Expand sex ed to all grades: report

Tue Jun 2, 3:23 PM

Teens are being sexually active but are not getting the information or services they need to be properly educated about sex, according to a report on sexual health released Tuesday.

Planned Parenthood Toronto, York University, the University of Toronto, Wilfrid Laurier University and Toronto Public Health produced the survey.

In one of the largest studies of its kind, 1,216 Toronto teens aged 13 to 18 of different racial backgrounds and sexual orientation were interviewed about their sexual experiences by other teens between December 2006 and August 2007.

Interviewer David Anokye said teens want to hear about more than HIV/AIDS, pregnancy and birth control, which are covered in Ontario's sex ed curriculum.

"A lot of people talk about more the scare tactics and not much the pleasure part of it," Anoyke said. "I mean, we know people are being sexually active, and we know people are out there doing these things, but no one's really teaching us about it."

Overall, 37 per cent of teens in the survey said they were sexually active, but some didn't know how to define "sex."

"Very surprising to us was that many kids were unsure about whether they had had sex or not," said one of the study's authors, Sarah Flicker, a professor of environmental studies at York University. "And even among those who were unsure, some reported that they had engaged in oral sex, anal sex or vaginal sex."

The report recommends age-appropriate sexual education for all grades, starting in kindergarten.

Right now, students in Ontario schools receive sex education in Grade 7 and Grade 9. Among those surveyed, eight per cent said they had not had any sex ed at all.

Both young women and men said they were most likely to seek information from friends but would prefer to get it from professional sources such as doctors, nurses and teachers, according to the report.

Of those surveyed, 83 per cent said they had never accessed sexual heath care from a doctor or a clinic, many because of concerns over confidentiality and fear of being judged.

"The information and services that work for a 14-year-old Asian lesbian are not going to be the same as what works for an 18-year-old straight African male who is a newcomer to Canada," said Flicker.

One of report's 70 recommendations included tailoring sexual health programs to a diverse youth population and ensuring that staff at clinics reflects that diversity.

Neglected Russian girl found mimicking cats and dogs; father faces charges

2 hours, 39 minutes ago

By Steve Gutterman, The Associated Press

MOSCOW - A five-year-old Russian girl has been placed in state custody after being found alone in an apartment filled with cats and dogs and imitating the animals' behaviour.

Police in the Transbaikal region of Siberia said Wednesday that the girl was kept shut up with the animals in a filthy apartment in the regional capital of Chita, where she lived with relatives, including her father and grandparents.

Larisa Popova, head of the children's affairs unit at the local police precinct, told state-run Rossiya television that the girl had developed feral characteristics.

"The child lived in unsanitary conditions. There was a horrible stench," Popova said. "There were many animals - both dogs and cats. In all probability, the girl lived with and was raised by these animals."

Police said the girl understands Russian but rarely speaks and they are gathering evidence to support neglect charges.

Nina Yemelyanova, head of the reception department at a children's home where the girl has been placed, said the child appears to mimic the behaviour of animals.

"Today, when I left the room, she jumped up to the door and started to bark," Yemelyanova told Rossiya television. "And she does not know how to behave at the table - when she eats, the tries to put the spoon aside and lap from the dish."

Regional police said water, heat and gas to the apartment had long since been shut off for non-payment.

The ITAR-Tass news agency cited the girl's mother as saying the child's father had taken her away without her permission when she was 2 1/2 years old. But the father claimed his mother-in-law had asked him to take the child because the mother was not taking proper care of her, the news agency quoted regional police spokesman Yegor Markov as saying.

Markov said the father could be charged with neglect of a minor, which carries a prison sentence of up to three years.

Chita is 4,700 kilometres east of Moscow.

Saudi Arabia mulls marriage ban for girls under 18

Mon May 4, 1:00 PM

RIYADH (Reuters) - Saudi Arabia may ban marriage for girls below 18, a government minister said after a case of an eight-year old girl marrying a man more than 40 years her senior drew international criticism and embarrassed the kingdom.

