A flurry of sex-abuse allegations is rocking a Long Island high school where 2 accusers say lines between teachers and students were blurred in a 'cult-like' environment

cheap car insurance quotes - #1:A flurry of sex-abuse allegations is rocking a Long Island high school where 2 accusers say lines between teachers and students were blurred in a 'cult-like' environment

 

 Long Island's Babylon Junior-Senior High School is in the grips of a sexual-abuse scandal.
Brittany Rohl's account of being groomed by a teacher ignited a cascade of similar allegations.
Rohl and another accuser told Insider about the "reckoning" ahead of an outpouring of allegations.
When the Babylon, New York, school district announced earlier this month that a high-school teacher had resigned amid unspecified allegations, Brittany Rohl thought of about six names that could fit the bill.
The district never detailed the allegations against the unidentified teacher, and the Suffolk County police on Long Island said they found no evidence of a crime. But the incident motivated Rohl, now 28, to speak out about her own experience with a different teacher at Babylon Junior-Senior High School.
"I felt like this was the time, if ever, to come forward," she told Insider in an interview Monday.
On November 8, Rohl wrote an eight-page letter to the Babylon Board of Education, alleging that a former teacher at the school groomed her from the age of 16 and initiated a two-year sexual relationship with her once she turned 18. The relationship left her feeling suicidal, she wrote in the letter.
Rohl told Insider she had always dreamed of a "reckoning" at her alma mater but didn't have "much hope that that would happen."
She said it was a "surreal" experience seeing just how wrong she was.
Rohl's letter prompted a wave of women to come forward with their own allegations against staff members at the school. Dozens told their stories in a dramatic six-hour school-board meeting on November 15.
Rohl told Insider she expected a few other women to show up and speak that day but was surprised when even more stepped up to the microphone. She said some even showed up during the meeting after watching it unfold on Zoom and deciding to get in their cars and drive there to speak.
"I really thought that no one would bat an eye about this" or would try to discredit her, Rohl said. "To see so many people show up to the meeting — the venue was moved from the library to the auditorium — and then I got a standing ovation at the end of my speech, it just felt like a dream come true."
One of the women who spoke was Darcy Bennet, who graduated in 2009. Bennet alleged that a former teacher at the school, who also coached the tennis team, had touched her inappropriately at a summer camp between her seventh- and eighth-grade years and then tried to kiss her when she was in the ninth grade and attending a different school. Bennet told Insider that when she later described these unwanted sexual advances to a Babylon guidance counselor, the man was relieved of his coaching duties but allowed to continue teaching. (The teacher did not return a request for comment.)
Neither Bennet nor Rohl pressed charges over their claims, which date back to the late aughts and early 2010s, and some evidence that might have corroborated them has most likely been lost over the past decade.
Rohl told Insider she spent a lot of the meeting crying as she heard Bennet and the other women's stories.

READ MORE - A flurry of sex-abuse allegations is rocking a Long Island high school where 2 accusers say lines between teachers and students were blurred in a 'cult-like' environment

An off-duty New Jersey officer and his mother were charged after he fatally struck a pedestrian with his car and took the body back to his house, officials say

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A New Jersey officer has been charged with reckless vehicular homicide, Essex County officials said.
Louis Santiago took a pedestrian's body home after a collision. He then returned it to the scene.
Santiago's passenger and mother also face charges tied to the incident.
An off-duty New Jersey police officer has been charged with reckless vehicular homicide after fatally striking a pedestrian while driving, officials said.
Louis Santiago, 25, of the Newark Police Department, struck Damian Z. Dymka, 29, early in the morning on November 1 on the Garden State Parkway, said a release from the Essex County Prosecutor's Office issued on Wednesday.
The prosecutor's office said that after striking Dymka, Santiago fled the scene, only to return to put the body in his car and drive home, where he discussed the situation with his mother, Annette Santiago. A preliminary investigation found that Santiago failed to "maintain his lane and traveled on the right shoulder" of the parkway, where he hit Dymka.
Albert Guzman was a passenger in the car. And neither Santiago nor Guzman called 911 or administered aid, the prosecutor's office said in its statement.
The release also said that Santiago eventually returned the body to the scene, where it was found in the back seat by New Jersey State Police.
Santiago's father, a lieutenant in the Newark Police Department, was the one who called 911 to report that his son had been involved in an accident.
The release said that in addition to the charge of reckless vehicular homicide, Santiago was charged with leaving the scene of a crash resulting in death, desecrating human remains, and conspiracy to hinder prosecution, among other charges.
Santiago's mother and Guzman have been charged with conspiracy to desecrate human remains, hindering apprehension, and conspiracy to hinder apprehension and tamper with physical evidence.

