Multiple vaccine doses have resulted in up to 145,000 child deaths in past 20 years

naturalnews.com | Jan 24, 2013

by Jonathan Benson

(NaturalNews) The recommended childhood vaccination schedule has changed dramatically over the years, with children now receiving upwards of 30 vaccines, including multiple combination vaccines, before the age of six. And in many cases, doctors and nurses administer half a dozen or more vaccines all at once during a single visit to make sure children get all these shots and to save time. But according to data compiled from the government’s Vaccine Adverse Events Reporting System (VAERS), as many as 145,000 children or more have died throughout the past 20 years as a result of this multiple vaccine dose approach, and few parents are aware of this shocking fact.

In a study recently published in the journal Human & Experimental Toxicology, researchers evaluated the overall number of hospitalizations and deaths associated with vaccines administered between 1990 and 2010, and compared this data to the number of vaccines given at one time to individual children. Hospitalizations and deaths resulting from one vaccine dose were compared to those of two vaccine doses, in other words, and the same all the way up to eight vaccine doses. Researchers also evaluated overall hospitalization and death rates associated with getting one to four combined vaccine doses, five to eight combined vaccine doses, and one to eight combined vaccine doses.

Upon analysis, the team found that the more vaccines a child receives during a single doctor visit, the more likely he or she is to suffer a severe reaction or even die. According to Heidi Stevenson from Gaia Health, for each additional vaccine a child receives, his or her chance of death increases by an astounding 50 percent — and with each additional vaccine dose, chances of having to be hospitalized for severe complications increase two-fold. To sum it all up, the overall size of the vaccine load was found to be directly associated with hospitalization and death risk, illustrating the incredible dangers of administering multiple vaccines at once.

Parents of children who become injured after just one vaccine tend to cease further vaccinations, suggests data

Interestingly, the total number of reported hospitalizations and deaths from getting just one vaccine was higher than the number reported for getting two, three, or even four vaccines. Though the precise reason for this is unknown, it is believed that newborns mostly fall into the one vaccine category, and those that are injured by a single vaccine tend not to get any more vaccines, hence the immediate decrease observed among children who received only two vaccines. Once a child reaches five vaccinations; however, the hospitalization and death rate jumps dramatically, the reason for which was not investigated as part of the study.

“Our findings show a positive correlation between the number of vaccine doses administered and the percentage of hospitalizations and deaths reports to VAERS,” wrote the authors in their conclusion. “In addition, younger infants were significantly more likely than older infants to be hospitalized or die after receiving vaccines. Since vaccines are administered to millions of infants every year, it is imperative that health authorities have scientific data from synergistic toxicity studies on all combinations of vaccines that infants are likely to receive.”

You can view the complete results of the study in their entirety here: http://gaia-health.com

Toxic mercury ban treaty exempts vaccines for children

In this April 22, 2012, file photo, Holly Ann Haley, 4, gets vaccinations at the doctor’s office in Berlin, Vt., although the state continues to be embroiled in a debate about continuing to allowing parents to have their children skip the immunizations required for most to attend school. (Associated Press)

The treaty says that certain mercury-added products, such as batteries, lamps, switches, skin-lightening cosmetics, pesticides and thermometers, may not be manufactured, imported or exported no later than 2020.

Mercury-added dental amalgams are also to be phased out.

Treaty on mercury would not affect vaccines with thimerosal

Washington Times | Jan 19, 2013

By Cheryl Wetzstein

A global treaty to reduce toxic mercury in the environment has been completed and will be presented to countries for their agreement to control and reduce ways in which mercury is used, released or emitted.

Negotiations on the Minamata Convention on Mercury, named for the Japanese city that suffered severe mercury poisoning in the 1950s, finished in Switzerland on Saturday.

“Everyone in the world stands to benefit from the decisions take this week in Geneva — in particular, the workers and families of small-scale gold miners, the peoples of the Arctic, and this generation of mothers and babies and the generations to come,” said Achim Steiner, United Nations undersecretary-general and executive director of the United Nations Environment Program, which facilitated the meeting of delegates from 140 member states.

The treaty says that certain mercury-added products, such as batteries, lamps, switches, skin-lightening cosmetics, pesticides and thermometers, may not be manufactured, imported or exported no later than 2020.

Mercury-added dental amalgams are also to be phased out.

However, certain mercury-added products are to be exempted from the ban, including those used for military and civil protection, products with no mercury-free alternative, products used in religious or traditional practices and vaccines containing thimerosal, an ethylmercury preservative.

The omission of thimerosal-containing vaccines from the ban disappointed advocates who believe the preservative plays a role in sickening some children.

“Children’s health took a backseat to special interests. The only major purposeful exposure to mercury that didn’t get addressed was thimerosal,” said Eric Uram, executive director at SafeMinds, which seeks to eradicate autism and other health disorders caused by mercury and man-made toxicants.

However, use of thimerosal vaccines was supported by specialists who advise the World Health Organization, and groups like the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP).

Fifteen years of research “has failed to yield any evidence of significant harm” — including disorders such as autism — from using thimerosal in vaccines, Dr. Walter Orenstein, associate director of the Emory Vaccine Center at Emory University in Georgia, wrote in AAP’s Dec. 17, 2012, Pediatrics journal.

