It’s every parent’s nightmare: discovering that a teacher, coach, pastor or other trusted adult has preyed on your teen. Yet it happens far too often. According to the U.S. Bureau of Justice Statistics, 93 percent of juvenile sexual assault cases involve perpetrators who know the victim in some capacity. After hearing about another inexcusable instance…
One sentence in a recent media article refers to “unfettered access to young people.” That can assuredly be a good thing where, say, an impassioned teacher is searching for new talent to challenge and mold. In instances where clergy members are intent on committing acts of sexual abuse, though, it is obviously a disaster. We…
How uncomfortable are college students who have been sexually abused on campus — most often by another student — with reporting details of that violence to campus or law enforcement officials, much less mentioning its occurrence at all? Put another way: How comfortable — that is, how confident — might some sexual abusers in a…
At some level, a good many of our readers across Los Angeles County and elsewhere in California likely worry a bit about nursing homes, when they think about them. Perhaps some of them have a loved one in a nursing facility and wonder about staff sufficiency, care delivery, food quality, medication dispensing and related factors.…
California is a vanguard state for taking the lead on many matters of national importance. Today (and in our immediately following blog post of this week), we take a look at one such matter that is unquestionably significant across the country and most assuredly in need of a broadly purposeful response from authoritative figures and…
Duodenoscopes. Gastroscopes. Colonoscopes. Bronchoscopes. What do all these medical devices — used for internal looks and treatment of patients’ body parts and organs, such as lungs, stomachs, bladders and colons — have in common? According to emerging research, these medical devices are often impervious to truly effective post-use cleaning protocols. The result: Many of the…
It seems like every summer there is a story like the one we are about to relate, a tale that serves as a truly chilling reminder that even environments where strict safety precautions are stressed can harbor outsized dangers to the public. We’re talking amusement parks and, of course, their myriad rides that cater to…
We noted in our earlier blog post of this week that Medtronic, which describes itself online as “the world’s premier medical technology and services company,” is front and center in a recent media expose that denotes it as “a flash point in a national debate about the role of money in medicine.” In a nutshell,…
Here’s a quasi-truism regarding sexual harassment in the workplace: It is often relegated to something minor in the overall scheme of unwanted sexual contact, where obvious and explicit acts of sexual assault and other forms of abuse command more attention. That is the wrong view to take, of course, given that harassing sexual behavior aimed…
Although it might be a bit cumbersome, motorcyclists throughout Los Angeles County and Southern California might want to consider toting a copy of a UC-Berkeley study on motorcycle safety as they traverse area roads and freeways. And they might want to resolutely stick it in the hands of the next irate motorist that yells at…