ABUSE - Choate Rosemary Hall

"Prep school Choate owns up to decades of abuse allegations" PBS NewsHour 4/14/2017

Excerpt

SUMMARY:  Decades of sexual abuse have been uncovered at one of the nation's elite prep schools.  A new investigation details the experiences of 24 adult alumni of Choate Rosemary Hall who, between 1963 and 2010, allegedly suffered offenses such as kissing, groping and rape.  Hari Sreenivasan discusses the report with Paul Mones, a sexual abuse attorney, and Jonathan Saltzman of The Boston Globe.

HARI SREENIVASAN (NewsHour):  The report released last night focused on a dozen former teachers at the prestigious boarding school in Connecticut, Choate Rosemary Hall.

It recounts the experiences of 24 adult alumni who were allegedly abused between 1963 and 2010.  Investigators said the offenses ranged from kissing to groping to rape.

Choate hired a law firm with no previous ties to the school to lead the investigation.

Jonathan Saltzman was part of The Boston Globe Spotlight team that helped break the story.  And Paul Mones is an attorney who has represented sexual abuse survivors at private schools and other institutions.  He is not involved in any of the Choate cases.

Jonathan, I want to start with you.

You and your team launched this series a while back about this happening at elite prep schools in the Northeast.  What did this report reveal to you?

JONATHAN SALTZMAN, The Boston Globe:  Well, we had reported on about 110 private schools in New England that had faced allegations of sexual abuse over the past 25 years.

And we mentioned Choate.  But this report was initiated in response to that story, and it laid out in extremely graphic detail the accounts of about 24 survivors of abuse.

And as you said in your introduction, some of these are extraordinarily graphic descriptions of abuse, rape.  And, to me, the most startling thing about the report was that, first, the school named 12 teachers that they said had abused kids.  That's an extraordinary number, and we haven't seen that before in other schools.

And then what they also did was they essentially owned up to the fact that they had never reported these cases of abuse to child welfare authorities in Connecticut, even though it had been required.

THE STREAK - ! University of Connecticut Women's Basketball !

"How UConn women's basketball became synonymous with winning" PBS NewsHour 2/14/2017

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SUMMARY:  The UConn Women's basketball team hasn't lost a game since 2014.  That streak -- 100 straight games -- has never been approached by any other NCAA team -- male or female.  William Brangham talks to Christine Brennan of USA TODAY about this groundbreaking accomplishment.

WILLIAM BRANGHAM (NewsHour):  To put this streak in context, the UConn women haven't lost a basketball game since 2014.  No one has beaten them in over 800 days.

And inside that span, they also won two of their record four national championships.  One analyst called the UConn women — quote — “the most dominant program in the history of college basketball, period.”

For more on these amazing women and their legendary coach, Geno Auriemma, I'm joined by USA Today's Christine Brennan.

Welcome back to the NewsHour.

CHRISTINE BRENNAN, USA Today:  Great to be here, William.  Thank you.

WILLIAM BRANGHAM:  So, explain this phenomenon that is these women.  How do you explain their dominance?

CHRISTINE BRENNAN:  Well, no one saw this coming, if you consider, UConn had won four national championships in a row.  And …

WILLIAM BRANGHAM:  Amazing, in and of itself.

CHRISTINE BRENNAN:  That's right.

And the top three players from that, the seniors who won all four years, all went in the WNBA draft first, second, and third.  So, of all players coming out of college, they were the best three.  They all left.

So, everyone thought this was going to be a down year for UConn.

CONNECTICUT - New Workers' Wage Law

"Connecticut Just Passed a Law Requiring Bosses Who Steal Workers’ Wages to Pay Them Back Double" by Ava Tomasula y Garcia, In These Times 6/25/2015

For many employers, wage theft makes good business sense.  The probability of getting caught refusing to pay a worker overtime, shaving hours off their check or paying less than the minimum wage is low.  And even in the small number of cases pursued by victims that see the inside of a courtroom, employees often only recover a fraction of what they’re owed.  A new law in Connecticut, however, aims to change this.

This Wednesday, Connecticut Governor Dan Malloy signed into law Senate Bill 914, a measure that will allow victims of wage theft to collect double the amount due them.  By making the cost of breaking the law outweigh the cost of following it, business owners will be deterred from committing the crime in the first place.

“This is going to mean the transfer of millions of dollars each year from cheating employers to low-wage workers,” says James Bhandary-Alexander, a lawyer for New Haven Legal Assistance who represents victims of wage theft.

