Tag: Abuse

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World News

Uni withdraws pupil’s provide over racist abuse of England trio

Uni withdraws student's offer over racist abuse of England trio

England striker Jadon Sancho (C) is comforted by his teammates after missing a penalty in the UEFA EURO 2020 final between Italy and England at Wembley Stadium in London on July 11, 2021.

Laurence Griffiths | AFP | Getty Images

A university withdrew an offer from a student after racist abuse against English players after the EURO 2020 final.

Video footage from a Snapchat group chat was circulating on Instagram in which a person was heard using racist language to Marcus Rashford, Jadon Sancho and Bukayo Saka, who each missed penalties in the shooting at Wembley Stadium.

A spokesman for Nottingham Trent University said: “This allegation does not apply to an NTU student. We do not tolerate any form of discrimination, including racism.

“We dealt with this matter immediately and withdrew an offer from an applicant.”

Read more stories from Sky Sports

Police have arrested five people for racially abusing English players online since the defeat by Italy on Sunday.

Prime Minister Boris Johnson announced on Wednesday that the government plans to extend football bans over online racism, while social media companies face heavy fines if they fail to remove the abuse from their platforms.

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Health

Measuring the Price of Racial Abuse in Soccer

Measuring the Cost of Racial Abuse in Soccer

Paolo Falco, labor economist at the University of Copenhagen, was delighted, like many football fans around the world, about the outcome of the European Championship final last Sunday, in which Italy beat England on a blatant penalty shoot-out. And he was equally appalled by the consequences.

In the hours following the game, the three English players, all black, who missed their penalties were showered with racial abuse on social media. The abuse sparked outrage from Prince William and British Prime Minister Boris Johnson and revived an all-too-familiar aphorism: “If you win, you are English; If you lose, you are black. “

In recent years, UEFA, the governing body of European football, has campaigned against racism against its players both online and in stadiums. But the behavior persists; in Italy and elsewhere, world-class colored players were exposed to racist chants and surnames and even bananas were thrown on the field. “I’ve seen firsthand all kinds of terrible things being said and verbally abused and yelled at,” said Dr. Falco, who is closely following Serie A, Italy’s top division.

In December, he and two colleagues – Mauro Caselli and Gianpiero Mattera, economists at the University of Trento in Italy and the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development in Paris, respectively – published one of the first studies measuring the impact of in-stadium abuse on the game. Their working paper, due to be published in a peer-reviewed journal, compared the performances of around 500 Serie A players in the first half of the 2019-2020 season of the main Italian championship league – before the Covid-19 pandemic, when the stadiums were still turned out to be full and loud – until the second half, when “ghost games” were played in empty stadiums.

Their results were overwhelming: a subset of players, and only one, played noticeably better without an audience. “We find that players from Africa, who are most frequently affected by racial harassment, experience a significant increase in performance when the fans are no longer in the stadium,” the authors write.

Dr. Falco spoke by phone from Copenhagen on Thursday. The following conversation has been edited for brevity and clarity.

What inspired your studies?

I watched a soccer game after the lockdown began and was impressed by how different an experience I had myself on TV, simply not hearing all the noises and chants that normally go on in the background of a soccer game.

I’m from Naples and soccer fans in Naples are definitely very noisy. In this type of stadium you see emotions at their best and worst. And you can’t help but feel that this has an impact on what happens on the ground in the stadium.

I started to wonder: would it make a difference for all players alike? Who are the players who suffer more or less or who benefit more or less from having or not under pressure from fans?

What was your working hypothesis?

That players who are targeted for their color do better when the pressure is removed – regardless of the general playing pressure in a stadium, which is the same for all players.

This question is incredibly difficult to answer under normal circumstances because you don’t have the experiment you would like to have: seeing how these players fare in relation to themselves, before and after, with and without fans. Covid gave us exactly this natural experiment. From one day to the next, the players went from full stadiums to empty stadiums.

We got curious and started analyzing the data. And we’ve found that players are indeed affected differently, with those who are most abused seemingly seeing an improvement in their performance once they are no longer under that pressure. This effect persisted even after controlling a variety of potentially confusing factors – weather, time of day of the game, strength of the opposing team – so we firmly believe it is there.