"Among the options that are available and excluding the issue of puberty, is to ban marriage for (people) under 18," Justice Minister Mohammed al-Eissa told Asharq al-Awsat newspaper.

He was responding to a question about his ministry's plan to deal with the marriage of young girls.

"A girl below 18 is often not fit to take the family responsibility especially if she quickly gives birth (after marriage)," he said.

Saudi Arabia is a patriarchal society that applies an ascetic form of Sunni Islam which bans unrelated men and women from mixing and gives fathers the right to wed their sons and daughters to whomever they deem fit.

Many Saudi clerics, including the kingdom's chief cleric Grand Mufti Sheikh Abdul-Aziz Al al-Sheikh, endorse the practice of marrying underage girls, arguing that in doing so they avoid spinsterhood or the temptation of engaging in relationships outside the wedlock.

A 50-year old man in the small Saudi town of Onaiza agreed this week to divorce his eight year-old bride.

Financial considerations could prompt some Saudi families to wed their underage daughters to much older men.

Many young girls in Arab countries that observe tribal traditions are married to older husbands but not before puberty. Such marriages are also driven by poverty in countries like Yemen, one of the poorest countries outside Africa.

(Reporting by Souhail Karam; Editing by Jason Benham)

Arizona student killed in love triangle involving teacher

1 hour, 21 minutes ago

By Amanda Lee Myers, The Associated Press

CHANDLER, Ariz. - An 18-year-old high school student caught with his 48-year-old math teacher in her bedroom was stabbed to death by her boyfriend, who was himself a former student of hers, police said Tuesday.

Chandler police said Sixto Balbuena, 20, told them he never meant to kill Samuel Valdivia. He allegedly told police "the blade went in like going into butter" and that he just wanted to show Valdivia how much he hurt him by sleeping with Tamara Hofmann.

Balbuena, a navy sailor on leave from California, was arrested on a charge of second-degree murder after police found him covered in blood and told them about the killing. He was in jail Tuesday and did not have a lawyer.

Balbuena found his girlfriend naked and Valdivia in his boxer shorts in the woman's bedroom around 2:40 a.m. Friday, according to police reports and court documents.

Balbuena told police that Valdivia apologized to him before Balbuena began kicking, punching and throwing things at him, according to a police probable cause statement.

Police said Balbuena told them he "wanted to teach the victim a lesson," and stabbed him in the lower side with a kitchen knife, according to the court document. Valdivia later died at a hospital.

He also threw Hofmann to the floor jumped on top of her and demanded to know how long she had been cheating on him, according to the document.

Police said Hofmann taught Valdivia math at El Dorado High School in Chandler and was also Balbuena's teacher when he attended Marcos de Niza High School in Tempe.

A call to both schools was not immediately returned Tuesday. Hofmann's phone number is unlisted.

Balbuena is the one who called 911. He told officers he felt remorse for stabbing Valdivia after seeing him lying on the floor struggling to breathe, police said.

U.S. judge rules for teen girls in "sexting" case

Mon Mar 30, 9:27 PM

By Jon Hurdle

PHILADELPHIA (Reuters) - A U.S. judge on Monday barred a Pennsylvania prosecutor from filing child pornography charges against three teenage girls caught with sexually suggestive pictures of themselves on their cell phones.

U.S. District Judge James Munley said he was issuing a restraining order on Wyoming County District Attorney George Skumanick because his proposed action would violate freedom of speech and parental rights.

The ruling came after the American Civil Liberties Union sued Skumanick on behalf of the girls and their families.

"The court agrees with the plaintiffs that the public interest would be served by issuing a TRO (temporary restraining order) in this matter as the public interest is on the side of protecting constitutional rights," the judge said.

The case has attracted national attention and revolves around the growing practice among teens of "sexting," a play on the term texting, in which nude or semi-nude photos are sent on cell phones or posted on the Internet.

The pictures, found last fall by officials of Pennsylvania's Tunkhannock School District, showed two of the girls wearing bras, and another standing topless with a wrapped towel around her waist. No sexual activity was displayed.

