Story here. Excerpt:

'A clause of the recently approved Domestic Violence Bill 2009 that allows punishment of six months or a fine of Rs50,000 to those who file false complaints came under severe criticism at a national consultation here on Thursday.
...
Demanding complete repeal of this new addition by the government, civil society activists expressed the fear that the clause would transform the bill, formulated to provide relief to women, into another Hadood ordinance. “This would mean that practically no aggrieved party, victim or complainant will ever file a case in fear of reactionary punishment to them,” said Maleeha Zia of Aurat Foundation. She was speaking at the ‘National Consultation on Domestic Violence Bill 2009’ organised by Aurat Foundation.

Article here. Excerpt:

'Domestic violence victims will be able to get greater protection from courts in England and Wales from next month.

Judges will have powers to impose restraining orders on abusers charged with any offence - even if they are cleared but still considered a threat.

Victims are currently often forced to go through civil courts to secure such an injunction even if, for example, a partner is convicted of assault.
...
From 30 September, anyone still considered a threat at the end of a criminal case - regardless of the charge or result - may be made subject of an order.'

Story here. Excerpt:

'A WOMAN who triggered a major investigation after claiming she was the victim of a sex attack in Carlisle has been charged with perverting the course of justice.

The 22-year-old is expected to appear in court following an alleged sexual assault in Cavendish Terrace, Stanwix, on January 4.

She answered police bail yesterday

The charge against her states that between January 3 and March 21, with intent to pervert the course of public justice, she made a false allegation that she was subject to a serious sexual assault which instigated a major police investigation during which four people were arrested.'

Article here. Excerpt:

'Three days after releasing e-mail messages described as the "tip of the investigative iceberg" and publicly demanding that the woman suing Steelers quarterback Ben Roethlisberger abandon her case immediately, Roethlisberger has filed a motion to dismiss the claims against him, support by a 43-page legal brief and 29 exhibits.

We've obtained a copy of everything that has been filed. (And, consequently, the hard drive on the official PFT Commodore 64 is now full.)

Put simply, the attack against the plaintiff is among the most aggressive I've seen in nearly 18 years of practicing law.
...
Roethlisberger requests that the plaintiff be required to submit to an "immediate medical examination," alleging that "there is no question that Plaintiff is unstable mentally."

Story here. Excerpt:

'A former Helper Junior High School teacher charged with having a sexual relationship with a 15-year-old male student paid her victim between $1,400 and $1,500 after the encounters, court documents allege.

New details about the relationship between Melissa Ann Andreini and her alleged victim emerged from a probable cause statement recently filed in 7th District Court.

According to the statement, the victim's mother confronted Andreini at Andreini's home in Helper on July 3 after finding out the teacher was supposedly having sex with her son. Andreini admitted to the boy's mother that she had sex with the teenager on several occasions at her home, according to the statement.'

Video report here. Caption:

'Woman admits to killing a Phoenix man in a wheelchair because she thought he was a police informant.'

Story here. Excerpt:

'LOUISVILLE, Ky. - A woman charged with trying to extort $10 million from University of Louisville basketball coach Rick Pitino may be so mentally incompetent that she does not understand the legal proceedings and may not be able to assist in her own defense, federal prosecutors said Friday in asking a judge to order a psychological exam.
...
Sypher has pleaded not guilty to federal charges of trying to extort money from Pitino and lying to the FBI. She is accused of demanding college tuition for her children, that her house be paid off and $10 million in exchange for keeping quiet about allegations involving Pitino.
...
Prosecutors also asked Simpson to issue a protective order barring Earhart and Sypher from making public any evidence or statements turned over in the case. The motion did not blame Earhart, and he said he still has not received evidence from prosecutors in the case.'

Story here. A North Carolina dentist was found not guilty by reason of SELF DEFENSE in the death of his wife. The jury found that she tried to kill him with a spear (weapon of choice for wild savages)and he killed her to save his life. Some good news for a change from the state that gave us the term of getting "Nifonged" by the judicial system. Excerpt:

'MOCKSVILLE, N.C. -- Kirk Turner, the dentist charged in the 2007 stabbing death of his estranged wife during a confrontation at their farm, has been found not guilty by a Mocksville jury Friday.