What metric did you use as a measure of player performance?

There are very detailed statistics, compiled by a publicly available algorithm, about the performance of each player after each game. It’s much more than just goals scored and it’s very objective: how far did the player run during the game? How many rounds did you complete?

These are statistics from a database that is often used for fantasy team reviews and betting purposes, is that correct?

Yes that’s right.

There is an interesting and growing literature on the effect football fans have on teams as a whole. For example, it has been shown that referees in the absence of spectators are not as favorable to the home team and that the home advantage is not as pronounced as those who win. We wanted to look at each player to see differences in performance between those with a particular ethnic background.

I want to go back to the very end of this game between England and Italy. Imagine for a second what is going on in the minds of these players as they approach that penalty kick, knowing that not only are they facing the same pressure as any other soccer player on the field, but also that they are black that they are in a minority and they are very likely to be treated exactly as they were treated the moment they made a mistake.

Think of the incredible pressure that is put on these players. It almost makes you shiver. So I don’t think the idea that we could find something like that in the data was too much of a fantasy leap.

What did your results show?

We found that African players did 3 percent better in the second part of the season than they did in the first part. You may think OK, 3 percent isn’t that big of a deal. But if you were to talk about the productivity or the bottom line of a company and its employees, 3 percent would be huge. When you see soccer players as workers for what they ultimately are and they are 3 percent less productive, it affects the entire team.

These are economic costs, not just moral or ethical concerns. Players of African descent play worse in front of spectators, but no one else does better, so the overall quality of the game deteriorates. This should bother the club owners as they invest in players.

We also looked at players from teams that we know were particularly abused at the start of the season. The Italian authorities are actually recording episodes of abuse by fans in the stadium so we know which teams played in games where there was such racist behavior before the lockdown. And it was the players on those teams, including Napoli, who saw the greatest increase in performance – 10 percent better – in the absence of spectators.

We’re talking about the country’s elite top athletes. You are in the best position for social status and money making. The fact that these athletes are affected is therefore extremely worrying; if you look at the lower leagues, there’s a lot more to do.

Do you think your study group, with only 7 percent African players, was robust enough to produce meaningful results?

That’s a good question. But the number of players plays only a limited role, because these are players we observe several times a year – 38 observations for each player each week during the season, about half before the lockdown and half after. The statistical power of the analysis is very strong because we are comparing exactly the same people and not just two random samples before and after.

As fans in the stadium, we all like to think that we are more than just spectators – that our voices have a real impact on the game. Your research suggests that we are actually doing this, and it is uncomfortable.

Sometimes I worry a little about what we’ve been up to here as we may inadvertently reassure people that shouting racist things will help their team win. On the other hand, I firmly believe that research should aim to uncover facts and always make them transparent. In that case, I hope those responsible for the economics of this game understand that racism costs them money and harms their investments. If certain players fail to reach their full potential, the game just isn’t as beautiful and engaging as it could be.

The inquiries came because the recent shot put event would have set a British national record of 55 feet had it not been determined that the weight of 16 pounds was half an ounce too light.

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Health

Ease of Covid lockdown restrictions could assist diminish drug abuse, physician says

Ease of Covid lockdown restrictions may help diminish drug abuse, doctor says

The number of deaths from drug overdose in the United States hit a dismal record as the nation battled the Covid-19 pandemic at the same time. In 2020, a total of 93,331 Americans died from drug overdoses, an increase of nearly 30% year over year, according to preliminary data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Dr. Nora Volkow, director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse, told CNBC’s The News with Shepard Smith that she hopes the surge in drug overdoses will not last.

“One of the reasons I’m optimistic … is that one of the factors that contributed to this surge in drug use was isolation and social distancing, and that doesn’t allow you to give Narcan, which reverses overdoses,” said Volkow. “This desperation, which I hope people felt, is slowly being alleviated.”

Volkow added that people will now be able to rebuild social support systems that existed before the Covid pandemic and that health systems can focus again on treating opioid abuse disorders.

