Canada not meeting obligations to children: UNICEF
CTV.ca News Staff, Nov. 20 2007
Canada is failing its children under the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child as poverty, obesity and mental illness rates rise, a new UNICEF report said Tuesday.
The report, released to coincide with National Child Day, says a great number of Canadian children live below the international standards adopted by 192 countries 18 years ago, creating an urgent need for a national action plan.
UNICEF Canada President Nigel Fisher, who spent most of his life working in developing countries, told Canada AM on Tuesday that Canada's lack of progress over the past 18 years is troubling.
"To come home to Canada and see with all our wealth and resources that we can't do better for our kids, and especially those that are most vulnerable, that is a real shame," he said.
Key recommendations of the report include creating a national children's commissioner and making the convention enforceable in the Canadian court system.
"A country that signs on to the convention has to make sure that the convention become part of national law," Fisher said.
The report concludes that uneven child-rights legislation across Canada has hindered efforts to live up to the agreement.
"Canada's consideration of the best interests of the child, and institutionalization of the rights of children to have a say about medical, judicial and other issues affecting them according to their evolving capacities, are uneven in both federal and provincial legislation," the report states.
"Children's evolving capacity for decision making is very rarely recognized and it remains a rarity for children and young people to be consulted on issues affecting them."
Fisher said that aboriginal families, single-parent homes and children of poor immigrant parents are the most at risk.
"There is no national focus on the child in Canada," Fisher said. "We have so many jurisdictions between provincial and federal and in fact there is no focal point for monitoring what is happening to kids in Canada."
The report's findings, many of which are based on data from Statistics Canada, include:
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About one in six Canadian children live in poverty;
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Canada has one of the highest rates of obesity among children in developed countries at 26 per cent;
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Canada's infant mortality rates have remained unchanged for the past five years while rates in other developed countries continue to fall. Canada's infant mortality rate remains at five deaths per 1,000 births;
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Canada has one of the highest rates of children in state care and in youth detention centres compared with other industrialized nations;
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Twenty per cent of children are currently being treated for mental illness in Canada;
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Poverty rates among aboriginal children are almost three times higher than for other Canadian children;
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Remote communities across the country were found to lack adequate housing, clean water and quality education.
Canada ratified the international agreement, which works to protect the universal rights of children, in December 1991.
The Convention on the Rights of the Child was the first legally binding international set of standards aimed at protecting human rights for children under 18.
Grant Wilson, president of the Canadian Children's Rights Council, agreed with the recommendations of the report, saying that appointing a national children's commissioner is an essential step in helping Canada's children.
"We have to get responsible people in a position of authority in both the provinces and territories, as well as, federally," Wilson told CTV Newsnet on Thursday.
"We need a national commissioner for children to analyze all these issues."
The report praised Canada's efforts in a number of areas, including access to health care, immunization rates and educational achievement. The country was also praised for a notable increase in the number of women attaining post-secondary education.
"In terms of our overall education system and the quality of health care, they are good compared to many other countries and there have been improvements in child protection," Fisher said.
"But it doesn't hide the fact that so many children are falling through the cracks."
Canada ranked 12th among 21 industrialized countries, falling behind the Netherlands, Sweden, Denmark, Finland, Spain, Switzerland and Norway. The United Kingdom and the United States ranked 20th and 21st respectively.
Read the UNICEF Report - A portrait of Canada's first generation growing up under the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child
45 pages.....GREAT READING
The biased words highlighted below should be "sexual assault", "raped" or similar type words NOT "sexual relationship" or "had sex"
Female sex offenders reveal cultural double standard
The Seattle Times
September 10, 2007
It all seems so terribly familiar.
A trusted, even respected or beloved teacher is accused of having a sexual relationship with a student.
What used to shock us, but is now much too commonplace, is that the teacher is a woman.
Their names become tabloid headlines: Mary K. Letourneau, Debra Lafave, Pamela Diehl-Moore and others.
And now two more cases, both local.
Jennifer Leigh Rice, a 31-year-old former Tacoma teacher, was charged with having sex with a 10-year-old boy who had been in her fourth-grade class. The boy's father says she lavished the boy with attention until she was told not to come to their house anymore.
So she abducted the boy, police say, drove him to a highway rest stop outside Ellensburg and had sex with him. After her arrest in early August, Rice said she'd had sex with the boy four or five times, including once when she sneaked into his house as his parents slept.
