Guards may be responsible for half of prison sexual assaults

Jail and prison officials are reporting an increase in allegations of sex abuse, according to a new report from the Justice Department. ProPublica broke down the numbers and found some disturbing trends.

• The vast majority of sex abuse allegations are deemed “unfounded” by prison officials.
• Officials often allowed abusive staff members to resign, preventing the offense from showing up in public records.

Read the full story here.

"The University of Missouri did not investigate or tell law enforcement officials about an alleged rape, possibly by one or more members of its football team, despite administrators finding out about the alleged 2010 incident more than a year ago, an "Outside the Lines" investigation has found. The alleged victim, a member of the swim team, committed suicide in 2011," ESPN reports. Read the full story here.

“Cheplic, who has denied the allegations, is one of at least seven alleged sexual predators quietly placed in the Rutherford retirement home in the past decade, The Star-Ledger found. Some lived there a short time. Others have stayed for years. Neighbors said they were never informed of the men’s presence until told by a reporter.”

As an innocent abroad, Jamie Leigh Jones was a perfect heroine, Washington Monthly reports. And she confronted an unusually good villain. KBR had been plagued with allegations of fraud and overbilling involving its Pentagon contracts in Iraq. It also was closely associated with Vice President Dick Cheney, who had been Halliburton’s CEO before coming to the White House. The company was linked in the public mind with fraud, plunder, mismanagement, and a war gone wrong. It didn’t seem surprising that its employees might have gang-raped a guileless new arrival. But when her case went to trial, it quickly fell apart. What really happened to Jones in Iraq?

“The emails — which featured jokes about erectile dysfunction and breast size, and pictures that compared naked women to various animals — appear to violate the spirit, if not the letter, of Ivy Tech’s sexual harassment policy. Yet they were allowed to continue for at least six months before administrators asked Walkup to cease sometime this year.”

Daisy Coleman, new to town and a cheerleader, was 14. Matthew Barnett, a 17-year-old football player and the grandson of a longtime politician, was 17. The evidence pointed overwhelmingly toward rape, the Kansas City Star reports. There was even a video. Yet, two months later, the Nodaway County prosecutor dropped the felony cases against the youths, one the grandson of a longtime area political figure. Then the people of Maryville, Missouri, set about running the Colemans out of town.

Following a rash of violent crimes around the USF campus, WTSP’s investigative team digs into federal Clery Act reporting to expose the hidden dangers around many college campuses.  Most students will never know their off-campus apartments are often in the most dangerous parts of town – and most universities do little to prepare them for it.

“A memo written in 2011 obtained by MPR News from police shows the former vicar general – the top deputy of the archdiocese – did not want parish employees to know about Wehmeyer's past. ‘At every step of the way, this could have been prevented,’ Haselberger said. ‘This is just failure after failure after failure after failure.’”

"Last week’s hearing on sexual assault allegations against three U.S. Naval Academy football players highlighted a little-known problem at the school: off-campus rental houses that violate academy regulations but have been the scene of alcohol-and sex-fueled parties for years. The Sun found that the houses, nestled in quiet suburban neighborhoods, have been the focus of residents’ complaints and the scene of other alleged sexual assaults."

“Each year, some 4,500 American workers die on the job and 50,000 perish from occupational diseases. Millions more are hurt and sickened at workplaces, and many others are cheated of wages and abused. In the coming months the Center for Public Integrity will publish, under the banner Hard Labor, stories exploring threats to workers — and the corporate and regulatory factors that endanger them.”