SHADMIA’S WORLD

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Archive for June, 2008

Millionaires Convicted of Slavery

Posted by shadmia on June 27, 2008

Varsha Sabhnani, 46, was sentenced to 11 years in prison. She was convicted with her husband, Mahender Sabhnani, 51, in December 2007 on a 12-count federal indictment that included forced labor, conspiracy, involuntary servitude and harboring aliens. In other words human slavery.

The Sabhnani’s of 205 Coachman Place East, Muttontown, Long Island were rich, in fact they were millionaires, who ran an international business distributing perfume. They were arrested in May 2007 by federal agents on charges of keeping two Indonesian women as slaves, since 2002, in their posh Long Island home.

“No one would ever think that human beings were being brought into the United States and held for slave labor, and beaten, and tortured in a beautiful mansion right here in one of the most exclusive neighborhoods on Long Island,” said federal prosecutor Demetri Jones

The case began to unfold when Samirah, one of the two women being held in the house, wandered away from the home and came across a Dunkin Donuts shop at 52 W. Jericho Tpke., Syosset, early Mother’s Day morning. The manager, Adrian Mohammed, who initially thought she must be a homeless person, realized that something was wrong and called the cops. When the police arrived, Samirah led them back to the Sabhnani mansion, where Nona was found, cowering in a 3-by-3-foot closet under the stairwell leading to the basement. With the help of an interpreter they told the police their story of the horrible abuse they had suffered at the hands of their employers. The Sabhnanis were arrested and eventually released on $3.5 million bail.

The women were physically abused on a regular basis, with beatings administered by Varsha in one of the house bathrooms with Mahender looking on. Varsha Sabhnani liked to mix it up a little, dealing out beating with a wide variety of instruments. Rolling pins and broomsticks were her favorite, but she wasn’t above using bamboo canes in a pinch.

Varsha threw scalding water on Samirah at one point, cut the woman behind the ears with a paring knife another time, and forced the women to eat chili peppers until they vomited - then made them eat the vomit. The women were starved, given barely enough food to survive on. Eventually things got so bad for Samirah and Nona that they started hoarding food, keeping snacks that she was able to sneak out of the kitchen in a spot above a drop-ceiling panel.

These women were forced to work 21 hour days from 4 a.m. to 1 a.m. “seven days a week” according to prosecutors. When they were allowed to sleep, they had to sleep on 3-by-6 foot mats that were kept on the floor of one of the Sabhnanis two kitchens. If they slept late, they got a beating. Caught stealing food from the trashcan? That’s a beating. Looking master in the eye? Oh you can bet that’s a beating.

“In her arrogance, she treated Samirah and Enung as less than people,” said Assistant U.S. Attorney Demetri Jones. “Justice for the victims: That’s what the government is asking for.”

“This did not happen in the 1800s,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Mark Lesko said during the trial. “This happened in the 21st century. This happened in Muttontown, New York.”

Federal sentencing guidelines had recommended a range of 12 to 15 years in prison for Sabhnani, who was identified as the one who inflicted the abuse. In addition to prison, she will serve three years probation and pay a $25,000 fine.

Mahender Sabhnani, 51, who is free on bail while awaiting his own sentencing, wept as he watched his wife’s punishment pronounced. He was charged with the same crimes because he allowed the conduct to take place and benefited from the work the women performed in his home, prosecutors said. He is expected to receive a much shorter prison term.

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Posted in Abuse, Assualt, Our World, Women, news, world | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , | 1 Comment »

God Gets Arrested Near Church

Posted by shadmia on June 25, 2008

It may surprise you to hear that God got arrested near a church on cocaine charges! Its true, God Lucky Howard, 39, a self-employed mortgage broker, living at 3812 N. Avon Ave., Tampa was arrested. He was charged with one count each of delivery of cocaine within 1,000 feet of a church, a school and public housing; one count each of delivery of cocaine with intent to sell within 1,000 feet of a church, a school and public housing; and two counts of possession of cocaine.

According to the police report, on April 28th police bought 3.4 grams of cocaine from him at his home. A month later, police served a search warrant on that same address and found a safe in the bedroom closet containing three plastic bags with 22.5 grams of cocaine. They also found a digital scale with cocaine residue.

This was not God’s first offense. In 1995 had pleaded guilty to a similar charge and in 2003 he spent 18 months in state prison, again on a cocaine charge. He is currently held in the Orient Road jail on an $86,500 bail.

Just in case you didn’t know, God Lucky Howard is not the only God in Florida, nor is he even the only God in trouble. There are other Gods in the Florida penal system:

  • Glory of God Cummings of Pensacola
  • God Fearing Philippe of Lakeland
  • None God of Jupiter
  • God Medeiros of New Port Richey
  • God Goldman of Dade County
  • God V. Torres of Dade County and
  • Allahzar God Allah, 62, has been in a Lake County prison for almost a quarter century serving a life sentence for first-degree murder.

