Washington state leads in child porn

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Washington’s not-so-little dirty secret
Police 'overwhelmed' as state leads the nation in child pornography
BY LEVI PULKKINEN, SEATTLEPI.COM STAFF Updated 1:34 pm, Wednesday, December 9, 2015
21





Seattle Police Department Detective Ian Polhemus sits with Bear, the department's electronics detecting dog. Bear, who joined the department's Internet Crimes Against Children team in August, hunts for hidden electronics during investigations into child pornography. Polhemus, a longtime investigator with the unit, is Bear's handler. Photo: GENNA MARTIN, SEATTLEPI.COM / SEATTLEPI.COM
Photo: GENNA MARTIN, SEATTLEPI.COM
IMAGE 1 OF 18 Seattle Police Department Detective Ian Polhemus sits with Bear, the department's electronics detecting dog. Bear, who joined the department's Internet Crimes Against Children team in August, hunts for hidden electronics during investigations into child pornography. Polhemus, a longtime investigator with the unit, is Bear's handler. less

Ronald Merideth had something to hide.
Detective Ian Polhemus knew where to find it.
Pieced together on Merideth's computer was a two-minute video. The one the Seattle detective was looking for showed the degradation of a little girl, a 9-year-old bound with rope and sexually assaulted on camera.
The computer in Merideth’s Kirkland office was one of thousands in Washington known to be housing child pornography. Merideth was exceptional in only one respect -- he got caught.
Today, Washington law enforcement agents can pick out more than 17,000 devices that appear to be trading child pornography in the state. They know how to find the traders. What they lack are the resources -- detectives, prosecutors -- to bring them down.
Beyond those traders, hundreds of leads pour into a small group detectives monitoring all of Washington, which by one key measure leads the nation in child pornography. Overwhelmed, investigators try to target offenders hurting children most directly.
The images are like autopsy photos. They’re evidence of a crime. And they’re horrific.
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“There are some sections of the depictions world that are unimaginable, really, on any level,” said Cecelia Gregson, a state prosecutor who for two years has been hauling some of the Seattle area’s most egregious offenders into federal court.
“It’s not like you happen into it,” the King County senior deputy prosecutor continued. “You don’t happen into seeing a 6-year-old being raped by an adult man. And if you did happen into, and were as mortified as a normal person might be, you wouldn’t repeatedly click on it.”
But thousands do, many without even bothering to hide their crimes. And – despite desperate work of the handful of detectives and prosecutors who’ve taken on the heartbreaking burden – most aren’t paying a price.
A planned expansion of a Seattle Police Department-led unit tasked with policing child porn aims to change that. Gregson’s initiative, which has brought federal power to bear against two dozen King County suspects, is rolling forward.
‘These numbers have just overwhelmed us’
Crimes tend to find their moment. Methamphetamine gets the spotlight, then human trafficking, heroin, fraud.
All are undeniably deserving of prosecution. Each creates an injustice, a victim. Each might be cured if enough money, power and wisdom were brought to bear.
As a crime, child pornography’s moment has yet to arrive.
It occupies a space alongside other crimes that tend to prompt silence rather than outrage. Its victims are among the world’s weakest people – children – while its perpetrators can be anyone at all.
“We think about Seattle; it has myriad issues,” said Mike Edwards, the Seattle Police Department captain leading the state’s Internet Crimes Against Children unit. “What’s the flavor of the week, of the month? It is that rash of car prowls, that rash of burglaries. …
“Whatever it is, it becomes something that garners a lot of attention. And if it garners a lot of attention, it garners a lot of resources. That’s just how it works.”
Edwards is fired up after a recent win in the Washington Legislature that should deliver an additional $1.3 million to the effort.
Which is welcome, because, as an industry, child pornography is booming.
In recent months, coaches, teachers and one aspiring police officer have drawn child pornography charges in King County. Subway spokesman Jared Fogle’s child pornography-fueled fall made national news; Bear, the police dog who helped bring him down by searching his home, now works for the Seattle Police Department.
Edwards said his six detectives now sometimes receive more than 100 tips a week from the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children. The most concerning statistics relate to peer-to-peer file-sharing networks like BitTorrent, which allow users to directly exchange files.
Investigators say Washington ranks among the top five states when it comes to peer-to-peer network users who are trading child pornography. The other leading states are California, Florida, New York and Texas. Per capita, they say, Washington is No. 1.
At any given time, police in Washington have more than 17,000 potential leads on the most popular peer-to-peer networks. That number has been as high as 25,000, with each lead representing a device that appears to be moving child pornography. Currently, only eight investigators in the state are in a position to chase down those peer-to-peer leads.
“These numbers have just overwhelmed us, with the staffing levels that we have,” Edwards said.
“We need to do more,” the captain continued. “We just don’t have the resources.”
And those numbers under-represent the problem in several respects. They only account for child pornography offenders using peer-to-peer networks, and then only the most popular networks. They also miss child pornography that hasn’t been spotted by law enforcement.
Brian Levine, a University of Massachusetts-Amherst computer science professor, has been researching how child pornography moves through peer-to-peer networks for six years. He said the trading is basically done in public. Investigators who know where to look have no trouble finding hundreds of thousands of users moving child pornography.
“So many people do this, and they do it in public,” said Levine, part of a research group working closely with police to build investigatory tools for law enforcement. “The real challenge for police is figuring out who to arrest. … You want to save a child. That’s the real goal.”
There’s no consensus as to how common it is for child pornography collectors to commit other sex crimes. Recent studies indicate that anywhere from half to four-fifths of convicted child pornography offenders committed other sex offenses. About 10 percent have been convicted of other sex crimes.
What’s clear is that the children are often attacked by those they should be able to trust. That betrayal compounds the harm.
Speaking at her office at the Maleng Regional Justice Center in Kent, Gregson recalled a young boy abused by a parent.
“This little guy, I just felt so sorry for him,” Gregson said. “He really loved that parent, even though we know what happened from what’s on the tapes.”
Opinions differ on what drives the collectors. Some are child abusers trying to relive their crimes. Some were abused themselves. Some say they’re caught in something of an addiction.
“They purport that there’s a compulsion,” Gregson said, who added that she wasn't sure whether to believe this.
“I don’t know,” she said. “It’s a self-report, right? … How reliable is it? You’ll never really know.”
For their part, the suspects tend to talk once detectives come calling.
“Most of them, in their mind, they kinda know it is wrong but they don’t think it’s that wrong,” Edwards said. “They want to explain themselves to somebody. Because they figure if they can explain it, you’ll understand it and realize that it’s really not so bad.”
Survivors waiting on Congress
“Every day people are trading and sharing videos of me as a little girl being raped in the most sadistic ways. They don’t know me, but they have seen every part of me. They are being entertained by my shame and pain.”
That’s how “Vicky” described her life as a child pornography survivor.
Her father started raping her when she was 10. He recorded the assaults on video, taking requests from fans while terrorizing his daughter. He’s locked up now, but the recordings he made roam free.
“Vicky” was 17 when she learned that the videos her father made were circulating. In a letter to the court, she said her “world came crashing down that day.”
“They are trading my trauma around like treats at a party, but it is far from innocent,” she said in court papers. “It feels like I am being raped by each and every one of them.”
Child pornography collectors sometimes fixate on the boys and girls pictured in the horrific videos, said Carol Hepburn, a Seattle attorney representing several child pornography survivors. Some of the offenders catalog and organize their collections. Some chat online among themselves, casually discussing the abuse.
“It’s a very hurtful thing to know that the offenders are out there, and to know that there are people … getting pleasure from these exceedingly painful moments,” Hepburn said.
Hepburn, a former state deputy prosecutor, has been representing clients abused on camera since 2008. “Vicky” was one of them.
While they often need psychological and educational support, child pornography survivors aren’t easily able to collect from the men and women who trade images of their abuse.
In most criminal cases, defendants are ordered to repay their victims for the harm they’ve caused. But restitution remains an uncertain thing for child pornography survivors.
At present, courts have the impossible task of untangling the harm caused by the original abuse and hurt caused by those watching the recordings. The burden on survivors is tremendous.
“There are toddlers and infants that are abused and are the subjects of child porn,” Hepburn said. “How is that little one, when they grow up, ever going to disentangle … the distribution of the images from the fact that their father, their brother, their uncle abused them? So often the abuse is all about creating the videos so that the two issues are inseparable.”
Earlier this year, the U.S. Senate unanimously passed a bill that would make it easier for child pornography survivors to collect. The House of Representatives has failed to move on the bill, the Amy & Vicky Restitution Act.
“You’d think that they could all get behind helping child abuse victims and iron out their differences in approach,” Hepburn said.

