Story here. Excerpt:

Print story here, plus Sun News discussion of case here (video).

'Prosecutors are appealing a not guilty verdict in a case of domestic sexual assault after the investigating officer reported that the Ottawa trial judge created an online dating profile to research the alleged victim.

In an affidavit filed in court, Const. Erin Lehman detailed how Ontario Superior Court Justice Timothy Ray allegedly invited her to his private chambers after his ruling on Dec. 18, 2013, to discuss her investigation.

Ray allegedly said he created a profile on match.com, posing as a 25-year-old gay man. He suggested that the defence "would have been able to hang the victim with all the available information," according to the affidavit.

The alleged victim testified behind a screen during the trial, which shielded her from seeing others in the courtroom but allowed others, including the accused, to see her.
...
At some point Justice Ray stated that he was not sure if he was supposed to be talking to me like this but that his decision had already been made and was heard," Lehman wrote.

Ray found the accused not guilty of sexual assault, forcible confinement and possession of a weapon for a dangerous purpose, but found him guilty of assault. The accused cannot be named in order to protect the identity of the alleged victim.

Lehman reported her conversation to the Crown after leaving the judge's chambers.
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"This is a case where very serious issues have been raised; issues that go to the heart of trial fairness," the ruling detailed.

The Court of Appeal ruled that the credibility of the complainant had been an issue at trial.

Story here. Excerpt:

'The mother of a 17-year-old Texas boy is demanding criminal charges be brought against a father who fatally shot her son. The incident occurred last week when the father, who hasn't been identified publicly, was alerted by his four-year-old son that there was someone in his 16-year-old daughter's bedroom.

The man grabbed his gun and entered his daughter's bedroom, where an argument ensued and his daughter reportedly denied knowing Johran McCormick. Police said the man shot McCormick in the head, claiming the teen was reaching for something.

Police said the girl later admitted to sneaking McCormick into the house.'

Article here. Excerpt:

'But is there any evidence that American girls in this day and age are fragile flowers whose confidence can be destroyed by a discouraging word? According to BanBossy.com, "girls are twice as likely as boys to worry that leadership roles will make them seem 'bossy' " -- a factoid based on a 2008 report from the Girl Scout Research Institute, "Change It Up!"

But while the report is based on a solid study -- a survey of about 2,500 girls and 1,500 boys -- this particular finding is less than impressive. It is based on a subgroup of 360 children who said they weren't interested in being leaders, and who were asked about the reasons for this disinterest. "I do not want to seem bossy" was mentioned by 29 percent of the girls but only 13 percent of the boys. However, in the entire survey pool, girls were just as likely as boys to say that they wanted to be leaders and to agree that "I think of myself as a leader." They were also equally likely to describe themselves as "confident," "talented," and "strong."

Story here. Excerpt:

'Mickey the pit bull stares at me from behind the bars of his cage at Maricopa County's Animal Care and Control quarantine unit on south 27th Avenue.

Death row for dogs.
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He glances at me and turns away, unable to stop quivering, not unusual for a dog unfamiliar with people. He spent much of his time chained in a yard. He is not trained or neutered. He was underfed.
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You'd feel sorry for Mickey if you didn't know he had attacked and disfigured a 4-year-old boy.

You'd feel sorry for him until you found out that people from Arizona and all over the world seem to be more concerned for Mickey than for little Kevin Vicente, who required 5 ½ hours of surgery to stitch the gashes in his face and to mend his broken eye socket, detached tear ducts and a fractured jaw.'

Article here. Excerpt:

'Rutgers University is hosting a female orgasm workshop so extensive it promises to have something for “orgasm aficionados and beginners of all genders,” Campus Reform has learned.
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Tuesday’s workshop will be taught by “sex educators” Marshall Miller and Maggie Keenan-Bolger, and is sponsored by Student Residence Life and the Busch Campus Dean.

The event invitation did not bar students under the age of 18 from attending.

Rutgers is a public university that receives federal and state tax dollars. The university did not respond to a request for comment from Campus Reform in time for publication.'

Story here. Excerpt:

'It wasn't easy for the man whose job it generally is to prove that a criminal defendant abused his accuser to say.

"Her credibility, with respect to both dockers, was irrevocably compromised by falsely reporting three incidents in the City of Rome and providing at least one false written statement to the Rome Police Department," said prosecutor Joshua Bauer.

Instead of prosecuting the case against correction officer and accused abuser Craig Lockwood, the district attorney's office would up asking two judges to drop all the charges after victim Savannah Loce Lockwood admitted she made it up. And while the final charge against Lockwood was dropped Monday, the damage is still done, and some fear it will hurt the system.
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Not only did Craig Lockwood not harm his estranged wife, his attorney says she assaulted him.

"She did stab him," said George Massoud, Lockwood's attorney. "She stabbed him in the shoulder."

Story here. Excerpt:

'A Smyrna woman has been charged with murder after police say she admitted lacing her husband's steroid injections with antifreeze.

State police say 44-year-old Jamie Baker was arrested on Thursday and charged with first-degree murder in the death of her husband, 42-year-old James Baker.

James Baker died in September. An autopsy revealed he had a chemical found in antifreeze in his system, and his death was ruled homicide by poisoning.
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Police searched the home again on Thursday, and police say Jamie Baker told officers that she had used a hypodermic syringe to extract antifreeze from a bottle and then injected it into her husband's bottles of steroids.'