Earlier this year, former Tenino math teacher Dawn Welter, 38, was charged with second-degree sexual misconduct after spending the night at a motel with a 16-year-old female student. Her lawyer explained her relationship with the student as "horseplay that became sexual."
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Sex Offenders
Female Sexual Predators
Hundreds of them.... female teachers who sexually assaulted 12 year old boys. Read about a lesbian tennis coach who sexually assaulted her 13 year old female student.
Read how a 40 year old female sexual predator blamed a 7 year old boy whom she claimed was "coming on to me" and whom she "hoped to marry someday." Read More ..
FEMALE RAPISTS STRUCK BEFORE All-woman rape gang who kidnapped man, 23, and sexually abused him for three days linked to at least SEVEN other attacks, South African cops fear
The men are often fed Viagra and one even watched as his semen was put into vials and frozen in a cool box
The Sun, UK, Jamie Pyatt, Corey Charlton, May 30, 2017
DETECTIVES believe a gang of three women who kidnapped a man and put him through a three day rape ordeal may have struck a number of times before in South Africa.
Officers are to look at up to SEVEN cases in recent years where a male has been kidnapped – sometimes at gunpoint – by three women who have then repeatedly raped him.
The men are often fed Viagra in an energy drink to make them perform and one victim of a three woman gang watched as his semen was put into small vials and frozen in a cool box.
One cop involved in one of the investigations said he believe there was a trade in selling the stolen semen to faith healers or "witch doctors" who use it to make "magic" potions.
The latest attack in Pretoria - the country's capital - has led police to appeal for other potential victims to spare their blushes and report it.
Although at least seven cases have been on police files for several years, many more are believed to have gone unreported as men are often too embarrassed to report being raped by women.
The Sun Online told earlier how the latest kidnap victim was found traumatised and exhausted after being dumped in a field semi-naked and told officers about his 72-hour sex ordeal.
The 23-year-old man said he was in a 15 seater communal taxi in which three young women were already travelling and he was told by the driver to sit in the front beside him.
Police spokesperson Captain Colette Weilbach said: "One of the women the allegedly injected him with an unknown substance and he passed out and woke up in an unfamiliar room.
3 in 4 B.C. boys on street sexually exploited by women
VANCOUVER - Canada's largest study into the sexual exploitation of street kids and runaways has shattered some myths about who the abusers might be - with the most surprising finding being that many are women seeking sex with young males.
"Some youth in each gender were exploited by women with more than three out of four (79 per cent) sexually exploited males reporting exchanging sex for money or goods with a female," said Elizabeth Saewyc, associate professor of nursing at the University of British Columbia and principal investigator for the study conducted by Vancouver's McCreary Centre Society.
"I must admit it wasn't something we were expecting."
Mom drugged daughter to get her pregnant: police
Associate Press, U.S.A.
April 3, 2009
PITTSBURGH (AP) - A western Pennsylvania mother has been charged with giving her 13-year-old daughter drugs and alcohol so the woman's boyfriend could impregnate the girl without her knowing, police said Thursday.
Shana Brown, 32, is no longer able to have children but wanted to have a baby with her current boyfriend, Duane Calloway, said Uniontown Police Detective Donald Gmitter. The pair decided to drug the girl so Calloway, 40, could have sex with her, he added.
"There's some sick people on this case," Gmitter said.
Brown has been charged with endangering the welfare of a child, turned herself in Thursday and was being held in the Fayette County jail, police said. Brown's attorney did not return a call for comment.
Calloway faces several counts of attempted rape. He was arrested Wednesday and remains in jail. It was not immediately clear whether he had an attorney.
The three attacks occurred in Brown's home in Uniontown, about 50 miles south of Pittsburgh, according to the criminal complaint.
The Oprah Winfrey Show
Lisa Ling Video Interview of Female Sexual Predator / Offender
This woman raped or sexually assaulted over 100 children by her own account.
Our blind rage at women who abuse
Because we assume women never commit child sexual abuse, we treat one who is accused with disproportionate disgust
The Guardian, UK
June 11, 2009
About 20 years ago, I gave a talk about sexual abuse to the RAF. At the end, a young airman came up to me and said, "It's not just men, you know," before hurriedly walking away. That pulled me up sharp. Up till then, like most people working in the area of sexual abuse, I'd always assumed the abusers were men.
This just isn't so. We can't be sure of the precise prevalence of sexual abuse by women, as there hasn't been enough research into the subject. Academics have just assumed it doesn't happened. But conservative estimates suggest that 5% of girls and 20% of boys who have reported being abused have been abused by women. From my own research - I have had 800 cases reported to me - I believe the more likely figure is that it is 20% of all sexual abuse that is done by women.