God has also been spotted elsewhere. An Illinois judge gave a man named Steve Kreuscher permission to legally change his name to “In God We Trust”. The 57-year-old artist and bus driver said the name grew from his devotion to God……and in his own words:

“There are billions of artists out there. If you don’t do something to stand out in the crowd, the world won’t recognize you.”

This got me to thinking about Jesus Christ. Where can the son of God be found? Well the closest I got was a cocaine drug dealer named Spider who was waiting for Jesus in Dallas:

Drug traffickers in Mexico mixed as much as six pounds of the illicit white powder into a paste and used it to make a regal statue of the Christian savior, complete with painted-on flowing hair and a gold cape. They were hoping that it would not attract the attention of border guards in Laredo….wrong. Drug-sniffing dogs at the border exposed Jesus as nothing but a mixture of cocaine and paste.

“These people will use anything, including religious icons to smuggle their drugs,” said Steven Robertson, a spokesman for the Drug Enforcement Administration, in Washington. “It is sacrilegious.”

The plot quietly began to unfold when the woman who was a passenger in a car driving into the United States said a man told her he had too many things to carry, and would pay her $80 if she’d drop the statue at the Laredo bus station, according to a court document filed.

While trying to enter the United States, Customs and Border Patrol inspectors grew suspicious and checked her out. The woman later said she was unaware the statue was cocaine and took federal agents along for her rendezvous. After being arrested, the man, 61-year-old Bernardino Garcia-Cordova, admitted the statue was his property. Garcia-Cordova, who now faces cocaine importation and possession charges, told investigators a man he knows only by a Spanish nickname, La Araña, or The Spider, told him to take it to Dallas.

Hopefully the Spider has not put too much faith in the coming of Jesus, because it is not going to happen!!

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Kids Perform in “Sex Shows”

Posted by shadmia on June 23, 2008

The depth of human depravity has hit a new low in the case of kids, 5-7 years old, being taught how to perform sex shows in front of adults. They were were fed powerful painkillers (Vicodin) they knew as “silly pills”. They danced for the audience. They were forced to have sex with each other on stage. They were videotaped in sexual positions.

The case came to light in August 2004 in Mineola, Texas. Involved were three siblings: a 7-year-old girl, a 6-year-old boy and a 5-year-old girl, along with their 6-year-old aunt.

Six adults have been charged; two (Jamie Pittman, 36, and Shauntel Mayo, 29 both from Tyler) have been already sentenced to life in prison; jury selection is set start for a third, Patrick “Booger Red” Kelly, 41 of Tyler. The others awaiting trial are: Dennis Boyd Pittman, 45, of Tyler; Shelia Darlene Sones, 48, of Mineola; and Jimmy Dale Sones, 33, of Brownsboro.

It has also been reported that a 7th person, Rebeca Lynn Pittman, has signed papers to be extradited from Washington state to face charges of aggravated sexual assault on a child, in connection with this case. Authorities are still investigating and are looking for others, including anyone who may have attended shows a what is being called The Mineola Swinger’s Club.

During the trial of Jamie Pittman, the first defendant to go to trial, the jury was shown a 2 1/2 hour videotaped interview Texas Ranger Sgt. Phillip Kemp conducted with the oldest victim when she was 8 and her 7-year-old brother. Their foster mother was also there to make the children feel more comfortable during the interview in November 2005, about eight months after the children were removed from their home by CPS. The girl drew a diagram and described the inside of the club where they danced. She said there were two guards standing inside the front door and “Dennis” would sit at the front desk where people had to pay for tickets to watch the movies made of the children performing sex acts.

The girl said there were eight kids who would perform in the club. Her brother had to have sex with a teenaged boy for the movies, she said, and she would make movies with some of the other children. Jamie Pittman filmed the movies, she said.

The movies would be filmed in one area of the club and people would watch the movies in another area. People would also watch as they danced and performed sex acts. Each time she was asked about what they did, the girl would spell out “s-e-x” but refused to say the word. The girl said the children were made to watch their own movies to see how they turned out and they made a new movie each week.

At age 5, the children would begin “kindergarten, where they were taught sex acts using dolls. At the school, the kids were called by numbers, such as Kid One. She said she was in the older group and had graduated from kindergarten.

Jamie Pittman would buy “silly pills” all of the children would take every time they went to the club, she said. “They made us feel like, to do anything. They made us feel silly and stuff … They made us crazy,” she said.

The 7-year-old boy told Kemp “nasty” things happened to him in kindergarten, but he didn’t want to talk about it. He said his sister had to touch him when they were at the club and they played doctor for people. He also said they took “silly pills” and he named other children he did plays with. He said Pittman videotaped the skits they made.

Sgt. Phillip Kemp testified he began investigating the “Mineola Swinger’s Club” in November 2005 after the Smith County District Attorney’s Office asked him to investigate the allegations. He said Pittman orchestrated and videotaped an incident where the two siblings were forced to have sex with each other.

