Chicago Man’s Family Worries As He Is Held By ICE, Trump Administration Plans Sanctuary City Crackdown

Syndicated Local – CBS Chicago

CHICAGO (CBS) — The Trump administration last week announced a controversial plan to send armed SWAT-like teams of Border Patrol agents to Chicago and at least nine other so-called sanctuary cities. 

 

© Provided by CBS Chicago

On Friday night, Mayor Lori Lightfoot ripped into the plan for creating a climate of fear in the city.

The plan is set to begin this month and last until May. At least 100 agents will be sent to cities like Chicago and others across the country.

CBS 2’s Mike Puccinelli on Sunday night introduced us to one family that is already worried as Immigration and Customs Enforcement holds a husband and father.

Zoe Torres has been clinging to her mom since the middle of last week.

“Your 3-year-old is asking, ‘Where is her dad?’” said Carolina Larios of Woodlawn. “You know, what do you say?”

It’s a tough question to answer, because Zoe’s dad is in jail. He has been there since Wednesday, when he was arrested by ICE agents while attempting to drop his step-daughter off at school.

“He told him to get out the car, and then they just put him in handcuffs,” said stepdaughter Maya Chavez, 15.

How tough was that?

“Very,” Chavez said.

Maya’s stepdad is Julio Torres. He was brought to the U.S. by his parents when he was 12 years old.

Now, 22 years later, he finds himself in a jail in Kenosha, Wisconsin, facing possible deportation to Mexico.

Chavez said watching her 34 year old stepdad being led away in cuffs was traumatic.

“I just think it’s unfair,” she said. “He didn’t do anything.”

Larios said that’s true. She even showed CBS 2 the provisional unlawful presence waiver issued to her husband by United States Department of Homeland Security.

“He’s not a bad person. He’s not a criminal. He didn’t do anything wrong,” she said. “We did everything we were supposed to do by law. We apply. We pay fees. We gave $10,000 to this attorney so he could help us.”

But on Wednesday morning, that didn’t matter. And now, the Trump administration plans to send tactical teams from border areas to sanctuary cities like Chicago to help round up undocumented residents.

“If (President Trump) does that, the people they’re going to be terrorized,” said one man who did not want his face shown. “They’re not going to walk in the streets anymore.”

Trump administration officials say Sanctuary Cities make it impossible for ICE agents to do their jobs. But Larios said her husband’s case shows how even people who work through the system get punished in the current climate.

“He’s obviously really upset,” Larios said. “He misses us. He just wants to be home.”

And they want him home too.

“It’s very unnecessary, especially for my stepdad. They try and make it seem as if he’s a bad person, but really, we’re just here to try to live and make a better life,” Chavez said.

“I don’t know what it is that we are doing so wrong here I don’t get it. I don’t get it,” Larios added. “Why now? Why come and take him like that?”

CBS 2 reached out to Immigration and Customs Enforcement and had yet to hear back Sunday night.

Crumbling churches to forgotten temples: Haunting images show abandoned sacred buildings around the world

2/11/2020





These haunting images show once-magnificent holy sites, which now lay abandoned and reclaimed by nature. From crumbling churches to forgotten temples, all feature in the book Abandoned Sacred Places. Author Lawrence Joffe reveals the stories behind these sites and why they are so important. Scroll through to see more...Next Slide

1-4/22 SLIDES © Provided by Daily Mail

If this Michigan woodworker has his way, Bigfoot sightings will be more common

Rachel Greco, Lansing State Journal

VIDEO Mason woodworker makes 8-foot tall Bigfoot from wood. Does he believe?

MASON - Chris Ketchum doesn't put much faith in tall tales or folk lore.

If he can't see it, he's not likely to believe in it, but the size of the tracks he saw crossing M-36 a few miles east of Dansville in the late 1960s still haunt him.

They were massive, each footprint in the snow at least 15 inches long, maybe bigger. They stretched across the road and led into the woods.

Whatever made them had a stride of at least 6 feet, Ketchum said, and riled up his neighbor's horses.

Ketchum, now 67, had been on his way over to help settle the horses down when he found the footprints in the snow, and knelt down to marvel at them.

"I don't know what it was, but it wasn't a bear like my neighbor thought," he said. "I'd never seen anything like it. He got his horses settled down and I never saw anything again."© Matthew Dae Smith/Lansing State Journal Chris Ketchum and the 8-foot-tall man-made Bigfoot in his backyard on Wednesday, Feb. 19, 2020. He made the cutout from plywood.

Ketchum, who retired after working as a cook for the Michigan State Police, never forgot those tracks, or the the wide, deep imprint they made in the snow more than 50 years ago.

The Bigfoot legend never won him over, he said, but the tracks he saw decades ago inspired his latest woodworking project — an 8-foot-tall plywood cutout of Bigfoot that he painted black and set up in his backyard.

He aims to make more, and sell them, in the hope that there's a market for his Sasquatch creations.
A woodworker's creation 

© Matthew Dae Smith/Lansing State Journal Chris Ketchum of Mason and, his dog Max, on Wednesday, Feb. 19, 2020 alongside the 8-foot-tall man-made Bigfoot in his backyard that Ketchum made from plywood.

