Tag: child

By Conquering Their Own Fears, Following Their Child’s Lead And Tolerating Ambiguity – Parents Can Support A Child Who Comes Out As Trans
LGBTQ

By Conquering Their Own Fears, Following Their Child’s Lead And Tolerating Ambiguity – Parents Can Support A Child Who Comes Out As Trans

Young transgender, or trans, people face high rates of anxiety, depression and suicide. These elevated mental health risks largely stem from external factors such as discrimination, victimization and – most especially – family rejection rather than from being trans. Em Matsuno, a research fellow at Palo Alto University, is currently developing and testing an online training program called the Parent Support Program to help parents better understand and support trans youth. They talked with The Conversation U.S. about their findings and how parents can be better advocates – and avoid common missteps – when a child identifies as trans or nonbinary. What are common challenges parents with trans kids face? A big one is fear. Parents fear for their child’s safety. For example, they fear their ...
Your child’s vaccines: What you need to know about catching up during the COVID-19 pandemic
COVID-19, HEALTH & WELLNESS, Journalism

Your child’s vaccines: What you need to know about catching up during the COVID-19 pandemic

This spring, after stay-at-home orders were announced and schools shut down across the nation, many families stopped going to their pediatrician. As a result, kids have fallen behind on important childhood vaccinations. Vaccination rates declined starkly after mid-March, with up to 60% reductions in some areas of the country. Nationwide, vaccination rates dropped by 22% among Medicaid and Children’s Health Insurance Program recipients under 2. Now that kids are coming back to pediatricians like me, many parents have questions about catching up. Why is it a problem that my child is behind on vaccines? Vaccines protect your child from serious communicable diseases including brain infections, pneumonia, bloodstream infections and, in the case of the HPV and hepatitis B vaccines, even some t...
IN OTHER NEWS, LAW ENFORCEMENT

Hundreds arrested for ‘dark web’ child porn by international task force

Yesterday, authorities in the United Kingdom and the United States announced that 337 suspected users in 38 countries were arrested following an investigation of a dark web child pornography site. The website was based in South Korea and accepted cryptocurrency as payment. Law enforcement agencies from Germany, South Korea, the United Kingdom and the United States were part of the international task force. The current phase of investigation and arrests began in 2018. The website after it was shuttered by authorities Image: NCA. via Twitter At the center of the case was a website known as "Welcome To Video" and its alleged operator Jong Woo Son from South Korea. According to authorities, the site hosted a quarter million video clips containing sexual abuse of children, including toddle...
How We Shut Down the Nation’s Largest Child Detention Center
SOCIAL JUSTICE

How We Shut Down the Nation’s Largest Child Detention Center

Now the Trump Administration wants to reopen it. On the morning of Aug. 3, the last of more than 3,000 children were taken out of the Homestead detention center in Florida. The controversial detention center had served as an indefinite holding place for migrant youth, many of whom fled violence and poverty in Central America and were seeking asylum in the United States. Homestead was an “emergency influx facility”—a designation used to skirt the Flores settlement agreement, which requires oversight and certain standards of care for children in detention. It was run by Caliburn—a for-profit prison operator that includes former White House Chief of Staff John Kelly on its board of directors, and cost taxpayers $1 million dollars a day to operate. Children were not allowed ...
LAW ENFORCEMENT

Four Men Arrested for Using Dark Web “Child Porn” Forum

Authorities in Switzerland have arrested four suspected members of the dark web child abuse forum, “Elysium.” Europol has been coordinating the investigation between German authorities and Fedpol. In 2017, the German Federal Criminal Police Office raided the home owned by the operator of Germany’s largest child pornography forum on the dark web. They arrested the forum owner and seized the encrypted computers that had been hosting the server. Since the arrest, the German Federal Criminal Police Office and other branches of law enforcement in Germany and Austria arrested members of Elysium. They used logs from the seized server and other pieces of revealing information to track down physical child abusers first. Even though the forum was for German speakers, law enforcement around the worl...
IN OTHER NEWS

Pedophile Sentenced to Eight Months in Prison for Downloading Child and Animal Porn

A pedophile in Berkshire, England, was sentenced for downloading more than 400 pictures and videos of child abuse from a site on the dark web. Law enforcement learned that the man had been viewing illegal content while on probation for previous child sexual abuse crimes. In 2015, a judge in Berkshire, England, sentenced Ben Keeler to several years on an extended sentence for sexually abusing a minor and possessing pictures of sexual child abuse. The sentence required Keeler to live at an Approved Premises (also known as a bail hostel). Approved Premises are the equivalent of halfway houses for offenders to live at before reintegrating with society. They also house some criminals on license. At the Approved Premises, offenders were not permitted to have or use cell phones. Keeler had eithe...
Saudi Man Admits Paying for “Sadistic” Child Pornography with Cryptocurrency
IN OTHER NEWS

Saudi Man Admits Paying for “Sadistic” Child Pornography with Cryptocurrency

In a court in the Eastern District of Virginia, a Saudi national admitted downloading child abuse content from a darkweb platform that provided illegal content to paying members. The announcement, published on the Department of Justice Office of Public Affairs’ website, highlighted the fact that the defendant had “paid cryptocurrency” to access this darkweb platform in search of illegal pictures and videos. The case, brought to the attention of law enforcement agencies by Project Safe Childhood, is one of only a small number of cases involving child abuse platforms with a membership fee payable in cryptocurrency. These forums, chat rooms, imageboards, and and similar content distribution sites have often presented a barrier of entry for law enforcement by requiring members or users to upl...
Canadian Bus Driver Sentenced to 39 Months for Sharing Child Pornography
IN OTHER NEWS

Canadian Bus Driver Sentenced to 39 Months for Sharing Child Pornography

During a recent hearing in a Canadian courtroom, Justice Allan Maclure sentenced a former member of the darkweb child abuse forum “Childs Play” to prison for 39 months. The man, a former school bus driver from London, had pleaded guilty to possessing, distributing, or creating child pornography at an earlier court appearance. The convicted pedophile received a significantly shorter prison sentence than expected due to both time served and to testimony from a therapist familiar with the case. According to evidence uncovered in an investigation conducted by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, the former bus driver had taken at least 176 pictures and videos of children on the bus he had driven for a London elementary school in Ontario, Canada. The man, known only as “Steps” to the public due ...
Judge weighs bid to dismiss child sex abuse claim against Cosby
IN OTHER NEWS

Judge weighs bid to dismiss child sex abuse claim against Cosby

Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge Craig Kaplan said at the end of the hearing he would take arguments from both sides "under submission" and render a written decision at an undisclosed date. Cosby, 78, lost a previous bid to fend off the same lawsuit on similar grounds last year, a fact Kaplan noted during Thursday's proceedings. He added that Cosby's latest challenge to the case "just seems like a second bite at the same apple". Cosby's accuser, Judy Huth, now in her 50s, sued the entertainer in December 2014, alleging that he plied her with alcohol and molested her during an encounter at the Playboy Mansion in Los Angeles in 1974. Cosby's attorneys have called Huth's account a fabrication, asserted that her case stemmed from a failed extortion attempt and argued that she waited too...