The US also had the highest number of deaths from opioid overdoses in 2020, and more than 60% of those deaths were related to fentanyl. Moderator Shepard Smith asked Volkow why fentanyl played such a role in drug overdoses. Volkow stated that it had to do with potency and pricing.

“Fentanyl is a very potent drug, and it’s actually 50 times more potent than heroin, so you need smaller amounts to get the same effects,” said Volkow. “So it is actually a big win for the illicit drug market, and it has been used to actually contaminate other drugs. So when you mix fentanyl with drugs like methamphetamine or cocaine, you make them so much more deadly. “

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Business

English Soccer Proclaims Social Media Boycott to Protest On-line Abuse

English Soccer Announces Social Media Boycott to Protest Online Abuse

English football officials said Saturday they would hold a social media blackout this coming weekend to protest “the ongoing and ongoing discriminatory abuse that players and many others have received online related to football”.

The boycott is supported by a coalition of groups including the Premier League, the richest and most famous football league in the world, but also the English Football Association. the two best professional levels in men’s and women’s football; Referee; the country’s players’ union and others.

The action is the most direct effort by a sport to date to pressure social media companies like Twitter, Instagram and Facebook to take action against online abuse. It follows a season in which players, clubs, team leaders, referees, commentators and others are active and was the target of abuse.

The social media boycott also follows a week of anger and street protests against top clubs and their owners who tried – and failed – to create a breakaway European Super League that would have sealed them off from many structures, including the pay system Sustaining football for a century. At each of the protests there were vitriolic demands on the owners of teams to sell.

Cases of harassment have been well documented online. In February, Arsenal striker Eddie Nketiah posted a picture on Twitter entitled “Work with a Smile!”

The tweet was racially abused by a Twitter user who told Nketiah, who is black, to leave the club. Twitter responded by permanently banning the user’s account, Sky Sports reported.

Such harassment was instigated not only by fans but also by the club’s social media accounts. In December, commentator and former soccer player Karen Carney deleted her Twitter account after receiving a wave of online abuse.

After Leeds United beat West Brom 5-0, Carney wondered on Amazon Prime Video Sport whether Leeds would “blow up” at the end of the season. A clip of her comment was shared on the Leeds team’s Twitter account, which dumped a lot of hateful messages for Carney.

Many on Twitter defended her and criticized the team’s social media people, including former Leeds captain Rio Ferdinand, who demanded that the tweet be deleted.

Bethany England, a Chelsea forward, called on the Leeds social media team for “cruel behavior”.

“Cyber ​​bullies an expert and opens her up to mass online abuse for doing her job and speaking out!” England said.

In February, the top executives of the Football Association – the English Football Association – the Premier League and other organizations wrote an open letter to Jack Dorsey, CEO of Twitter and Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Facebook, urging those responsible to do so an end to the “level of malicious, offensive abuse” emanating from users on their platforms.

“The reality is that your platforms continue to be havens for abuse,” the football managers wrote. “Your inaction has made the anonymous perpetrators believe that they are unreachable.”

In the past, Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter have taken steps such as: B. the temporary or permanent ban on users, but the problems of online abuse have continued to arise.

In a press release announcing the social media boycott, which will run from Friday afternoon through Monday, English football urged the UK to “put in place tough laws to keep social media companies out for what is on their platforms happens to make you more accountable “.

In the statement, Richard Masters, the Premier League executive director, said the league would continue to urge social media companies to make changes to prevent online abuse.

“Racist behavior of any kind is unacceptable and the appalling abuse that players receive on social media platforms must not continue,” said Masters. “Football is a diverse sport that brings together communities and cultures from all areas. This diversity strengthens competition.”

It’s not the first time football has tried to shed light on racism.

For example, players and coaches in the Premier League and other top leagues have kneeled the whole season before kick-off to support the Black Lives Matter movement – at the suggestion of the league team captains and with the support of league officials.

But some players and even entire teams who are frustrated because there is no concrete progress on racial issues and who feel that the gesture has become more performative than productive have recently stopped participating.

Crystal Palace striker Wilfried Zaha said he had come to view kneeling as “demeaning” and said he would stop and focus his efforts on other areas. Brentford, a team in England’s second division championship, stopped kneeling before the games in February. While the players said in a statement that they still support the anti-racism effort, they said, “We believe we can use our time and energy to promote racial equality in other ways.”