Millions of children in the developing world depend on multidose vaccines that can be stored without refrigeration; thimerosal prevents bacteria or pathogens from growing in these vaccines, added researchers Katherine King and colleagues in Pediatrics. “Banning thimerosal would amount to banning such multidose vaccines” that currently protect children from tetanus, diphtheria, whooping cough and hepatitis B, they wrote.

The United States uses thimerosal-free vaccines, except in some flu shots, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Mercury is highly toxic to humans and animals when inhaled or ingested, and is particularly harmful to developing brains and nervous systems in children and fetuses.

Global mercury pollution, which will be curtailed under the new treaty, occurs through emissions from mining, power plants, smelters and cement production. Mercury has entered the global food chain, especially via fish and shellfish; shark, swordfish, tilefish and King Mackerel should not be eaten because of their high mercury concentrations, the Food and Drug Administration advises.

The signing of the global mercury ban will occur in October in Minamata, where thousands of Japanese citizens suffered death and injury from eating methylmercury-contaminated seafood from their local waters. It was later discovered that a local chemical factory had released its industrial wastewater into the surrounding waterways.

Vaccine Court Awards Millions to Two Children With Autism

“The hatred from the medical community towards families like ours is intense.”

huffingtonpost.com | Jan 14, 2013

by David Kirby

The federal Vaccine Injury Compensation Program, better known as “vaccine court,” has just awarded millions of dollars to two children with autism for “pain and suffering” and lifelong care of their injuries, which together could cost tens of millions of dollars.

The government did not admit that vaccines caused autism, at least in one of the children. Both cases were “unpublished,” meaning information is limited, and access to medical records and other exhibits is blocked. Much of the information presented here comes from documents found at the vaccine court website.

Some observers will say the vaccine-induced encephalopathy (brain disease) documented in both children is unrelated to their autism spectrum disorder (ASD). Others will say there is plenty of evidence to suggest otherwise.

What’s more, these cases fit the pattern of other petitions, (i.e., Poling and Banks) in which the court ruled (or the government conceded) that vaccines had caused encephalopathy, which in turn produced permanent injury, including symptoms of autism and ultimately an ASD diagnosis.

And most of these children now have taxpayer dollars earmarked for applied behavioral analysis (ABA), an effective therapy specifically designed to treat ASD.

Meanwhile, parents, grandparents, friends and neighbors of both children testified they were developmentally normal, if not advanced for their age when they developed seizures, spiking fevers and other adverse reactions to their vaccines. According to these eyewitnesses, the children never fully recovered, and instead began losing vocabulary, eye contact and interest in others around them, all classic symptoms of regressive autism.

In the first case, involving a 10-year-old boy from Northern California named Ryan Mojabi, the parents allege that “all the vaccinations” received from 2003-2005, and “more specifically, measles-mumps-rubella (MMR) vaccinations,” caused a “severe and debilitating injury to his brain, described as Autism Spectrum Disorder (‘ASD’).”

The parents, who did not want to be interviewed, specifically asserted that Ryan “suffered a Vaccine Table Injury, namely, an encephalopathy” as a result of his MMR vaccination on December 19, 2003.” (“Table injuries” are known, compensable adverse reactions to immunizations.)

Alternatively, they claim that “as a cumulative result of his receipt of each and every vaccination between March 25, 2003 and February 22, 2005, Ryan has suffered . . . neuroimmunologically mediated dysfunctions in the form of asthma and ASD.”

In vaccine court, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services acts as the defendant and Justice Department attorneys act as counsel.

In 2009, Ryan’s case was transferred to vaccine court’s Autism Omnibus Proceedings, according to the docket. A year-and-a-half later, the government conceded that MMR vaccine had indeed caused Ryan’s encephalopathy.

HHS agreed that “Ryan suffered a Table injury under the Vaccine Act — namely, an encephalitis within five to fifteen days following receipt,” of MMR, records show. “This case is appropriate for compensation.”

Whether HHS agreed with Ryan’s parents that his vaccine-induced brain disease led to ASD is unknown. The concession document is under seal.

In December 2003, when Ryan was nearly two, he received his first MMR and hepatitis B vaccines before his family left for an extended trip overseas. That day, his mother testified, Ryan began shaking with uncontrollable tremors and “was really uncomfortable, he didn’t feel well at all.”

The nurse at Ryan’s pediatrician said the symptoms were “pretty normal after the vaccination,” and advised Tylenol. The next day, Ryan began crying, “but it’s not a normal crying,” his mother testified. “He didn’t go to sleep, he was without energy.”

The family considered postponing their holiday, but that wasn’t feasible. The doctor’s office said it was fine to travel. Prior to leaving, Ryan’s mother said, the boy had difficulty breathing and “was without energy and sleepy.” He could no longer hold his head up, something “he could do prior to the vaccinations.” At the airport, Ryan began “screaming,” she recalled. “He was just opening and closing his eyes so hard, he was pulling my hair.”

