Category: Violence

EXCLUSIVE: Trans-Identified Male Who Abducted, Tortured, and Sexually Assaulted Female Victim Is Reported As A “Woman” By Media | Women’s Voices

A trans-identified male residing in Colorado has been charged with sexual assault, kidnapping, and false imprisonment after taking a woman hostage for three days. On November 30, Hannah Viramontes, 26, took the unidentified female victim captive to abuse as a “sex slave,” and told her he would kill her if she tried to escape. Viramontes, previously known as Cameron Mauldin, is accused of brutally beating and torturing the victim before she was able to escape and contact authorities.

Local news reports have referred to Viramontes simply as a “woman,” with no mention of his transgender status or biological sex.

Source: EXCLUSIVE: Trans-Identified Male Who Abducted, Tortured, and Sexually Assaulted Female Victim Is Reported As A “Woman” By Media

Met Police ‘misled Minister’ about violent threats by trans protesters – leading her to insist that no law was broken | MSN

The Metropolitan Police has been accused of “misleading” the Policing Minister over violent placards at last weekend’s mass trans rights protests in London.

Officers told Dame Diana Johnson that no threatening signs were displayed at Saturday’s demonstration in Parliament Square, leading her to insist in interviews that there was no evidence the law had been broken.

In fact, several threatening placards were visible at the protest.

These included two placards with hangmen and slogans such as “the only good terf is a _ _ _ _ one” implying gender-critical feminists should die.

Another urged opponents to perform a “DIY lobotomy” on themselves, while one more appeared to show bullet holes alongside the message: “I will make you listen.”

Chris Philp, the Shadow Policing Minister, has now described the Met’s “misleading” briefing as “deeply alarming”.

He warned that any suggestion of unequal treatment of protesters risked reigniting a row over “two-tier policing.”

The Met initially said it had reviewed images of threats against women posted on social media and found they were either old, from other parts of Britain or not criminal.

But the force retracted this claim after The Telegraph showed it evidence that threatening placards were indeed from the London protest.

The Met is now reviewing the images, speaking to witnesses and examining CCTV footage

Source: Met Police ‘misled Minister’ about violent threats by trans protesters – leading her to insist that no law was broken

Medical misogyny investigation: Australian women wrongly admitted to psychiatric wards | SMH

This masthead has uncovered a series of disturbing cases where women claim they have been disbelieved, misdiagnosed, and wrongly admitted to mental health wards. Others have been told their pain is “all in their head”.

A woman was involuntarily detained under the Mental Health Act after telling police she was being watched and could hear someone on her roof, only for her complaint to be vindicated when food and cameras were later found in the roof of her home, according to two doctors familiar with the case.

The NSW woman spent multiple days in a mental health ward because police and hospital staff had wrongly believed she was delusional when she reported her stalking fears to authorities, said Dr Karen Williams, a consultant psychiatrist who specialises in trauma and family violence.

In a separate case, a pregnant woman was forcibly admitted to a mental health unit before it became apparent that her distressing symptoms were being caused by a severe drug reaction to the medication she had been prescribed.

More than 1700 of the 1800 women who responded to this masthead’s ongoing investigation into medical misogyny said they felt dismissed or ignored when seeking healthcare.

Source: Medical misogyny investigation: Australian women wrongly admitted to psychiatric wards

Police blocked mother from seeing daughters after she confiscated iPads | MSN

A mother-of-two was blocked from seeing her daughters by police who arrested her after she confiscated their iPads.

Vanessa Brown, 50, was released from Staines police station in Surrey with bail conditions that barred her from speaking to anyone connected to the investigation, including her children.

The history teacher had been detained for nearly eight hours on suspicion of theft before Surrey Police eventually found the iPads belonged to her children and said she was “entitled” to confiscate them.

The force said a search operation for the devices had begun after a man in his 40s alerted them to their possible theft, having already been called out to a “concern for safety” on March 26.

Ms Brown was arrested later that day at her mother’s house in Cobham and was taken to the station where she had custody photos and fingerprints taken.

Officers also pulled one of her daughters out of a class at school.

Surrey Police said a tracking device showed the iPads were at the address and she was detained after refusing to cooperate.