The social media blackout will take place while a slew of games are played across multiple leagues, including one between Manchester United and Liverpool, the defending champions of the Premier League.

Edleen John, director of international relations at the football association, said English football will not stop pushing for change after next weekend.

“It is simply unacceptable that people throughout English football and society should continue to be exposed to discriminatory abuse online on a daily basis with no real consequences for the perpetrators,” said John. “Social media companies must be held accountable if they continue to fail to fulfill their moral and social responsibilities to solve this endemic problem.”

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Entertainment

Filmmakers Take a look at Woody Allen Abuse Allegations in 4-Half Sequence

Filmmakers Look at Woody Allen Abuse Allegations in Four-Part Series

Documentary filmmakers Kirby Dick and Amy Ziering have shed light on sexual abuse allegations in institutions such as the military for the past decade in The Invisible War (2012). Colleges, in “The Hunting Ground” (2015); and the music industry in “On the Record” (2020). Now they target Dylan Farrow’s decades of sexual abuse allegations against her adoptive father Woody Allen.

“Allen v. Farrow” is a four-part documentary that will be released later this month. It introduces viewers to Farrow’s public experience of accusing a famous and powerful man of abuse, but also includes details of the case that were not shared with the public.

At first, Farrow’s story didn’t fit in with the usual broad-based research by Dick and Ziering, but on closer inspection, the filmmakers found they had an opportunity to discuss family child abuse and incest, a topic that survivors consistently urged the two to address .

“I was haunted by these stories,” said Ziering. “That is the third track. Nobody talks about it. “

Everyone is talking about Woody Allen and Mia Farrow, however. The former Hollywood power couple were together for 12 years. They never married and had separate apartments, made 13 films together, adopted and had two children (Dylan and Moses) another (Satchel who changed his name to Ronan after his parents separated). They were the talk of the town until everything collapsed in 1992. Over the course of eight months, Farrow discovered nude photos of college-age daughter Soon-Yi Previn in Allen’s apartment. That summer, 7-year-old Dylan said Allen sexually assaulted her. These allegations resulted in an ugly custody battle and a permanently torn family apart. Allen has consistently denied the allegations and has not been charged with a crime following investigations in Connecticut and New York.

With the media fully focused on the scandal for so many years, Dick said he believed he knew the story and was initially reluctant to delve further. “It’s been covered so extensively and a lot of our work goes into new cases,” he said. “But when we got involved, we found that there was a lot more. We turned around finding that the whole story had never come out. “

The filmmakers, along with Amy Herdy, the producer who led the investigation, spent three years tracking down court documents and police reports, and conducting extensive interviews with many witnesses who had never spoken to the public before.

The series begins February 21 on HBO and includes a home video of Mia Farrow growing up in Connecticut, as well as audio recordings she secretly taped from some conversations with everyone. And for the first time, we see 7-year-old Dylan’s videotape, taped immediately after Farrow’s allegations. The ribbon has become a hot button over the past two decades. One side is evidence of her truthfulness and the other side is evidence that Farrow coached her daughter in her responses. The filmmakers also raise questions about an important report from the Yale Child Sexual Abuse Clinic at Yale-New Haven Hospital that found Dylan incredible after nine interviews within seven months.

Neither Allen, Soon-Yi Previn nor Moses Farrow participated in the documentary. (The majority of Farrow’s other living children did so.) They declined to comment on the series that they had not yet seen.

I asked Dick and Ziering why they decided to get involved. You will find edited excerpts from our conversation below.

For so long this story has been told the way he said – it told a family drama in which many people declared, “We will never know the truth.”

Amy Ziering If you dig closer you see he said it, he said, he said, he said, he said, he said, she said [whispered]he said, he said, he said, he said. But we didn’t know. Nobody knew. If you get this echo chamber from a certain perspective and narrative, you will not recognize the source. That was interesting when we unpacked it. And when we started listening to the “She Said” part and checking out the “He Said” part, it got extremely interesting.

