Violence against children is always a topic that rightly commands front-page news attention in media outlets across California and the rest of the country, given the sheer vulnerability of adolescents and the corresponding need to spotlight the wrongs committed against them. In no realm is that truer than with acts of sexual abuse committed against…
“Kids need a safe place to be and someone who cares about them. Now why should that be so hard?” Thus queries a seasoned Los Angeles Police Department veteran, an officer who heads the LAPD unit that focuses upon identification and eradication of child sexual exploitation. Lt. Andre Dawson’s posed question is eminently straightforward and…
There is a definite focus on vulnerability in several new California laws that were passed last year and took legal effect on January 1. We are confident that our readers across Southern California will routinely applaud that focus and attendant effort of state legislators to protect individuals who are at the greatest risk of being…
Filmmakers in Los Angeles have examined virtually every conceivable subject under the sun over the years, with no topic seemingly being taboo. And now the focus has in a very literal sense turned in on Hollywood and the movie industry itself, and in a manner that is anything but salutary or self-congratulatory. The subject matter…
It’s likely hard — in fact, insuperably difficult — for readers of our blog to contemplate what goes through the mind of a victim of sexual assault, unless, of course, they have been victimized themselves. For purposes of today’s post, we focus on the aftermath of such heinous behavior, specifically, the inability of a victim…
Whither Jessica’s Law? In our earlier post from this week, we noted the evisceration of that California statutory enactment by state corrections officials acting in the wake of a state court decision rendered earlier this year. The result: An estimated 4,200 — if not more — sex offenders convicted of crimes against children previously who…
“Kids in kindergarten living across the street from a sex offender is not what the people voted for in Jessica’s Law.” So says a state legislator who is clearly dismayed by an abrupt turn in established state policy that has removed living restrictions on thousands of paroled sex offenders across California. As noted in a…
The Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Los Angeles has duly reflected. And with the “further reflection” recently noted by an attorney representing the archdiocese, that church body has withdrawn the earlier support it had extended to the Los Angeles Unified School District in a sexual abuse case involving a former teacher and a 14-year-old female student.…
Actually, the above headline might reasonably benefit from a slight word adjustment, namely, the substitution of “many” for “some,” given relevant statistics that help flesh out the real-world dimensions of driver-related risks in the nation’s commercial trucking industry. In the aggregate, commercial truckers would seem by all indications to warrant close scrutiny from safety regulators…
As published by LA Times, BuzzFeed, Inside Edition, KTLA, ABC 7 and NBC, on October 22, 2015, Dr. Joseph Koetters, a former Marlborough School teacher pled guilty to four felony counts of sexual assault of two minors who were also former students. Mr. Koetters sexually molested both students while they attended Marlborough in the early…