After his shots, she added, Ryan “stopped saying those words that he had, even mommy and daddy, that he had repeated a hundred times before.”

In early January, while still abroad, Ryan was rushed to the hospital with vomiting, high fever and red spots covering his body “from head to toe in a measles-like rash,” the attending physician said. Ryan was diagnosed with “febrile convulsion, probably related to MMR.”

The next day, another doctor diagnosed him with “high fever, skin rash, tremors, and lethargy,” which were “most likely due to an adverse reaction to multiple vaccines he received earlier.”

Two days later, Ryan returned to the hospital with a persistent fever of 104 or more.

Ryan’s parents testified that, upon returning home, they expressed worry to their pediatrician about behavioral problems, non-responsiveness and language loss, which later produced an ASD diagnosis.

At trial, however, the government argued powerfully that written medical records, and the recollections of Ryan’s doctor, were inconsistent with his parents’ testimony. If Ryan had truly suffered an MMR encephalopathy, for example, his family would never have taken him overseas. And his parents’ complaints of ASD symptoms were raised a full year after returning from abroad, they alleged. It looked like the family had a weak case.

But then something changed.

In October, 2010, Ryan’s attorney filed four new exhibits (under seal) and proposed amending the court’s “findings of fact.” In January and May of 2011, several more exhibits were filed, along with a motion to further supplement the findings of fact.

A month later HHS conceded the case, which moved into the damages phase.

Award details were announced a few days ago: A lump sum of $969,474.91, to cover “lost future earnings ($648,132.74), pain and suffering ($202,040.17), and life care expenses for Year One ($119,302.00),” plus $20,000 for past expenses.

Another undisclosed sum, several millions more, will be invested in annuities to cover yearly costs for life, which could total $10 million or more, not accounting for inflation. Nearly $80,000 was earmarked for ABA in the first two years.

The second case involves a girl named Emily, whose mother, Jillian Moller, filed back in 2003 and has been fighting in vaccine court since. The docket, crammed with 188 items, documents Moller’s extended but victorious struggle to win compensation for Emily, who has seizure disorder and PDD-NOS, a form of ASD.

Moller alleged that Emily was severely injured by a reaction to the DTaP vaccine at 15 months (when MMR, HiB and Prevnar were also given). “She had a vaccine reaction and she just spiraled out of control,” Moller said in an interview.

Emily’s fever spiked to 105.7 and she began screaming. She stared blankly and developed seizures. Before long she began “shaking episodes” at night and “repetitive behaviors, including arm flapping and spinning,” court documents show. Like Ryan, she developed a measles-type rash.

Things went from bad to worse. Emily’s medical record is filled with damage and suffering. One neurologist, for example, noted that Emily “had staring spells and an abnormal EEG.” Another diagnosed “encephalopathy characterized by speech delay and probable global developmental delay that occurred in the setting of temporal association with immunizations as an acute encephalopathy.”

Moller filed for an encephalopathy Table injury in 2003, unaware her daughter would be diagnosed with ASD.

Two hearings were held in 2005. “I was badgered and harassed for four hours on the stand,” she said. “They said Emily couldn’t have been that sick, or else I would’ve taken her to the ER. But I took her to my doctor and he said not to bring her to the hospital!”

Government lawyers insisted that Emily had suffered neither a vaccine injury nor encephalopathy. But every alternative cause they suggested “made no sense, because she showed no signs of those things before that vaccination,” Moller said.

The case dragged on for years, with motions and counter-motions, status reports and expert medical reports. In 2007, Moller filed for summary judgment. That also took years, as more medical records were submitted to bolster Emily’s case.

After the ASD diagnosis, the judge reportedly became convinced that Emily would prevail. “My attorney said she was angry, she felt forced into a corner with no choice but to find for us,” Moller said. “She said, ‘Emily has autism, and I don’t want to give other families who filed autism claims any hope.'”

The government agreed to settle. Last spring the case went into mediation and, on December 3 HHS made its proffer, which was entered into the record on the 28th. Emily was awarded a lump sum of $1,030,314.22 “for lost future earnings ($739,989.57), pain and suffering ($170,499.77) and life care expenses for Year One ($119,874.88) plus $190,165.40 for past expenses.” Some of that money will go to ABA therapy.

Based on the first year payout, another estimated $9 million will buy annuities for annual expenses through life, which after inflation has the potential to pay over $50 million dollars.

HHS did not admit that vaccination caused encephalopathy or autism, but merely decided not to dedicate more resources to defending the case.

“I don’t understand why they fought so hard,” Moller said. “We had the evidence: the EEG, the MRI, everything was consistent with encephalopathy, post-vaccination. How can government attorneys claim what our doctors said happened, didn’t happen?”

Perhaps the feds were loath to concede yet another vaccine case involving autism. Four cases in the Autism Omnibus Proceedings were recently compensated. Three of those cases are marked with asterisks, indicating the government did not conclude that autism can be caused by vaccines. But the fourth autism case that was paid out in 2013 (Ryan’s case? We don’t know) has no such caveat.

