Jennifer Mahoney, 33, of Manalapan pleaded guilty in U.S. District Court to sexual exploitation of a child.

She faces between 15 and 30 years in prison when she is sentenced Aug. 22, and will have to pay restitution to the victim. She had been charged with two counts of sexual exploitation of a child.

As part of the plea, Mahoney agreed 30 years is the appropriate sentence, although the judge will have the final say. She would be under supervised release for anywhere between five years and life after her sentence is completed. She also agreed not to appeal.

Mahoney has been in custody since December after prosecutors said three pornographic videos showing assaults on the child were found on the computer of Robert Ramos Jr. of Austin, Texas.

Ramos was charged with possession of child pornography and sexual exploitation of minors. Prosecutors in Texas say he set up seven fake Facebook accounts to solicit teenage girls to send him nude photos and videos of themselves engaged in sex acts.

Mahoney admitted to sexually assaulting the girl and streaming the assault live over a video chat service on the Internet. She also admitted to abusing the girl on another occasion, recording the abuse on a camera phone and emailing the video to at least one other person. Finally, Mahoney admitted to viewing other videos of child sexual abuse streamed to her using a video chat service.

"This horrible crime is a stark example of how harmful child pornography is, and how its young victims bear not just the physical and emotional scars of violent sexual assault, but lifelong trauma as others repeatedly watch," U.S. Attorney Paul Fishman said in a statement. "Those like Mahoney, who create and feed the market, perpetuate unimaginable suffering for the children they abuse."

Source: ABC News

This news comes after a story that ran this weekend on CNN detailing  cases of women in each branch of the military who were diagnosed with a mental disorder and dismissed from the military after filing a sexual assault or sexual harassment complaint.

The stories are gruesome, telling of several women’s experience of serious sexual trauma, who are then essentially rejected from the military when they share what happened to them.

CNN has interviewed women in all branches of the armed forces, including the Coast Guard, who tell stories that follow a similar pattern — a sexual assault, a command dismissive of the allegations and a psychiatric discharge.

Schroeder says a fellow Marine followed her to the bathroom in April 2002. She says he then punched her, ripped off her pants and raped her. When she reported what happened, a non-commissioned officer dismissed the allegation, saying, “‘Don’t come bitching to me because you had sex and changed your mind,’” Schroeder recalls.

Moore says she was alone in her barracks in October 2002 when a non-commissioned officer from another battery tried to rape her. When she filled out forms to report it, she says, her first sergeant, told her: “Forget about it. It never happened,” and tore up the paperwork.

“It felt like a punch in the gut,” Moore says. “I couldn’t trust my chain of command to ever back me up.”

McClendon says she was aboard a Navy destroyer at sea when a superior raped her on the midnight to 2 a.m. watch. After reporting the attack, she was diagnosed with a personality disorder and deemed unfit to serve.

ThinkProgress reached out to Kayla Williams , a female veteran and author of Love My Rifle More Than You , who has written extensively about women in the military, to see if the CNN report sounded correct to her. Williams not only confirmed the CNN article; she told a similar sexual assault experience she witnessed:

While I was at the Defense Language Institute, a woman reported sexual assault – and was threatened with disciplinary action for having been drinking underage when the assault happened. She was later discharged with a personality disorder diagnosis. Stories like that [discourage] victims from coming forward, which prevents justice from being done. Since those who commit sexual assault are often repeat offenders, discharging victims while not vigorously prosecuting those who commit assault could also ruin the careers – and lives – of multiple victims while allowing criminals the freedom to continue. The Department of Defense has been making progress in fighting sexual assault within the military, but it has a long way to go. Treating victims of sexual assault seriously and with the dignity and respect they deserve, rather than sweeping cases under the rug with this type of discharge, is an important step in continuing that progress.

Military sexual traumas, as they are called within the armed forces, are shockingly common and on the rise. 19,000 incidents were reported  (PDF) last year alone. But there is little transparency on sexual assault cases, and the ACLU has requested more information through a Freedom of Information Act. A judge ruled recently  that the armed forces were too slow in fulfilling the request, and ordered the records released by this time next month. The military has not yet complied.

In the mean time, the new regulations announced by Defense Secretary Panetta will hopefully provide some relief to victims: Not only does it change minimum ranking, it also requires military investigators to be trained in helping sexual assault victims and requires troops to have sexual assault awareness training when they go into active duty.