Kemp also said people came to watch the children’s shows, but he was never able to identify any of the spectators. He believes other people were there and didn’t do anything to protect the children. He said he believed a lot more than the four children were involved, but he hasn’t been able to find them yet.

It took the jury just 4 minutes to find guilt and 2 minutes to sentence Jamie Pittman to life in prison charged with aggravated sexual assault of a child.

In the case of Shauntel Mayo it took the jury 4 minutes to find her guilty and 6 minutes to sentence her to life in prison.

The third person to go on trial, Patrick Kelly, 41, is charged with aggravated sexual assault of a child, tampering with physical evidence and engaging in organized criminal activity. Kelly also faces a life sentence if convicted, and Smith County prosecutors hope for another swift verdict.

Thad Davidson, Kelly’s attorney, said his client passed a lie-detector test proving his innocence and worries about getting a fair trial in Tyler, 25 miles southeast of Mineola, which is in Wood County.

“I think it’s impossible to get a fair trial within 80 miles of Smith County,” Davidson said.

Mineola, about 80 miles east of Dallas, is a close-knit, conservative bean-processing town of with more than 30 churches. Residents there want to put the scandal behind them as quickly as possible. The one-story building, where prosecutors say four children were trained to perform in front of an audience of 50 to 100 once a week, has been vacant since the landlord ousted the alleged organizers in 2004.

The Rev. Tim Letsch is opening a church in the yellow-plastered building where the children were abused. He acknowledges that building a congregation might be difficult because of the stigma attached to the property.

“You got to decide whether you’re willing to forgive those kind of things,” Letsch said. “It’s a hard deal. Especially for a spiritual person to walk in and say, ‘This happened here.’”

Permanent custody of the three siblings was given to John and Margie Cantrell. However, this week, in a surprising turn of events, prosecutors in California charged John Cantrell with sexually assaulting a child in the state 18 years ago. Margie Cantrell said her husband is innocent. Patrick Kelly’s attorney has moved to postpone the trial in light of the allegations against Cantrell, a state witness, who had testified in the previous two trials.

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5-Year-Old Boy Tortured and Abused

Posted by shadmia on June 21, 2008

Starkeisha Brown’s 5-year-old son, who suffered “unbearable psychological and physical abuse” demonstrates the strength of the human spirit in the face of adversity. His will to live after enduring the  horrible torture at the hands of his own mother and her live-in girlfriend, Krystal Matthews, 21, is truly amazing. His name has not been released.

“I’ve never seen anyone with these kinds of injuries who has lived,” Assistant Police Chief James McDonnell told reporters last week. “This kid must have a tremendous will to live, to be able to still hang on despite what he’s been through.”

In his 5 short years:

  • He was hung by his hands and wrists from a door jamb and beaten
  • He was routinely denied food and water.
  • He was burned with cigarettes all over his body, including his genitals.
  • He was left to sit in his own urine and feces.
  • His hands were held to a hot stove that may leave them permanently disfigured.

The boy’s physical appearance was also striking. He had a pot belly suggestive of severe malnutrition, burns across his body in various stages of healing, old scars, bruises, and badly damaged and burned hands, he also had a broken tooth with the nerve end exposed. Lt. Vincent Neglia of the LAPD’s Abused Child Unit, said the abuse was obviously continuous and prolonged.

“This wasn’t just one big beating,” Neglia said. “You can tell by the different stages of injuries that this was prolonged.”

The boy remains in hospital, after suffering kidney failure due to malnutrition. Authorities describe him as withdrawn and shy but plays with people he trusts. He has a healthy appetite and began walking over the weekend with a slight limp. His burnt hand is healing well and regaining its range of motion.

The mother, Starkeisha Brown, 24, and Krystal Matthews, 21, who lived together at a South Los Angeles apartment near 110th and Figueroa streets, were charged with one count each of torture, child abuse, corporal injury to a child, dissuading a witness, and two counts each of conspiracy. A district attorney’s office statement identified Matthews as the live-in girlfriend of Brown. A baby sitter, La Tanya Monikue Jones, 26, was added to the case. Prosecutors charged her with child abuse, corporal injury to a child, conspiracy and conspiracy to dissuade a witness. Jones allegedly burned the 5-year-old’s hand over a stove at one point while baby-sitting, according to prosecutors.

Brown and Matthews appeared in Superior Court in Compton but their arraignment was postponed to June 25. Brown was held on $1.1 million bail. Matthews was remanded to custody without bail because of a probation violation. Both face up to 25 years to life in prison if convicted. Jones is being held on $180,000 bail. She faces up to 20 years in prison if convicted.

The boy was finally rescued from his abusers after an anonymous tip from a stranger. On June 4th a woman called the abuse hotline saying that the little boy told her at a train station that his mother had burned his hand on top of a hot stove. That call prompted the Department of Children and Family Services to set up an appointment with Starkeisha Brown and Krystal Matthews on Monday, June 9th, to discuss the allegation.

