On Tuesday, McDonald’s Corporation was sued by a group of workers in the state of Michigan who say the global fast-food chain allows pervasive sexual harassment to run rampant at its restaurant locations. Read the rest

A mom in Brazil became concerned as she watched the viewing numbers on innocent backyard clip her daughter posted to YouTube suddenly climb hundreds of thousands of views. The child posted a video of herself and a friend playing in the family pool. YouTube's recommendation engine had been suggesting the video as recommended content to viewers who'd just watched other videos that contained sexually oriented video content. YouTube's AI sexualized her kid and pushed her image to pedophiles. This happens a lot, apparently. Read the rest

New leaders of FLDS polygamy cult known for ritualized child rape have reportedly purchased property and started building in Northern Minnesota. Known polygamist and convicted felon Seth Jeffs, brother of convicted pedophile Warren Jeffs who's serving life plus 20 for child sexual assault, obtained permit to build a 6,000-sq ft compound. Construction equipment has arrived.

SETH STEED JEFFS is “a known polygamist, a convicted felon and a member of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (FLDS).”

One of Seth's brothers is Warren Jeffs, the convicted pedophile and former FLDS boss who is in prison.

Seth Jeffs is currently being sued over claims he participated in that same ritual sex abuse orchestrated by Warren Jeffs in the FLDS. Seth is reported to be in hiding from the child rape lawsuit, and has faced related legal troubles around a food stamp abuse scheme the authorities say funded the FLDS.

In 2011 Warren was convicted of two felony counts of child sexual assault, for which he is currently serving a prison sentence of life plus 20 years.

After Warren went to prison, media attention mostly faded. People still live in the communities along the Utah-Arizona border where men like Warren and Seth were once kings. The Utah town of Hildale has a female mayor now, who grew up in the FLDS. She's amazing, and her name is Donia Jessop. Those former FLDS temple buildings in the Utah and Arizona border towns of Hildale and Colorado City no longer host FLDS worship services, and most of the faithful moved on to colonies elsewhere. Read the rest

Alphabet and Google co-founder Larry Page did not ask his company's board of directors for approval before personally approving a $150 million dollar stock grant to disgraced Android executive Andy Rubin, despite the sexual harassment allegations that led to Rubin's ouster. These are the claims in an investor lawsuit, which says the company covered up the sexual misconduct of Rubin and others. Read the rest

Today is R. Kelly's birthday. Today, news is breaking that the singer is under investigation in Georgia.

R. Kelly has been accused of abuse, predatory behavior, and pedophilia for decades. A new investigation has launched into charges he committed crimes against girls in Fulton County. Dream Hampton, executive producer of 'Surviving R. Kelly,' said it best. Read the rest

“Oh no! For the first time since 1981 there will be no Woody Allen this year,” lulzed Joe Berkowitz, speaking for me also, and everyone who's grossed out by Woody Allen.

“NOW how will we get our required annual dosage of shrewish women complicating a nervous man's life?” Read the rest

A German 48-year old citizen and her 39-year old partner have been sentenced to 12 years in prison after being found guilty of repeatedly raping her son. If that’s not enough, the filth also sold the boy to pedophiles she found on the Dark Net, who further abused the child and filmed it, over a two-year period. It goes without saying that Germany, and most anyone else that’s heard about it, has been horrified by the case.

From The Guardian:

In Tuesday’s verdict, the couple was ordered to pay €42,500 (£38,000) in compensation to the boy and another victim, a young girl.

Local authorities have been accused of failing to protect the boy, who now lives with a foster family. The mother’s partner was supposed to be banned from having contact with children. Officials removed the boy from the family in March last year, but a local court sent him back weeks later.

According to The Telegraph, six others were jailed for their involvement in the sexual abuse of the boy. Because of the way that Germany handles criminal cases that involve rape, none of the parties responsible can be named by the media.

