The Lookout: What You Need to Know About California’s New Sexual Assault Laws
October 28, 2021
Watching your tax dollars, elected officials and legislation that affects you.
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sexual assault
LAPD Chief: Students Suspended Over Alleged Hamilton HS Sex Assault
October 27, 2021
Students who allegedly took part in or witnessed an alleged sexual assault in a Hamilton High School bathroom have been suspended while an investigation continues, Los Angeles Police Department Chief Michel Moore said today.
There is No Time Limit for Justice
October 7, 2021
Justice means giving someone what he or she deserves. Finally, after facing numerous allegations of sexual misconduct, payoffs to victims and unpopular acquittals singer R. Kelly was found guilty of racketeering and eight counts of sex trafficking in a Brooklyn federal courtroom. The jury found him guilty of being the ringleader in a decades-long criminal enterprise to recruit women and underage girls for sex. Allegations of inappropriate sexual relationships with minors have swirled around R Kelly for years, especially after his illegal marriage to the R&B singer Aaliyah in 1994 when she was just fifteen. The term racketeering is usually associated with organized crime, referring to a group of individuals that attempt to extort, coerce or otherwise create some type of scheme or a racket. In the case of R Kelly, the court and prosecutors felt that his expansive entourage of staff and enablers around the musician constituted a criminal enterprise.
Review: Anita Hill urges us all to battle gender violence
September 28, 2021
“Believing: Our Thirty-Year Journey to End Gender Violence” by Anita Hill (Viking)
Anita Hill didn’t care if President Joe Biden apologized or not, but she found his aversion to doing so rather dramatic.
This is one anecdote from her new book, “Believing: Our Thirty-Year Journey to End Gender Violence.” It was released Tuesday.
First, she was a survivor: #MeToo’s Burke tells her story
September 15, 2021
People will think this is a book about, you know, going to the Golden Globes and meeting a bunch of celebrities, and a bunch of powerful men whose lives were impacted by #MeToo. I want to tell a different story. My story is ordinary and also extraordinary: It’s so many other little black girls’ stories, so many young women’s stories. We don’t pay attention to the nuances of what survival looks like or what sexual violence feels like and how it impacts our lives. So it just felt important. This is a story that’s been growing inside me for more than 40 years. It was time to give it a home outside of my body.
New Study: Innocent Blacks Seven Times More Likely to be Wrongfully Convicted of Murder Than Innocent Whites
March 4, 2021
The nonprofit legal organization committed to exonerating wrongly convicted individuals also noted that Black people are more likely to be wrongly convicted of murder when the victim is White. Among Black people exonerated of murder convictions, approximately 31 percent were wrongly convicted of killing White people. However, only 15 percent of homicides by Black people involve White victims, the National Registry of Exonerations reported.
Elizabeth Keckley, Thirty Years a Slave, Four Years in the White House
March 4, 2021
“He came to the bed, lifted the cover from the face of his child, gazed at it long and earnestly, murmuring, ‘My poor boy, he was too good for this earth. God has called him home. I know that he is much better off in heaven, but then we loved him so. It is hard, hard to have him die.’”
Living Legend: Kamala Harris makes history as America’s First Black & Female Vice President
November 26, 2020
Madam Vice-President Kamala Harris is a living legend, her election marked a new day during a colossal shift in social awareness. As the first Black and South Asian woman to be listed on a major political ballot and the first woman to hold a seat as vice president, she has created a new wave of thought and possibility. It will continue to grow for women, as an increase in young girls will strive to be on that level of power. Delivering her candidacy on the day Martin Luther King Jr. declared a universal dream, more diversity will be a new normal as the whole world is changing into that vision.
California Judge Tosses Sexual Assault Suit against Russell Simmons
November 26, 2020
Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge Mark Epstein granted Simmons a motion to dismiss that lawsuit after the anonymous alleged victim failed to respond to a court order regarding the statute of limitations. The judge said he found that the woman’s claims were legally time-barred since she alleged the incident happened in 1988 and only filed her suit in March 2018.
The Pernicious Power of Patriarchy
February 27, 2020
If we women were honest, we would say that we have all cosigned patriarchy in the interest of keeping it moving. We have deflected the sexist comments that come our way, even as we cringe from them. We smile at men that we abhor because they may have decision making power in their hands. We dress up or dress down depending on the occasion and the way we have to play the game. We know the system is slanted against us, we know we still have to play, and we decide when we choose to blow the whistle, a whistle we could blow every single day.
Jarrett Adams: Falsely Accused Man Re-enters Society as an Attorney
February 20, 2020
On Wednesday, January 29, 2020, thirteen years after being exonerated, Adams was admitted to the Wisconsin State Bar. Adams was joined by Keith Findley, a co-founder of the Wisconsin Innocence Project at a ceremony celebrating his bar admission at the Wisconsin State Capitol.
$12.5M claim filed against Phoenix for body-cavity search
June 27, 2019
The claim says Erica Reynolds was pulled over Dec. 26 in a drug-trafficking investigation.
Professor seeks Assembly seat after making sex assault claim
January 2, 2019
A college professor who has accused the lieutenant governor of Virginia of sexual assault announced Tuesday she is running for an open California Assembly seat being sought by a dozen mostly Democratic candidates.
Former DA’s Bombshell Affidavit Could Clear Bill Cosby
October 25, 2018
When O’Neill ruled that Castor couldn’t testify on behalf of Cosby because the judge claimed the former DA was “not credible,” Castor said he viewed that as an attempt to hurt him publicly and it was a measure of political and professional payback.
LAUSD Reaches $22 Million Settlement with Molested Students
August 31, 2018
Nine sexual molestation victims of a former youth services coach employed by Los Angeles Unified for a program that took place after classes at Cahuenga Elementary and seven more similar victims of a former football coach at Franklin High School settled their claims for a collective $22 million, their lawyers announced today.