archdiocese. That response was grossly ineffectual and unethical,…

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A tragedy re many serious, fatal accidents: they are preventable

It is of course infinitely sad every time a serious or fatal accident occurs in Southern California or elsewhere across the country. And the personal loss suffered by an individual or family can seem even more tragic when the precipitating factor most centrally contributing to harm is human error. A catalyst in many catastrophic injury…

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Former high-ranking politician’s sex-abuse saga enters new stage

We last left off with one-time U.S. House of Representatives Speaker Dennis Hastert in a previous post, noting therein that the former politician — the longest-tenured Republican House speaker in the nation’s history — was soon scheduled to be sentenced in a high-profile criminal case involving allegations of sexual abuse committed against juveniles. There was…

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Task force acts: Los Angeles fertile ground for child molesters

The Internet — ubiquitous and powerful — is seemingly a global conduit for every conceivable thing. It provides news coverage to the second, sports and entertainment information and a ready catalog of virtually every song ever written and recorded. It allows users to instantly communicate across the world with others, do homework and research projects…

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Step 1 concluded: sex-crimes SOL passes California Senate

It’s a start. Would-be legislation in California is, well, would-be. That is, a bill is merely incipient and must clear multiple hurdles before it is deemed finally approved and can be enacted as law. A high-profile bill (SB 813, for short) focused upon the reporting window available for individuals to file legal claims regarding sex…

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