The incident is the latest in a string of controversial police responses after the parents of a nine-year-old girl were arrested having complained about their daughter’s primary school in a WhatsApp group.

Ms Brown’s treatment has been criticised by Tory MP Anthony Stansfeld, the former police and crime commissioner for Thames Valley, who called on the force to apologise.

“It seems to me incompetence and a certain amount of overzealousness at a junior level, which the local inspector should have put a rapid stop to,” he said.

“It was quite unnecessary to put a reputable 50-year-old history teacher into a cell for seven hours.”

[Ed: Who was the man in his 40s who alerted the police?]

Source: Police blocked mother from seeing daughters after she confiscated iPads

Man jailed for crime so heinous it’s an Australian-first.| Mamamia

“The aggravated servitude in the present case involved a regime of extraordinary cruelty and tyranny perpetrated over a lengthy period.”

Under Australian Commonwealth law, servitude, as defined within Division 270 of the Criminal Code, is “criminalised as a slavery-like practice, punishable by imprisonment, and includes the condition of a person who is not free to stop providing services or leave the place where they provide services.”

AAP reports that the man pleaded guilty to the offence in the Victorian Supreme Court, along with two counts of assault, where Justice Jane Dixon sentenced him for up to 12 years in jail.

“As well as being subjected to regular violent assaults, she was deprived of personal freedom and liberty in almost every aspect of her life,” Justice Dixon said during sentencing.

“The aggravated servitude in the present case involved a regime of extraordinary cruelty and tyranny perpetrated over a lengthy period.”

The court heard that since 2020, the husband refused to allow his wife to seek medical care alone, even after she became pregnant. She was not permitted to use the toilet alone or attend university, and was forced to transfer all her money to him. He would leave the house to socialise, but locked his wife and their baby in a room while he did so, forcing her to send him videos to prove she was still imprisoned while he was out.

When she failed to perform domestic duties such as cooking and laundry to her husband’s standards, he beat her with poles, belts and cords. He called this “giving her consequences.”

Source: Man jailed for crime so heinous it’s an Australian-first.

Trans killer’s jail rammy leaves female prison officer injured in women’s wing – Daily Record

Paris Green, who is serving life for murder, was initially charged with assaulting the victim by forcibly pushing a door in August 2023.

A trans killer has admitted culpable and reckless conduct after a female member of staff was injured at the women’s wing of a Scottish prison.

Paris Green, who is serving life for murder, was initially charged with assaulting the victim by forcibly pushing a door in August 2023.

This month, the 33-year-old pled guilty to an amended charge of culpable and reckless conduct at Edinburgh Sheriff Court and was admonished.

Green was born Peter Laing but now identifies as female and is incarcerated in the women’s wing of HMP Edinburgh.

But campaign group For Women Scotland has criticised the Scottish Prison Service’s policy.

Spokeswoman Susan Smith said: “This illustrates the abject idiocy of the notion that violent male prisoners convicted of murdering or assaulting other men will be restrained and gentle towards women.

“Paris Green is clearly a danger to all women in that unit and should have been removed at once.”

Source: Trans killer’s jail rammy leaves female prison officer injured in women’s wing – Daily Record

System failure: Nearly half of NSW homicides were DV-related in 2024

Almost half of all homicides in NSW last year were domestic violence-related, according to new figures today by the NSW Bureau of Crime Statistics and Research.

It’s a stark and tragic reminder of the toll of domestic violence in the state, with 45.9 per cent of the 85 murder victims recorded by NSW police being DV-related.

Twenty-six women were murdered in NSW in 2024, along with 13 young people and children. The majority fall into the category of being domestic violence related; others (like the five women killed during the Bondi Junction stabbing attack) had no personal connection to their killer.

Meanwhile, while many categories of major crimes have been trending downwards over the past ten years, domestic and family violence has taken a different path, with domestic violence assaults up 3.1 per cent a year on average (well ahead of the 1.3 per cent per year average in non-domestic assaults). Sexual assault is also up: 8.8 per cent per year on average.