Other unidentified people distributed the pictures.

Last month Skumanick told the girls and 17 other students that he would charge them with possessing or distributing child pornography, which is a felony, unless they agreed to probation and participated in a "re-education" program.

All but three agreed to his demands, setting the stage for the lawsuit.

Witold Walczack, legal director of the ACLU of Pennsylvania, welcomed the legal decision.

"This country needs to have a discussion about whether prosecuting minors as child pornographers for merely being impulsive and naive is the appropriate way to address the serious consequences that can result from sexting," he said.

But Skumanick said it could encourage potential defendants to use the federal court system to evade state charges.

"My big fear is setting the precedent that would allow criminals in the state system seeking protecting in the federal system." Skumanick said. When asked if he would appeal, he said was studying the opinion.

A national survey last fall found 20 percent of teenagers said they have sent or posted online nude or semi-nude pictures of themselves, and 39 percent said they have sent or posted sexually suggestive messages, according to the National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy.

(Editing by Paul Simao)

Infanticide video said inciting hate

Fri Mar 20, 1:28 PM

By Stuart Grudgings

RIO DE JANEIRO (Reuters) - A video made with the help of U.S. missionaries and depicting Amazon Indians burying children alive is "faked" and inciting racial hatred, a group campaigning for tribal rights said Thursday.

The short video, "Hakani," has been watched more than 350,000 times on the YouTube video-sharing website.

It depicts scenes of Indians in an isolated forest village digging graves and burying several live children in them. The "Hakani" campaign also has a website and a group on networking site Facebook with more than 13,000 members.

London-based Survival International said in a statement the film is "faked, that the earth covering the children's faces is actually chocolate cake, and that the film's claim that infanticide among Brazilian Indians is widespread is false."

"People are being taught to hate Indians, even wish them dead," said Survival's director, Stephen Corry.

The video was made by the son of the founder of an American missionary organization called Youth with a Mission, which has a branch in Brazil known as Jocum.

Youth with a Mission is an interdenominational Christian group based in Hawaii which focuses on involving young people in evangelism in 149 countries, its website says.

Enock Freire, one of the makers of the film, said Youth With a Mission helped in the production of the film, which he acknowledged was fictional and aimed at drawing attention to what he said was a serious problem.

"It (infanticide) is common," he said from Hawaii. "This distortion that we are trying to incite hate is untrue."

Infanticide is practiced by some tribes in the Amazon region, sometimes on disabled children, often based on the belief that children who take their last breath above land will come back to haunt a community. But Survival says it is rare and becoming rarer as healthcare access improves.

Brazil's Indian affairs department has tried to bar the film, which it says was financed by Jocum, saying it denigrates the image of the more than 220 ethnicities that live in Brazil.

'POWERFUL DOCUDRAMA'

Neither the video, the "Hakani" campaign website nor the Facebook group include any mention of the missionary group or any contact details. Corry said the group was trying to play down its role in the film.

The website says the girl "Hakani" was rescued from her tribe, and that she was among what it says are hundreds of children targeted for death each year among Brazil's tribes.

It says the video is a "powerful docudrama" and urges people to donate money and write letters in support of a proposed Brazilian law, known as Muwaji's Law, which would abolish infanticide by indigenous groups.

"The only thing we are trying to do is save lives," said Freire.

Survival says the law, by requiring Brazilians to report to authorities anything seen as a "harmful traditional" practice, would foster "witch hunts" against indigenous people.

"I think the missionaries are stirring up hatred against the Indians, who they profess to be concerned about," said Fiona Watson, a Brazil campaigner for Survival.

"The infanticide is not being explained; it's being taken out of context."

(Editing by Eric Walsh)

British girl starves to death after dentists pull all her teeth

Tue Feb 10, 11:44 AM

By Jill Lawless, The Associated Press

LONDON - Eight-year-old Sophie Waller cracked a baby tooth eating candy, and set off the chain of events that led to her death.