Story here. Excerpt:

'A federal judge has ruled that a series of claims by a student-athlete against his school will go to trial after he was branded a rapist during a campus hearing even though a local prosecutor who investigated said the case should be dropped.

A ruling from U.S. District Judge Arthur Spiegel rejected the request by Xavier University to toss the entire case. It ordered a trial on claims by Dezmine Wells regarding breach of contract, intentional infliction of emotional distress, libel through injury to his personal reputation, his profession reputation and with malice, negligence and discrimination.

The school released only a statement on the dispute.

“We’re pleased that the court dismissed a number of the claims at this point,” the university said. “The court’s decision was based solely on the facts as alleged by Mr. Wells and his lawyers in their amended complaint, as is required by court rules at this early stage in the litigation. After the actual facts are disclosed to the court, we are confident that the result will vindicate Xavier.”

Catherine Sevcenko, an attorney, commented on the website of the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education that Wells was expelled for sexual assault “in spite of the local prosecutor’s public statements that the evidence did not support the accuser’s allegations.”
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WND has reported several times on the federal campaign to have campus disciplinary boards determine guilt based on a preponderance of the evidence, which is far lower that the “beyond a reasonable doubt” in America’s criminal justice system.
...

Article here. Excerpt:

'How does classifying most consensual sex as rape help rape victims?

As a lawyer who has handled rape and sexual harassment cases, I can’t imagine how. But this radical result is what some want to happen in California.

In endorsing a bill in the California legislature that would require “affirmative consent” before sex can occur on campus, the editorial boards of the Sacramento and Fresno Bee and the Daily Californian advocated that sex be treated as “sexual assault” unless the participants discuss it “out loud” before sex, and “demonstrate they obtained verbal ‘affirmative consent’ before engaging in sexual activity.”

Press release here. Excerpt:

'WASHINGTON / March 11, 2014 – Editorial writers are criticizing Senate Bill 967 for removing due process protections and encouraging false allegations. Stop Abusive and Violent Environments, a victim advocacy group, says the bill’s broad definitions would serve to dissipate scarce resources and make it harder for victims to be believed.

SB 967 would require students contemplating any form of “sexual activity” to express their prior consent through “clear, unambiguous actions.” SB 967 also encourages partners to reaffirm consent on a continuing basis throughout the sex act.

Article here. Excerpt:

'With a tidal wave of shared parenting legislation sweeping the nation, New York has a golden opportunity to dramatically improve the outcomes of millions of children in the state by passing shared parenting legislation. Senate Bills 949 and 5316 would establish “a presumption of shared parenting of minor children in matrimonial proceedings.” The Bills are now in the Children and Families committee, and they need your help now to move to a floor vote.

Story here. Reported by the NY Times, no less! Excerpt:

'The most important sexual assault prosecution in the military came apart on Monday. But cracks had appeared two months earlier in the same North Carolina military courtroom.

During a Jan. 7 pretrial hearing, the sole witness to accuse Brig. Gen. Jeffrey A. Sinclair of forced sex — charges that could imprison him for life — took the stand at Fort Bragg to explain how she had only recently found an old iPhone that contained evidence of their three-year affair.

What might have seemed an innocuous discovery was, to General Sinclair’s civilian lawyers, a major opportunity: The witness, a 34-year-old captain, had kept text and other communications with General Sinclair on her computer and on another cellphone, some of which bolstered their contention that the relationship was consensual. They suspected this newly discovered phone contained similar messages.

As the lead defense lawyer, Richard L. Scheff, a former federal prosecutor, questioned the captain, she told a precise, detailed and unequivocal story about when and where she found the phone, and what she did with it.
Photo

But according to a forensic expert hired by the defense, her story was not true — the phone had been charged and restarted two weeks earlier than she had claimed. The military’s own experts reached a similar conclusion later.
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This week, Colonel Pohl stopped the court-martial, sent the jury home and offered General Sinclair another chance to try to hammer out a plea agreement, presumably on lesser charges. The military, in its pursuit of General Sinclair, seemed overly concerned about politics and its public image, he suggested.

Article here. Excerpt:

'Female TSA officers are in such high demand to conduct pat-downs that they get pigeonholed as checkpoint workers and miss out on chances for other experience that would earn them promotions, a top member of Congress said Tuesday.

Female officers are required to pat down women travelers and also are preferred for pat-downs for children, which means that they end up conducting more than half of the pat-downs, even though they are just a third of the TSA workforce, said Rep. Nita Lowey, the top Democrat on the House Appropriations Committee.

“The result is that female TSOs are not getting the experience at other stations to be considered for promotion,” Ms. Lowey told Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson.

Mr. Johnson said the conundrum was news to him, but said he didn’t doubt it was possible.

Article here. Excerpt:

'A New Jersey court decision makes it clear, it may take two to tango but not to give birth.

“It’s well established under federal and state law that there is a privacy right when a woman’s in labor.”

Rutgers professor and family law expert Sally Goldfarb says a Passaic County judge made the right call last November in his decision, which was published this week, when he sided with pregnant woman that her ex-fiancee had no legal right to be in the delivery room.

“What this man was seeking to do was really interfere with the woman’s ability to exercise her own choices about giving birth in privacy and that to me falls outside of the rights that a father is legitimately entitled to.”

In the decision, believed to be the first of its kind, the father was also told he didn’t have a right to know when the baby was born.

Jeff Golden of Fathers & Children’s Equality says, “It’s a sad day for fathers, and for father’s and men’s rights.”