Protecting Our Kids At All Costs

By: Gaétane F. Borders, Ed.S., ABD

I recently attended a 5k walk to honor the memory of Shaniya Davis, a little girl who was murdered by a pedophile after her mother sold her to him.  It’s a story that touched the hearts of so many around the world and garnered a significant amount of news media.  However, it has been a year since her tragedy and the television stations are no longer covering her story.  The newspapers and magazines no longer have her beautiful face as the cover image.  And many people have forgotten how they felt the first time they heard of her sadistic and gruesome murder.  Part of the reason for this is likely because people do not believe that something like this could ever happen to their family.

The sad truth is that sexual abuse and sexual exploitation is far more frequent than most acknowledge.  While Shaniya’s reported pedophile was not known to her, most individuals who molest children are known to them.  They are very slick and manipulative in their approach. They "groom" the child into thinking that they are trustworthy, and gradually involve children in inappropriate acts. Later they often threaten to harm the child or their family members if they do disclose. Victimized children often won't tell because they are afraid that they will not be believed, or feel guilty that they may have, in some way, been responsible for the abuse. Now, all of this is compounded with the fact that more often than not, it is a parent who is committing the abuse. In this case, a child may not want to tattle.

So what can you do as a parent? Be attuned to any changes in your child's behavior because this will tell you a lot! Young children will often regress by wetting the bed, sucking their fingers, or not eating. Elementary school age kids often demonstrate excessive fear of certain people, masturbate excessively, have nightmares, or will withdraw from people. In the teen years, kids may become promiscuous, experiment with drugs, be depressed, and may also have suicidal thoughts. You should be concerned if you see any of these behaviors, and begin asking questions.  Also equally important is to understand that not everyone should be trusted with or around your children…whether or not they are related to you.  When it comes to your child, you should only trust a few people…and even still, watch like a hawk to ensure their safety.

If your son or daughter tells you that they have been abused, BELIEVE THEM! It is extremely rare for a child to lie about this. Keep in mind that the way that you react to this will help determine how your child will heal. Tell them that you are proud that they had the courage to tell you, and that it was not their fault. They really do need to hear this! In addition, make sure that they receive counseling to address their trauma because it will have life long ramifications if not treated.

If you were abused, and are finding it difficult to find inner peace... just remember that you do not have to let your trauma define who you are. Despite what happened to you, it is possible to live and love without pain. Your healing process may be difficult, but happiness is attainable.

Sincerely,

Gaétane F. Borders, Ed.S., ABD                                  

INCREDIBLE CRIMES OF 2009

By Michelle Simonsen, True Crime Writer and Victim's Rights Advocate

ENTER HERE, NO EXIT

Annie Le

In 2003, Annie Le was voted by her high school classmates as "most likely to be the next Einstein". She was currently in the doctorate phase of her education at Yale University in the Department of Pharmacology. She was planning her wedding to her fiancee, Jonathan Widawsky, a Columbia University graduate student.

At 24, Annie Le had her entire life in front of her.

But in September, 2009, it was taken away...five days before her wedding.

Le went missing after entering a Yale University school building. Surveillance cameras capture her walking into the building, but never exiting. Her body was found on her wedding day, five days later, inside a wall of the laboratory in the school basement. Connecticut's medical examiner who performed Le's autopsy found that she had died as a result of "traumatic asphyxia due to neck compression."

After a thorough investigation, lab technician Raymond Clark, was arrested and charged in Le's murder. Clark has yet to enter a plea and will not have another court hearing until January 26, 2010. The motive is currently unclear, as well as the significance of Clark and Le's relationship, if any.

In a sad irony, Le wrote an article for Yale Medical School's B Magazine in February 2009 entitled, "Crime and Safety in New Haven".

A LAST LOOK--PRETTY IN PINK

Sandra Cantu

She was wearing a pink Hello Kitty t-shirt when she died. She was later stuffed inside a small cheap suitcase and dumped into an irrigation pond in Tracy, California, 70 miles south of Sacramento.

8-year old Sandra Cantu was last seen skipping along surveillance footage in her mobile park neighborhood with the intent of playing with a 5-year old girl who lived nearby.

She was never shown coming home.

Ten days later, farmers located the suitcase of horrors. It led them directly to the mother of Sandra's playmate. 28-year old Melissa Huckaby, mother and Sunday school teacher, has been indicted and charged with kidnapping, rape by instrument, and the murder of Sandra Cantu.

Prosecutors are seeking the death penalty. Her trial is set to begin on October 18, 2010.