Two Washington representatives – Republican Dave Reichert and Democrat Suzan DelBene – sit on the House committee that could act on the bill. Both are sponsors; their aides say they’re waiting for the committee chair to put it to a vote.
Levine said many companies are trying to address the problem. Industry leaders – Facebook, Yahoo, Google – all have people working to fight Internet-based child exploitation. Still, the images and videos persist online.
“There’s no tool that will protect victims,” the computer scientist said. “I can’t deploy a security patch and fix the problem.”
'Take these people off the street'
Police officers don’t join up to spend their days looking at child pornography. It’s not a job for the recruiting poster.
The work is draining and damaging. Detectives comb through the most disturbing images man has made. Then they meet the kids.
“We’re asking these people to do some pretty incredible stuff,” said Edwards, seated behind his desk at a Seattle Police Department office building near Georgetown.
“You never forget those images,” he continued. “Once you meet that child it brings a whole new level of reality. … These are real live people, and we end up meeting them.”
SPD spends $1.5 million annually to be the host of the state’s Internet Crimes Against Children unit. Additional state funding, won earlier in 2015 after a push by advocates in Olympia, will add another $1.3 million to the unit’s coffers during the next two years.
The SPD effort compliments investigations led or facilitated by the FBI, Homeland Security Investigations and the U.S. Secret Service.
Until November, the Secret Service’s local leader on the issue was Special Agent Bryan Molnar. His work helped put away David McMillen, a teacher caught secretly recording a 14-year-old student.
Molnar and others with the Secret Service also made the case against Benjamin Franklin, an Algona child rapist who recorded his assaults on two young boys. A Secret Service review of Franklin’s electronics uncovered videos showing the abuse. Franklin, 39, pleaded guilty to child rape charges in state court after learning from Gregson that he might face federal charges.
Robert Kierstead, special agent-in-charge for the Secret Service’s Northwest office, praised Molnar as “a tremendous asset” during his five years in Seattle. Molnar was honored recently with the Homeland Security Department Secretary’s Exemplary Service Award before receiving a promotional transfer.
“The way Bryan Molnar sees it, he wants to take these people off the street,” Kierstead said. “That’s what his motivation is, and he has no issue doing it.”
Edwards said he and others are working to figure out how to select detectives who’ll best be able to police child pornography. Detectives usually last five to seven years before they need to move on to other investigations.
Their work is both delicate and urgent. Investigators fear for the child they could save but won’t reach in time.
“There unfortunately is the dark side. And that’s where we live,” Edwards said. “We’re there to protect and rescue kids.”
“Every one of the cases we look at, we have it in the back of our minds that this might be someone about to abuse, that we have to get on it,” the captain continued. “But we know we can’t. We’re overwhelmed.”
Make video –
Edwards envisions a robust cross-jurisdictional unit with offices around the state, funded in part by the new appropriation from Olympia. A Seattle office is slated to come online first, followed by one in the Tri-Cities. Others will follow.
The current head count at the unit is six full-time detectives, a sergeant, Edwards, Bear and Bear’s handler, Polhemus. Edwards wants to grow the operation to 20 dedicated detectives statewide and five forensic investigators.
Delving the darkness
For two years, Gregson has been splitting her time between the King County Prosecutor’s Office, where she prosecutes crimes against children, and federal court. There, as a special U.S. attorney, she’s able to elevate state investigations into the federal system, where resources are more plentiful and penalties are often more severe. The federal system is also better equipped to monitor offenders after they are released from prison.
Gregson became cross-designated in January 2014 after something of a child pornography boom in King County. On her watch, 23 men and one woman have been moved into federal jurisdiction or pleaded guilty to state charges knowing they could face federal prosecution. All are accused of making child pornography or are convicted sex offenders.
"We will always find a prison cell for this type of offender," King County Prosecutor Dan Satterberg said Tuesday. "We are grateful to the police and prosecutors who have to delve into the darkness of this criminal subculture to bring these men to justice."
“Partnering with county prosecutors to battle those who sexually abuse and exploit children is key to broadening our collective reach and effectively using limited resources,” said Annette L. Hayes, U.S. Attorney for Western Washington.
Hayes said Gregson’s assignment to the U.S. Attorney’s Office ensures close coordination across all levels of law enforcement investigating Internet-enabled crimes against children.
Gregson’s future as a special federal prosecutor isn't entirely certain, as someone has to find the money to pay for her time working with federal authorities. Prosecutor's Office spokesman Dan Donohoe said he expects Gregson will continue her work.
Thanks to that work, Merideth’s future is all but assured.
Raiding Merideth’s Kirkland office earlier this year, investigators found the child rape video they knew was there and many more. Meredith, a film production technician, has since admitted to all of it.
Because Merideth was previously convicted of a sex crime, Gregson was able to move his case into U.S. District Court. He pleaded guilty to federal charges in late November and now faces a mandatory 10-year prison term.
Seattlepi.com reporter Levi Pulkkinen can be reached at 206-448-8348 or levipulkkinen@seattlepi.com. Follow Levi on Twitter at twitter.com/levipulk.

