Their cries for help going unheard. ibid.
Every abuse ought to be reformed, unless the reform is more dangerous than the abuse itself. Voltaire
More than 50 women have accused Bill Cosby of sexual assault, drugging or rape. Their allegations span five decades. He has never been charged with a crime with regard to any of these accusations. Bill Cosby: The Women Speak, caption, CI 2015
A cultural icon in crisis. ibid.
‘It’s so damned humiliating: we don’t want to ever talk about it again.’ ibid. victim
Cosby was also a regular at the Playboy Mansion in LA. ibid.
‘There was always a sense of something ... something was going on.’ ibid. Cosby Show actor
‘Bill Cosby raped me. Why did it take 30 years for people to believe my story? Only when a male comedian called Cosby a rapist did the accusation take hold.’ ibid. Washington Post article Barbara Bowman 13th November 2014
You may not have struck her, but you did worse – you treated her with indifference and exposed her to temptation. What has happened is the natural result off your neglect and want of care for her. Robert Tressell, The Ragged Trousered Philanthropist
At the far end stood a huge, square bed, with quilts red like the rest, and on it a girl was lying, dressed in a frock of red velvet. At the sight of me she shrank away and tried to hide her knees under the short dress.
I had halted by the door. ‘Come here, my chicken,’ I called to her.
She gave a whimper of fright. With a bound I was beside the bed; she tried to elude me, but I seized her by the throat – like this, do you see? – tight! She struggled, she began to cry out for mercy, but I held her fast, forcing her head back her head and staring down into her face … She was a peasant girl, doubtless, whom her parents had sold into slavery.
Without another word I pulled her off the bed and threw her on the floor. And then I fell upon her like a tiger! Ah, the joy, the incomparable rapture of that time! …
More and more savagely I renewed the attack …
Ah, how she screamed, with what bitter cries of agony. But there was no one to hear them; down here under the streets of Paris we were as secure as at the heart of a pyramid. George Orwell, Down and Out in Paris and London
In the 1990s thousands of young people came to Deepcut to learn to be soldiers. Four of them would die here in mysterious circumstances. Today a coroner said one – Cheryl James – had taken her own life. After twenty years recruits are speaking out about a culture of bullying and abuse. Deepcut: The Army’s Shame, BBC 2016
There was a wider culture of brutality at the base. ibid.
Cheryl: she’d died from a single bullet wound to the head. ibid.
‘You still hear those stories today – this sexualised culture remains entrenched and a very difficult problem with the army.’ ibid.
We cannot know the full extent of bulling and sexual assault at the base or other army facilities. ibid.
America’s frat boys – notorious for hard drinking and even harder partying. Bound by a secret world of rituals and life-long bonds between fraternity brothers. Its members go on to become some of the most powerful and influential people in America. But they are institutions accused of creating a culture of sexual abuse. And brutality towards its new members. Frat Boys: Inside America’s Fraternities, BBC 2016
Confess. It felt good beating me, starving me, frightening me, humiliating me. Game of Thrones s6e10: The Winds of Winter, mother of boy-king, HBO 2016
You’re in the great game now. And the great game is terrifying. ibid. little man to Khaleesi
One of the world’s most senior Roman Catholic cardinals – George Pell – has been charged with multiple sexual offences … He is considered to rank third in the hierarchy of the global church. BBC news 29th June 2017
Victoria Climbie’s life was short and tragic. Her murder prompted the largest review of child protection arrangements in the UK …
July 1999: Kouao and Victoria, who speaks no English, move into Carl Manning’s home in Tottenham, north London. Within days, Victoria would be suffering abuse at the hands of Carl Manning. That abuse would lead to her torture and death …
24th February 2000: Victoria is rushed to North Middlesex Hospital suffering from a combination of malnutrition and hypothermia. Doctors later transfer her to an intensive care ward at St Mary’s Hospital in west London.
25th February 2000: Victoria is declared dead at 3.15pm at St Mary’s Hospital.
Dr Nathaniel Carey, the Home Office pathologist who examines her body, finds 128 separate injuries and scars, many of them cigarette burns, and describes them as ‘the worst case of child abuse I’ve encountered’. BBC online article 28th January 2003, ‘Timeline: Victoria Climbie’
A sex cult leader who brainwashed and abused children has been jailed and warned he may never be released.
Colin Batley, 48, was found guilty of 35 offences at Swansea Crown Court on Wednesday. Three women, including his estranged wife, were also imprisoned.
He moved from London to the small town of Kidwelly, Carmarthenshire, where the cult operated in a cul-de-sac.
He was given a public protection sentence with an 11-year minimum recommendation.
‘That means, of course, you may never be released,’ said Judge Paul Thomas QC.
Jacqueline Marling, 42, described as ‘Batley’s right-hand woman’, was jailed for 12 years, while Batley’s wife Elaine, 47, was jailed for eight years.
Shelly Millar, 35, described during the trial as Batley’s ‘sex slave’, was jailed for five years.
Vincent Barden, 70, of Kempston, Bedfordshire, who was not a cult member, was jailed for three years after admitting two counts of sexual assault on an underage girl.
Batley was said in court to have been active as a molester and rapist of children and young people for more than three decades.
Previously, a jury rejected claims by Batley and other defendants during the trial that no cult existed.
The cult, who all lived in the same cul-de-sac, took part in a catalogue of abuse against children and young adults.
Victims said the group used occult writings and practices to ‘brainwash’ them, and justify their abuse.
Batley used his position as the cult leader to rape boys and girls, the court was told. BBC online article 11 March 2011, ‘Kidwelly sex cult leader Colin Batley may never be free’
Australian cult leader Anne Hamilton-Byrne has died in Melbourne at the age of 98.
Her cult, The Family, was accused of imprisoning and brainwashing children in the 1970s and ’80s.
Hamilton-Byrne thought she was a reincarnation of Jesus Christ and blended drug-taking with mysticism and Christianity.
For most of the accusations against her, she never faced trial and suffered from dementia in her later years.
Originally a yoga teacher, she founded the cult in the late 1960s; it operated for more than 20 years, until police raided its property in the state of Victoria in 1987.
She and her husband Bill Byrne took children through adoptions, allowing the cult to assemble and imprison them in a strict home-schooling environment at a rural property near Eildon in Victoria.
Allegedly administering drugs to the minors, the cult was also accused of subjecting them to beatings, starvation and brainwashing.
The children wore identical clothes and had their hair dyed blond; they were told that one day they would take over the world.
‘Growing up, it was Anne and Bill, they were mum and dad; and then there were foster kids, and they were kids of other sect members, who would either come up on weekends or stay there for stints of a couple of years,’ Ben Shenton, a former Eildon child, told the Storyville programme.
‘The greatest amount of kids at any given stage was 28,’ he added.
‘We all had blonded bleached hair – not all of us, some had red hair, because Auntie Anne [Anne Hamilton-Byrne] was actually naturally red-headed,’ Roland Whitaker, who also spent time at Eildon as a child, told Storyville.
He describes what the children were made to wear.
‘Very royal, Von Trapp [characters in The Sound of Music] sort of clothes, your velvets, your smart shoes; everything had to be polished and looking the same – and that was really to implant in us that we’re all brothers and sisters.’
Police began investigating the cult in the late 1980s and broke up the group, freeing the children.
Hamilton-Byrne was only ever convicted of fraud, having to pay A$5,000 ($3,450; £2.700) in fines.