BELOW IS THE LINK FOR A NEW BLOG THAT IS A LITTLE ' HUMOROUS ' BUT NOT REALLY. HOPE THAT YOU ENJOY.
http://highereducationboomso.blogspot.com
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| THIS ARTICLE WAS IN LAST SUNDAY'S PAPER AND WAS GOOD. I SUSPECT THE CATCH WILL BE ' BETTER ' THAN EVER AFTER ALL THIS IS TEXAS AND, OH SORRY, THE STATES ARE SO SIMILAR, ANYWAY, ARIZONA, SHIT ! THERE I GO AGAIN ! NEW MEXICO ! I HOPE THAT IT HELPS THE FAMILIES AND MOST ESPECIALLY THE CHILDREN AND WOMEN. I TRYED TO FIND THE ARTICLE ONLINE A WHILE BACK, BUT, YOU KNOW ME, DUMB, DUMB, BUMB, DUMB, OH SO DUMB ! AND IT HAD BEEN ON THE TABLE ON THE PORCH ALL THIS TIME ! |
cnn.com 6 - 11 - 2015
'Sea change' in Catholic sex abuse scandal
By Daniel Burke, CNN Religion Editor
Updated 2127 GMT (0427 HKT) June 10, 2015
Pope condemns clergy who sexually abused 02:14
(CNN)Pope Francis has created a church tribunal to judge bishops who fail to protect children from sexually abusive priests, the Vatican announced Wednesday, a move long sought by abuse victims and their advocates.
The new court will be part of the powerful Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, the Catholic Church's chief watchdog. Since 2001, the congregation has judged priests accused of sexual abuse, but there has been no Vatican office with a similar role to judge bishops.
The Rev. Federico Lombardi, a Vatican spokesman, said the Pope will appoint a secretary and permanent staff for the tribunal. The tribunal was proposed by the Pontifical Commission for the Protection of Minors, which was appointed last year by Pope Francis.
Longtime critics of the Vatican called Wednesday's move a "sea change" within the Catholic Church.
"Priests abuse children, and so do bishops," said Terence McKiernan, president of the watchdog group BishopAccountability.org. "Bishops who offend are inevitable enablers, and the commission's plan must confront that sad fact."
Critics of the church's handling of its sexual abuse scandal, which has involved thousands of priests and victims, have often argued that bishops who quietly shuffled abusive priests from parish to parish -- tacitly allowing the crimes to continue -- should be punished.
To date, one American bishop, Robert Finn of Kansas City, has been removed from office. Finn was convicted in 2012 on charges of failing to report suspected child abuse. The Vatican accepted Finn's resignation in April, though without offering a reason.
Last week, prosecutors in Minnesota charged the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis with six counts related to a sexually abusive ex-priest.
Advocates for sexual abuse victims gave the new tribunal qualified approval.
"Time will tell whether these moves actually result in holding bishops accountable for cover-ups of crimes," Boston-based church reform group Voice of the Faithful said. "But these steps are the most promising the Vatican has yet taken."
The new court was advocated by Boston Cardinal Sean O'Malley, who has long pushed the Vatican to discipline bishops who failed to protect children. But at their semi-annual meeting in St. Louis on Wednesday, U.S. Catholic bishops seemed taken by surprise at the move. Several suggested they first heard of the new tribunal by reading news reports Wednesday morning.
"I don't have a lot of background information on it," said Archbishop Joseph Kurtz, president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops. However, Kurtz said, he welcomes the Pope's new tribunal. "We are eager to cooperate, and we know it's a direction that we have to take seriously."
Archbishop Thomas Wenski of Miami, who is also in St. Louis for the meeting of Catholic bishops, said the tribunal does not represent the first time that popes have held bishops accountable.
"Throughout history popes have deposed bishops for various reasons," he said.
Few, however, have been deposed during the church's devastating sexual abuse scandal.
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ALBUQUERQUE JOURNAL 6 - 11 - 2015
Dad flunks parent-teacher conference
PUBLISHED: Thursday, June 11, 2015 at 12:05 am
Copyright © 2015 Albuquerque Journal
A father attending a parent-teacher conference at an elementary school left with more than just information about his child – he walked out of the classroom with a $1,200 MacBook Pro laptop, which he then gave to his child to carry out of the school, according to court documents.
Demetrius O’Neill, 28, was arrested Tuesday and charged with contributing to the delinquency of a minor, larceny and child abuse in connection with the February incident, as well as charges in connection with two other heists in February.
O’NEILL: Also accused of theft in two other cases
In an interview with the Journal, Nichole Sandoval, the mother of their children, said O’Neill wanted to see what their kids were doing at school so he accompanied her to a meeting at Edward Gonzales Elementary School on Feb. 26.
The pair have a 9-year-old daughter and a 10-year-old son, Sandoval said.
Sandoval said she didn’t know about the theft until police officers knocked on her door later that day. She said officers told her the computer could be seen inside a car parked in the driveway, and she returned it to them.
“The police officers said that they had seen on the camera that he had taken a computer,” Sandoval told the Journal on Wednesday. “He didn’t even tell me what happened.”
Albuquerque Public Schools police were called to the school on Feb. 26 when the principal reported a school computer had been stolen from a classroom, and he suspected a parent was responsible, according to the criminal complaint filed in Metropolitan Court.
A review of the surveillance video showed O’Neill walking out of a classroom holding the MacBook in his hands, according to the complaint. He can be seen walking into a bathroom holding the computer and wearing a letterman jacket and leaving the bathroom with the laptop wrapped in his jacket, police said. Then, the video shows he handed the computer to one of his children, and they all walked out, according to the complaint.