Since the beginning of the #MeToo movement, Allen has been ostracized in a number of ways: Amazon has canceled its film contract for several pictures. His latest film has not yet found US distribution. The first editor of his memoirs resigned. Some actors have said that they will no longer work with him in the future. Why publish this documentary now?

ZIERING Our goal is never the perpetrator. It is more about us all understanding these crimes, how we all participate in these crimes, and I mean all of us, both funny and unknowing. It’s also about how to talk about something that happens all the time in America that no one is comfortable with. This is not the full exploration of it. It’s a way of getting people to think about it.

THICK As with “On the Record,” where people need to know what happens when a person decides to come forward and immediately afterwards, this is built into the experience of the people involved. So it’s not just about someone being accused.

Whether by the media or by everyone himself, Farrow has long been portrayed as unstable? Was that your perception of her and has that changed?

THICK I just want to say that the suspicion and criticism that mothers have in this society in general are just evidence of misogyny. People like to blame mothers for anything. From the beginning I was very suspicious of this narrative because it is a misogynist narrative – the idea of ​​the hysterical woman, the crazy woman. This is what not only happens with incest, which is done quite often, but also with sexual assault. Hearing that made me very, very suspicious.

ZIERING There are amazing wills [to Farrow] and people will see the home videos Mia has made of her children all her life. We have received a lot of love and praise from the people we interviewed about their qualities as mothers.

Wasn’t Dylan ready to give you the tape of her at the age of 7, the tape that has been at the center of this controversy for so long?

ZIERING It took Dylan a long time to feel comfortable and secure in sharing this video. And once she shared it, there were parameters about whether she’d be okay with us actually using it. It was incremental. We are not concerned with contributing to the pain of others.

At the end of the documentary, Mia says she’s still scared of Woody and is actually worried about what he’s going to do when he sees this series. Then why did she choose to participate? What was your goal?

ZIERING She didn’t want to be part of it. She did this for her daughter Dylan. In fact, in the interview you see her in, she’s in my shirt. I literally had to borrow someone else’s shirt and give her my shirt because when she showed up she didn’t want to do the interview, she was so unhappy. What did she wear? I don’t even remember.

She said, “My daughter came up to me and said it was important to me and you must do this for me.” And she said, “I stand by my children. I will take the incoming fire. I don’t know you, Amy. I don’t know Kirby. I know your work. I was angry because I didn’t do anything. ”

The series examines the Yale-New Haven clinic in depth. From the frequency with which the clinicians interviewed Dylan to the fact that any timely interview notes from those sessions were destroyed when the final report was published. In your previous sexual abuse research, have you ever seen a situation where such notes were destroyed?

THICK I had not. It’s really shocking that notes get destroyed, but that’s one of the reasons the whole story never came out. If everything had been transparent, we wouldn’t have made this series.

How actively did you try to reach out to Soon-Yi, Moses, and Woody? Have you ever got an answer from any of them?

THICK We have definitely achieved. We didn’t expect them to speak. If we were to make a movie about Woody Allen’s career, he probably wouldn’t be talking to us. It didn’t surprise us.

Were there any threats of lawsuits or anything else from the Allen camp when you put this together?

THICK No. We are always careful when verifying facts. We went to great lengths to ensure accuracy.

ZIERING As always. We never had to withdraw a fact. Legally, it would have been easier to adapt a book or write a story about someone who is already convicted. This way you won’t be in front of a moving train. But unfortunately we actually run in front of moving trains. The only thing that can save us is truth and extreme caution. We are not dead yet.

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Business

‘No person Tells Daddy No’: A Housing Boss’s Many Abuse Circumstances

‘Nobody Tells Daddy No’: A Housing Boss’s Many Abuse Cases

Women who have worked for Mr. Rivera have also dealt with gross remarks, frequent sexual innuendo and, in one case, assault, according to records and interviews with dozens of former employees.

For a while, a nonprofit employee named Danielle Dawson was romantically involved with Mr. Rivera until she broke it off, according to a police report and interviews with her employees. On December 22, 2016, after the relationship ended, Mr. Rivera turned to Ms. Dawson at an animal shelter where she worked and asked her to have sex. This is evident from the report she filed with the New York City Police Department.