READ MORE - An off-duty New Jersey officer and his mother were charged after he fatally struck a pedestrian with his car and took the body back to his house, officials say

Their own words may have doomed men who killed Ahmaud Arbery

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The video of Ahmaud Arbery's shotgun death was a shocking piece of evidence that suddenly brought the Black man's killing into the national consciousness.
But the murder convictions of the three white men who chased him may have been secured as much by their own words to investigators the day of the shooting.
Greg McMichael, who was in the bed of a pickup truck when his son killed Arbery, told police the Black man "was trapped like a rat" and he told Arbery: "Stop, or I’ll blow your f—ing head off!”
Statements like that allowed prosecutors to give context to the short video that didn't show the entire shooting and had little of the five minutes that the men chased Arbery.
“It’s those statements that screwed the defense more than the video. If they had never talked to police and they said we saw him taking something from the property and running — there’s an OK shot the jury might have acquitted them," said appellate attorney Andrew Fleischman, who followed the trial from Atlanta.
WHAT THEY SAID:
The shooter, Travis McMichael, his dad, Greg McMichael and neighbor William “Roddie” Bryan all spoke extensively and candidly with Glynn County investigators just hours after Arbery was killed in their Brunswick, Georgia, neighborhood in February 2020.
They told police they weren’t sure exactly what Arbery had done wrong, which would later be a big blow to their defense that they were making a citizen's arrest.
Watch: Key moments from the murder trial for Ahmaud Arbery's death

The citizen's arrest law, largely repealed by lawmakers after Arbery's death, required a person to see or have immediate knowledge of a crime being committed or have reasonable suspicion that someone is fleeing a felony in order to justify a citizen’s arrest.
“I don’t think the guy has actually stolen anything out of there, or if he did it was early in the process. But he keeps going back over and over again to this damn house," Greg McMichael said, according to a transcript of the interview that Glynn County police Sgt. Roderic Nohilly read in court.
Bryan was on his front porch when he saw Arbery run past with the McMichaels’ truck close behind. He told police he didn’t recognize any of them, or know what prompted the chase, but still joined in after calling out: “Y’all got him?”
In an interview with the Georgia Bureau of Investigation, Bryan said he wanted to take a photo of Arbery to show police, but couldn’t point to any crimes Arbery had committed.
“I figured he had done something wrong,” Bryan said. “I didn’t know for sure.”
The statements allowed prosecutor Linda Dunikoski to methodically pick apart the defense's arguments.
“Nobody was talking about a citizen’s arrest. And I don’t mean using the magic words ‘citizen’s arrest.’ I mean no one’s saying, ‘We saw the guy commit a burglary and we were going to hold on to him so we could turn him over to police because he committed this crime,'" Atlanta defense attorney Page Pate said.
DEFENSE CASE
That left the attorneys for the men to struggle to explain away their statements.
“The evidence suggests that Roddie Bryan legitimately struggles to find the right words,” Bryan's lawyer, Kevin Gough, told jurors in his closing argument Monday.

READ MORE - Their own words may have doomed men who killed Ahmaud Arbery

Oakdale man returns home after crashing motorcycle in Modesto. Hours later, he was dead

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 An Oakdale man died at home Wednesday night, hours after crashing his motorcycle in Modesto and being ejected into a canal, the California Highway Patrol reported.
The collision happened about 6:50 p.m. on McGee Avenue south of Claribel Road, said CHP Modesto office spokesman Officer Tom Olsen. Joshua Corrigan, 42, was southbound on a straight stretch of McGee, riding his 2008 Yamaha.
As he entered a roughly 45-degree left bend in the road north of Rice Road, he was unable to negotiate the turn and fell, Olsen said. Corrigan was thrown from the cycle and landed in the empty irrigation canal that parallels McGee.
Corrigan was able to get himself out of the canal and call his father, who came to pick him up.
The men returned to a family home in Oakdale. At about 9:20, Olsen said, Corrigan’s family called 911 to report that he had been in a crash and now was unresponsive.
An ambulance crew and the CHP responded to the home, where Corrigan was pronounced dead.
The cause of his death has yet to be determined, Olsen said. Also unknown at this time is whether drugs or alcohol were factors in the crash, he said.

READ MORE - Oakdale man returns home after crashing motorcycle in Modesto. Hours later, he was dead

GoFundMe pulls page aimed at raising $5 million bail for Waukesha Christmas parade suspect