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FBI: Washington sex tourist paid hungry kids for child porn
‘If you want me to send you money for food you better get online’
By LEVI PULKKINEN, SEATTLEPI.COM STAFF Published 12:25 pm, Tuesday, August 2, 2016
5






FBI agents recently raided the rural Snohomish County home of Joe Grubbs. Grubbs, most recently of Camano Island, now faces federal child pornography charges. 
FBI agents recently raided the rural Snohomish County home of Joe Grubbs. Grubbs, most recently of Camano Island, now faces federal child pornography charges.

A Washington state man accused of paying impoverished Filipino women to sexually abuse their children on camera now faces federal charges.
Federal prosecutors in Seattle claim Joseph Grubbs spent years exchanging sexually explicit messages with mothers abroad and arranging to rape their children. Grubbs, 67, was targeted by the FBI in December after a tip from Yahoo.
Company security flagged an exchange between an email belonging to Grubbs and a woman in the Philippines, an Everett-based FBI agent said in charging papers. Investigators claim the woman sent Grubbs sexually explicit photos of a 10- to 12-year-old girl. Investigators claim to have tracked the exchange to Grubbs’ Stanwood home.
As it turned out, Stanwood police had received a tip five years before that Grubbs had child pornography at his home. According to charging papers, the tipster told police Grubbs had traveled to the Philippines in November 2009, and that he had child pornography on his computer.
Writing the court, the FBI special agent said images recovered during the investigation appear to have been made in the Philippines. The agent claimed Grubbs was involved in an extensive online chat with other Yahoo users interested in child abuse and child pornography.

As early as May 2012, Grubbs praised in graphic terms sexually explicit photos of an infant, the FBI agent said in charging papers. Grubbs is alleged to have arranged to meet one girl, who described herself as 13, during a visit to the Philippines.
During their text exchange, the girl asked Grubbs to “pay for me … just for foods for my family,” according to charging documents.
“I want to see you on cam first honey,” Grubbs replied, according to charging papers.

“If you want me to send you money for food,” he is alleged to have continued, “you better get online.”
Investigators claim the girl went on to offer a 9-year-old family member to Grubbs.
In another chat exchange months later, Grubbs discussed the 13-year-old’s genitals and asked her to send him pornographic photos of herself, the FBI agent continued.
Other chat exchanges recovered during the investigation follow a similar line. In one, a woman who appears to be arranging a child sex show for Grubbs explains she pays girls about $6 to have sex on camera. Grubbs is alleged to have offered to pay the woman $27 to have sex with a girl during a visit to the Philippines.
Travel records show Grubbs regularly visited the Philippines between 1995 and March 2016.
On July 14, FBI agents looking for Grubbs found him living in an RV on Camano Island. According to charging papers, Grubbs claimed he had a second home in the Philippines.
Investigators searched Grubb’s home on July 26. He was arrested and has since been charged with child pornography offenses in U.S. District Court at Seattle. He remains jailed and is expected to return to court Aug. 10 for a preliminary hearing.
MORE FROM SEATTLEPI.COM: Child pornography: Washington's not-so-little direty secret
Seattlepi.com reporter Levi Pulkkinen can be reached at 206-448-8348 or levipulkkinen@seattlepi.com.
Hearst Newspapers© Copyright 2017 Hearst Seattle Media, LLC

