WSister Abhaya, a Catholic sister, was found dead in a water well in St Pius X Convent in Kottayam on 27 March 1992. Investigation into this death is by far the longest running murder investigation in the State of Kerala.
WThe Adass Israel School sex abuse scandal is a criminal case and extradition dispute regarding allegations of child sex abuse at a Jewish religious school in Melbourne, Australia. Victoria Police have laid 74 charges against a former principal, Malka Leifer, concerning conduct from 2003 to 2008. At least eight victims have come forward, and an investigation is ongoing. Leifer, a dual Israeli-Australian citizen, fled under suspicious circumstances shortly before a warrant could be issued, and she has remained in Israel and the West Bank since 2008, under varying levels of police and court supervision, pending the resolution of her extradition case. Allegations of further victims in the West Bank were made in June 2018.
WThe American Boychoir School was a boarding/day middle school located in Princeton, New Jersey, and the home of the American Boychoir. The school originated as the Columbus Boychoir in Columbus, Ohio. In 1950, the school relocated after receiving property in Princeton, New Jersey from the Lambert estate. The relocated school was renamed the American Boychoir School. It remained in this location until the sale of Albemarle in 2012. The school served boys in grades 4–8, many of whom came from across the United States and from many countries. It was one of only two boychoir boarding schools in the United States, the other being Saint Thomas Choir School in New York City. The school provided opportunity to boys from across the world to experience the rich world of music. The Boychoir toured across the contiguous United States, allowing students to gain diverse cultural perspective while performing at the professional level. The American Boychoir performed with numerous orchestras, frequently including the New York Philharmonic as well as the Philadelphia Symphony Orchestra.
WLisa Read Bloom is an American attorney known for advising Harvey Weinstein amid sexual abuse allegations and for representing women whose sexual harassment claims precipitated the firing of Bill O'Reilly from Fox News. Bloom founded and owns the Bloom Firm, a law firm that has represented clients including Kathy Griffin and Mischa Barton. Bloom was also the anchor of Lisa Bloom: Open Court, a two-hour live legal news program on truTV's In Session, from 2006 to 2009.
WCaldey Abbey is an abbey of the Trappists situated on Caldey Island off the coast of Pembrokeshire, Wales, south of Tenby.
WThe casting couch is a euphemism for the practice of soliciting sexual favors from a job applicant in exchange for employment in the entertainment industry, primarily acting roles. The practice is illegal in the United States. Predominantly male casting directors and film producers use the casting couch to extract sex from aspiring actors in Hollywood, Bollywood, Broadway, and other segments of the industry. The term casting couch originally referred to physical couches in the casting office, but is now a metonym for the phenomenon as a whole. Depictions of casting couch sexual encounters have also become a genre of pornography.
WCatholic Church sexual abuse cases are cases of child sexual abuse by Catholic priests, nuns and members of religious orders. In the 20th and 21st centuries, the cases have involved many allegations, investigations, trials, convictions, and revelations about decades of attempts by Church officials to cover up reported incidents. The abused include mostly boys but also girls, some as young as three years old, with the majority between the ages of 11 and 14. Criminal cases for the most part do not cover sexual harassment of adults. The accusations of abuse and cover-ups began to receive public attention during the late 1980s. Many of these cases allege decades of abuse, frequently made by adults or older youths years after the abuse occurred. Cases have also been brought against members of the Catholic hierarchy who covered up sex abuse allegations and moved abusive priests to other parishes, where abuse continued.
WAmerican comedian Bill Cosby has been the subject of publicized sexual assault allegations, with the earliest incidents allegedly taking place in the mid-1960s and his conviction for aggravated indecent assault happening in 2018. He has been accused by numerous women of rape, drug-facilitated sexual assault, sexual battery, child sexual abuse, and sexual misconduct. Assault allegations against Cosby became more public after a stand-up routine by comedian Hannibal Buress became popular in October 2014, alluding to Cosby's covert sexual misbehavior; thereafter, many additional claims were made. The dates of the alleged incidents have spanned from 1965 to 2008 in ten U.S. states and in one Canadian province.
WGirl 27 is a 2007 documentary film by writer/director David Stenn about the 1937 rape of dancer and sometime movie extra Patricia Douglas (1917–2003) at an M-G-M exhibitors' convention, the front-page news stories that followed, and the studio's subsequent cover-up of the crime. Also covered in the film are a similar assault on singer Eloise Spann and her subsequent suicide, and the better-known scandal involving actress Loretta Young and her "adopted" daughter Judy Lewis, the product of her affair with Clark Gable during the production of The Call of the Wild.
WThe Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse (IICSA) in England and Wales was announced by the British Home Secretary, Theresa May, on 7 July 2014. The inquiry was established to examine how the country's institutions handled their duty of care to protect children from sexual abuse.