Knowing that she could not attend the meeting with her son, who showed obvious signs of abuse, Brown concocted a scheme to fool the authorities. She “borrowed” the healthy 4-year-old son of La Tanya Monikue Jones and his 6-year-old sister. She planned to pass off the 4-year-old as her own son. Brown and her girlfriend then asked a complete stranger to watch her 5-year-old son while they went to the meeting.

While the women were being interviewed, the stranger who had been asked to watch the boy started asking people in the neighborhood what he should do with the 5-year-old, who looked sickly and injured. Eventually someone called authorities. Officials got word of the boy’s condition as they were interviewing Brown and Matthews and began asking more pointed questions and challenging the pair’s story. Halfway through the interview the two women sprinted from the office, abandoning the 4-year-old and his sister at the office, police said. The children are now in the care of the authorities.

“They realize that no one is buying their ruse,” said Lt. Vincent Neglia of the LAPD’s Abused Child Unit, and “they bug out.”

Capt. Fabian Lizarraga said it was fortunate that the stranger sought help. He “had the sense that something was not right, that the situation he had been placed in was not right,” the captain said.

Authorities launched a hunt for Brown and Matthews while authorities took the 5-year-old child to a hospital. Matthews was arrested Friday and Brown turned herself in to police on Saturday. Both women have accounts on the popular MySpace website. See Starkreisha Brown here and Krystal Matthews’ is here. Both women also have criminal records.

Brown is a known gang member who as a minor served time in the California Youth Authority for battery. She also served a total of two and a half years in prison for two separate convictions: one for felony robbery of an elderly woman in 2003 and later for petty theft, when she and another woman stole a bracelet and other items from a Macy’s department store.

Most recently, Brown was incarcerated from March 2006 to January 2007. During that period, the boy was in the custody of his grandmother, authorities said. Brown regained custody of her son when she left prison in January 2007. But that March, a judge issued an arrest warrant for her in connection with parole violations. It is unclear why officials could not locate her.

Matthews also has a criminal history, including convictions for assault with a deadly weapon and forgery. In May, Matthews got into a fight with her younger brother, slashing him in the face with a box-cutter. She was arrested and eventually pleaded guilty. She was sentenced to 3 years probation.

Los Angeles County Department of Children and Family Services (DCFS) is investigating why no one followed up an initial case review after a tip in November 2005 that the boy was neglected and at risk while in the care of his grandmother, who took the boy in after his mother was arrested for shoplifting.

An array of other agencies missed their chance to intervene, said Gloria Molina, a member of the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors, including the state Department of Corrections and the county’s Department of Probation, Department of Mental Health and foster care agencies that had case files for Brown and the two other women charged in the case. Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky blamed a “silo” mentality of agencies that do not reflexively alert one another to potential risks posed by cases.

“Why was there no intervention? It shouldn’t have to be from the hotline,” Molina said.

Friends and family say they suspected that Starkeisha Brown beat her 5-year-old son but nobody called authorities. Such problems are particularly present in neighborhoods like the one where the Browns lived, where distrust of police and child-protection workers is high and residents worry that calling authorities could make problems worse.

“I don’t think it is that they are colluding with the abuser,” said Carole Shauffer, executive director of the Youth Law Center, a San Francisco-based public interest law firm. “For the most part, it’s fear of what’s going to happen, fear of nothing happening, fear of collateral consequences, and denial, that ‘it’s none of my business, and it can’t be as bad as it seems to me.’ “

The boy’s great-grandmother, Barbara Moreno, said she noticed cuts, scratches and bumps on him, but dropped the subject when he told her the injuries were caused by a fall and a dog attack.

“Sometimes you turn your head,”
said Vivian Daniels, a family friend who about a month ago finally asked Brown about the bruises and scratches on her son’s body. She said she didn’t call police or the Department of Children and Family Services because she feared it would make things worse for the boy and perhaps even for her and her children.

“It’s tit-for-tat,” Daniels said. “In South-Central, we don’t do that. I’m just telling you how it is.”

“We have seen time and time again that people say, ‘I’ve seen child abuse, I’ve heard it, I’ve heard screams, but I do nothing,’ ” said Earl Ofari Hutchinson, president of the Los Angeles Urban Policy Roundtable. “People are so reluctant to speak out on it.”

Hutchinson and others said suspicion and fear of authorities runs deep in parts of South L.A. and that extends beyond the police to social service agencies and other public providers. They said some people are afraid that calling authorities could end up making the family situation worse — particularly if the child is taken into foster care. Others fear authorities might end up checking on them.

In response to the case, community activists on Friday canvassed the neighborhood around 110th and Figueroa streets, where Brown recently lived with the boy, with fliers that read: “Break the Silence on Child Abuse in South L.A.! Help Make Sure a Starkeisha Brown Torture Case Never Happens Again.”

