“These issues thrive on silence,” says a program director of an organization devoted to reducing violence against young people. The “issues” that individual is referring to are centered on the scourge of sexual assault acts perpetrated by adults — both male and female offenders — against young juvenile males. The resounding silence that often surrounds…
The “boy code.” That can of course signify varied things in given contexts, but many of our readers across California can likely intuit a very specific meaning to it when it is linked to the subject of child sexual abuse. It means a male juvenile going mum. It means keeping lips pursed in the wake…
As published by LA Times, Daily Journal, OC Register, San Gabriel Valley Tribune, Daily Bulletin and KTLA, on May 10, 2016, Taylor & Ring obtained an $8 million verdict against Pomona Unified School District on behalf of the then 14-year-old student who was sexually abused by her 8th grade teacher Steven Andrews. The Lorbeer Middle…
Today’s post continues discussion of a problematic reality we referenced in our immediately preceding entry, namely this: teachers in states across the country who commit acts of sexual misconduct against children and simply relocate to jobs in other areas without repercussions. And then reoffend. How is that possible? It owes to what a recent media…
Readers of our blog focused upon child sexual abuse — its identification and prevention, as well as just outcomes for victims and due punishment for perpetrators — might reasonably believe that there is a strong federal program in place that helps systematically catalog problem teachers across the country and ensure that relevant information is shared…
Whose interests are being served? That is a fundamentally important question to consider in any comparative examination of criminal and civil court cases, respectively. As we implied in our immediately preceding blog post, it is conceivable that the best interests of a child victimized by sexual assault are not advanced at all — in fact,…
The high-profile O.J. Simpson litigation that played out in Southern California courts some years back likely engendered a bit of confusion for many people regarding the mechanics of the judicial system. Some of our readers, for example, might have reasonably posed this question: Why was he tried twice? We bring that up today because the…
“[T]he light bulb is going off that this is the right thing to do.” So says a principal with one victims’ advocacy group in discussing the growing movement in many states across the country that is focused upon the mass testing of rape kits assembled in sex crime cases. In the context of what she…
There is really no reasonable excuse these days for any California parent to be in the dark regarding their children and the potential for sexual abuse. And the reasons for that are obvious. For starters, it is simply a stark and long-noted fact that acts of sexual abuse committed against children do occur and have…
So-called “group homes” that serve to house thousands of neglected and abused California children who cannot be readily situated with relatives or foster families have always been envisioned by state officials as temporary venues. In other words, the goal has been to place children in such places only for very limited periods, and only when…