As for Emily, she is “not too good,” Moller said. “Her emotional state is fragile, at best. She has seizure problems and autoimmune issues… And it’s a constant fight when you have a vaccine-injured child. It’s not just the disability, it’s the ignorance. The hatred from the medical community towards families like ours is intense.”

Meanwhile, as HHS says it “has never concluded in any case that autism was caused by vaccination,” it is still underwriting autism treatments such as ABA for children in its vaccine-injury program.

White House considers funding for police in schools after Newtown

Vice President Joe Biden says a consensus is emerging over proposals such as tightening background checks and banning high-capacity magazines. Biden says he will deliver recommendations to President Obama on steps to curb violence by Tuesday.

washingtonpost.com | Jan 10, 2013

By Philip Rucker

The Obama administration is considering a $50 million plan to fund hundreds of police officers in public schools, a leading Democratic senator said, part of a broad gun violence agenda that is likely to include a ban on high-capacity ammunition clips and universal background checks.

The school safety initiative would make federal dollars available to schools that want to hire police officers and install surveillance equipment, although it is not nearly as far-ranging as the National Rifle Association’s proposal for armed guards in every U.S. school.

The idea is gaining currency among some Democratic lawmakers, who see it as a potential area of common ground with Republicans who otherwise oppose stricter restrictions on firearms. Sen. Barbara Boxer, a liberal Democrat from California, said she presented the plan to Vice President Biden and that he was “very, very interested” and may include it in the policy recommendations he makes to President Obama.

“If a school district wants to have a community policing presence, I think it’s very important they have it,” Boxer said in an interview Thursday. “If they want uniformed officers, they can do it. If they want plainclothed officers, they can do it.”

But hope of finding an accord over gun laws dimmed considerably Thursday after the NRA lashed out publicly against what it called the administration’s “agenda to attack the Second Amendment” after meeting with Biden and senior White House officials.

Biden plans to present recommendations from the administration’s working group on gun violence to Obama next Tuesday. The vice president said Thursday that he sees an emerging consensus around “universal background checks” for all gun buyers and a ban on high-capacity ammunition magazines. Obama, meanwhile, has said he also supports a ban on assault weapons.

The gun industry has long opposed these restrictions,and the NRA said after its 95-minute White House meeting that it would have nothing more to do with Biden’s task force, foreshadowing a partisan and emotionally charged fight over gun control.

“It is unfortunate that this administration continues to insist on pushing failed solutions to our nation’s most pressing problems,” the NRA said in a statement. “We will not allow law-abiding gun owners to be blamed for the acts of criminals and madmen.”

Biden met with other gun-owner groups as well as representatives of hunting and sporting organizations Thursday as he surveys interest groups in the wake of last month’s elementary school massacre in Newtown, Conn., that killed 20 children and six adults.

Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. met separately Thursday with major gun retailers, including Wal-Mart. Biden already has spoken with law enforcement leaders, gun violence victims and gun-safety groups and has had conference calls with governors and other state and local elected officials of both parties.

Biden said that, going into Thursday’s meetings, his task force heard repeatedly about the need to strengthen background checks to keep guns out of the hands of criminals and the mentally ill. He said the proposals would go beyond closing a loophole that exempts some private firearms sales, such as transactions at gun shows, from background checks.

Full Story

Judge: Texas school can force teenagers to wear locator chips

In this Oct. 1, 2012 photo, Kayla Saucedo, an 8th grader at Anson Jones Middle School, uses her new ID card to check out a book in the library in San Antonio, Texas. The San Antonio school district’s website was hacked over the weekend to protest its policy requiring students to wear microchip-embedded cards tracking their every move on campus. A teenager purportedly working with the hacker group Anonymous said in an online statement that he took the site down because the Northside school district “is stripping away the privacy of students in your school.” All students at John Jay High School and Anson Jones Middle School are required to carry identification cards embedded with a microchip. They are tracked by the dozens of electronic readers installed in the schools’ ceiling panels. (AP Photo/San Antonio Express-News, Bob Owen)

Reuters | Jan 9, 2013

By Jim Forsyth

SAN ANTONIO (Reuters) – A public school district in Texas can require students to wear locator chips when they are on school property, a federal judge ruled on Tuesday in a case raising technology-driven privacy concerns among liberal and conservative groups alike.

U.S. District Judge Orlando Garcia said the San Antonio Northside School District had the right to expel sophomore Andrea Hernandez, 15, from a magnet school at Jay High School, because she refused to wear the device, which is required of all students.

The judge refused the student’s request to block the district from removing her from the school while the case works its way through the federal courts.

The American Civil Liberties Union is among the rights organizations to oppose the district’s use of radio frequency identification, or RFID, technology.

“We don’t want to see this kind of intrusive surveillance infrastructure gain inroads into our culture,” ACLU senior policy analyst Jay Stanley said. “We should not be teaching our children to accept such an intrusive surveillance technology.”

The district’s RFID policy has also been criticized by conservatives, who call it an example of “big government” further monitoring individuals and eroding their liberties and privacy rights.

The Rutherford Institute, a conservative Virginia-based policy center that represented Hernandez in her federal court case, said the ruling violated the student’s constitutional right to privacy, and vowed to appeal.