Child porn bust

Fight the New DrugFight the New DrugFight the New Drug
400 Children Rescued/348 Adults Arrested After Police Take Down $4 Million Child Porn Empire
DECEMBER 2, 2016
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Cover image: (ERNEST DOROSZUK/Toronto Sun)
Some may find the following post to be disturbing. Reader discretion advised.
Nearly 400 children have been rescued and 348 adults arrested following an “extraordinary” international child pornography investigation in Canada, according to a report by NBC News.
The three-year undercover project, named Project Spade, began back in 2010 when Toronto police officers first made contact with a man who had been sharing “very graphic images” of child sexual abuse.
What they eventually found was a full blown child porn production and distribution company in Toronto that was distributing their content online. The site was run by 42-year old Brian Way and sold and distributed images of child exploitation to people across the world.
The head of Toronto’s Sex Crimes Unit said they enlisted the help of the United States Postal Inspection Service since many of the videos were being exported to the U.S. and began a joint investigation. After a seven-month long investigation, officers executed search warrants across the city of Toronto including at the business of Brian Way.
It was there that investigators catalogued hundreds of thousands of images and videos of “horrific sexual acts against very young children, some of the worst they have ever viewed,” said the lead investigator at a recent press conference.
Police seized over 45 terabytes of data from the $4-million business that distributed child porn to over 50 counties including Australia, Spain, Mexico, Sweden and Greece. As a result of the investigation thus far, 50 people were arrested in Ontario, 58 in other parts of Canada, 76 in the United States, and 164 internationally.
What was most alarming was that many of the arrests were of people who worked with or closely interacted with children. Among those arrested were 40 school teachers, nine doctors and nurses, six law enforcement personnel, nine pastors and priests and three foster parents.
In one particularly horrific example of those arrested, police found over 350,000 images and over 9,000 videos of child sexual abuse in the home of a retired Canadian school teacher. Some of the images were of children known to the man and he was also charged with sexually abusing a child relative.
The inspector said an indispensable aspect to the success of the operation and the rescue of 386 children from child exploitation was the expansive cooperation between Toronto police and organizations worldwide.
“[This] confirms that when we work together regardless of the borders that divide us we can successfully take down those who not only prey on our most vulnerable but also profit from it.
– Read the original article on NBC News here.
Child pornography has become more prevalent and larger than we would ever like to imagine. It is said to be a $3 billion dollar industry globally, generating massive amounts of money for people willing to exploit young children. While federal agencies work endlessly to fight this global issue and rescue the children affected, the people who actually get caught for the crime are just the tip of the iceberg.
Child pornography has been expanding virally on the web for years and the material is only getting worse. In 2008, Internet Watch Foundation found 1,536 individual child abuse domains. Every week there are over 20,000 images of child pornography posted on the web (National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children, 2003). Furthermore, U.S Customs Services estimates that illegal child pornography is offered by approximately 100,000 websites.
To report an incident involving the possession, distribution, receipt, or production of child pornography, file a report on the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children (NCMEC)’s website at www.cybertipline.com , or call 1-800-843-5678.
What YOU Can Do
This is a huge problem in our society and we can’t let it slip into the background. SHARE this article to take a stand and raise awareness on this global issue.
– Grab a tee and rep the Porn Kills Love movement:
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PHOTO ILLUSTRATION BY BRIGETTE SUPERNOVA/THE DAILY BEAST
THE ONE PERCENT
The Billionaire Pedophile Who Could Bring Down Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton
BRANDY ZADROZNY
06.29.16 10:00 PM ET
Editor's note: This article has been updated to reflect the withdrawal of Virginia Roberts Guiffre's allegations against Alan Dershowitz and the striking of the allegations from the court record by a federal judge.
For Jeffrey Epstein and his famous friends, the Aughts were a simpler time, when the businessmen, academics, and celebrities who counted themselves among the playboy philanthropist’s inner circle could freely enjoy the fruits of his extreme wealth and connections.
Epstein’s little black book and flight logs read like a virtual Who’s Who: Bill Clinton, Donald Trump, Larry Summers, Kevin Spacey, Prince Andrew, and Naomi Campbell all hitched rides on Epstein’s private planes. Socialites and distinguished scientists went to visit Epstein’s island in St. Thomas, and cavorted at epic dinner parties at his palatial townhouse—then the largest privately owned residence in New York, as he liked to brag. There, they picked at elaborate meals catered by celebrity chefs like Rocco DiSpirito, marvelled at Epstein’s opulent decor, and noted the pack of very, very young model-types with whom Epstein always seemed to surround himself.

But a darker story was going on underneath the glamour. In 2008, Epstein was convicted of soliciting sex from an underage girl and quietly paid settlements to scores of alleged victims who said he serially molested them. But the girls kept coming out of the woodwork—in 2014, another young woman filed a lawsuit claiming that Epstein used her as a sex slave for his powerful friends—and that she’d been at parties on his private island with former President Clinton.
And just last week, yet another “Jane Doe” filed a suit in New York accusing Epstein and Donald Trump of raping her at a series of sex parties when she was only 13.
Watch: Casey Anthony's Former Lawyer Is Taking On A Rape Case Against Trump
Attorney Cheney Mason helped acquit Casey Anthony. Now, he's signed on to help one of Donald Trump's rape accusers.

Trump has denied Jane Doe’s claims and his reps have said he barely knew Epstein—even though New York media in the ’90s regularly chronicled his comings-and-goings at Epstein’s Upper East Side palace, and even though Epstein had 14 private numbers for Trump and his family in his little black book. Meanwhile, Bill and Hillary Clinton have remained mum about their ties to the Palm Beach pedophile—despite evidence that shows Bill was one of the most famous and frequent passengers on Epstein’s “Lolita Express” and that Epstein donated money to the Clinton Foundation even after his conviction.