And yet, as Bhandary-Alexander notes, SB-914 is only a “modest” step in providing workers fair compensation.  Passed after years of effort by workers, immigrant rights advocates and myriad grassroots organizations, SB-914 paradoxically illustrates how large the holes are in existing labor laws across the country—and what an uphill struggle it will be to achieve what Bhandary-Alexander calls “major” progress:  a $15 and hour minimum wage, fair scheduling legislation, the elimination of tip credit and other provisions.

“We can see now how big a battle it is,” he added.

Double down, triple to go

The new law is intended to alleviate a number of gaping holes in state law that allowed bosses to get away with stealing workers’ wages.  Up until now, Connecticut employees had to prove “bad faith, arbitrariness or unreasonableness” on the employer’s part in addition to wage theft, making it extremely difficult for victims to collect.  Courts regularly construed “bad faith” so narrowly that the majority of wage theft charges couldn’t pass muster.

In a 2010 case, for example, Ann Maratea was denied double damages because a Connecticut Superior Court held that her employer, Taylor Freezer, supposedly was “unaware” that it had to pay overtime for the entire 10-year period she worked there.  According to the court, “although it was known to management personnel that Ann Maratea would arrive … well before the official 8 a.m. start of the work day,” failure to pay a single cent for the 10 extra hours Maratea put in every week for a decade didn’t amount to proof of employer “bad faith.”  And so the judge ruled that Taylor Freezer didn’t have to pay Maratea the full amount she would seemingly be legally entitled to.

Now, in order to avoid paying double damages, employers who commit wage theft must demonstrate that they undertook specific investigation into how much constitutes a legal wage, and then somehow made a mistake.  SB-914 lifts the burden of proof from the employee to the employer.

This is crucial because provisions under the federal Fair Labor Standards Act for double damages only apply to workers who are part of “interstate commerce” and those whose employers make over $500,000 a year.  This means that, for millions of workers around the country, federal wage law simply doesn’t apply—making legislation at the state level, including SB-914, their only recourse.

Still, even advocates who pushed for the law say it’s far from ideal.

“To be honest,” said Megan Fountain, an organizer with Unidad Latina en Acción (ULA), a grassroots workers’ and immigrants’ rights organization whose members lobbied hard for the law, “SB-914 is nowhere close to the best wage theft laws in the country.  Ten states make an employer liable for triple damages.”

But even among those states that provide for treble damages (Arizona, Idaho, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Nebraska North Dakota, Vermont and West Virginia), few make the grade in wage theft prevention.  According to one 2012 study which gave states a letter grade based on the strength of their wage theft prevention laws, the two highest-ranking states, New York and Massachusetts, only got a C+ and a C. Connecticut brought home a D—and 18 states scored effectively zero.

“I’d say wage theft is the biggest crime wave in the country,” Bhandary-Alexander added.

Organize, organize, organize

In 1938, Congress passed the nation’s first-ever wage law, the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA), which made double damages a federal requirement.  Yet nearly a century later, the gap between actual practice and national paper provisions is enormous.

In protests that continue to ripple across the country, workers have attested to the variety of ways by which they are deprived of their due pay:  Employers regularly pay below minimum wage, withhold overtime pay or tips, misclassify their employees as independent contractors and engage in a whole host of other tactics to pay workers less than what they are legally owed.  In many industries, wage theft is endemic.

National studies find that over 60 percent of workers in low-wage industries suffer wage violations each week, and that wage theft costs workers $50 billion a year.  In 2013, the Connecticut Department of Labor recovered $6.5 million in unpaid wages.  But many workers use civil suits instead of going through the DOL, and one can safely assume that many did not file complaints because of language barriers or fear of retaliation.  The way the legal odds are stacked—and thanks to years of budget cuts that have reduced DOL Wage and Hour investigators to only about 20 percent their number in the 1970s—there are few incentives for an employer to not steal wages.

In her testimony in front of the Connecticut state senate in support of the new law, Karim Calle, a full-time student and worker from East Haven who said that in years past she had made as little as $30 a day waitressing, told the court what can happen to a worker trying to get back stolen wages.  Calle spoke about two nail salons in Darien and New Canaan where manicurists were discriminated against, sexually harassed by their boss and paid neither minimum wage nor overtime.  In addition, workers developed health problems because of the toxic chemicals they came into contact with daily.

In 2008, six of the women who worked in the salons filed a lawsuit for $370,000 in stolen wages.  As the case wound its way through the courts, the employer’s three houses suddenly went into foreclosure, and he sold the two salons to his niece before disappearing.  “Fraudulent employers use these practices frequently,” Calle said.  Even though the court came to a judgment for $209,000, the employees had no way to collect it.