“I was embarrassed and mad at the same time for my kids and myself,” Sandoval said after officers told her about what allegedly happened. “The kids yelled at him and said, ‘Why did you do that?’ He told them it was a mistake and he was sorry.”
When police arrived at Sandoval’s house that afternoon, O’Neill slammed the door in their faces and ran out the back door of the house, according to the complaint. Sandoval said the police officers told her O’Neill was no longer allowed on the school’s property.
When O’Neill was arrested Tuesday, he faced three warrants stemming from three different larceny charges in February, including the theft at the school.
In early February, a woman reported $5,600 worth of property stolen from her house, including a Dell laptop computer, jewelry and a semiautomatic pistol, according to a criminal complaint. A week later, another woman reported an Apple MacBook Air, jewelry and Nike tennis shoes were stolen from her house, according to another criminal complaint. O’Neill’s fingerprints were found in both homes, according to the complaints.
O’Neill was booked into the Metropolitan Detention Center on $80,000 bail for the three larceny cases.
ALBUQUERQUE JOURNAL 6 - 11 - 2015
Copyright © 2015 Albuquerque Journal
No one has ever been charged in the murders of 11 prostitutes whose bodies were buried on Albuquerque’s West Mesa – one of the nation’s worst unsolved serial killing cases.
Convicted rapist Joseph Blea, left, is taken into custody after being sentenced to 36 years by District Court Judge Judith Nakamura on Monday. (Adolphe Pierre-Louis/Journal)
But an affidavit obtained by the Journal reveals that investigators believed a plant tag from a California nursery found at one of the burial sites connected the victim to a rapist sentenced this week.
The affidavit filed in 2010 in support of a search warrant seeking DNA from Joseph R. Blea, 58, says the identification tag for 5-gallon spearmint juniper was recovered from the grave of a victim found 8 feet below the surface “in an area where Blea was known to dump debris from his landscape business.
“It is highly unlikely (the tag) blew into the pile of dirt after the grave #2 had been dug up,” according to the affidavit filed by APD detectives.
According to the affidavit, APD detectives found 20 prostitutes who identified Blea – who has never been charged in the murders but was still under investigation in connection with them, according to police earlier this year – as someone who frequented prostitutes in the East Central corridor.
“We are not confirming any suspects or leads at this point in the investigation. We do have strong leads, continue to be dedicated to solving this case and continually investigate further tips,” APD spokeswoman Celina Espinoza said Wednesday.
She added that detectives on the case had obtained warrants to get DNA swabs on “multiple persons of interest.”
Further, one of his ex-wives said Blea “often speaks about his hatred for prostitutes, calling them dirty whores and sluts, sometimes calling them by name.”
The search warrant affidavit says Blea was known to frequent prostitutes even while he was married, and to dump landscaping debris on the West Mesa late at night to avoid landfill fees and to bring home women’s clothing and jewelry. He entered guilty pleas in the 1980s to burglaries in which stolen items including women’s panties.
After finding the plant tag, detectives turned to the Vacaville, Calif., wholesale nursery that supplied retail outlets in the Albuquerque area as far back as the early 2000s, and one retail outlet identified Blea as a regular customer.
APD executed a search warrant in June 2009 at Blea’s home on Shadyside SW “in reference to the homicides of the victims buried in the area of 118th St and Dennis Chavez SW,” seizing handwritten notes and a register of purchases from various nurseries in 2003, 2004 and 2005, the affidavit says.
A former cellmate of Blea’s also said he had an abiding interest in the so-called West Mesa murders, an ongoing investigation prompted by the discovery of 11 bodies and a fetus in 2009 of women who had disappeared from 2003 to 2006.
Both of Blea’s former wives told detectives that Blea would leave late at night to illegally dump waste from his business, Landmarks Unlimited Tree Trimming, which he had operated since the 1980s.
Both also said he was physically abusive.
One of the prostitutes who identified Blea also identified the interior of his home and said that after their encounter he “tried to purchase her panties.”
In a recorded conversation from the jail, Blea’s then-wife said she hadn’t done laundry in so long that she was “reduced to going into your thong panty drawer.” She asked if she could wear his ring with a strip of gold triangles, and he responded that it wasn’t his ring and that her daughter must have shoplifted it. Blea’s wife said it looked old and definitely wasn’t shoplifted.
The wife told an employee of the landscape business, which she was operating after Blea’s arrest, that she had found women’s jewelry in the house that did not belong to her or her daughter.
Blea also pressed his wife in a recorded conversation about finding out the statute of limitations on certain crimes. When she told him that the lawyer had advised there is no statute of limitations on murder, Blea responded, “Not now there isn’t, but we’re not talking about now are we!”
Besides the 1988 rape of a 13-year-old girl, the affidavit says APD was advised in early 2009 of a database DNA match between Blea and a prostitute murdered in 1985, Jennifer Lynn Shirm. Another man, Alex Eugene Murray, initially was charged with Shirm’s murder, but prosecutors dropped murder charges in 2006 in part because DNA taken from Shirm didn’t match Murray.
Police investigated a man in Missouri in connection with the murder of the prostitutes, but no charges were ever filed.
No charges have been filed in Shirm’s murder.
Rape sentence
This week, 2nd Judicial District Judge Judith Nakamura sentenced Blea to 36 years – two mandatory terms of 18 years, to be served consecutive to one another – for the 1988 rape of the 13-year-old girl. The affidavit says Blea’s DNA was present in the rape kit evidence taken from the girl at the time, and only tested years later.
Blea was convicted last week at a trial during which the evidence was agreed to by both sides. Defense attorneys said their client was eager to be able to appeal on multiple grounds, including illegally obtained DNA, and the only means to accomplish that were a conditional plea or a conviction at trial.
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