A RARE OCCURRENCE

Only 5 percent of pedophiles in America who abuse girls are female, said David Finkelhor, director of the University of New Hampshire Crimes Against Children Research Center, and the victims are almost always older than Sandra was. "There are cases of a woman acting alone, but more frequently you get a situation where it's a woman working in cahoots with a guy," he said. "What's being described here is very rare." (source)

HELL'S PLAYGROUND

Michael Brewer

While most 15-year olds were unwrapping their Christmas gifts this year, Michael Brewer was having skin graft bandages unwrapped. In a cruel and deliberate assault against the Deerfield Beach, Florida teen, Brewer was burned alive by five of his fellow peers in October, 2009.

The reason? $40, a video game and a stolen bike.

It was determined by five Florida bullies that Michael Brewer should pay for "snitching" on defendant, Matthew Bent, 15, after he was fingered and arrested for stealing Michael's father's bicycle.

The day following the arrest of Bent, he and four others allegedly stalked and confronted Michael in order to assault him. Alcohol was poured over his body while another snapped a lighter setting him ablaze that left him with severe burns over 65% of his body.

Three of the boys have been charged as adults while the other two as juveniles. The three that will stand trial in the attempted murder of Michael Brewer, Denver Jarvis, 15, Matthew Bent, 15, and Jesus Mendez, 16, have pled not guilty and face up to 30 years in prison.

Listen to the 911 call HERE. (Warning: disturbing audio.)

HIGHWAY TO HEAVEN

Shaniya Nicole Davis

The most innate part of human nature is our natural urge to protect our children. What level of atrocity is it when a mother sells her own 5-year old daughter into prostitution?

Antoinette Nicole Davis, 25, stated that she put her daughter, Shaniya, on the couch at 5:30 a.m., and left the room. When she checked back an hour later Shaniya was gone.

According to Fayetteville, North Carolina authorities, Shaniya did not "go missing", as her mother charged.

Antoinette Davis, sold her daughter into sex slavery, where she was later murdered and dumped on the side of a dirty highway like a piece of trash. Shaniya was last seen with Mario Andrette McNeill, 29, as shown in this hotel surveillance footage. He has been charged with the rape and murder of Shaniya. Mommy Dearest has been charged with multiple felonies including human trafficking and child abuse involving prostitution.

Shaniya's father, Bradley Lockhart, has stated that Antoinette Davis sold their daughter into prostitution in order to pay off a drug debt. Preliminary autopsy results show that the 5-year old died from asphyxiation.

Mark Logan, executive and director of the Polaris Project and the former U.S. ambassador to combat human trafficking stated while there are no numbers on how many young children are trafficked by their own parents, there are about 100,000 minors trafficked in the United States each year.

Lois Lee, the founder and president of the non-profit Children of the Night, said drugs are often involved when mothers are found to have sold or traded their children. (Source)

The scariest thing about this case? Antoinette Davis is currently pregnant again!

LOST & FOUND

Jaycee Lee Dugard

In June, 1991, Jaycee Lee Dugard, then 11 years old, was forcibly abducted by two unknown adults at her South Lake Tahoe, California bus stop within eye shot of her stepfather and several classmates. After massive searches, tips and fruitless leads, Jaycee was thought to be gone forever.

18 years later...it is 2009. Investigators are following up on a parolee and while making a house visit, he meets his "daughter" Alyssa. Alyssa is 29 years old and claims the two girls with her, ages 11 and 15, are her little sisters. Something about "Alyssa's" story didn't jive with police.

After further investigation, it was revealed that her name was not Alyssa, but missing Jaycee Lee Dugard. Her two "sisters" are her daughters, Angel and Starlit, born as a result of the relentless rapes she endured over the past 18 years at the hands of Phillip Craig Garrido and assisted by his wife, Nancy.

After Jaycee was abducted in 1991, the Antioch, California couple had kept her captive in their home and in tents and make-shift sheds in their backyard.

Phillip Craig Garrido had already served a not-so-lengthy sentence for the vicious kidnap and rape of a woman back in 1976. The court's physicians had diagnosed him as "a sexual deviant and chronic drug abuser." During his trial in 1977 he testified that he would masturbate in his car by the side of schools while watching young girls.

Both have pleaded not guilty to kidnapping, rape, and false imprisonment and are awaiting trial. Jaycee has shown a great amount of what is called "The Stockholm Syndrome", where a victim has been mentally broken down by their captor, has formed a bond with them, or is sympathetic to them.