Sophie refused to open her mouth for a dentist so doctors at her local hospital took out the tooth in an operation, one of the doctors told a coroner's inquest. They removed all seven of her other baby teeth at the same time to avoid the need for future operations, the doctor said.

After the surgery Sophie refused to eat or even open her mouth for her parents, the couple told the inquest. But she was sent home anyway, and starved to death three weeks after the operation.

The parents said the hospital mishandled Sophie's follow-up care, referring them to a child psychologist who told them not to worry about Sophie's plummeting weight. Sophie's mother, Janet Waller, said she also was told to consult her family doctor, who prescribed nutrition drinks over the phone but did not see the girl in person.

Pediatric pathologist Dr. Marie-Ann Brundler said Sophie died at home Dec. 2, 2005 from kidney failure caused by starvation and dehydration. The inquest was told Sophie weighed 72 pounds when she went into hospital and lost a third of that weight before she died.

An official at the Royal Cornwall Hospital in Truro, 400 kilometres southwest of London, said there had been failures in Sophie's care, and it had changed its procedures.

"The impact of Sophie's death has been a wide-ranging impact across all of the disciplines that were involved," John Ellis, a pediatrician at the hospital, told the inquest. "There have been changes."

The hospital said it would not comment further until the end of the inquest, which was continuing Tuesday to establish the facts behind the girl's death.

Janet Waller told the inquest in Truro that Sophie had developed a fear of dentists after her tongue was nipped during a checkup, and had refused to let a dentist look at her loose tooth.

"Because Sophie would not open her mouth for examination, I wanted to eliminate any further dental problems," Tamsin Hearle, a specialist in pediatric dentistry, was quoted as saying by the Times newspaper.

Hearle said the parents signed a consent form for the procedure. The Wallers said they thought they were consenting to one tooth being removed. Waller told the inquest that Sophie was "devastated" when she found out the eight teeth had been removed.

She said that doctors did not adequately take care of Sophie after the girl was sent home from hospital Nov. 17, 2005, eight days after the operation.

"No one saw her after she was discharged from hospital," Waller, 34, told the inquest Monday. "I told (a child psychologist) she was sucking on a watermelon, she told me that was enough for her to survive on."

Janet Waller said she and her husband phoned the hospital to express concern about Sophie's weight loss and refusal to eat, and were told not to bring her in, but to talk to the community child psychologist assigned to the case.

Sophie's father, Richard Waller, said he phoned the psychologist "every day, sometimes twice a day, to say how unwell she looked."

"I kept asking her to come round but she said she would next week and there was nothing to worry about," he said.

Ellis, the pediatrician, said Sophie had stopped eating when she had loose teeth in the past, and "it was clear there were psychological issues" around her refusal to eat.

A coroner's inquest is required in Britain to establish the facts when someone dies unexpectedly, violently or of unknown causes, but has no power to punish anyone. The coroner is expected to rule next week.

The Wallers have criticized the time it has taken to hold the inquest. The coroner's office said it was a complex case and it took time to gather reports and inquiries from the different agencies involved.

3 dead, 12 wounded in Belgian day care stabbings

35 minutes ago

By Slobodan Lekic, The Associated Press

DENDERMONDE, Belgium - A man went on a rampage at a Belgian daycare centre Friday, stabbing two young children and a female worker to death and slashing and severely injuring 12 other people, 10 of them children.

Sobbing parents rushed to the scene and to nearby hospitals. Shocked rescue workers spoke of finding crying, bleeding toddlers scattered inside the daycare.

Medical workers at six hospitals sprung into action, performing emergency operations to save the 10 children and two adults badly wounded in the attack.

The shocking assault caused panic and outrage in the town 30 kilometres northwest of Brussels, where the daycare centre sits on a residential street.

"An act of great brutality has happened here against our weakest citizens," said Mayor Buyse Piet. "The whole city is united in support for the parents who are in deep grief."