For months, talking heads have wondered whether Trump would use Epstein and his girls as a weapon against Bill and Hillary Clinton.
Now, with the latest federal lawsuit against Trump himself, it seems the notorious financier has become a serious liability for both campaigns.
***

Less than a year before Florida police began investigating Jeffrey Epstein for the alleged rape and abuse of scores of young girls, the questionable billionaire responded to a call on Edge—an online club where navel-gazing intellectuals and academics meet to pose questions to one another—for a “bit of wisdom, some rule of nature... that you’ve noticed in the universe that might as well be named after you.”
“Epstein’s First Law,” he wrote, “Know when you are winning.”
“Epstein’s Second Law: The key question is not what can I gain but what do I have to lose.”
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What the 63-year-old Ralph Lauren lookalike had to lose was his perverted double life. According to law-enforcement officials and alleged victims, between the years 1998 and 2007—and possibly even earlier—he ran a particularly vile pyramid scheme that involved paying minors around $200 at a time to perform sexual massages nearly every day and then recruit even younger girls to do the same. (“The more you do, the more you are paid,” one said.) During these massages, girls as young as 13 told police they were instructed to get undressed. Epstein would masturbate or penetrate them, they said—with his finger, or a vibrator, or his allegedly egg-shaped penis.
By the time Epstein was arrested in 2008, police in Palm Beach County, Florida, had already spent months monitoring his movements, rifling through his trash, and interviewing potential victims and witnesses. Police reported to prosecutors that they had gathered enough evidence to charge the money manager with several felonies: lewd and lascivious molestation and four counts of unlawful sexual activity with a minor. Epstein’s freedom, his wealth, his little black book full of famous folk—including princes, presidents, and prime ministers—all were seemingly at stake.
So Epstein did what the mega-rich do in these situations: hired star attorneys Gerald Lefcourt and Alan Dershowitz, who defended their client vigorously, reportedly having witnesses followed and discrediting the alleged victims by offering their MySpace pages as evidence of supposed drug use and scandalous behavior.
Prosecutors said Epstein’s dream team made successful prosecution unlikely. “Our judgment in this case, based on the evidence known at the time, was that it was better to have a billionaire serve time in jail, register as a sex offender, and pay his victims restitution than risk a trial with a reduced likelihood of success,” U.S. Attorney Alex Acosta explained in a 2011 letter.
And so, despite a decade of alleged serial sexual abuse and rape of an unknowable number of girls, some as many as 100 times according to court filings, the notoriously secretive financier was offered a deal. For the alleged systematic victimization of young girls—most of whom were plucked by Epstein’s assistants from Palm Beach’s poorer neighborhoods and groomed to adore or acquiesce to him—he was slapped with a 2008 conviction on a single charge of soliciting a minor; and sentenced to an 18-month stay in a Palm Beach county jail—of which he served only 13 months and was allowed to leave six days out of every week for “work release.” He also agreed to a few dozen confidential, out-of-court payoffs to his accusers, the most recent of which was finalized in 2011.
Epstein’s “potential co-conspirators,” as the U.S. Attorney called them—women who allegedly procured girls for Epstein—also received immunity from prosecution as a condition of the 2007 agreement that enraged the local police force for its leniency. As of 2015, according to The Guardian, two of these women had changed their names, and were operating businesses out of a building owned by Epstein’s brother, where it was alleged in court documents that Epstein had housed young women.
Though Epstein must register as a sex offender for life, and arguably suffer the world’s most revolting Google presence, he has seemingly retained his collection of elite academic and media friends as well as his fortune. Since his release in 2009, Epstein has gone about his business, running a mysterious money management firm (clients unknown, income unknown, investments and activities unknown) from his private 70-acre island in the U.S. Virgin Islands and spending time at his Uptown stone mansion. The palace was gifted to Epstein, some say, by its previous owner—Epstein’s guardian angel and the founder of The Limited Inc., Leslie Wexner.
From his plush perch, Epstein continues to dismiss any notions that he should be viewed as the child rapist that victims and Florida police say he is.
“I’m not a sexual predator, I’m an ‘offender,’” he told the New York Post in 2011, shortly after a New York judge classified him as a level 3 offender, or “a threat to public safety.”
“It’s the difference between a murderer and a person who steals a bagel,” Epstein said.
But for the wealthy and famous in Epstein’s orbit, his conviction has meant suspicion by association.
In December 2014, just as the Palm Beach lawsuits were winding down, another alleged victim emerged and her claims were salacious: Epstein, she said, had loaned her out as an underage sex slave to his famous friends—including Britain’s Prince Andrew and Epstein defense attorney Dershowitz (both men denied the charges). Coming forward in Britain’s Daily Mail in 2011, Virginia Roberts Guiffre—called Jane Doe #3 in a related lawsuit (PDF)—claimed that Epstein and his “girlfriend,” alleged madame Ghislaine Maxwell, forced her to have sex with the pair’s powerful pals and gather intel that Epstein could later use. In court documents, Guiffre testified, “Epstein and Maxwell also told me that they wanted me to produce things for them in addition to performing sex on the men. They told me to pay attention to the details about what the men wanted so I could report back to them.”
Guiffre noted that Epstein appeared to be collecting information on Prince Andrew—particularly on his alleged foot fetish—and claimed, “Epstein also trafficked me for sexual purposes to other powerful men, including politicians and powerful business executives. Epstein required me to describe the sexual events I had with these men presumably so that he could potentially blackmail them. I am still very fearful of these men today.”
A judge threw out Guiffre’s motion in 2015, but Guiffre stands by her claims and is suing Ghislaine Maxwell, whom she claims acted as Epstein’s madam.