Turner’s attorneys argued that the man was defending himself after Jennifer Turner attacked him with a seven-foot spear. Deliberations started Thursday morning around 10 a.m. and ended that day around 5 p.m.'

Article here. Excerpt:

'For 20 years Steven Barnes has relived one day over and over in his mind; the scenes sometimes unfold like a filmy, disjointed dream, and sometimes with a stark and painful furor.

It was the day he was arrested, at age 23, for a crime he did not commit.

“When they came to arrest me I was screaming and freaking out saying I didn’t murder nobody,” said Barnes, who is now 43, and was released from prison last November just a few days after his conviction was overturned.

His conviction hinged on what he calls “junk science.” In 1989, Barnes was convicted of raping and strangling to death 16-year-old Kimberly Simon on the evening of Sept. 18, 1985, in Marcy, N.Y. The case against him relied heavily on forensic evidence and he spent nearly 20 years in prison.'

Article here. Excerpt:

Article here Excerpt:

'Attorney David Cornwell released a statement on Tuesday requesting the accuser to drop her sexual assault civil lawsuit against Steelers QB Ben Roethlisberger. In a statement entitled "Andrea McNulty's Own Words Prove She was Not Raped By Ben Roethlisberger," Cornwell contends that McNulty's online behavior is inconsistent with someone who had been sexually assaulted. (Via the Reno-Gazette Journal, a pdf of the statement can be found here.)

Story here. Excerpt:

'The 27-year-old woman, who lives in Malaga, used the excuse to get a termination when she became pregnant after having an extramarital affair, police said.

The woman, who is from Latin America and has not been named, told police that she had been followed by a masked man who forced her into the back of his car, drove her to scrubland, and raped her at knife point.

But police became suspicious after inconsistencies in her story and because she failed to report the crime until two months after the supposed attack. She then took her police report to a medical centre and asked for an abortion.

Police spend three weeks investigating her claim before they accused the woman of inventing the story to prevent her husband discovering that she had become pregnant from her lover.

She is facing between six months and a year for requesting an abortion on false grounds and six to 12 months for falsifying a crime.'

Article here. Excerpt:

'It turns out there was also another -- unspoken -- requirement: the tutor ought to be a woman. This was something my wife and I both felt in our gut, even though I knew it made me a huge hypocrite.

I have written over a thousand blog posts on fatherhood, mostly making the point that there is no reason why guys can't do the childrearing thing as well as women. And I know that unfair stereotypes are a reason why so few men end up in primary education. But it's one thing to defend my days as an at-home dad and another to put an elementary-school girl alone with a college guy for hours a week. Yes, I know the risk is low, but why accept the risk at all?

Story here. Excerpt:

'Movement was something teachers were seeing a lot of in Ouachita Parish kindergarten classrooms on Wednesday as they experienced the first ever district-wide "boy day." Tuesday's "girl day" in most cases was a bit more reserved.

"Crisscross apple sauce," Stacy Frost reminded her male students as they fidgeted in a reading circle. "That means cross your legs."

The pent up energy in both classrooms was quickly evident when either teachers' attention was momentarily diverted.

"The girls read books and played with Play-Doh yesterday," Herbet said, while the boys played with blocks, built race cars and threatened to attack toy castles. "The boys ... we want them ready for nap time."'

Article here. Excerpt:

'For the past two years, he has been researching the reading gender gap in Ontario as part of a project with the Education Quality and Accounting Office, an agency of the provincial government.

"It's a goal of the province to reduce the gap," said Klinger. "We want a strong knowledge economy. We have a goal in this province where we want 75 per cent of the children producing at what we call level three in achievement, which is considered to be the level of literacy you need to be successful. The girls are there; the boys aren't."

The reading gender gap is not exclusive to Ontario; it's an international problem. Girls, on average, are better readers than boys in every country in the world.

I met Klinger in his office at Queen's to learn about his work. I'm also an educational researcher who is trying to understand the reading gender gap,. I have visited schools in the U.S., Japan and Taiwan to better understand this phenomenon.'