The school district – the fourth largest in Texas with about 100,000 students – is not attempting to track or regulate students’ activities, or spy on them, district spokesman Pascual Gonzalez said. Northside is using the technology to locate students who are in the school building but not in the classroom when the morning bell rings, he said.

Texas law counts a student present for purposes of distributing state aid to education funds based on the number of pupils in the classroom at the start of the day. Northside said it was losing $1.7 million a year due to students loitering in the stairwells or chatting in the hallways.

The software works only within the walls of the school building, cannot track the movements of students, and does not allow students to be monitored by third parties, Gonzalez said.

The ruling gave Hernandez and her father, an outspoken opponent of the use of RFID technology, until the start of the spring semester later this month to decide whether to accept district policy and remain at the magnet school or return to her home campus, where RFID chips are not required.

 

Boy Scouts employ aggressive tactics in sex abuse defense

“They will tear you to shreds…”

Associated Press | Dec 25, 2012

When a lawsuit alleged that two young brothers in Michigan had been molested “hundreds of times” by a troop leader, the Boy Scouts denied responsibility and pointed the finger at someone else — the boys’ recently widowed mother.

The Scouts faulted the woman “for her failure to provide adequate parental supervision,” suggesting in court papers that she was responsible for any harm to her sons.

One of the boys’ lawyers called that argument excessive.

“The day their dad died, the perpetrator began to befriend the boys,” Kelly Clark said. “Then the Boy Scouts turn around and file papers saying Mom was the problem?”

The Scouts’ legal tactics in the ongoing lawsuit are part of an aggressive approach that the youth group has long used in defending itself in child sex abuse cases, some victims, their families and lawyers say.

Since 1,247 confidential files were unsealed in October detailing allegations of sexual abuse in its ranks, Scouting has taken a more conciliatory stance.

“We have heard from victims of abuse and are doing our very best to respond to each person with our utmost care and sensitivity,” Scouting spokesman Deron Smith said in October, offering an apology, counseling and other assistance.

But in the years before the files’ release, some who alleged abuse say, their accusations were met with denial, blame and legal hardball.

“The knives are out and you’d better get your knife out because if you don’t, they will tear you to shreds,” said Timothy Hale, who represents a Santa Barbara County, Calif., teenager who was abused in 2007 at the age of 13 by volunteer Scout leader Al Steven Stein.

Stein had a history of inappropriate behavior with children but a local Scout official tried to keep the boy’s mother from reporting the abuse to police, according to the teenager’s lawsuit. She did anyway, and Stein later pleaded no contest to felony child endangerment.

Some plaintiffs’ lawyers, including Clark, say the Scouts deserve credit for the victims it has helped, even when it had no legal obligation. And the Boy Scouts is entitled to defend itself: It’s not unusual for large organizations to employ aggressive legal strategies, including accusing plaintiffs of causing their own injuries.

Hale and others contend, however, that discouraging victims of sexual abuse from reporting crimes, or blaming them when they do, goes too far.

An Oregon man’s lawsuit alleged that Scouting allowed troop leader Timur Dykes to continue in the group after he admitted molesting 17 boys in the early 1980s.

At the trial in 2010, regional Scouts official Eugene Grant faulted parents for letting their sons go to Dykes’ apartment for merit badge work and sleepovers.

“His parents should have known better,” Grant said of one victim. “I think it’s criminal.”

The jury rejected that assertion, finding the Scouts liable for nearly $20 million in damages.

The Scouts’ files made public in October were submitted as evidence in the Portland, Ore., trial and spanned 1965 to 1985. More recent instances of the Scouts’ tactics are detailed in court records across the country.

In 2002, Jerrold Schwartz, a 42-year-old former scoutmaster in New York, admitted abusing a boy in his troop in the 1990s. After being secretly recorded saying he “did something very, very wrong” and apologizing to the boy, Schwartz pleaded guilty to four counts of sodomy and was sent to prison.

Despite the conviction and the victim’s testimony that Schwartz “raped me and forced me to perform oral sex on him,” the Scouts, in a motion to dismiss a subsequent lawsuit, contended that the sex was consensual, records show.

“To argue that an adult scoutmaster in his 30s can have consensual sex with a 13-year-old in his Scout troop is something dreamt up in pedophile heaven,” attorney Michael Dowd told the New York Law Journal in 2006 after a judge rejected the Scouts’ motion. The lawsuit was later settled; terms were not disclosed.

Boy Scouts officials declined to be interviewed or make their lawyers in sex abuse lawsuits available. In a statement, the group stressed its multifaceted child protection efforts, enhanced in recent years to include criminal background checks for all volunteers and mandatory reporting to police of all suspected abuse.

“We deeply regret that there have been times when Scouts were abused, and for that we are very sorry and extend our deepest sympathies to victims,” it said.

The Michigan lawsuit, which is pending, alleges that Assistant Scoutmaster Roger E. Young, a 25-year volunteer, had raped or otherwise abused both Scouts repeatedly at their home, his house and the church where the troop met.

The abuse occurred in 2006 and 2007, when both boys were younger than 14, according to the lawsuit. It also says that local Scouting officials knew of Young’s inappropriate behavior, including time he spent alone with the boys — in violation of the Scouts’ child-protection policies — but ignored warnings by police and others.