Calle is a member of ULA, and fought hard for SB-914 as part of a package of laws, including one that would have brought wage liens to Connecticut.  Wage liens enable workers to put a legal hold on an employer’s property when filing a wage theft claim and ensure that an employer can’t “disappear” assets before being ordered to pay what they owe—as the nail salon owner did.

Liens have been used successfully in Wisconsin, Maryland, Alaska, Idaho and Washington, and are being fought for in states like New York, where it’s known as the SWEAT bill (Securing Wages Earned Against Theft).  Yet SB-914 is the only bill of the group that made it through the Connecticut Congress thus far.

Yet perhaps the most important advance to come out of SB-914 was the high level of community and worker organization that coalesced around the law.  Groups like ULA joined forces with Legal Services lawyers, union members, local students, activists from the Connecticut Immigrants’ Rights Alliance, the Fight for $15 campaign and others to secure the bill’s passage.  According to Calle, this coalition is what made the bill’s passage successful.

“This isn’t just a legal problem,” said Bhandary-Alexander, “it’s a political problem and a cultural problem, too.  We need to keep fighting the legal battles, yes, and keep increasing the cost of wage theft, but, on the bottom end, it’s organizing, organizing, organizing… SB-914 shows you both what you can do with not a ton of resources but a lot of patience and energy,” he concluded.  “But the question is, how do we accomplish more?”

The law becomes effective October 1, 2015.

CONNECTICUT - Trying Something New for Latino Students

"Language Wars:  Should Spanish-Speaking Students Be Taught in English Only?" PBS Newshour 7/18/2013

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JUDY WOODRUFF (Newshour):  There's long been debate about bilingual education in the United States and what's the most effective way to make sure students are proficient in academics in the English language.

Special correspondent John Tulenko reports on a Connecticut school district that's taking a different road, one that may yield results, but is sparking a battle over its approach.

JOHN TULENKO:  From kindergarten to third grade, these are the reading years.  But when students exit them, national tests show, only 35 percent read proficiently.

Here in New Britain, Conn., the figure is just 25 percent, among the lowest in the state.  But this urban, mostly Latino school district is trying to turn that around.

The effort began with home visits to address chronic absenteeism among kindergartners.

JOE VAVERCHAK, New Britain Public Schools:  Chronic absenteeism last year was 30 percent.  So, that means we had approximately 1,000 -- around 1,000 kids last year.  And 30 percent of them were missing at least 18 days of school.

JOHN TULENKO:  Attendance officers Joe Vaverchak and Jerrel Hargraves have made some 400 home visits this year.

JOE VAVERCHAK:  We're not there to put a hammer to the parent, because there's lots of issues that cause truancy and absenteeism, a lot.

Watch Should Spanish-Speaking Students Be Taught in English Only? on PBS. See more from PBS NewsHour.

CONNECTICUT - Sandy Hook Post Traumatic Effects

Early responders at Sandy Hook Elementary included, from left:
Lt. Christopher Vanghele, Officer Jason Flynn, Officer Leonard Penna,
Detective Jason Frank and Officer William Chapman.

"Reliving Horror and Faint Hope at Massacre Site" by RAY RIVERA, New York Times 1/28/2013

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The gunfire ended; it was so quiet they could hear the broken glass and bullet casings scraping under their boots.  The smell of gunpowder filled the air.  The officers turned down their radios; they did not want to give away their positions if there was still a gunman present.

They found the two women first, their bodies lying on the lobby floor.  Now they knew it was real.  But nothing, no amount of training, could prepare them for what they found next, inside those two classrooms.

“One look, and your life was absolutely changed,” said Michael McGowan, one of the first police officers to arrive at Sandy Hook Elementary School on Dec. 14, as a gunman, in the space of minutes, killed 20 first graders and 6 adults.

Officer McGowan was among seven Newtown officers who recently sat down to share their accounts of that day.  Some spoke for the first time, providing the fullest account yet of the scene as officers responded to one of the worst school massacres in United States history, one that has inflamed the national debate over gun control.

It is an account filled with ghastly moments and details, and a few faint instances of hope.  One child had a slight pulse, but did not survive.  Another was found bloody but unhurt, amid her dead classmates.  Teachers were so protective of their students that they had to be coaxed by officers before opening doors.  And the officers themselves, many of them fathers, instinctively used their most soothing Daddy voices to guide terrified children to safety.