Meanwhile, the men named by Guiffre seem eager for her to go away. “It’s as if I’ve been waterboarded for 15 months,” Dershowitz told the Boston Globe after the settlement of a defamation case related to Guiffre’s claims. “This has taken a terrible toll on my family, on my friends…” Buckingham Palace has also denied the allegations against Prince Andrew, calling them “categorically untrue.”
UPDATE: This April, Giuffre's lawyers withdrew her allegations against Dershowitz and said that it was a "mistake" to have filed the accusations in the first place. A federal judge later struck her allegations against Dershowitz from the court record. At Dershowitz's request, Louis Freeh, the former head of the FBI, also conducted an independent investigation of her claims and published a statement noting, "Our investigation found no evidence to support the accusations of sexual misconduct against Professor Dershowitz."
In her lawsuit, Guiffre had claimed that during trips to Epstein’s private island, she'd also encountered another very famous person: former President Bill Clinton. Guiffre alleges the former U.S. president visited Epstein’s “Orgy Island” when there were underage girls present, but added that she never had sex with him and never saw him have sex with any of the young women.
Still, it’s these sorts of allegations that have journalists and Clinton-haters circling. Just last month, pundits on MSNBC’s Morning Joe were speculating about Bill Clinton’s oft-discussed friendship with Epstein and whether it would be the go-to play for a Trump campaign looking to combat Hillary Clinton’s claims that Trump is bad for women.
Requests for comment to Hillary Clinton’s campaign and the Clinton Foundation were not returned.
The former president, who flew on the “The Lolita Express” at least 26 times from 2001 to 2003, has never addressed his ties with Epstein, a onetime major Democratic donor, according to Federal Election Commission records, who also gave millions to the Clinton Foundation even after his arrest for abusing underage girls. “I invest in people—be it politics or science. It’s what I do,” Epstein has reportedly said to friends.
“There’s a 100 percent chance [Trump] is going there,” said former McCain strategist Steve Schmidt on Morning Joe, referring to Clinton’s friendship with the pervy moneyman.
***
Still, Trump may not want to actually “go there” in light of the new federal lawsuit against him.
Just last week, Trump’s own connections to Epstein made headlines when a Jane Doe claimed that the presumptive Republican nominee and his financier pal raped her on several occasions when she was 13 years old.
The allegations are explosive. And the circumstances surrounding them are very, very strange.
According to the complaint, filed in a Manhattan federal court, one of Epstein’s assistants approached Jane Doe as she waited for a bus at the New York Port Authority terminal and offered the teenager money and contacts that could lead to a modeling contract if she came to a party at Epstein’s house. Jane Doe says she attended several parties at Epstein’s Upper East Side mansion, and supposedly had sexual contact with Donald Trump at four of them. The fourth and final time she attended a party with Trump, she alleges he tied her to a bed with pantyhose, raped her, then beat her and threatened to kill her and her family if she told a soul.
This is the second time the woman has brought a suit against Trump and Epstein. The first, which she filed herself this April in California using the name Katie Johnson, was dismissed for failure to bring a claim under the civil-rights law under which she had filed suit. Calls to the phone number listed on the original suit were never answered, with no way to leave a voicemail. The plaintiff’s reported address in Twentynine Palms was a one-bedroom, one-bath home belonging to 72-year-old David Stacey, who had died on Oct. 9, and public records show no evidence of a Katie Johnson living at the property. Neighbors told RadarOnline that squatters had overrun the home while Stacey was hospitalized, and a real-estate agent reported the home had been turned over to the bank by April.
“The allegations are not only categorically false, but disgusting at the highest level and clearly framed to solicit media attention or, perhaps, are simply politically motivated,” Trump told RadarOnline, responding to the original lawsuit. “There is absolutely no merit to these allegations. Period.”
The new complaint charges that Trump’s denial amounts to defamation. This time, Johnson also has a declaration from a woman who claims to be a corroborating witness, known in the suit as Tiffany Doe. According to her statement, Tiffany was 22 when she lured Johnson to Epstein’s home and witnessed Johnson’s alleged rape firsthand.
Johnson has a number of non-anonymous supporters, though it’s a cast of characters who do little to allay Trump’s assertion that her claim was brought solely to influence the election.
According to a lengthy article on the site Jezebel, some eight months before Johnson filed her California lawsuit against Epstein and Trump, a man named Al Taylor—who claimed to be the “PR person” for something called the Erotic Heritage Museum in Las Vegas—reached out to a reporter at Gawker to shop a video recording of Johnson and her rape story. Taylor, who identified himself to The Daily Beast as “a friend” to Johnson, claims to have met her at a party where she revealed her alleged childhood assault by Trump. In a video published in part on Jezebel, a woman claiming to be Katie Johnson appears—wearing a blond wig, her face pixelated and her voice disguised. In it, she details the allegations of rape.
When The Daily Beast asked Taylor for a copy of the video, Taylor suggested it was still for sale. “I heard it would be worth $1 million,” Taylor said, claiming the proceeds from the sale would go to Johnson’s protection.
“We’ve got her in hiding,” he said. 
Taylor has coincidentally been the subject of Epstein-related news before. In 2011, Taylor, at first freelance producing for The Jerry Springer Show then working alone, claimed to have made a million-dollar deal with Casey Anthony for an interview after the Florida woman’s acquittal in the murder of her 2-year-old daughter. When the interview didn’t happen, Taylor retained the services of Spencer Kuvin, a Palm Beach lawyer who also represented three Epstein victims. Taylor says he met Kuvin during an attempt to interview his Epstein clients. They settled with Epstein out of court and declined to be interviewed by Taylor.