In 2007, a member of the Big Sister organization found the boys not wearing pants while alone with Young at their home and at a motel where the family was staying, according to court papers and a police affidavit. In at least one instance, Young was in his underwear, the records state.

Local Scouts officials took no action, allowing Young to continue with the troop even after police raised red flags about him, the lawsuit states. In October 2009, he was charged with possessing child pornography and criminal sexual conduct involving one of the boys.

He killed himself the next month.

Two years later, in November 2011, the Scouts filed court papers saying the mother had in effect abdicated her role and delegated “parental authority” to Young after her husband died.

“For the Scouts to say this is her fault, when they have said to single mothers all over the country … ‘We know you’ve got it tough: Give us your boys and we’ll help you raise them’ — to me, this is absolutely astonishing,” said Clark, the boys’ lawyer.

In at least one case, local Scout leaders faulted the victim and defended the perpetrator.

“They threw my son under the bus,” said the father of a Florida Scout who was 12 when a 16-year-old Scout lured him into a tent and molested him in March 2007.

The boy was so traumatized that he told no one for months, he and his father said in an interview. When the boy did speak up, local Scout leaders accused him of lying.

“(He) is quick to make up stories,” the troop’s merit badge counselor, Chuck Janson, wrote in a two-page memo supporting the assailant, who later admitted to the sexual assault in a plea deal.

The abuse occurred on a camping trip when the older Scout, Robert “Robbie” Brehm, who as senior patrol leader was the top elected troop member, invited the Sarasota boy into a tent to play cards, court records show. Instead, Brehm pulled a knife from a duffel bag and put it to the boy’s throat.

“I told him I wanted him to perform oral sex on me,” Brehm later said in a lengthy sworn statement. “I told him that he had to or else I was going to hurt him.”

Brehm testified that he also threatened the younger Scout if he told anyone.

“I was just so freaking scared, like, I didn’t know what the hell to do,” the boy, now 18, told the Los Angeles Times. “I just went back into my tent. … I was in shock. I was so violated.”

Six months later, he revealed his secret to his high school counselor, who notified authorities.

Local Scout leaders including Janson, who had clashed with the boy’s father over troop issues, sided with Brehm and said the boy was lying.

He and at least two other adult leaders planned to testify for the accused, according to interviews and Brehm’s sworn statement.

“The worst thing you can do to a child victim is call him a liar,” said Adam Horowitz, the victim’s lawyer in a pending lawsuit. “The reason so many children don’t come forward in the first place is that they fear adults won’t believe them.”

In a recent interview and a follow-up email, Janson defended his actions.

“I came up with an honest interpretation of what I knew,” he said. “Can you fault someone for having an honest opinion?”

The boy said he felt betrayed by Janson and the other leaders.

His father said their support of Brehm made it nearly impossible for his son to get justice.

For more than three years, he said, he pressed prosecutors to file charges. When they did, and confronted Brehm with the prospect of 15 years in prison, he confessed to the sexual assault and pleaded guilty to a lesser charge of aggravated battery.

“Looking back, I was a bully,” Brehm said in statement.

The victim’s father calls the five-year ordeal “beyond a nightmare.” His son’s relationships have been affected, his grades have suffered and he’s had flashbacks, the father said.

At times during the first year after the attack, he said, the boy was in twice-weekly therapy, with only part of its cost covered by his health plan.

Had the Boy Scouts stepped up early on, he said, his son’s lawsuit might never have been filed.

“After we got the conviction, one would have thought they’d say, ‘Oh, my God, we were wrong in our assumptions. What can we do to help this child and his family?’ ” he said. “But it was just more of the same — attack, attack, attack.”

TSA Apologizes To Wheel-chair-bound 11-Year-Old Girl Detained At Airport

cbslocal.com | Dec 17, 2012

DALLAS (CBSDFW.COM) – The TSA has apologized to an 11-year-old girl who was detained for nearly an hour last week at DFW International Airport after agents said they found explosive residue on her hands.

TSA’s disabled child detainee: ‘I Still Feel Traumatized!’

The girl, Shelbi Walser, suffers from a bone disorder and uses a wheelchair to get around. She and her mother were traveling to Florida for medical treatment when the incident occurred.

TSA Humiliate Child In Wheelchair

The TSA released the following statement to KRLD.

   “We regret that the experience of this young lady was not a positive one as we always strive to screen passengers with dignity and respect while ensuring the safety of all travelers. Everything TSA does is designed to protect against another terrorist attack. In all likelihood, this traveler would have presented no risk, yet we could take no chances. She alarmed for explosive residue and TSA took the necessary steps to resolve the alarm.”

Walser’s mother, Tammy Daniels, said that TSA agent never used common sense when they pulled her daughter to the side and called in a bomb expert. The two were released after experts found nothing hazardous.

NRA calls for armed police officer in every school

Associated Press | Dec 21, 2012

By PHILIP ELLIOTT

WASHINGTON (AP) — Guns and police officers in all American schools are what’s needed to stop the next killer “waiting in the wings,” the National Rifle Association declared Friday, taking a no-retreat stance in the face of growing calls for gun control after the Connecticut shootings that claimed the lives of 26 children and school staff.