Sadly, it seems that the “national crisis” of male violence against women that was declared in the first half of 2024, as well as the federal government’s commitment to end family and domestic violence “in one generation” has done little in NSW to reduce the figures, according to these latest stats.

Other major crime areas, including recorded robbery, break-and-enter, general stealing, and malicious property damage, are described as being “all much lower” than a decade ago.

Source: System failure: Nearly half of NSW homicides were DV-related in 2024

‘They’re meant to help and did the complete opposite’: many children feel silenced by family courts

My new paper, co-authored with Southern Cross University researchers Eliza Hew, Meaghan Vosz and Helen Walsh and published in the journal Child and Family Social Work, looked at how children felt about their experiences in the family courts.

We interviewed 41 children and young people aged ten to 19 from Queensland, New South Wales, the Australian Capital Territory and Victoria. Four key themes emerged.

1. Children feel silenced

The children in our study wanted to be heard directly. As Troy, 14, put it:

Talk to us, not about us.

2. Children feel ‘in the dark’

Most children we interviewed felt “in the dark” about family court processes.

3. Some children will vote with their feet

Some children said they’d refused to comply with family court parenting orders. As Ava, 13, put it:

If they can’t listen to me, I’m not going to listen to them.

4. Children feel less able to trust others

Children stressed the importance of family law professionals creating space to build trust. But several children felt they were betrayed by law professionals who’d shared what the children had said with their parents.

Source: ‘They’re meant to help and did the complete opposite’: many children feel silenced by family courts

Prisoners forced to give birth while handcuffed to male officers – LBC | UK

At least two women were made to give birth while handcuffed between 2021 and 2023.

According to an investigation by The Times, both incidents occurred at HMP Bronzefield in Surrey.

The women allege they were handcuffed sometimes during antenatal appointments, vaginal examinations, and during labour.

One female prisoner said she was restrained during antenatal appointments, and for 48 hours while in labour – sometimes handcuffed to male staff.

“Being handcuffed and without any privacy, including being chained to a male prison officer, made me feel humiliated and degraded.

“Yes, I had broken the law, but I was still a pregnant woman. I feel I was treated as less than an animal,” she told The Times.

One woman in HMP Brozefield, speaking to Channel 4, said that she was “doubled over” having contractions, “sobbing” to be released from the handcuffs.

She said she was handcuffed to an officer while showering, sleeping, and using the toilet.

Source: Prisoners forced to give birth while handcuffed to male officers – LBC

Why are women still being sent to prison as ‘a place of safety’? | Eva Wiseman | The Guardian | UK

Typically, this is how it goes: a woman on the street behaves erratically and police pick her up, concerned she might harm herself or others. Perhaps she’ll be held in a police car or cell for a while, charged with disorderly conduct, or perhaps she’ll be taken to hospital. But increasingly a lack of mental health beds means she is then taken to prison “as a place of safety” and there she’ll stay, unsentenced and without specialist care, sometimes lingering in a cell for more than a year.

In 19th-century asylums, women were offered very little mental health provision and patients routinely self-harmed. There are a series of unnerving and moving photos online by society photographer Henry Hering who took portraits of Bethlem patients, including Eliza Josolyne, admitted in 1857 with “overwork”. She “frequently tried to injure herself by knocking her head against doors and walls, and has slept in the padded room on this account”. Perhaps it’s unhelpful to keep returning to the Victorian asylums, but here is where my mind goes, aided in part by pictures of a prison currently housing women as “a place of safety” (the words catch on the tongue) – HMP Styal in Cheshire, which occupies a former “orphanage for destitute children” opened in 1898.

There were 11 suicides at HMP Styal between 2007 and 2024, more than any other women’s jail in England. One was 18-year-old Annelise Sanderson, who had been arrested in 2020 for stealing a pair of trainers and assaulting emergency workers who had intervened. When she was apprehended she poured petrol on herself and tried to drink it; instead of being offered psychiatric treatment, she was sentenced to 12 months at Styal.

Prison is not a place of safety. For women especially, it is a place of chaos and trauma where vulnerable people struggle to maintain their dignity, let alone sanity.

Source: Why are women still being sent to prison as ‘a place of safety’? | Eva Wiseman | The Guardian