Sexual Assault | Western Outlaw

April 29, 2011

Jaycee Dugard’s Kidnappers Plead Guilty

Filed under: Uncategorized — Tags: 11 year old, bailiff, kidnapping case, plea deal, sexual assault, tweet — Mal @ 3:30 am

Jaycee Lee Dugard in 1991

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Ending a sensational kidnapping case spanning two decades, Phillip and Nancy Garrido pleaded guilty Thursday to abducting Jaycee Dugard, who was held as a sex slave and gave birth to Phillip’s two children.

As part of the plea negotiations, both Garridos gave lengthy confessions, recalling how they bought a stun gun in Reno in 1991, trolled South Lake Tahoe for a victim, and grabbed the 11-year-old Jaycee as she walked to her school bus.

The two, wearing red inmate jumpsuits, entered their pleas during an unscheduled, 35-minute hearing in El Dorado County Superior Court in Placerville, Calif.

Phillip Garrido listened attentively and asked the judge to repeat a statement about the irreversible nature of the pleas. Nancy Garrido sobbed throughout the hearing and at one point a bailiff handed her a tissue.

Plea Deal

Attorneys had been discussing the plea deal in earnest since earlier this year, after Phillip was found competent to stand trial.

Under the deal, the Garridos pleaded guilty to kidnapping and sexual assault – 13 sexual-assault counts by Phillip and one by Nancy. Phillip, 60, will get 431 years, and Nancy Garrido, 55, will get 36 years to life. They both waived their right to appeal.

Phillip and Nancy Garrido

Rich Pedroncelli / AP, Splash News Online

Police say Dugard was held against her will and repeatedly raped, eventually giving birth to two daughters by Garrido in the warren of backyard tents where the Garridos kept them hidden from parole officers. Dugard and the daughters never attended school or saw doctors.

Dugard was recovered after security officers at UC Berkeley became suspicious when Garrido and his daughters went to the campus to distribute religious materials.

Dugard, now 30, is writing a memoir about the ordeal and lives with her mother and her daughters in Northern California. Her family was given $20 million by the state of California as compensation for the failure of parole officials.

March 20, 2011

WikiLeaks’ Julian Assange Arrested in the U.K. [Update]

Filed under: Julian Assange - Wikileaks — Tags: open question, prosecutors, sexual assault, spokeswoman — Mal @ 3:01 am

by Robert Quigley | 8:25 am, December 7th, 2010

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange has been arrested in the U.K., according to reports by the associated Press, NPR, and the BBC.

While Assange has been in the news for his connection to “Cablegate,” WikiLeaks’ controversial data dump of close to a thousand leaked U.S. diplomatic cables (WikiLeaks says it has a total of more than 250,000 in its possession), he was arrested in connection with rape charges filed against him in Sweden, which led to an Interpol Red Notice for Assange’s arrest. (The details of these charges are themselves a subject of controversy.)

NPR reports:

Assange, who has been in hiding since his controversial website released secret U.S. diplomatic cables, was due at Westminster Magistrate’s Court later Tuesday. He is expected to fight attempts to extradite him to Sweden, where prosecutors are seeking to question him about allegations of sexual assault.

If Assange challenges extradition, he likely will be remanded into custody or released on bail until another judge rules on whether to extradite him, a spokeswoman for the extradition department said on customary condition of anonymity.

One open question is whether this will trigger WikiLeaks’ release of a so-called “poison pill” file of damaging secrets; Assange said that these were prepared in case he was captured or killed, but in this case, he agreed to his arrest. A potentially more interesting question is what will happen to WikiLeaks: Assange is by his own admission a figurehead, a lightning rod who attracts media attention while the people behind the scenes continue to do the real work of the organization. If he is detained for a long time, will WikiLeaks’ work be materially impacted in any way? If not, will the media and the authorities care anymore, or will they continue to come under the fierce, legality-blurring assault that they have over this past week-and-a-half?

Assange wrote an op-ed for the Australian today defending WikiLeaks’ mission:

WikiLeaks coined a new type of journalism: scientific journalism. we work with other media outlets to bring people the news, but also to prove it is true. Scientific journalism allows you to read a news story, then to click online to see the original document it is based on. That way you can judge for yourself: is the story true? Did the journalist report it accurately?

Democratic societies need a strong media and WikiLeaks is part of that media. the media helps keep government honest. WikiLeaks has revealed some hard truths about the Iraq and Afghan wars, and broken stories about corporate corruption.

WikiLeaks is not the only publisher of the US embassy cables. other media outlets, including Britain’s the Guardian, the new York Times, El Pais in Spain and Der Spiegel in Germany have published the same redacted cables.

Yet it is WikiLeaks, as the co-ordinator of these other groups, that has copped the most vicious attacks and accusations from the US government and its acolytes.

Full op-ed here.

Update: Assange was apparently refused bail; WikiLeaks says that they will continue to release Cablegate files, but do not yet plan on a ‘poison pill’ release.

WikiLeaks’ Julian Assange Arrested in the U.K. [Update]

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February 21, 2011

Julian Assange extradition hearing: woman’s text messages ‘showed she wanted revenge’

Filed under: Uncategorized — Tags: claimants, magistrates, rape, sexual assault — Mal @ 7:10 pm

Mr Assange’s Swedish lawyer, Bjorn Hurtig, said he had seen dozens of texts sent by miss W which “go against” her allegation last August that she was raped while she was asleep and suggest she has a “hidden agenda”.

The existence of the texts was disclosed as mr Hurtig gave evidence on the second day of an extradition hearing to decide whether mr Assange should be sent back to Sweden, where a prosecutor wants to indict him for rape and sexual assault.