Source: Think Progress

Sixty-nine percent  of Transgender Latina Women reported having been verbally harassed, physically assaulted or sexually assaulted by a law enforcement personnel, a new report conducted by the Williams Institute reveals. Of these, only 31 percent admitted to having lodged a report or complaint. The report, “Interactions of Latina Transgender Women with Law Enforcement ,” interviewed 220 Latina male-to-female transgender individuals, 18 years and older, and discovered that police officers accounted for the majority of negative reactions reported, representing 56 percent of all verbal harassment cases, and 16 and 15 percent of all reported physical and sexual assaults respectively. When asked whether they had ever been solicited for sex by a police officer or other law enforcement personnel, 42 percent responded in the affirmative.

Source: Think Progress

A federal district court judge ruled yesterday that the military has been too slow to respond to a Freedom of Information Act request for its sexual violence data. There are an estimated 19,000 reports (PDF) of sexual assault in the military each year — a number that israpidly rising — and both the Service Women’s Action Network (SWAN) and the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) are seeking more information on the problem, arguing that the only way to begin to solve it is to know all the facts.

In a press release, the ACLU outlined one of the military’s reasons for not responding, and U.S. District Court Judge Mark R. Kravitz’s reaction:

In one example, the Army Crime Records Center claimed it couldn’t provide records about “sexual assault” because its records are organized by specific criminal offenses, not under the generic heading of “sexual assault.”

“’Sexual assault’ is easily read as encompassing rape and other non-consensual sexual crimes defined in the Army’s offense codes,” Kravitz wrote in his order. “The fact that the agency was unwilling to read the Plaintiffs’ request liberally to include such terms seems to be almost willful blindness.”

The military places sexual assault cases into a special category: MST, or Military Sexual Trauma, which puts the onus on the victims by citing their trauma and grouping together all incidents of rape, sexual assault, and sexual harassment. But specific incidents have emerged in lawsuits, testimonials, documentaries, and the Veterans’ Administration has concluded that incidents are under-reported.

Defense Secretary Leon Panetta has vowed to reduce the number of sexual assaults, but the ACLU and SWAN argue only a full account of where and when the incidents occurred, as well as documentation of how they were handled, can lead to solving the problem. Those groups will get what they are hoping for: Judge Kravitz’s ruling mandates that the military turns over its records by May 15.

Source: Think Progress

Some days the American common sense deficit seems worse than others, and such was the case when XXL published a video interview with the rapper Too $hort, titled “Fatherly Advice From Too $hort — Lesson Three: The Birds & The Bees.” Which in this case apparently means advice for boys who are starting to be attracted to girls on how to “take it to the hole.” And more importantly, suggesting that groping girls and pushing them up against walls is the quickest route to male sexual gratification. As disgusting as schooling young people in sexual assault is, and as horrifying as the thought is that such advocacy of assault would constitute “fatherly advice”—and XXL has apologized profusely for posting the video, as well they should—Too $hort’s apology may be even more revealing.

“When I got on camera I was in Too $hort mode and had a lapse of judgment. I would never advise a child or young man to do these things, it’s not how I get down,” he said in his apology. “Although I have made my career on dirty raps, I have worked over the years to somewhat balance the content of my music with giving back to the community. Just coming from a man who wants to see young people get ahead in life, I’m gonna do my best to help and not hurt. If you’re a young man or a kid who looks up to me, don’t get caught up in the pimp, player, gangster hip-hop personas. Just be yourself.”

First, there’s the idea that it’s totally fine to advocate molesting young girls as long as you’re in character, because no harm can possibly be done from giving that advice. Even if it’s very, very clear that advice is comedic or performative (something that might be less clear in an interview than in a song), that still suggests that something that actually happens to women and is completely and utterly awful is hilarious to contemplate—even when the “joke” isn’t well-crafted, or crafted at all to reveal the ugliness of such attitudes.

Then, there’s the idea that private conduct is, if not more impactful than the product you sell and the entertainment industry helps you distribute widely, at least balancing it out. I think it’s great if stars want to give back to their communities. But they’re kidding themselves if they think it’s some sort of spiritual tithe for disseminating ideas that at best are demeaning and at best could contribute to someone justifying themselves when they assault someone.

Source: Think Progress