When Jaycee was originally asked by police about her relationship with Garrido, she stated "he was a changed man and a great person who was good to her kids. Alyssa subsequently stated that she didn't want to provide any additional information and that she might need a lawyer." (Source)

Jaycee and her daughters are back with her family and learning to remember who she really is and to cope with what happened to her. Carl Probyn, Jaycee's stepfather, confirmed that Jaycee and her daughters are in good health and intelligent, their reunion is going well, and they are proceeding slowly. Jaycee Dugard's aunt, Tina Dugard, about the two girls: "They are clever, articulate, curious girls who have a bright future ahead of them." (Source)

Michelle Simonsen is a victim's rights advocate, crime analyst and blogger for "Michelle Says So", founder of the grassroots consumer boycott, "Boycott Aruba--Justice for Natalee Holloway", an advisory board member of "Survivors in Action", and is a contributing writer for "Now Public", and "True Crime Talk".

Innocence Lost

By Gaetane Borders

In the news this week was the story of an adorable 5-year-old girl named Shaniya Davis. The whole world was, seemingly, glued to the news networks because it had been reported that Shaniya had been abducted.

There was hope that she was still alive because a surveillance photo of her being carried by a man into a hotel elevator was released. The man in the video was 29-year-old Mario Andrette McNeill.

By now the world knows that, sadly, Shaniya’s body was found in the woods located near Walker Road off of N.C. 87. Her mother, Antoinette Davis was charged with human trafficking, felony child abuse involving prostitution, filing a false police report and interfering with a police investigation. Mario McNeill was arrested on first-degree kidnapping charges. The unthinkable was brought to light! A mother allegedly sold her child for sex. Her baby… How could this happen? Surely it was an isolated incident…right?

Shaniya’s tragic story is disturbing to say the least. Yet, unfortunately, it is not unique nor uncommon. However, it has forced people to acknowledge that this sort of thing does ABSOLUTELY happen. The image of her…helpless, scared, and petite…being carried by McNeill is graphic and visual proof that there are individuals who prey on children of all ages. Despicable, nauseating, infuriating…but a reality of the world in which we live.

The fight to end the issue of the sex labor industry is not a new one. The Innocence Lost National Initiative started in 2003 to address child sex trafficking in the U.S. Recently, the FBI, its local and state law enforcement partners, and the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC) worked together as part of the Innocence Lost National Initiative. The operation included enforcement actions in 36 cities across 30 FBI divisions around the country, and led to the recovery of 52 children who were being victimized through prostitution. Additionally, nearly 700 others, including 60 pimps, were arrested on state and local charges. To date, the 34 Innocence Lost Task Forces and Working Groups have recovered nearly 900 children from the streets. The investigations and subsequent 510 convictions have resulted in lengthy sentences, including multiple 25-years-to-life sentences and the seizure of more than $3.1 million in assets. Yet, this is only the tip of the iceberg. The FBI estimates that well over 100,000 children and young women are sex trafficked every day.

So now that we have acknowledged that this crime is prevalent…let’s talk about it in more specifics. Who are these heinous individuals that buy and sell children? They are called traffickers, and are defined as those who recruit, transport, receive, and exploit victims, often using force, threats, or other physical and psychological methods of control. Traffickers include a wide range of criminals, including individual pimps, family operations, small businesses, loose-knit decentralized criminal networks, and international organized criminal operations. They are driven by two primary factors: high profits and low risk.

Who are the victims? There is no one consistent face of a trafficking victim. Trafficked persons can be rich or poor, men or women, adults or children, or foreign nationals or U.S. citizens. Some are well educated with college degrees, while others have no formal education. Although anyone can fall prey to trafficking, victims tend to come from vulnerable populations such as runaways, at-risk youth, the poor, and oppressed and marginalized groups. Traffickers often target individuals in these populations because they are reportedly easiest to recruit and control.

Although the research shows that the disenfranchised are often targeted, don’t think that something like this could not happen to you and your middle to upper middle class family. There is a false sense of security that many of us tend to have because we feel that our circle of elite friends and family and large brick homes buffer us from the inherent cruelty of the world. Here is the reality, however. If you at any time allow your child to spend time on the Internet unsupervised…you have potentially allowed your child to interact with traffickers. I plead with you to install Internet filter programs such as Net Nanny or Cyber Patrol so that you can monitor everything that your child accesses online. Although your child might call you overprotective and you might feel as though you are smothering them…rest assured that you would rather be a nagging overprotective parent than one who is mourning their child’s murder or abduction.

Rest in peace Shaniya…and the millions and millions of Shaniya’s who are out there as well.

Parent with Love,

Gaétane