Story here. Excerpt:

'Three years ago, one of the strangest criminal cases in recent memory began in Charlottesville, Virginia, where I live, when a young woman sent a series of text messages telling her boyfriend that a man had abducted her, followed by a series of texts, allegedly from her captor, taunting her boyfriend with threats of sexual violence. Her story was strange, and the case was fraught with complications from the get-go, but the accused ended up in prison long after the doubts outweighed the evidence.

This story is bizarre, but it’s not all that unusual: Prosecutors can prosecute even the weakest, most clearly flawed cases relentlessly, and innocent people can end up in jail.

This week, after two and a half years in prison, Mark Weiner saw his conviction vacated. It finally ended a saga in which Weiner was arrested, convicted, and sentenced to eight years in jail on charges of abducting a woman with the intent to sexually harm her.
...
When defense counsel learned of the cellphone evidence and attempted to use one of the detectives as a defense witness, Lunsford had him disqualified as an expert, objecting to the fact that the defense attorney hadn’t subpoenaed the right witnesses to get the phone record evidence in. When the defense lawyer asked in chambers for a continuance so that he could call the correct witnesses, the motion was denied by trial court Judge Cheryl Higgins. Jurors would never hear what the phone tower records showed. Local lawyers and trial observers were shocked.
...

Article here. Lead article here. Excerpt:

'July has been good to the National Parents Organization so far. Despite many state legislatures no longer being in session, NPO continues to fight the good fight for shared parenting and family court reform in the media. Here’s a list of our media placements so far. Child custody reforms push for equal time with both parents'

Article here. Excerpt:

'About a month after the UCF Recreation and Wellness Center started enforcing a ban on shirts that don’t “fully cover the back, front and sides of the torso,” students say staff are now only enforcing it among men and not women.

“You guys have to understand this is sexism at its finest because you’re yelling at me and not saying anything to the girls,” said Austin Medlin, in a video he took during an argument he had with an RWC staff member about the policy.

Medlin has been banned from going to the UCF RWC as of Wednesday, after accusing the RWC staff of sexual discrimination. He also believes UCF is violating the federal Title IX law.

“I was on a bench they came up, Troy and another guy and told me to leave and my privileges have been restricted. Once I went upstairs they told me the same thing, and I have to take it up with student conduct and I can’t use the facilities anymore,” said Medlin.

Article here. Excerpt:

'Men are bullies -- at least online, in games, and disproportionately towards women, an international study has found. The kicker though, is that men are most likely to harrass women when they're being beaten by them.

In their paper "Insights into Sexism: Male Status and Performance Moderates Female-Directed Hostile and Amicable Behaviour", Michael M. Kasumovic of the University of New South Wales' Ecology and Evolution Research Centre and Jeffrey H. Kuznekoff of Miami University Middletown's Department of Integrative Studies researched whether "female-initiated disruption of a male hierarchy incites hostile behaviour from poor performing males who stand to lose the most status."

Story here. Fury and a woman scorned. Fortunately, a neighbor helped the stabbing victim out: “I thought she was an alright girl. There’s something wrong with her,” he said. Quite true. Excerpt:

'A woman scorned and a man stabbed around 20 times.

It happened at about 6:30 pm Tuesday at the Locust Park Apartments in Loveland.

As 45-year-old Walter Puttoff showed stab wounds all over his body he explained to FOX31 Denver what led to the attack.

“She just said ‘I’m going to kill you,’” explained Puttoff.

Puttoff said he thought he was going to die after 37-year-old Bernedette Vasquez, knocked on his door wanting to talk.

“I knew I was going to die,” he said less than 24 hours after the attack.

“She must have had the knife behind her back or something and the next thing I know she just come in just stabbing,” he explained.'

Story here. Excerpt:

'It will be a demonstration unlike any other outside a pop-music concert in British Columbia.

On Friday (July 17) from 5 p.m. to 7 p.m., members of the Canadian Foreskin Awareness Project will rally outside B.C. Place Stadium to show their support for Harry Styles's alleged refusal to get snipped.

Styles and his pals in One Direction are singing that night in front of a massive Vancouver crowd.

In 2013, the National Enquirer reported that Styles and singer Taylor Swift parted ways because she wanted him circumcised and he refused to do this.'

Story here. Excerpt:

'Brenda Martinez walked into San Mateo police headquarters about 8:30 p.m. on the Fourth of July, authorities say, and flagged an officer to report that a homicide occurred about 30 minutes earlier. She told them to go to a North Claremont Street apartment to find the scene.

And then she told them she did it.

Martinez, 40, sits in San Mateo County jail on suspicion of murder after police say she fatally attacked her neighbor with the victim's own baseball bat. And true to her confession, when police went to the involved home, they found a gravely injured 66-year-old woman with "obvious head trauma."'