“The only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun,” said Wayne LaPierre, the group’s chief executive officer.

Some members of Congress who had long scoffed at gun-control proposals have begun to suggest some concessions could be made, and a fierce debate over legislation seems likely next month. President Barack Obama has demanded “real action, right now.”

The nation’s largest gun-rights lobby broke its weeklong silence on the shooting rampage at Sandy Hook Elementary School with a defiant presentation. The event was billed as a news conference, but NRA leaders took no questions. Twice, they were interrupted by banner-waving protesters, who were removed by security.

Some had predicted that after the slaughter of a score of elementary-school children by a man using a semi-automatic rifle, the group might soften its stance, at least slightly. Instead, LaPierre delivered a 25-minute tirade against the notion that another gun law would stop killings in a culture where children are exposed daily to violence in video games, movies and music videos. He argued that guns are the solution, not the problem.

“Before Congress reconvenes, before we engage in any lengthy debate over legislation, regulation or anything else; as soon as our kids return to school after the holiday break, we need to have every single school in America immediately deploy a protection program proven to work,” LaPierre said. “And by that I mean armed security.”

He said Congress should immediately appropriate funds to post an armed police officer in every school. Meanwhile, he said the NRA would develop a school emergency response program that would include volunteers from the group’s 4.3 million members to help guard children.

His armed-officers idea was immediately lambasted by gun control advocates, and not even the NRA’s point man on the effort seemed willing to go so far. Former Republican Rep. Asa Hutchinson of Arkansas, whom LaPierre named national director of the program, said in an interview that decisions about armed guards in schools should be made by local districts.

“I think everyone recognizes that an armed presence in schools is sometimes appropriate,” Hutchinson said. “That is one option. I would never want to have a mandatory requirement for every school district to have that.”

He also noted that some states would have to change their laws to allow armed guards at schools.

Hutchinson said he’ll offer a plan in January that will consider other measures such as biometric entry points, patrols and consideration of school layouts to protect security.

LaPierre argued that guards need to be in place quickly because “the next Adam Lanza,” the suspected shooter in Newtown, Conn., is already planning an attack on another school.

“How many more copycats are waiting in the wings for their moment of fame from a national media machine that rewards them with wall-to-wall attention and a sense of identity that they crave, while provoking others to try to make their mark?” LaPierre asked. “A dozen more killers, a hundred more? How can we possibly even guess how many, given our nation’s refusal to create an active national database of the mentally ill?”

While there is a federally maintained database of the mentally ill — people so declared by their states — a 1997 Supreme Court ruling that states can’t be required to contribute information has left significant gaps. In any case, creation of a mandatory national database probably would have had little impact on the ability of suspected shooters in four mass shootings since 2011 to get and use powerful weapons. The other people accused either stole the weapons used in the attacks or had not been ruled by courts to be “mentally defective” before the shootings.

New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg said the NRA is blaming everyone but itself for a national gun crisis and is offering “a paranoid, dystopian vision of a more dangerous and violent America where everyone is armed and no place is safe.”

Rep. Jerrold Nadler, D-N.Y., called the NRA’s response “both ludicrous and insulting” and pointed out that armed personnel at Columbine High School and Fort Hood could not stop mass shootings. The liberal group CREDO, which organized an anti-NRA protest on Capitol Hill, called LaPierre’s speech “bizarre and quite frankly paranoid.”

“This must be a wake-up call even to the NRA’s own members that the NRA’s Washington lobbyists need to stand down and let Congress pass sensible gun control laws now,” CREDO political director Becky Bond said in a statement.

The NRA’s proposal would be unworkable given the huge numbers of officers needed, said the president of the International Association of Chiefs of Police, Craig Steckler.

He pointed to budget cuts and hiring freezes and noted that in his hometown of Fremont, Calif., it would take half the city’s police force to post one officer at each of the city’s 43 schools.

The Department of Education has counted 98,817 public schools in the United States and an additional 33,366 private schools.

There already are an estimated 10,000 school resource officers, most of them armed and employed by local police departments, in the nation’s schools, according to Mo Canady, executive director of the National Association of School Resource Officers.

Gun rights advocates on Capitol Hill had no immediate comment. They will have to walk a tough road between pressure from the powerful NRA, backed by an army of passionate supporters, and outrage over the Sandy Hook deaths that has already swayed some in Congress to adjust their public views.

A CNN/ORC poll taken this week found 52 percent of Americans favor major restrictions on guns or making all guns illegal. Forty-six percent of people questioned said government and society can take action to prevent future gun violence, up 13 percentage points from two years ago in the wake of the shooting in Tucson, Ariz., that killed six and wounded then Rep. Gabrielle Giffords.

Since the Connecticut slayings, President Obama has demanded action against U.S. gun violence and has called on the NRA to join the effort. Moving quickly after several congressional gun-rights supporters said they would consider new legislation to control firearms, the president said this week he wants proposals that he can take to Congress next month.