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Kerstin Fritzl Reunited with her Family

Posted by shadmia on June 20, 2008

Kirsten Fritzl, 19, of Amstetten, Austria who had been in a medically-induced coma for several weeks, has finally been reunited with her mother and siblings. Her father, Josef Fritzl, remains in jail having being accused of repeatedly raping his own daughter, who bore him 7 children (including Kristen) and holding them captive for 24 years in a cellar. See the Fritzl story here.

Kerstin’s doctor, Dr Albert Reiter said: It was an extraordinary moment when Kerstin, holding my arm, and I were able to walk through the door into a new home, crossing the threshold into a new life.The entire family is very happy that they are all together for the first time.“ See the press conference here. The Fritzl family now lives in an apartment on the grounds of the clinic where they are being taken care of.

Kerstin’s recovery has truly been remarkable. She was rushed to hospital in April after she fell desperately ill and was placed on life support systems including a respirator and dialysis machine. Her condition became worse and she was eventually put into a medically-induced coma to help her organs recover. In May her doctors began reducing her medication and she was brought out of the coma in June. Elisabeth, her mother, was at her bedside regularly encouraging her to fully come back into the world.

As she lay in bed, medics gradually started to help her to use her muscles again – including teaching her how to eat and speak again because of problems caused by the length of time she was connected to the respirator. Finally she was allowed out of intensive care and was taken by ambulance to start a new life with the rest of her freed family.

She is still suffering from symptoms associated with prolonged bedrest, including muscle waste and deterioration of her bones. But she has already managed to walk and received vaccinations to prepare her body for the outside world.

The Fritzl family is now all together: Kerstin; Elisabeth, her mother; Rosemarie, her grandmother; her brothers (Felix, 6, Alexander, 12 and Stefan, 18); and her sisters (Monika, 14 and Lisa, 16);

Family lawyer Christoph Herbst said Elisabeth, 42, is now determined to keep the family together.

“The family all want to live together. There is a real desire to be with one another. To be together is something very precious indeed. Everyone involved couldn’t anticipate that this could happen so quickly and so positively.”

But he said their freedom of movement was severely restricted by media besieging the clinic and appealed to journalists to respect family members’ privacy.

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State Charges Dropped in Hope Steffey Case

Posted by shadmia on June 20, 2008

According to a grand jury, Stark County deputies committed no criminal acts while arresting Hope Steffey two years ago. Nancy H. Rogers, Ohio attorney general, issued a statement saying that a Stark County grand jury did not hand down any indictments after reviewing the evidence presented by the state’s Bureau of Criminal Identification and Investigation Special Prosecution Sections.

The Steffey case was investigtated by Paul Scarsella, the Chief of the Special Prosecutions Section for the Attorney General’s Office where he manages 4 attorneys and support staff. He was assisted by Bridget Carty, Public Integrity Unit Coordinator, and an Assistant Attorney General in the Special Prosecutions Section.

The Special prosecutors, Paul Scarsella and Bridget Carty, said the incident, in which male and female deputies forcibly removed Steffey’s clothes at the Stark County jail, was a suicide precaution. They said the deputies were only following a medical order given by a doctor on duty to remove her clothes. Though the jail has suicide suits for inmates to wear, prosecutor Scarscella said Steffey was not immediately given one because even the suit was deemed too dangerous for her to have.

The Special prosecutors presented the results of their investigation to the grand jury without interviewing Hope Steffey. They said they were unwilling to interview her with her lawyers present, as she requested. Steffey did however appear before the grand jury. The grand jury declined to indict the deputies involved.

Steffey denied that she was suicidal or was given the opportunity to remove her clothes herself. There is no policy that prevents men from removing a female inmate’s clothes during a suicide precaution situation. Men are however prevented from strip-searching a female inmate.

However, the findings of this grand jury will have no bearing on the federal lawsuit that Hope Steffey filed on Oct. 2007, accusing Stark County deputies of violating her civil rights by assaulting, strip-searching and leaving her injured and naked for six hours in a Stark County jail cell. She had to use toilet paper to cover herself. Defendants in the case are Swanson, Deputy Sheriff Richard T. Gurlea Jr. and one to 15 other “John and Jane Does” employed at the Stark County Jail, and the Stark County commissioners. That case is scheduled to go to trial in December.

Below is the video (in 2 parts) which documents Hope’s experience at the hands of the Stark County Sheriff’s Dept. The video is graphic (you’ve been warned!!)

Whether or not the videotape was presented to the state grand jury will probably never be known, since the deliberations of grand juries are held in secret. But it is certain to be part of the civil case to be heard in federal court. Steffey’s attorneys are now under federal court order to not discuss the case. But they have argued that the force used by deputies, and seen on the videotape, was brutal and unnecessary.