But Taylor wasn’t the only party working to get the tape and Katie Johnson’s story to the media. According to Jezebel, Steve Baer, described in National Review as “a conservative activist and major, if secretive, donor to the conservative movement,” lobbied their reporter to publish Johnson’s claims. Baer is also, according to Jezebel, the father of Chandler Smith, an Ohio woman who happens to be the co-founder of an organization called Vote Trump Get Dumped, a campaign that urges ladies to withhold sex from Trump supporters. “Until Trump is defeated, we don’t date, sleep with, or canoodle with Trump supporters,” the group’s manifesto reads.
When Johnson’s case was thrown out in California, Taylor says he began looking for an attorney to file a new case for his “friend.” They approached Brad Edwards, the lawyer who has represented a number of Epstein victims through settlements—and who is now representing Virginia Roberts Guiffre in her claim against Epstein’s former girlfriend Ghislaine Maxwell as well as four alleged victims in the case against the federal government.
“I will say I’ve never represented [Johnson] and I won’t be representing her,” Edwards told The Daily Beast.
Edwards couldn’t comment on the conversations he had with Johnson or her representatives, citing attorney-client privilege. Concerning Trump’s involvement in Epstein’s illicit affairs, Edwards said he hadn’t seen any evidence that would implicate the GOP nominee and described Trump as “extremely helpful and honest,” during questioning.
When Edwards declined to take the case, Taylor told the website GossipExtra they were shopping for representation. That’s how Johnson’s current attorney, Tom Meagher, says he found his client.
Meagher is a patent attorney in New Jersey who openly admits, “I've never taken on accusations like this,” but says he was drawn to Johnson’s story and believes her “100 percent.” In an effort to get media attention for Johnson’s case, Meagher attended a May fundraiser in Lawrenceville, New Jersey—thrown to pay off the debt incurred by Chris Christie’s failed presidential campaign, and one at which Donald Trump spoke. Described as “a protester” by a local reporter, Meagher confirms he was removed by security after holding up a sign that read: “Ask Trump About Katie Johnson.” 
“I don’t have a view on the race,” Meagher now tells The Daily Beast. “I did before the matter, but now I’m apolitical so I can focus on my client.”
Concerning the timing of the lawsuit, Meagher says: “Of course, she does not want her rapist to be president.”
Despite several requests, The Daily Beast was not able to speak with Katie Johnson or Tiffany Doe. When asked whether any evidence of their claims existed outside of the Doe declarations, Taylor said Tiffany kept a journal of Epstein contacts. “She has all the goods,” Taylor said, but would not elaborate and said future names would only be released in response to a scandal on par with Donald Trump’s political ascent.
But Mike Fisten, a retired Miami-Dade homicide detective who worked as a private investigator in several Epstein-related cases, is skeptical about the new claims.
Fisten says Epstein had in effect two lives: “a business life and deviant pedphile life.” To find out which friends were involved in which life, Fisten carried a book with photos of Epstein’s contacts. In hundreds of interviews with hundreds of witnesses, he said no one has ever identified Trump as being involved in any kind of sexual activity with underage girls. In fact, Fisten recalls learning in the early 2000s that members of Trump’s private Palm Beach club, Mar-a-Lago, complained that Epstein was often accompanied by very young girls–“a different girl every week”—each of whom he would refer to as “his niece.” Fisten says he offered to look at Tiffany Doe’s book to vet her free of charge, but Taylor and Meagher declined.
Emails to the Trump Organization and the campaign for this story were not returned, but Trump’s attorney Alan Garten has repeatedly denied any relationship between his client and Epstein, other than Epstein’s Mar-a-Lago membership.
Still, it’s clear that Trump’s association with Epstein runs deeper than just pool days at Mar-a-Lago.
“I’ve known Jeff for 15 years,” Trump told New York Magazine in 2002. Calling him a “terrific guy,” Trump continued, “He’s a lot of fun to be with. It is even said that he likes beautiful women as much as I do, and many of them are on the younger side. No doubt about it—Jeffrey enjoys his social life.”
According to a 2003 profile in Vanity Fair and New York gossip rags that covered the goings-on of Epstein and his famous friends in the late ’90s, Trump would attend dinner parties at the 71st Street mansion. In April 1999, The Mail spotted Trump among the guests at a dinner Epstein threw in honor of Prince Andrew. In 2000, they reported he attended a “hookers and pimps” Halloween party. New York  magazine reported Trump’s attendance at a 2003 dinner party thrown in honor of Bill Clinton. Magician David Blaine entertained the “barely clad models” with card tricks, but Clinton never appeared.
“I often see Donald Trump and there are loads of models coming and going, mostly at night,” a neighbor told The Mail on Sunday in 2000.
Then there is the black book, in which Epstein lists 14 phone numbers for Trump, including ones for his future wife Melania. Police evidence shows Trump has called Epstein, flown on Epstein’s plane, and eaten in Epstein’s Florida home.
Garten did not return a request for comment on these connections.
“Mr. Trump’s only connection with Mr. Epstein was that Mr. Epstein was one of thousands of people who has visited Mar-a-Lago,” the Trump attorney told a BuzzFeed reporter in 2015. “That’s it. Mr. Trump has NEVER been accused of having any involvement or even having any knowledge of any of Mr. Epstein’s conduct by anyone.”
That was true until last week. And while the media has been hesitant to report on Katie Johnson’s accusations, stories have emerged in recent days in outlets like the New York Daily News and Gothamist and more may be in the works: Johnson’s attorney says he taped an interview with ABC News and sources spoken to for this story said they had been contacted by other national news organizations.
Johnson will likely have her day in court, but—perhaps ironically, given Trump’s habit of “just asking” about conspiracy theories while claiming he’s not endorsing them—the veracity of her claims may not matter. True or not, they bring to light a number of disturbing questions about Epstein and his pre-Palm Beach days—ones both Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump will likely have to address.                                                              
  & TRADEMARK
© 2016 THE DAILY BEAST COMPANY LLC