It is women themselves who have done most to propagate this conspiracy of silence. It has almost become a feminist axiom that it is men who are to blame for abuse and that if women are in some way implicated, it is only because they have somehow been forced or controlled into doing so against their will. Again, this turns out to be completely incorrect: 75% of the cases reported to me involved women acting on their own. Read More ..
Correctional Services Canada
Service correctionnel du Canada
Female Sex Offenders in the Correctional Service of Canada, Case
Studies
Délinquantes sexuelles sous la
responsabilité du Service correctionnel du Canada, études de cas
LITERATURE REVIEW ON FEMALE SEX OFFENDERS
Although there is an increasing literature on male sex offenders, there is a noticeable dearth of information concerning female sex offenders. Most of the work in the area has come from three of the largest prison programs for female sex offenders in Missouri, Minnesota, and Kentucky.
OVERALL NEGLECT OF FEMALE SEXUAL OFFENCES
For a variety of societal reasons, female sexual abuse is likely to remain unnoticed. Some researchers have found that the incidence of sexual contact with boys by women is much more prevalent than is contended in the clinical literature (Condy, Templer Brown & Veaco, 1987). Despite society's increasing concern about sexual assault, there may be several reasons for the under-reporting of female sexual abuse of both child and adult victims. Traditionally, society has held preconceptions of women as non-violent nurturers. Women in general, and mothers mopre specifically, have more freedom than men to touch children (Marvasti, 1986). Therefore, a man may be mpre easily perceived as abusive when touching a child than when a woman touches a child in a similar manner (Plummer, 1981). Further, sexual offences perpetrated by women are often incestuous in nature and children may be reluctant to report sexual contact with a parent on whom they are dependent (Groth, 1979). Health care workers are often unable to detect mother-child incest as mothers often accompany their children to the doctor's office. This may serve as a barrier to detecting sexual abuse of the child (Elliott & Peterson, 1993). The medical profession is only reluctantly becoming sensitive to the fact that females can, in fact, be perpetrators of sexual abuse (Wilkins, 1990; Krug, 1989).
EXAMEN DE LA DOCUMENTATION SUR LES DÉLINQUANTES SEXUELLES
La documentation sur les délinquants sexuels s'accroît alors que l'information sur les délinquantes sexuelles est clairement déficiente. La plupart des travaux en ce domaine proviennent de trois des programmes les plus importants établis pour les délinquantes sexuelles au Missouri, au Minnesota et au Kentucky.
DÉSINTÉRESSEMENT GÉNÉRAL À L'ÉGARD DES INFRACTIONS SEXUELLES COMMISES PAR DES FEMMES
Pour diverses raisons sociales, les mauvais traitements sexuels infligés par les femmes demeurent généralement cachés. Certains chercheurs ont découvert que l'incidence des contacts sexuels entre des femmes et des garçons est beaucoup plus élevée que ne l'estime la documentation clinique (Condy, Templer Brown et Veaco, 1987). En dépit du fait que la société se préoccupe de plus en plus de l'agression sexuelle, plusieurs raisons pourraient faire que l'on parle moins des cas de mauvais traitements sexuels infligés par des femmes à des enfants ou à des adultes. La société a toujours perçu les femmes comme des nourricières non violentes. Les femmes en général, et surtout les mères, ont plus de latitude pour toucher les enfants que les hommes (Marvasti, 1986). Par conséquent, un homme qui touche un enfant de la même manière que le fait une femme peut être plus facilement perçu comme un agresseur (Plummer, 1981). En outre, les infractions sexuelles commises par des femmes sont souvent de nature incestueuse et les enfants peuvent hésiter à dénoncer un contact sexuel avec un parent dont ils dépendent (Groth, 1979). Les travailleurs du domaine de la santé sont souvent incapables de déceler les cas d'inceste entre l'enfant et la mère car cette dernière accompagne souvent l'enfant au bureau du médecin. Cela peut empêcher de dépister les mauvais traitements sexuels infligés à l'enfant (Elliott et Peterson, 1993). La profession médicale prend à contrecoeur conscience du fait que les femmes peuvent en fait infliger de mauvais traitements sexuels. (Wilkins, 1990; Krug, 1989). Read More ...
Read the UNICEF 45 page report. The link is at the very bottom of this web page.