Obama has already asked Congress to reinstate an assault weapons ban that expired in 2004 and to pass legislation that would stop people from purchasing firearms from private sellers without background checks. Obama also has indicated he wants Congress to pursue the possibility of limiting high-capacity firearms magazines.

Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., said former President Bill Clinton called her with an offer to help get an assault weapons ban reinstated. Clinton signed such a ban into law in 1994, but it expired after 10 years.

Feinstein said she’s not opposed to having armed guards at schools, but she called the NRA proposal a distraction from what she said was the real problem: “easy access to these killing machines” that are far “more powerful and lethal” than the guns that were banned under the old law.

LAPD will add daily patrols of all elementary, middle schools after Newtown shooting

Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, at podium, is flanked by LAPD and LAUSD officials at a news conference to discuss local school safety on Monday, Dec. 17, 2012 in the wake of 20 children and 6 adults being killed in a mass shooting in Newtown, Conn., on Friday, Dec. 14, 2012. (Hans Gutknecht/Staff Photographer)

Daily News | Dec 17, 2012

Los Angeles police will be present daily on every public elementary and middle school come January, and on any private or charter campus that requests a visit, Chief Charlie Beck said Monday.

Some officers will be in uniform, some will be in plainclothes and the campus visits will be part of their routine patrols, Beck said.

He wouldn’t say how long the patrols will last and whether the daily campus visits would be permanent.

The increased police presence around campuses – plus an announcement that L.A. will hold its annual gun buyback after Christmas instead of in the spring – was the city’s response to Friday’s massacre at a Newtown, Conn. elementary school.

During a 1 p.m. news conference at the police headquarters, Beck also gave a few more details about a 24-year-old man who was arrested Sunday on suspicion of making criminal threats. Beck said patrol officers found out that Kyle Bangayan of Pomona had allegedly posted comments on Facebook regarding committing violence at an elementary school.

That prompted an investigation by police and FBI agents that led Bangayan’s arrest at 11:15 a.m. at his parents’ home in the 1200 block of North New Hampshire Avenue in Los Angeles.

Police said the threats didn’t target specific schools but did reference Friday’s shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School.

LAPD officers and FBI agents seized nine firearms at the home, including rifles, a shotgun, handguns and ammunition.

However, a search of the suspect’s home in Pomona didn’t yield any weapons or related evidence, police said.

Bangayan was booked at LAPD’s downtown jail. His bail has been set at $500,000, and the investigation is ongoing, police said.

On Monday, Beck said the department would be extra vigilant and that the fatal shooting of 26 children and adults broke a cultural barrier, by targeting the most vulnerable.

“It is our job, all our jobs…to make sure that we resurrect that barrier and that our children are safe,” Beck said.

Televisions killing record number of American children

Tipping televisions kill record number of U.S. kids, gov’t warns

CBS News | Dec 13, 2012

by Ryan Jaslow

A record number of curious kids are getting hurt by falling televisions in their homes, a government report warns.

The U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) released a report on Thursday that estimates about 43,000 people are injured in a television or furniture tip-over related incident each year, more than 25,000, or 59 percent, of whom are children.

“Small children are no match for a falling dresser, wall unit or 50- to 100-pound television,” the CPSC said.

The report also showed that 349 people were killed between 2000 and 2011 by a falling television, appliance or piece of furniture — 84 percent of them were kids younger than 9 years old. Falling televisions were more deadly, accounting for 62 percent of these fatalities. Last year alone, a record 41 tip-over related fatalities occurred.

The worrisome trends the report spotlighted indicated that three children are injured by a tip-over every hour — or 71 children per day — and one child is killed every two weeks. Seventy percent of injuries involving children were caused by televisions, followed by 26 percent caused by furniture like dressers or tables.

Known causes of tip-overs included climbing (36 percent of cases involving children), hitting or kicking (14 percent) or playing nearby (7 percent). The report also suggests that some of these incidents are occurring as families swap out their heavier, older TVs for flat-screen models. The CPSC received reports that older, heavier television were moved to other areas of the house like the bedroom, where they were placed without a proper stand or anchoring device.

Government officials said these injury and fatality rates may climb even higher in the future.

“I urge parents to anchor their TVs, furniture and appliances and protect their children,” CPSC Chairman Inez Tenenbaum said in a press release. “It takes just a few minutes to do and it can save lives.”

Dr. Robert Glatter, an emergency medicine physician at Lenox Hill Hospital in New York City, tells CBSNews.com in an email that children younger than 3 years are especially likely to be curious and reach for or try to hold onto a television. Potential injuries include traumatic brain injuries, neck injuries and abdominal trauma such as to the liver or spleen.

The CPSC also reported incidents of fractures, bruises and cuts caused by the tip-overs.

“If a TV cannot be anchored or mounted on a wall properly, then it’s safer to place the TV on a low sturdy base,” Glatter recommends.

Other recommendations from the CPSC include keeping remote controls, toys and other items that might attract children off of television stands and furniture and making sure cords and cables are out of reach. Anti-tip brackets should also be installed on televisions and freestanding kitchen ranges, ovens and other appliances, the agency said.