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 A GoFundMe page aimed at raising $5 million bail for the Wisconsin man accused of plowing his SUV through a Christmas parade in Waukesha has been pulled from the platform.
Darrell Brooks Jr. was charged with five counts of first-degree intentional homicide following the holiday event on Sunday. Five people were pronounced dead on the scene while a sixth victim, 8-year-old Jackson Sparks, died days later in an area hospital.
During a court appearance on Tuesday, Brooks was ordered held on $5 million bail — sparking swift backlash given prosecutors previously admitted Brooks was only able to rip through the parade route after being sprung on an “inappropriately low” bond.
At the time of the parade massacre, Brooks was out on $1,000 bail after he was arrested earlier this month for allegedly attempting to run over the mother of his child with his car.
According to screengrabs first shared by Law Enforcement Today, the bail also spawned a fundraising effort on Brooks’ behalf. Set up by a person going by the name James Norton, the page insisted Brooks was a victim of a “racist” justice system and used hashtags including #RacismIsReal and #BLM.
“On November 21st, 2021 our dear friend Darrell Brooks was arrested for allegedly driving his car into a parade, as someone who knows Darrell personally I can tell you that he would NEVER do such a thing and I know he is innocent of what he was charged with,” Norton wrote, per the screengrabs.
“Clearly there is more to the story the media is not telling us and I am seeking to raise the bail so Darrell can be released and speak his truth to his side of the story in this tragic situation that sees another black man behind bars in a purely political and racist trial.”
The fundraiser organizer went on to write that there is “no excuse for this continued treatment of black Americans by prosecutors around the country.”
A spokesperson for GoFundMe on Wednesday confirmed to Fox Business that the page has since been removed from the platform. The person attempting to raise money for Brooks has also been banned from using GoFundMe for future fundraisers.
“Fundraisers with misuse are very rare, and we take all complaints very seriously,” the spokesperson said.
“Our team works with law enforcement to report issues and assists them in any investigations they deem necessary.”
The move comes amid controversy for GoFundMe over its previous removal of pages dedicated to raising money for Kyle Rittenhouse, who was recently acquitted of killing two men and wounding a third with an AR-style semi-automatic rifle unrest in Wisconsin last summer. The late-night violence was triggered by the shooting of Jacob Blake, a 29-year-old Black man who was shot by a white police officer on Aug. 23, 2020.
Now that Rittenhouse has been cleared of all violent charges, a spokesperson said money could now be raised on his behalf through the platform.
“If someone is acquitted of those charges, as Rittenhouse was today, a fundraiser started subsequently for their legal defense and other expenses would not violate this policy,” according to GoFundMe.
“A fundraiser to pay lawyers, cover legal expenses or to help with ongoing living expenses for a person acquitted of those charges could remain active as long as we determine it is not in violation of any of our other terms and, for example, the purpose is clearly stated and the correct beneficiary is added to the fundraiser.”

READ MORE - GoFundMe pulls page aimed at raising $5 million bail for Waukesha Christmas parade suspect

Wrongfully Convicted Black Man Is Entitled to No Money from The State After 43 Years In Prison, Now a GoFundMe Has Raised Over $1M: ‘You Deserve Every Penny!’

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 A Missouri man convicted of triple murder four decades ago is able to spend this holiday season home with family after courts ruled that he was wrongfully convicted.
Despite being a victim of the state, he will not receive any form of compensation from the state in restitution. However, a GoFundMe launched by the Midwest Innocence Project over the summer with a goal of $7,500 has far surpassed the goal of the nonprofit corporation.

On Tuesday, Nov. 23, Kevin Strickland was exonerated by a “Show Me” state judge of an over 40-year murder conviction he received in 1979. Evidence that was previously ignored was brought forward by a Jackson County prosecutor and was key in gaining Strickland’s new freedom.

The state’s attorney Jean Peters Baker spoke on this victory, saying, “To say we’re extremely pleased and grateful is an understatement. This brings justice — finally — to a man who has tragically suffered so so greatly as a result of this wrongful conviction.”
As Strickland exited the Western Missouri Correctional Center, he spoke about his emotions to a group of reporters.
“I’m not necessarily angry. It’s a lot. I think I’ve created emotions that you all don’t know about just yet,” the now 62-year-old shared. “Joy, sorrow, fear. I am trying to figure out how to put them together.”
He further committed himself to work in criminal justice reform, in hopes that he can prevent this from “happening to someone else.”
The presiding judge, James Welsh, said that he was presented with “clear and convincing evidence” that “undermines the Court’s confidence in the judgement of conviction.”
The community has also rallied around Strickland’s story to help him return to some normalcy as he begins to reintegrate into society. The GoFundMe has reached the $1.1 million mark, just $100,000 short of a new $1.2 million goal. Many donors contributed $5,000 each.
One donor left a comment demanding change: “This release after so many years of incarceration without compensation is wrong on so many levels. This practice only endorses a bad practice by prosecutors and will do little to help others similarly situated. There has to be some accountability for decisions that are made even in error. Let’s change the laws!”
Another was elated for Strickland, “You deserve every penny , I can’t even imagine 43 years taken away Your a millionaire now !!”
Strickland, who has always maintained his innocence all along, was convicted without any physical evidence linking him to the murders. The court sent him away for nearly two-thirds of his life based on the testimony of one woman — who later recanted her testimony on her death bed.
His younger brothers Roland Strickland and Warren Thornton said this has been a 43-year nightmare. KSHB records Strickland as saying, “I’ll never forget that time, that day, that month. My birthday is in April. I had just turned 16, and you take my brother away for life,” he said. “He wasn’t even a man. He’ll probably tell you he was, but I mean, age-wise, he was a boy. He was 18.”
Strickland also revealed that while his brother was sentenced in 1979, he had been locked up before the trial.
Thornton shared, “He wasn’t able to see his daughter, his son. He never got to see any of my children. The way the world has changed, the simple things that we take for granted, he didn’t have had any of those. Forty-three years of advancement he’s missed out on.”

READ MORE - Wrongfully Convicted Black Man Is Entitled to No Money from The State After 43 Years In Prison, Now a GoFundMe Has Raised Over $1M: ‘You Deserve Every Penny!’