WAn investigation into historic child abuse in Jersey started in the spring of 2007. Before that, social worker Simon Bellwood had made a complaint about a "'Dickensian' system" where children as young as 11 were routinely locked up for 24 hours or more in solitary confinement in a secure unit where he worked. The wider investigation into child abuse over several decades became public in November that year. It received international attention when police moved into Haut de la Garenne, then being used as a youth hostel.
WThe Kasur child sexual abuse scandal is a series of child sexual abuses that occurred in Hussain Khanwala village in Kasur District, Punjab, Pakistan from 2006 to 2014, culminating in a major political scandal in 2015. After the discovery of hundreds of video clips showing children performing forced sex acts, various Pakistani media organizations estimated that 280 to 300 children, most of them male, were victims of sexual abuse. The scandal involved an organized crime ring that sold child pornography to porn sites, and blackmailed and extorted relatives of the victims.
WBernard Francis Law was an American cardinal of the Roman Catholic Church. He was also known for covering up the molestation of children by priests under his watch. He served as Archbishop Emeritus of Boston, archpriest of the Basilica di Santa Maria Maggiore, and Cardinal Priest of Santa Susanna, which was the American Catholic church in Rome until 2017, when the American community was relocated to San Patrizio.
WIn November 2017, multiple women made allegations of sexual misconduct against Roy Moore, the Republican nominee in a U.S. Senate special election in Alabama scheduled for the following month. He is a former Alabama chief justice, and district attorney. Three women alleged that he had sexually assaulted them: two were minors at the time of these incidents, and Moore was then in his 30s. Six other women recalled Moore pursuing romantic relationships or engaging in inappropriate or unwanted behavior with them while they were between the ages of 16 and 22. The age of consent in Alabama is 16.
WThe Rotherham child sexual exploitation scandal consisted of the organised child sexual abuse that occurred in the town of Rotherham, South Yorkshire, Northern England from the late 1980s until the 2010s and the failure of local authorities to act on reports of the abuse throughout most of that period. Researcher Angie Heal, who was hired by local officials and warned them about child exploitation occurring between 2002 and 2007, has since described it as the "biggest child protection scandal in UK history". Evidence of the abuse was first noted in the early 1990s, when care home managers investigated reports that children in their care were being picked up by taxi drivers. From at least 2001, multiple reports passed names of alleged perpetrators, several from one family, to the police and Rotherham Council. The first group conviction took place in 2010, when five British-Pakistani men were convicted of sexual offences against girls aged 12–16. From January 2011 Andrew Norfolk of The Times pressed the issue, reporting in 2012 that the abuse in the town was widespread, and that the police and council had known about it for over ten years.
WJimmy Savile (1926–2011) was an English media personality who, during his lifetime, was well known in the United Kingdom for his eccentricities and was generally respected for his charitable work. He was knighted in 1990. In late 2012, almost a year after his death, reports surfaced that Savile had sexually abused hundreds of individuals throughout his life, with alleged male and female victims, ranging from prepubescent to adult.
WOn February 10, 2019, the Houston Chronicle and San Antonio Express-News published an investigative report into widespread sexual abuse within member churches of the Southern Baptist Convention. The report found since 1998, roughly 380 clergy, lay leaders and volunteers had faced allegations of sexual misconduct, leaving behind over 700 victims. The extent of misconduct is further complicated by work within the Southern Baptist Convention to move sex offenders to other communities and resist attempts to address the culture of abuse.
WSir Cyril Smith was a British serial sex offender and politician. A member of the Liberal Party, he was Member of Parliament (MP) for Rochdale from 1972 to 1992. After his death, numerous allegations of child sexual abuse by Smith, including many made during his lifetime, emerged, leading the police to believe he had been guilty of sex offences.
WDuring his career as a film producer, Harvey Weinstein, formerly of Miramax Films and The Weinstein Company (TWC), exploited his influential position to commit criminal sexual acts including rape.
WA series of allegations concerning the involvement of British politicians in cases of sexual harassment and assault arose in October and November 2017. Allegations were prompted by discussions among junior staff employed in the UK Parliament at Westminster following the Harvey Weinstein sexual abuse allegations in Hollywood earlier in October, and the subsequent rise of the #MeToo movement, but spread further to cover all the major political parties, including political figures beyond Westminster.
WYarl's Wood Immigration Removal Centre is a detention centre for foreign nationals prior to their deportation from the United Kingdom, one of 10 such centres currently in the UK. It is located near Milton Ernest in Bedfordshire, England, and is operated by Serco, which describes the place as "a fully contained residential centre housing adult women and adult family groups awaiting immigration clearance." Its population is, and has been, overwhelmingly female.