I can’t even begin to imagine the life-long harm that’s been done to those kids in the name of self-fulfillment and greed, nor can I understand the how a system designed to protect society’s most vulnerable failed them them so completely.

Image via Flickr, courtesy of Blogtrepreneur Read the rest

ProPublica's Michael Grabell and Topher Sanders obtained police reports and call logs from more than 70 of the 100 shelters housing immigrant children.

What the documents reveal: “If you're a predator, it's a gold mine.” Read the rest

A 6-year old girl separated from her mom under Trump's "zero tolerance" policy was sexually abused inside a Southwest Key shelter in Arizona, reports The Nation. Read the rest

"Larry, you do now realize that we, this group of women you so heartlessly abused over such a long period of time are now a force, and you are nothing." Read the rest

The Reckoning [vox.com] examines 105 of the powerful people (all but two of them men) who have been accused of sexual misconduct in 2017. Abusers in media and journalism are relatively widely-exposed, whereas those in other fields seem relatively few in number, at least as Vox counts it. In particular, badly-behaved politicians get headlines, but the list is surprisingly short.

More and more people have come forward publicly in recent months with stories like these, of high-ranking men who abuse their power to sexually harass and intimidate others. This kind of abuse is far from new, but in 2017, more and more of these men actually started facing consequences.

Pundits suggest the "Weinstein moment" — a broader, deeper awareness of abusive conduct, sexual harassment and criminal sexuality — is already fading without significant change. Few of the offenders face consequences worse than losing a gig, and yesterday we learned The New York Times isn't even up to that, letting its celebrity groper keep his job and trotting out Executive Editor Dean Baquet to dismiss his admitted behavior as merely "offensive." Sarah Jeong looks at another example: the hacker community, which did a surprisingly good job of outing its "missing stairs" but has trouble banishing them for good.

In information security, as in many other industries where the accused is a prominent figure, accusations can turn into a competition of social capital, and the accused almost always wins out over their accusers. But in this community, giving an accused rapist a pass has often been framed as a moral imperative with four words: “He does good work.” The assumption is that talent is scarce and sexual misconduct must be tolerated for the good of society. Little to no consideration is given to what we lose from disbelieving victims — their technical and social contributions, any future contributions by people who quite reasonably decide to avoid a toxic culture, and even beyond that, the quiet erosion of trust among bystanders. Complicity leaves a stain on us all.

New York-based filmmaker Morgan Spurlock, best known for his 2004 indie documentary Super Size Me, admitted Wednesday in a long online confessional that he has a history of sexual abuse towards women. Read the rest

So much for the Weinstein Moment: Woody Allen is still too powerful and too well-connected for people in Hollywood to speak ill of. Victim Dylan Farrow (whose sibling's reportage brought Harvey Weinstein down and seemed to open a floodgate) wonders why:

A prosecutor took the unusual step of announcing that he had probable cause to charge Allen but declined in order to spare me, a “child victim,” from an exhausting trial.

It is a testament to Allen’s public relations team and his lawyers that few know these simple facts. It also speaks to the forces that have historically protected men like Allen: the money and power deployed to make the simple complicated, to massage the story.

In this deliberately created fog, A-list actors agree to appear in Allen’s films and journalists tend to avoid the subject.

Farrow names names, too: Kate Winslet, Blake Lively and Greta Gerwig each denounced Weinstein but hedge their bets for good old Woody: "Having thought it all through, you put it to one side and just work with the person," Winslet said. "Woody Allen is an incredible director."

Farrow:

It isn’t just power that allows men accused of sexual abuse to keep their careers and their secrets. It is also our collective choice to see simple situations as complicated and obvious conclusions as a matter of “who can say”? The system worked for Harvey Weinstein for decades. It works for Woody Allen still.

“He proceeded to take all of his clothes off, and get completely naked, and started masturbating,” says one victim. Five women who spoke to the New York Times say comedian and filmmaker Louis CK's behavior with them crossed a line to sexual misconduct. Read the rest