Prosecutor Christian Du Four said the attacker rode his bike up to the Fabeltjesland centre about 10 a.m., entered and immediately began slashing those inside with knife. The dead included two children - the oldest being a three-year-old - and a woman working in the centre.

After the mayhem, the attacker walked out of the daycare and got back on his bicycle before being arrested in a nearby supermarket shortly afterward, Du Four said.

Dr. Ignace Demeyer, head of emergency services at the Our Lady Hospital in nearby Aalst, said the 10 wounded children and two daycare workers underwent surgery at six hospitals. All were in stable condition Friday night.

"This was a particularly violent attack. All the kids had multiple stab wounds on their legs, arms and all over their bodies," he told a news conference.

He said 21 children were at the centre during the attack, and nine were unharmed.

Police had to show distraught parents digital photographs of those taken to the hospital, asking them to identify their children.

Du Four did not immediately identify the suspect, who was injured as police detained him and briefly taken to a hospital.

Justice Minister Stefaan De Clercq said later the man was unco-operative under questioning. He did not elaborate.

Residents told The Associated Press the suspect was a local man with a history of mental illness.

Officials opened up a nearby community centre to provide psychological counselling to family members and witnesses, and police cordoned off the area.

"People are totally in shock," said Leene Du Bois, a spokeswoman for the regional government of Flanders. "Nobody would have imagined anyone could do so much harm. There is much grief."

She said the suspect had no connection to the daycare centre.

Officilas said Crown Prince Philippe and his wife, Princess Mathilde, planned to meet with the parents of the children.

Veerle Heeren, social welfare minister for the regional Flemish government, said she would be investigating security measures at the centre.

"(It's) something you hear about from America, not here," said bake shop owner Bie Hoornaert.

Irish woman jailed for incest, abuse of children

Thu Jan 22, 1:38 PM

By Andras Gergely

DUBLIN (Reuters) - An Irish woman who forced a teenage son to have sex with her and abused and starved her other five children for years in a rat-infested bungalow was jailed for seven years on Thursday.

The teenager was forced to have sex with his mother, now aged 40, on four occasions over a six-year period, the Irish Independent newspaper said.

The woman from central Ireland admitted to police her children -- now aged between 10 and 19 -- were often blue with cold, had dinner only twice a week and had lice crawling over their bodies.

"It was a house of horrors with bells on," the mother, who was not named in order to protect the identity of the children, was quoted as saying by several Irish newspapers.

"I can safely say that I was the worst mother in the world and I'd turn back the clock if I could, but I can't," she said.

The woman was given 7 years and concurrent sentences of 6 years on counts of carnal knowledge, incest and willful neglect, Ireland's Courts Service said in a statement.

"I wish to express my absolute shock and abhorrence at the circumstances surrounding the case," Minister for Children Barry Andrews said in a statement.

He said a preliminary investigation into social services' handling of the case was under way and on the basis of that he would decide on further action.

Judge Miriam Reynolds said she would have given the woman a life sentence had she been a man, but the maximum sentence for women in such cases was seven years, the Irish Times newspaper reported on its website.

The woman is believed to be the first female convicted of incest in Ireland.

Austria shocked the world last year with what media dubbed the "house of horrors" case of Josef Fritzl, who imprisoned his daughter in a cellar for 24 years and fathered seven children by her. Fritzl will go on trial on March 16 on charges including the murder of one of their children.

The Irish woman from the central county of Roscommon admitted a total of 10 charges including incest, sexual abuse, neglect and ill-treatment.

The teenage son who was forced to have sex with her was quoted as saying by the Irish Independent: "I was crying. She was my mother. Why did she do that to me?."

The children, who were moved to foster care in 2004, told healthcare workers their mother regularly left them on their own before coming home drunk around 3-4 a.m. and arguing incoherently with them.

A police investigation began in 2005 after the eldest child revealed details of the abuse to Health Board staff.

One daughter said nits used to crawl down her face and their mother forbade her and her sister from tying up their hair because they would become too obvious, the Independent said.

"Mammy didn't take care of us right," one child said.

(Editing by Richard Balmforth)