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Posted in Assualt, Our World, Police Brutality, Scandals, news | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , | 22 Comments »

100 Naked Students run in Oblation 2008

Posted by shadmia on June 20, 2008

A hundred naked members of the Alpha Phi Omega (APO) fraternity had their Oblation Run early this year. It is an event started in 1977 and is normally held in December. However, this year was different……June 18, 2008 marked the 100th birthday of the University of the Philippines (UP) and the APO, at the request of the university’s centennial committee, made sure that their presence would be felt and seen in a big way.

“This is our fraternity’s way of honoring UP on its centennial,” said APO member Menggie Cobarrubias.

Cobarrubias, who joined APO in 1970, said the hardest part in organizing the Centennial Run was getting 100 frat men to participate in the activity. They had to invite other APO frat men from different campuses to make up their numbers. But they did muster 100 members, the largest number of naked runners ever, for the event.

The naked runners wore golden masks and wrapped shirts around their heads to hide their identities. The 1 km run (about 1/2 mile) started shortly after 11:00am and took them from Vinzon’s Hall to the Palma Hall and finally to the Quezon Hall, where the iconic UP Oblation statue stands. It was this statue that inspired the fraternity’s 31-year-old tradition of the naked run. Along the way they stopped to pose for photos and offered roses to scores of giggling female students.

Below is a clip from the 2008 Oblation Run, but as a word of caution, it contains full frontal male nudity.

The Oblation, according to Wikipedia, “is the iconic symbol of the University of the Philippines, represented by a man with arms wide-stretched and face facing up, symbolizing selfless offering of one’s self to his country.”

President Rafael Palma commissioned Professor Guillermo E. Tolentino with the help of Anastacio T. Caedo, his student apprentice to make the sculpture. It was to be based on the second verse of Jose Rizal’s Mi Ultimo Adios:

In fields of battle, deliriously fighting,
Others give you their lives, without doubt, without regret;
Where there’s cypress, laurel or lily,
On a plank or open field, in combat or cruel martyrdom,
If the home or country asks, it’s all the same–it matters not.

The concrete sculpture painted to look like bronze, measures 3.5 meters in height, symbolizing the 350 years of Spanish rule in the Philippines. Tolentino describes the Oblation as:

The completely nude figure of a young man with outstretched arms and open hands, with tilted head, closed eyes and parted lips murmuring a prayer, with breast forward in the act of offering himself, is my interpretation of that sublime stanza. It symbolizes all the unknown heroes who fell during the night…..

The original statue, dedicated on March 1939, was completely naked, but in order to satisfy the morality of the time, was changed to include a fig leaf to cover the genitals.

The annual Oblation run was started in 1977 as a protest against the banning of the play, ‘Hubad na Bayani’ (Naked Hero); a political satire on the late President Ferdinand Marcos’ dictatorial rule. The APO said that more than a form of protest, their running bare-naked was more like a reminder to the UP students of the symbolism of the Oblation statue – a selfless offering of the Filipinos to their country.

This year the Oblation run was such a hit among students, faculty members and other spectators that it easily surpassed the other day-long activities scheduled for the university’s 100th Birthday Day. The 2,000-strong crowd began gathering about three hours before the scheduled start of the run in front of Vinzons Hall from where the “streakers” were expected to start.

The mostly female crowd was not to be disappointed. As the runners started to come out the girls  screamed and trained their digital cameras, video cameras and mobile phone cameras on the young men who posed for pictures and handed out red roses to some of them in the crowd.

“I’ll keep this as a good remembrance of my experience here,” said a Caucasian woman holding a rose. “I never expected it would be this exciting,” she added.

As the runners made their way to the Oblation statue in front of Quezon Hall, other APO members served as marshals, protecting the runners from the enthusiastic crowd. Even some elderly women in the crowd gleefully cheered on the barefooted runners.

“It has been quite a while since I saw something like this,” a 55-year-old woman said with a laugh.

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Sex on the Net XII

Posted by shadmia on June 17, 2008

Here are some more sex-related stories in the series “Sex on the Net”. The stories below, although sexual in nature, each have some educational/entertainment value. Hope you enjoy!

5 Penis Facts

  1. Your penis does have a mind of its own
  2. You may remember times when it was completely inappropriate to have an erection; and yet you couldn’t wish it away. It’s true that you have less command over your penis than body parts like your arms and legs. That’s because the penis answers to a part of the nervous system that’s not always under your conscious control. This is called the autonomic nervous system, which also regulates heart rate and blood pressure.

  3. Your Penis May Be a ‘Grower’ or a ‘Show-er’
  4. Among men, there is no consistent relationship between the size of the flaccid penis and its full erect length. In one study of 80 men, researchers found that increases from flaccid to erect lengths ranged widely, from less than a quarter inch to 3.5 inches longer. You can’t assume that a dude with a big limp penis gets much bigger with an erection. And the guy whose penis looks tiny could surprise you with a big erection.

