Women Abused in Childhood at Higher Odds of Having Child With Autism: Study, The Neurobiology of Sexual Assault

[news reporter]

Women Abused in Childhood at Higher Odds of Having Child With Autism:
Study
Researchers speculate that effect on immune system, stress response
might explain why Wednesday, March 20, 2013

WEDNESDAY, March 20 (HealthDay News) -- Women who were physically,
emotionally or sexually abused as children are more likely to have a
child with autism, a new study suggests. For women who suffered the
most severe abuse, the risk more than tripled, the researchers found.

"This is a completely new risk factor for autism," said lead
investigator Andrea Roberts, a research associate at the Harvard
School of Public Health.
"Child abuse has a horrible effect on individuals who experience it,
but the effects might reach across generations," she said. "The more
abuse a woman had been exposed to in her own childhood, the more
likely she was to have a child with autism."

Even women who experienced moderate levels of abuse were 60 percent
more likely to have a child with autism, she added. Although this
increased risk seems high, the absolute risk of autism associated with
a mother's exposure to abuse in childhood is very low, Roberts said.

In women who were not abused as children, fewer than one in 100 of
those children had autism. Among women exposed to the highest level of
abuse, two in 100 of their children had autism. "So, most of their
kids don't have autism," she said....
http://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/news/fullstory_135120.html


The Neurobiology of Sexual Assault by Rebecca Campbell, Ph.D. -
National Institute of Justice
"So now let’s loop in the rape victim advocate perspective: “It’s hard
trying to stop what police do to victims. They don’t believe them and
they treat them so bad that the victims give up. It happens over and
over again.” (slide 7)

"So what do we get from these three simple quotes? What these three
quotes show us right off the bat is that sexual assault case attrition
happens very early on in the criminal justice system. It’s happening
in the first interactions between the victims and law enforcement.
Indeed, if we take these qualitative data and look at them from a
quantitative perspective, we see very similar findings." (slide 9)

"This is the row that you want to pay attention to. This is the very
first step in the criminal justice system. On average, 86 percent of
the reported sexual assaults never went any further than the police.
The vast majority of these cases were never referred by the police on
to the prosecutors." (slide 11)

"Now the psychological impact of that on victims is quite devastating.
As a result of their contact with the legal system, most victims say
they leave that interaction feeling blamed, depressed, anxious, and 80
percent say that they feel reluctant to seek further help after that
interaction." (slide 14)

"If the information coming into the brain, into the body, is
emotionally charged, fearful, the amygdala is actually the structure
that’s going to pick that up first. It’s a very old structure, old in
an evolutionary sense. Part of the limbic system [audio skips] sort of
vibrating — and they’re much more difficult for the brain to process
because they’re laden with fear, they’re laden with terror. So the
amygdala and the hippocampus have to kind of work together for the
encoding of that information and then the consolidating of that
information." (slide 39)
http://nij.gov/multimedia/presenter/presenter-campbell/


‘I wanted to sell victim’s phone’ April 24 2013 By Sandy Moeketsi
Johannesburg - A man who took part in an apparent satanic ritual
killing wanted to return to the scene to get a cellphone, a
Johannesburg court heard on Wednesday.

“I was going to sell it for drugs,” Lester Moody told the High Court
sitting in the Palm Ridge Magistrate's Court. He said the cellphone
belonged to one of the girls who had been set alight in the ritual....
http://www.iol.co.za/news/crime-courts/i-wanted-to-sell-victim-s-phone-1.1505867#.UXh6iMWIBXs


Ritual killing deviated from Bible verse 2013-04-25 Johannesburg -
The "plan" to kill Kirsty Theologo came from a Bible verse, but
deviated from it when satanic elements were added, the South Gauteng
High Court sitting in the Palm Ridge Magistrate's Court heard on
Thursday.

"Originally, you were going to do what was in the Bible and satanic
elements were added later?" Judge Geraldine Borchers asked Lester
Moody. "Yes," he said.

Moody was testifying in the trial of four people accused of setting
alight Theologo and a 14-year-old friend of hers in an apparent
satanic ritual on 21 October 2011....
http://www.news24.com/SouthAfrica/News/Ritual-killing-deviated-from-bible-verse-20130425


Baby burned to death in satanic ritual after Chilean cult leader says
infant is the Antichrist
Cops say sect leader Ramon Gustavo Castillo Gaete, who is still at
large, is responsible for the grisly murder, which occurred in
Colliguay, Chile.
By Lee Moran / NEW YORK DAILY NEWS Friday, April 26, 2013

A tiny baby was burned to death on a bonfire after a cult leader
declared the child to be the Antichrist, police said.

The baby, just 3 days old, was strapped naked to a board and tossed
onto the blaze because "the end of the world was near." The horrific
ritual allegedly happened in a house in Colliguay, near the Chilean
coastal resort of Valparaiso, last Nov. 12.

The baby’s mom, 25-year-old Natalia Guerra, allegedly gave permission
for the brutal murder to go ahead. Cops have arrested four people —
from a 12-member sect led by Ramon Gustavo Castillo Gaete — in
connection with the death.

The Police Investigative Unit's Miguel Ampuero said Gaete, 36, formed
the cult — which consisted of professionals including a filmmaker, a
veterinarian and a flight attendant — in 2005....
http://www.nydailynews.com/news/crime/baby-burned-death-satanic-ritual-article-1.1328050