Mr Assange is fighting the attempt to extradite him, and denies any wrongdoing, saying the allegations made by miss W and a second woman, miss A, involved consensual sex.

Mr Hurtig told Belmarsh magistrates’ court that he had never been given a complete copy of the prosecution case against his client, but had been allowed to view excerpts, including the texts from miss W’s phone.

He said: “There was information in the text messages which was not good for the claimants. Regarding the rape, there are texts speaking of revenge, making money out of Julian Assange by having contact with the media and giving him a bad name.

“There was a text message saying that the woman who said she was asleep (during the alleged rape) was half asleep, which in my world is the same as being half awake.”

Mr Hurtig told the court in south east London that Marianne Ny, the Swedish prosecutor who is seeking mr Assange’s extradition, had tried to persuade him not to mention the texts to anyone.

In documents submitted to the court mr Hurtig also revealed that miss A had posted messages on the Twitter website in which she seemed happy in mr Assange’s company after he had allegedly assaulted her, and had also written a blog detailing how a woman could get revenge on an ex-lover.

He said the texts and blogs suggest “they may have a hidden agenda, which casts serious doubt on their accusations and their trustworthiness”.

Judge Howard Riddle, the chief magistrate for Westminster, reserved judgment in the case and is expected to give his ruling next week.

Julian Assange extradition hearing: woman’s text messages ‘showed she wanted revenge’

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February 9, 2011

Julian Assange: WikiLeaks founder fighting extradition to Sweden

Filed under: Uncategorized — Tags: european arrest warrant, london court, sexual assault, sweden, telegraph, warrants — Mal @ 1:10 am

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WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange appeared today in a London court to battle extradition to Sweden, where he is wanted for questioning on sexual assault charges. The two-day hearing will call into question the legitimacy of a European Arrest Warrant that Swedish authorities issued for Mr. Assange.

Clare Montgomery, representing the Swedish authorities in London court, said today that rape is an offense that warrants extradition under Swedish law, according to the BBC.

However, Assange’s defense team is expected to argue against their client’s extradition on technical grounds, claiming that the 39-year-old Australian native is so far only wanted for questioning in Sweden. he hasn’t been officially charged, which the lawyers argue makes the calls for extradition invalid. In addition, according to a BBC report, the defense is expected to argue that Assange could be questioned over the Internet or phone and doesn’t need to be in Sweden.

Assange’s lawyers may also fight the extradition on humanitarian grounds. If Assange is extradited to Sweden, he could arguably be extradited to the United States, The Telegraph reported:

An outline of the defence case already published by his legal team states: “There is a real risk that, if extradited to Sweden, the US will seek his extradition and/or illegal rendition to the USA, where there will be a real risk of him being detained at Guantánamo Bay or elsewhere … there is a real risk that he could be made subject to the death penalty.”

Mr Assange’s lawyers will argue that extradition to Sweden would breach his human rights because Sweden has, in the past, extradited suspects to Egypt, which has been accused of torture.

Immediately after WikiLeaks began releasing some 250,000 classified US State Department cables in November 2010, American officials began calling for Assange’s arrest on national security grounds. US Attorney General Eric Holder has said he is looking at options for prosecuting Assange for the release of US secrets, the Monitor reported last December.

But Nils Rekke, head of the legal department at the Swedish prosecutor’s office in Stockholm, rejected claims that Assange’s extradition to the US was possible, explaining that Sweden cannot send him to the US without approval from other countries, The Guardian reported.

"If Assange was handed over to Sweden in accordance with the European arrest warrant, Sweden cannot do as Sweden likes after that," Mr. Rekke said. "If there were any questions of an extradition approach from the US, then Sweden would have to get an approval from the United Kingdom."

Assange’s appearance in front of Woolwich Crown Court this morning “sparked a media frenzy,” The Telegraph reported. The 100 seats in court reserved for media were taken weeks ago, and when Assange walked into court this morning, his supporters – “some of them dressed in orange Guantánamo Bay-style boiler suits – cheered and waved anti-American placards.”

Assange has denied the allegations of sexual abuse that were brought against him by two Swedish women last August. he was held in a London jail in early December and released on bail one week later. since then, Assange has given multiple interviews to the media and reportedly signing a $1.3 million book deal for his autobiography.

Julian Assange: WikiLeaks founder fighting extradition to Sweden

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January 13, 2011

WikiLeaks’ Julian Assange signs $1.3 million book deal

Filed under: Julian Assange - Wikileaks — Tags: alfred a knopf, lawyer fees, memoirs, sexual assault — Mal @ 3:00 am

Julian Assange is not in the best of situations right now. He is under house arrest in London, faces possible extradition to Sweden to face charges of sexual assault. He faces possible espionage charges from the U.S. regarding leaked documents, and he has had most forms of payment method cutoff to his site WikiLeaks. On top of that he has ongoing lawyer fees to pay.

So Julian has done what any person in a similar, highly publicized position would do, he signed a book deal to write his memoirs.

The reported deal includes a publisher for both U.S. and U.K. publication of the book. Publisher Alfred A. Knopf has agreed to pay $800,000 for the U.S. rights, while Canongate Books ltd. is handling publishing in the U.K. for $502,000. Altogether it nets Assange $1.3 million, all of which may already be spent on defending himself in the courts, or keeping WikiLeaks running.

Assange admitted as much during an interview with the Sunday Times:

I don’t want to write this book, but I have to. I have already spent £200,000 for legal costs and I need to defend myself and to keep WikiLeaks afloat.