    A penis that doesn’t gain much length with an erection has become known as a “show-er,” and a penis that gains a lot is said to be a “grower.” Data suggest that most penises aren’t extreme show-ers or growers. About 12 percent of penises gained one-third or less of their total length with an erection, and about 7 percent doubled in length when erect.

  5. Your Penis Is Shaped Like a Boomerang
  6. Just like you don’t see all of a big oak tree above ground, you don’t see the root of your penis tucked up inside your pelvis and attached to your pubic bone. In an MRI picture, the penis looks distinctly boomerang-like, as noted by a French researcher who studied men and women having sex inside an MRI scanner.

    One method of surgical “penis enlargement” is to cut the ligament that holds the root of the penis up inside the pelvis. This operation may give some men a little extra length if more of the penis protrudes from the body, but there are side effects. This ligament, called the suspensory ligament, makes an erection sturdy. With that ligament cut, the erect penis loses its upward angle and it wobbles at the base. The lack of sturdiness can lead to injury.

  7. You Can Break Your Penis
  8. There is no “penis bone,” but you can break your penis all the same. It’s called penile fracture, and it’s not a subtle injury. When it happens, there’s “an audible pop or snap.” Then the penis turns black and blue. And there’s terrible pain.

    Penile fracture is rare, and it typically happens to younger men because their erections tend to be quite rigid. Here’s how to avoid penile fracture: don’t use your penis too roughly. A common way that penile fracture happens is when a man is thrusting too hard and fast during sex, and slams into his partner’s pubic bone. Also, a woman who moves wildly while on top of a man during sex can break a man’s penis.

  9. Most Penises in the World Are Uncut
  10. A report by the World Health Organization (WHO) and the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV /AIDS (UNAIDS) estimates that worldwide only 30 percent of males aged 15 and up are circumcised. Almost all Jewish and Muslim males in the world have circumcised penises, and together they account for about 70 percent of all circumcised males globally.

    The United States has the highest proportion of males circumcised for non-religious reasons. A whopping 75 percent of non-Jewish, non-Muslim American men are circumcised. Compare that to Canada, where only 30% are. In the U.K. it’s 20 percent; in Australia it’s merely 6 percent. Recently the World Health Organization (WHO) and the UUNAIDS recommended circumcision for adult men, based upon evidence that men with circumcised penises have a lower risk of being infected with HIV.

Headless Sex

There is no stopping the male praying mantids of Sydney. Even after their heads have been chewed off by their female partners, these hardy insects continue to have sex for up to eight hours.

“It’s pretty cool to watch,” said a Macquarie University scientist, Katherine Barry, whose research has led to an explanation for how this extreme form of sexual cannibalism may have evolved in false garden mantids, Pseudomantis albofimbriata, a species common to suburbs including Epping, Pymble and Turramurra.

By observing hand-reared mantids closely, Miss Barry has found that females benefit substantially from consuming their male partners, a job they complete after the lengthy mating has finished. In one of the first studies able to demonstrate this effect, she found the cannibalistic females put on weight and produced more eggs using the extra energy they got from a single meal of male meat.

“Sexual cannibalism can boost the reproductive output of the females by up to 40 per cent,” Miss Barry said.

Not every sexual encounter ends in death for the males, which helps explain why they keep trying. About 60 per cent of the time they do not get eaten. “Those that approach from the rear are much less likely to get cannibalised,” she said. While about 40 per cent of trysts are fatal, in about half of these cases the males manage to copulate while being cannibalized.

The females attack first, grabbing the males by the head and thorax and chewing off their heads, Miss Barry said. “But a lot of males can use their legs to grab onto the female’s abdomen and pull themselves round while being eaten and start mating with her.” The males were able to sustain sex for hours, because they have a second primitive brain in their abdomens, she said. Male mantids are about 40 per cent of the size of the females, Miss Barry said. “So it’s quite a good meal.”

Man Sued over Naked Pics

Daryl J. Roy isn’t your average Sprint sales drone. Service doesn’t stop just because you’ve got the receipt and walked out the door. Have you ever checked out Sprint’s picture mail? He wanted to make sure Nicole McElveen did after she purchased some new phones from him.

So he sent her a few picture messages, even though she didn’t pay for the service, before really showing off the resolution and clarity of their cameras with full-frontal nude pics of himself. Just to make sure she saw how good the pictures were, he re-sent them three different times.

Now she’s suing Sprint and Daryl for $1 million—her husband, David, adds in the filing that the toll on his wife from the pictures has cost him the “services, companionship, love, affection and consortium of his wife.”

Daryl says that’s total BS, they had corresponded over text messages, and she had asked for photos of him and that she actually “expressed her appreciation for receiving such photographs.”

The Penis Snatchers

Police in Congo have arrested suspected sorcerers accused of using black magic to steal or shrink men’s private parts. Reports of so-called penis snatching are not uncommon in West Africa, where belief in traditional religions and witchcraft remains widespread, and where ritual killings to obtain blood or body parts still occur.