Pleasure island

Daily Wire

Both Trump And Clinton Went To Jeffrey Epstein's Sex Slave Island
2016

One Twitter user once asked me, “Is it too much to hope that *one* of our parties would pick someone with no links to a pedophile sex-slave island?”

Apparently, it is too much to ask for.                                            
Both presumptive Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump and former President Bill Clinton have ties to convicted pedophile and Democratic donor, billionaire Jeffery Epstein and "Sex Slave Island."

Note: President Bill Clinton is not merely the husband of Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, either. Bill is currently campaigning for his wife, plus Hillary recently unveiled that Bill with be in charge of “revitalizing the economy” if she were to take office.

It has been uncovered that Clinton, known for his trouble-making libido, has even stronger ties to Epstein than previously reported. As noted by The Free Beacon, “Clinton was aboard the infamous Lolita Express owned by a billionaire pedophile at least 26 times," not the initially reported 11 times.

Clinton’s presence aboard Jeffrey Epstein’s Boeing 727 on 11 occasions has been reported, but flight logs show the number is more than double that, and trips between 2001 and 2003 included extended junkets around the world with Epstein and fellow passengers identified on manifests by their initials or first names, including “Tatiana.” The tricked-out jet earned its Nabakov-inspired nickname because it was reportedly outfitted with a bed where passengers had group sex with young girls…Official flight logs filed with the Federal Aviation Administration show Clinton traveled on some of the trips with as many as 10 U.S. Secret Service agents. However, on a five-leg Asia trip between May 22 and May 25, 2002, not a single Secret Service agent is listed.

The Republican presumptive nominee apparently got in on the action, too. Trump’s ties to Epstein — a man Trump once called a “terrific guy” — and Sex Slave Island have been chronicled by The Daily Wire here.

Per The Political Insider, Trump is accused of threatening and raping a 13-year-old girl on the private island. Epstein is also named in the suit for sexual misconduct. The lawsuit accusations have been vehemently denied by the Trump camp, alleging that the filing is a “hoax” and that there is “no evidence” that the plaintiff in question “actually exists.” 

Sex Slave Island, sometimes referred to as “Orgy Island,” (both lovely names), is one deranged place, allegedly rife with solicited sex, often from minors “groomed” by Epstein.

“Terrific guy” Epstein, of course, was convicted for soliciting sex from a minor in 2008; the billionaire served 13 months in prison.

Election 2016: Where both candidates have ties to a convicted pedophile, the Lolita Express and Sex Slave Island. 

TAGS BILL CLINTON DONALD TRUMP HILLARY CLINTON PEDOPHILIA RAPE SEX SEXUAL ASSAULT

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Florida pests

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CSIRO
This deadly flesh-eating parasite is invading the US for the first time in decades
"We had no idea what this thing was."
PETER DOCKRILL 29 NOV 2016
Florida is on high alert after the return of an invasive, flesh-eating parasite that has killed more than 100 deer since July.

The re-emergence of the New World screwworm, which was thought to have been eradicated from the US decades ago, has resulted in an agricultural state of emergency being declared in Monroe County, Florida, as authorities try to contain the outbreak.

The screwworm, so named because its ridges resemble the spiral shape of a screw, is the larvae (maggot) of the Cochliomyia hominivorax fly.

When this species matures, it looks much like a common housefly, but its larvae are especially dangerous.

The larvae infect warm-blooded animals, burrowing into open wounds and feeding on living flesh. People are also at risk from the parasite, although none have been infected in the recent outbreak.

The parasite, which hadn't been seen in Florida for 50 years, was the target of a long-fought eradication campaign starting in the 1930s, which was ultimately deemed successful in 1966.

Since then, local authorities have maintained a biological control called the sterile insect technique, to prevent the screwworm from re-entering the US from South and Central America.

This process involves releasing infertile male flies that have been sterilised by radiation into the wild. Female flies only mate once in their lives, and when they mate with these infertile males, no offspring result, ensuring that the screwworm is bred out of existence in infested areas.

But despite efforts to protect the US from the parasite with ongoing sterile fly barriers at the Darién Gap between Panama and Colombia, the screwworm got back in somehow, turning up in Monroe County in July, where it was reported in wild deer.

The deer species infested, called Key deer, only lives in Florida, and is endangered, with less than 1,000 remaining in the National Key Deer Refuge, run by the US Fish and Wildlife Service.

But as if the Key deer didn't have enough problems, the screwworm infestation has seen 132 of these animals killed since July – about 15 percent of the whole population.

"We had no idea what this thing was," ranger Kristie Killam told Frances Robles at The New York Times.

"There was a few here and there in July and August, but it was September, when the rut started, that we started scratching our heads and saying, 'This is a little bit out of the ordinary'," she added. "It looks like a horribly infected wound, an infected wound that never got treated, infected with mushy maggots."

Initially mistaking the parasite wounds for regular flesh wounds caused by deer fighting, the rangers weren't aware of the deadly pest in their midst, which also infected two cats, a dog, and a pig.

But lab tests run in September confirmed the outbreak was indeed screwworms, with Florida declaring an agricultural state of emergency in October.

The good news is that protection measures to stem the outbreak – including sterile flies, a quarantine area, and anti-parasitic medications – appear to be working.

The US Fish & Wildlife Service announced last week that the deer population seems to have stabilised at 875, with no new deaths in a week – the first time this has happened since the outbreak began.

While any warm-blooded animals are susceptible to screwworms, the real threat is to agriculture – although there's also a rare but potential risk to humans.

Since the eradication in the 1960s, only sporadic instances of screwworm infections in the US have occurred – usually isolated cases of infected travellers returning from other countries.

One of these cases involved a 12-year-old girl who had travelled with her family to Colombia, then complained of extreme pain in her scalp upon returning home to Connecticut.

Doctors eventually removed 142 screwworm larvae from her head, resorting to using "bacon therapy" – luring the parasites out with pieces of meat placed over the worms.

Efforts to contain the latest outbreak are expected to continue well into 2017, and hopefully we'll have new information soon to show us that infection counts are dropping – as this nightmarish parasite is the last thing the world needs right now.

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