The stories also reveal the deep stress that lingers for officers who, until Dec. 14, had focused their energies on maintaining order in a low-crime corner of suburbia.  Some can barely sleep.  Little things can set off tears: a television show, a child’s laughter, even the piles of gifts the Police Department received from across the country.

One detective, who was driving with his wife and two sons, passed a roadside memorial on Route 25 two weeks after the shooting, and began sobbing uncontrollably.  “I just lost it right there, I couldn’t even drive,” the detective, Jason Frank, said.

Officer William Chapman was in the Newtown police station along with Officer McGowan and others when the first reports of shots and breaking glass came in early on the day of the massacre.  The school was more than two miles away.  They traveled up Route 25, then right onto Church Hill Road.  “We drove as fast as we’ve ever driven,” Officer McGowan said.

They made it in under three minutes, arriving in the parking lot while gunfire could still be heard.

“I got out of the car and grabbed my rifle and it stopped for second,” Officer Chapman said.  “But then we heard more popping.  You could tell it was rifle fire. And it was up so close, it sounded like it was coming from outside.  So we were all looking around for someone to shoot back at.”

As the officers converged on the building, the gunfire stopped again.  Officers Chapman and Scott Smith made their way to the front entrance.  It was here, only minutes earlier, that a rail-thin 20-year-old named Adam Lanza, armed with a .223 Bushmaster semiautomatic carbine, two semiautomatic pistols and hundreds of rounds of ammunition, had blasted his way through the glass.

Much more in the full story.

GUN CONTROL - Connecticut Held Hostage by Gun Industry

"Gun Makers Use Home Leverage in Connecticut" by RAY RIVERA and ALISON LEIGH COWAN, New York Times 12/23/2012

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Gun owners packed a hearing room in the Connecticut capital, vowing to oppose a bill that would require new markers on guns so that they are easier to trace.

One after another, they testified that the technology, called microstamping, was flawed and would increase the cost of guns.

But the witness who commanded the most attention in Hartford that day in 2009 was a representative of one of Connecticut’s major employers: the Colt Manufacturing Company, the gun maker.

The Colt executive, Carlton S. Chen, said the company would seriously consider leaving the state if the bill became law. “You would think that the Connecticut government would be in support of our industry,” Mr. Chen said.

Soon, Connecticut lawmakers shelved the bill; they have declined to take it up since. Now, in the aftermath of the school massacre in Newtown, the lawmakers are formulating new gun-control measures, saying the state must serve as a national model.

But the failed effort to enact the microstamping measure shows how difficult the climate has been for gun control in state capitals. The firearm companies have played an important role in defeating these measures by repeatedly warning that they will close factories and move jobs if new state regulations are approved.

The companies have issued such threats in several states, especially in the Northeast, where gun control is more popular. But their views have particular resonance in Connecticut, a cradle of the American gun industry.

Like manufacturing in Connecticut over all, the state’s gun industry is not as robust as it once was. Still, Connecticut remains the seventh-largest producer of firearms in the country, according to federal data.

Colt, based in Connecticut since the 1800s, employs roughly 900 people in the state. Two other major gun companies, Sturm, Ruger & Company and Mossberg & Sons, are also based in the state. In all, the industry employs about 2,000 people in Connecticut, company officials said.

Gun-control advocates have long viewed Hartford, the capital, as hospitable terrain, because Connecticut is a relatively liberal state and already has more gun restrictions than most. Democrats control both houses of the legislature.

Yet lawmakers in Hartford did more than shelve the microstamping bill in 2009. They also declined to push a bill last year that would have banned high-capacity ammunition magazines — the very accessory used by Adam Lanza to kill 26 people, including 20 children, at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown.

In several states, the gun companies have enlisted unions that represent gun workers, mindful that Democratic lawmakers who might otherwise back gun control also have close ties to labor.

COMMENT: The gun-nuts oppose making guns easier to trace?! So they ARE hiding something. The cost issue is a smoke screen.

GUN CONTROL - Newtown Shootings Changing Conversation

"Gun Rights Supporter Sen. Mark Warner Says Tighter Firearms Laws Needed" PBS Newshour 12/18/2012

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SUMMARY: As funerals continued for shooting victims in Newtown, Conn., the White House and congressional leaders called for new gun legislation. Gwen Ifill speaks with Sen. Mark Warner, D-Va., a strong supporter of the Second Amendment, who explained that while there may be no easy solution, "Enough is enough."

JUDY WOODRUFF (Newshour): We turn to the aftermath of the shooting in Connecticut, as the community continues to mourn its losses in Connecticut, resume some routine, and consider its own role in a national conversation on what steps should now be taken.