When Ms. Dawson refused, Mr. Rivera slapped her face and said, according to the report, “Nobody says Dad no”. Then he forced her to give him oral sex. Ms. Dawson is ready to file charges, the report said, but it is unclear whether police ever investigated the incident further. Mr. Rivera has never been charged.

Police declined to answer questions about the allegation, but said the “NYPD takes sexual assault and rape cases extremely seriously.”

Following the incident, Mr. Rivera fired Ms. Dawson and asked her to file a complaint with the state about unlawful discrimination. This is evident from public records and interviews with her colleagues. In November 2017, the nonprofit paid her $ 45,000 to stop pursuing her. This resulted in a settlement agreement from The Times. It contained a provision that prevented her from speaking publicly about what had happened, said Brian Younger, a security officer she confided in at the time.

The next year, in 2018, Flora Montes, an administrative assistant for the Bronx Parent Housing Network, accused Mr. Rivera of sexual harassment and unsolicited touch. This resulted in a complaint she filed with the state and a draft of a Times-reviewed lawsuit. She said he repeatedly looked down her shirt, told her she was sexy, and stroked her hair and back.

When Ms. Montes was preparing to file a lawsuit in 2019, the nonprofit paid her a $ 130,000 settlement that included a non-degrading clause that the Times recorded prevented her from publicly targeting Mr. Rivera’s conduct to discuss.

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Entertainment

What Defines Home Abuse? Survivors Say It’s Extra Than Assault

What Defines Domestic Abuse? Survivors Say It’s More Than Assault

As destructive as these behaviors may be, they are not often viewed as inappropriate by law enforcement or the courts, adding to the belief that victims must be beaten and hospitalized before their accounts can be taken seriously. Doubts about how the judicial system would treat them are not unfounded: around 88 percent of the survivors surveyed by the ACLU said the police did not believe them or held them responsible for the abuse.

The new laws to combat compulsive behavior have raised some concerns from advocates who fear that – in trials that local lawyers claim are already piled up against survivors – the standard of evidence may be too high, especially when officials don’t have the Tools are in place to identify and prove patterns of risky behavior. “Researchers understand obsessional control as something that can help predict the outcome of a dangerous situation that will become fatal,” said Rachel Louise Snyder, author of “No Visible Bruises: What We Don’t Know About Domestic Violence Can Kill Us.” “But she added,” Law enforcement doesn’t necessarily recognize that. “

While coercive control has been illegal in England and Wales since 2015, 2018 saw the largest number of domestic violence-related homicides in five years, according to the BBC. The Center for Women’s Justice, a UK surveillance group, filed complaints in 2019 and 2020 alleging a “systematic failure” by the police to protect victims. “The officers on site do not understand the coercive control,” said Harriet Wistrich, the center’s director. Although some training was provided, she stressed that the police, social workers, and courts must have a common understanding of how emotional abuse can become criminal for the law to be most effective.

Others fear that the passing and enforcement of new laws in the United States could draw resources from urgent logistical needs of survivors or from other avenues to justice. A growing number of proponents say the best answer is not with the criminal courts, with their racial and economic inequalities, but with dialogue-based alternatives like restorative justice.

Judy Harris Kluger, a retired New York judge who is the executive director of the nonprofit Sanctuary for Families, agreed that coercive control is important as a concept. As a judge, however, she said, “I would rather put energy into enforcing the laws we have,” she said, “but focus on other things besides litigation to combat domestic violence,” such as funding prevention, Housing and employment programs for survivors.

Proponents say, however, that legal recognition of the harmfulness of the problem will make the fight easier – and will help force a reckoning of its spread.

You point to Scotland as a potential model. Domestic abuse laws passed in 2019 focus on coercive control and include funding for training. Much of the police and support staff have taken compulsory courses to understand the problem, said Detective Superintendent Debbie Forrester, Police Scotland’s director of domestic violence. The judiciary also received lessons. In addition to a public campaign in which it was declared that the control of the behavior is illegal, the authorities made the perpetrators aware that they were being scrutinized: “We will talk to previous partners,” warned a police statement.