Article here. Excerpt:

'A University of Kansas student was expelled for calling his ex-girlfriend a “psycho bitch” on Twitter. The tweet, which did not mention the woman by the name—and was not visible to her—is disallowed under Title IX, KU has argued.
...
After a dispute between Yeasin and his ex-girlfriend—who was also a student—KU imposed a no-contact order on him. KU then accused him of violating that order by tweeting “psycho bitch” and “#psycho,” even though the tweets did not identify his ex-girlfriend as the target of these insults. He was eventually expelled. A county judge ruled in favor of Yeasin last November, but KU appealed the decision.'

The University of Minnesota President, Eric Kaler, is attempting to enact an affirmative consent policy at the school. 

Members of the University's Board of Regents asked him to hold off until they could review such a serious change at their next meeting.

Now, the President is getting pressured into enacting the policy by media, even though affirmative consent would result in draconian and overbroad definitions of sexual assault crimes.

Such definitions would require the school to call innocent students 'criminals'.

Please contact President Kaler now and tell him to NOT pass an affirmative consent policy, and to instead stick with state definitions of crimes.

Call: (612) 626-1616
Or Email: upres-at-umn.edu

Yours,

Gina Lauterio, Esq., Policy Program Director
Stop Abusive and Violent Environments   
www.saveservices.org

Story here. Excerpt:

'A mum has sparked outrage after she refused to allow firefighters to break into her car to save her toddler son from the heat because the vehicle was too expensive to damage.

The unnamed mother was unable to open the door of her BMW when it accidentally locked itself.

Her three-year-old son was trapped inside and was suffering in the heat as no windows were open.

Firefighters who arrived at the scene in Yiwu city, China, were about to break the glass to rescue the boy - but his mum told them she wanted to wait for a locksmith instead so the car would not be damaged.'

Article here. Excerpt:

'Though the prospect of circumcising a baby boy typically causes some anxiety, Jewish parents most often to go through with it. Circumcision is a concrete symbol of the ancient Abrahamic covenant, an affirmation of membership in the tribe, and a way for the boy to “look like Dad.” Sealing the deal for many is the idea that circumcision provides health benefits throughout a child’s life.

These days, however, there are Jewish parents who consider the issue carefully—and come to a different conclusion. To them, circumcision seems unnecessary, harmful or traumatic, and they decide not to do it. The question is, do these families represent a disheartening watering-down of tradition? Or do they perhaps have something unique and precious to offer to the ongoing Jewish narrative?

Press release here. Excerpt:

'WASHINGTON / July 14, 2015 – Following recent passage of a law in New York on campus sexual assault, Affirmative Consent policies are coming under fire from civil rights and legal experts. The New York law will require that “clear affirmative agreement” be expressed before any sexual activity occurs between two students.

Robert Shibley of the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, a civil liberties group, notes that Affirmative Consent policies serve to promote a “guilty until proven innocent” mindset.

In her June 27 column, New York Times contributing writer Judith Shulevitz decried the notion of making “sex a crime under conditions of poor communication.” Her article quoted Harvard law professor Jeannie Suk who chided Affirmative consent as an “unworkable standard.”

Article here. Excerpt:

'The old liberal cliché that it's "better 10 guilty persons escape than one innocent suffer" has been upended in recent years — at least when it comes to accusations of sexual assault.

The cliché has been replaced by: "It's better 10 innocent persons suffer than one guilty escape."

The push to reduce campus sexual assault has bred this new sentiment, as policies purporting to make colleges and universities safer actually increase the likelihood that innocent students will be accused and punished. The new policies broaden the definition of sexual assault while narrowing the definition of consent, and remove due process protections for accused students while severely limiting what constitutes "evidence" in their defense.'

Article here. Excerpt:

'That summer, the student filed a complaint with USF against his ex-girlfriend. It was a complaint similar to the one she filed against him, claiming she violated the school’s code of conduct.

University officials did not investigate his complaint because it mirrored the one filed by his ex girlfriend, the suit says.

John Doe argued that his complaint should have be treated the same as hers.

Says his lawsuit: “Male students at USF, such as John Doe, are discriminated against solely on the basis of sex and are invariably found guilty, regardless of the evidence, or lack thereof.”'

Article here. Excerpt:

'This is the brilliant idea of Councilwoman Anita Bonds, a Democrat:

"Newly proposed D.C. legislation would require colleges to put a permanent and prominent notation on the academic transcripts of students who are convicted of sexual assault or who try to withdraw from school while under investigation for sexual misconduct — a “Scarlet Letter” that would follow them to new schools and graduate programs or into the workforce.

Council member Anita Bonds’s proposal Tuesday — which comes as the nation is paying more attention to the widespread problem of college sexual assault — immediately drew praise from several colleagues for its bold approach to attacking the issue. But it also caught officials at the city’s colleges and universities off guard, proposing what is certain to be a controversial way of permanently punishing those accused of assaults."