AMERICA - Words of Hope From 'Mr. Rogers'

"Words of Hope and Healing After Crisis: Message From Mr. Rogers Goes Viral" PBS Newshour 12/18/2012

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SUMMARY: After the shooting in Newtown, a tiny bit of hope was found in a message from children's advocate Fred Rogers via social media. Ray Suarez talks to Washington Post writer Maura Judkis whose father Jim Judkis photographed Rogers over his career, including the image published on Facebook along with words from the late Mr. Rogers.

RAY SUAREZ (Newshour): On Friday, as details of the horrific shooting in Newtown emerged, a group that supports public television posted on Facebook this image and these words from the late Fred Rogers.

"When I was a boy and I would see scary things in the news, my mother would say to me, look for the helpers. You will always find people who are helping. To this day, especially in times of disaster, I remember my mother's words and I'm always comforted by realizing there are still so many helpers, so many caring people in this world."

That message has since been shared by tens of thousands of people online.

The picture was taken by Jim Judkis, who photographed Mr. Rogers over the years.

We're now joined by his daughter, Maura Judkis, who is a writer for The Washington Post.

And did you realize soon after that your father's photo was ricocheting around the Web?

(LAUGHTER)

MAURA JUDKIS, The Washington Post: I think I noticed it Friday evening. And at that point, it had been shared by maybe 50,000 people.

CONNECTICUT - These Tragedies Must End

"‘These Tragedies Must End,’ Obama Says" by MARK LANDLER and PETER BAKER, New York Times 12/16/2012

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NEWTOWN, Conn. — President Obama vowed on Sunday to “use whatever power this office holds” to stop massacres like the slaughter at the school here that shocked the nation, hinting at a fresh effort to curb the spread of guns as he declared that there was no “excuse for inaction.”

In a surprisingly assertive speech at a memorial service for the 27 victims, including 20 children, Mr. Obama said that the country had failed to protect its young and that its leaders could no longer sit by idly because “the politics are too hard.” While he did not elaborate on what action he would propose, he said that “these tragedies must end.”

The speech, a blend of grief and resolve that he finished writing on the short Air Force One flight up here, seemed to promise a significant change in direction for a president who has not made gun issues a top priority in four years in office. After each of three other mass killings during his tenure, Mr. Obama has renewed calls for legislation without exerting much political capital, but the definitive language on Sunday may make it harder for him not to act this time.

“No single law, no set of laws can eliminate evil from the world or prevent every senseless act of violence in our society,” he said. “But that can’t be an excuse for inaction.” He added that “in the coming weeks I’ll use whatever power this office holds” in an effort “aimed at preventing more tragedies like this.”

“Because what choice do we have?” he added. “We can’t accept events like this as routine. Are we really prepared to say that we’re powerless in the face of such carnage? That the politics are too hard? Are we prepared to say that such violence visited on our children year after year after year is somehow the price of our freedom?”

Mr. Obama, speaking on a stark stage before a table of votive candles for each victim, mixed his call to action with words of consolation for this bereaved town. When he read the names of teachers killed defending their students, people in the audience gasped and wept.

The service came as new details emerged about the terrifying moments at the Sandy Hook Elementary School on Friday. Authorities said Sunday that the gunman, Adam Lanza, shot his mother multiple times in the head before his rampage at the school and that he still had hundreds of rounds of ammunition left when he killed himself. Gov. Dannel P. Malloy of Connecticut said Mr. Lanza shot himself as the police were closing in, suggesting that he may have intended to take more lives had he not been interrupted.

The president’s trip here came amid rising pressure to push for tighter regulation of guns in America. The president offered no specific proposals, and there were no urgent meetings at the White House over the weekend to draft legislation. Administration officials cautioned against expecting quick, dramatic action, especially given the end-of-the-year fiscal crisis consuming most of Mr. Obama’s time.

But the administration does have the makings of a plan on the shelf, with measures drafted by the Justice Department over the years but never advanced. Among other things, Democrats said they would push to renew an assault rifle ban that expired in 2004 and try to ban high-capacity magazines like those used by Mr. Lanza in Newtown. The president also said he would work with law enforcement and mental health professionals, as well as parents and educators.

ALSO:

"A Painful Duty: Consoling a Town Preparing to Bury Its Children" by CARA BUCKLEY, New York Times 12/16/2012

"The Nation Heads Back to School With New Worries About Safety" by MOTOKO RICH, New York Times 12/16/2012