Purported victims, 14 of whom were detained by police, claimed that sorcerers simply touched them to make their genitals shrink or disappear. But some residents said the victims were simply trying to extort cash by promising a cure, proved by the reappearance of their genitals.

“You just have to be accused of that, and people come after you. We’ve had a number of attempted lynchings. … You see them covered in marks after being beaten, said Jean-Dieudonne Oleko, Kinshasa’’s police chief.

Police arrested the accused sorcerers and their victims in an effort to avoid the sort of bloodshed seen in Ghana a decade ago, when 12 suspected penis-snatchers were beaten to death by angry mobs.

I’m tempted to say it’s one huge joke,” Mr. Oleko said. “But when you try to tell the victims that their penises are still there, they tell you that it’s become tiny or that they’ve become impotent. To that I tell them, ‘How do you know if you haven’t gone home and tried it?’ he said.

It’s real. Just yesterday here, there was a man who was a victim. We saw. What was left was tiny, said 29-year-old Alain Kalala.

Some Kinshasa residents accuse a separatist sect from the nearby Bas-Congo province of being behind the witchcraft in revenge for a recent government crackdown on its members.

Man Has Sex with 1,000 Cars

Edward Smith, who lives with his current “girlfriend” – a white Volkswagen Beetle named Vanilla, insisted that he was not “sick” and had no desire to change his ways.

“I appreciate beauty and I go a little bit beyond appreciating the beauty of a car only to the point of what I feel is an expression of love,” he said.

“Maybe I’m a little bit off the wall but when I see movies like Herbie and Knight Rider, where cars become loveable, huggable characters it’s just wonderful.

“I’m a romantic. I write poetry about cars, I sing to them and talk to them just like a girlfriend. I know what’s in my heart and I have no desire to change.” He added: “I’m not sick and I don’t want to hurt anyone, cars are just my preference.”

Mr Smith, 57, first had sex with a car at the age of 15, and claims he has never been attracted to women or men. As well as Vanilla, he regularly spends time with his other vehicles – a 1973 Opal GT, named Cinnamon, and 1993 Ford Ranger Splash, named Ginger.

Before Vanilla, he had a five-year relationship with Victoria, a 1969 VW Beetle he bought from a family of Jehovah’s Witnesses. But he confesses that many of the cars he has had sex with have belonged to strangers or car showrooms.

His last relationship with a woman was 12 years ago - and he could not bring himself to consummate it, although he did have sex with girls in his younger days. Talking about how his unusual passion developed, Mr Smith said: “It’s something that grew as a part of me when I was a kid and I could not shake it.

“I just loved cute cars right from the beginning, but over the years it got stronger once I got into my teenage years and was my first having sexual urges. When I turned 13 and the famous Corvette Stingray came about, that car was pure sex and just an incredible machine. I wanted it. I didn’t fully understand it myself except that I know I’m not hurting anyone and I do not intend to.”

“As far as women go, they never really interested me much. And I’m not gay.” Mr Smith is now part of a global community of more than 500 “car lovers” brought together by internet forums.

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Charges Dropped Against 3 Teens

Posted by shadmia on June 16, 2008

“Further investigation has shown that there is insufficient evidence to proceed with charges against the defendant.”

With that phrase charges were dropped against 3 of the teens involved in the case of the beating of former Mulberry High cheerleader Victoria Lindsay. Freed from further prosecution were: Cara Murphy, 16, Stephen Schumaker, 18, and Zachary Ashley, 17. They had all been charged with kidnapping and battery. There is some speculation that the 3 may become witnesses. However, Chip Thullbery, a spokesman for the State Attorney’s Office said any such speculation was premature: “At this point, it’s premature to determine who will be witnesses in the case,” Thullbery said.

Cara Murphy’s attorney, Melodie Lopez, said her client had nothing to do with the incident. Her client was at the scene of the incident, but that was all that happened.

Stephen Schumaker’s father, Bob Schumaker, blamed Polk County Sheriff Grady Judd, saying he had arrested the young men too hastily.

“They had nothing on the boys from the very start,” Bob Schumaker said. “That’s why we were so upset. Because they weren’t even there.”

Zachary Ashley’s mother, Heidi Dease, agreed:

“It’s been a long road,” Dease said. “But we’re very excited today.”

Five girls still remain charged in the beating of Victoria Lindsay: Mercades Nichols, 17; April Cooper, 15; Brittini Hardcastle, 17; Kayla Hassall, 15; and Brittany Mayes, 17, all of whom are charged with battery and kidnapping. In addition, Mercades, Brittini and Brittany also are charged with tampering with a witness. See the video here.

For the full story on the entire incident see this posting and this update.

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Posted in Assualt, Gang Assault, Our World, Teens, news | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , | 9 Comments »

Teen with Bullet in Head to go on Trial

Posted by shadmia on June 16, 2008