If nothing else, Ketchum said the large, looming shape in the snow behind his house seemingly striding toward the woods nearby has given motorists pause.

In the week since he set it up he's seen several cars suddenly slow down as they pass by. Some turn around just up the road and drive by his house again.

He doesn't blame them, Ketchum said.

"If I drove by and saw something like that I would have to do a double take to see what it really was," he said.

That's the point, Ketchum said.

His Bigfoot creation is a departure from the cabinets, lamps and Michigan-shaped tables and chairs he's been making for years.

Ketchum has been a hobby woodworker since he was a kid.

"My dad taught me," he said. "It's creative. I make everything."

These days Ketchum has more time to devote to it. Even in the winter he'll spend hours inside his barn, kept warm thanks to a wood stove. His dog, Max, usually keeps him company while he works.

"I go out there and do my woodworking and nobody bothers me," Ketchum said.

'Something is out there'

On Wednesday morning, Ketchum stood in the snow next to the tall cutout, peering up at it. He pointed to the small ridges he left along the outline of his Bigfoot's outstretched hand. They're meant to illustrate the texture and shape of fur, he said.

The size of its feet and the length of its stride aren't as grand as what he saw on the ground years ago. Still, it honors the legend he knows many people believe.

Family members are fans of the end result. A few have already asked him to make more.

"It's pretty cool," grandson Chris Diaz, 18, said. "It looks real."

Ketchum's preparing to make more and says people can contact him, by phone at 517-528-6611 and via email at csketch52@gmail.com, to purchase them.

"I just made him for fun but I'd like to sell some," he said. "It doesn't take long to make him."

Ketchum hasn't decided what he'll charge for each cutout, but said it would be "great" if his cutouts prompt a rise in Bigfoot sightings.

"I have no idea what the market is for something like this," he said. "But the intent is to make people stop and take a second look at them, to say, 'What is that?"

Ketchum still asks himself that very question about whatever made those peculiar tracks he saw decades ago.

There was another sighting of similar prints nearby in Dansville shortly after his own discovery, he said, but no one ever confirmed what made them.

"Something is out there," he said. "If it wasn't Bigfoot, I don't want to meet what it was."

Contact Rachel Greco at rgreco@lsj.com. Follow her on Twitter @GrecoatLSJ.

This article originally appeared on Lansing State Journal: If this Michigan woodworker has his way, Bigfoot sightings will be more common

Opinion: Indiana should ban private possession of dangerous wild animals

Erin Huang, IndyStar

VIDEO Wildlife in Need founder vows to 'fight to the end' if officials try to take his animals

Federal and state authorities are finally cracking down on Tim Stark’s Wildlife in Need (WIN) in Charlestown. The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) revoked the facility’s exhibitor license and assessed a $340,000 civil penalty. And the Indiana Attorney General filed a lawsuit against WIN alleging the facility deceived consumers who made donations while keeping animals in deplorable conditions.

The charges against WIN allege more than 120 Animal Welfare Act violations and are difficult for anyone with a heart to read. They include beating a leopard to death with a baseball bat; swinging monkeys around by their tails; sick and dying animals going without veterinary care; multiple unexplained animal deaths, including an ocelot who apparently strangled; and enclosures that posed a risk of harm to the animals they contained.

Big cats also were fed an inadequate diet and housed in cages insufficient to contain them. Animals went without basic necessities, such as clean drinking water, shelter, and shade, according to the allegations. The list goes on.
More: Wildlife in Need founder speaks after USDA revokes license for 'well over 120 violations'

House Bill 1200, introduced by Reps. David Abbott and Chris Campbell, would have gone a long way in strengthening Indiana’s law on the private possession of dangerous wild animals and could prevent irresponsible operators from harboring certain

species. The bill required that anyone wanting to possess animals such as bears, big cats, primates, and hyenas, have a USDA exhibitor license, not employ anyone convicted of abusing or neglecting animals, not have USDA citations for interfering with inspections, maintain liability insurance, file a written recapture plan in the event of an escape, and file animal inventories and records of acquisition and disposition.

A critical piece of the bill prohibited public contact with captive dangerous wild animals. Facilities like WIN constantly churn out baby animals for temporary use in pay-to-play operations.

To facilitate public handling, tiger cubs and other infants are removed from their mothers shortly after birth — a cruel and unhealthy practice that can lead to lifelong physical and psychological problems and even death. Infant animals are subjected to chronic stress from rough and excessive handling and are often controlled with physical abuse. During WIN’s baby tiger playtime, children and adults were bitten and clawed by juvenile tigers.

The cycle of breeding and exploiting baby big cats, bears, and other animals until they are a few months old leads to an excess of older animals with nowhere decent to go. Places like WIN create a burden for the sanctuary community. Tigers in America is a rescue network that relocates big cats from private owners and dilapidated facilities to sanctuaries.

Since 2011, the organization has helped transfer 252 tigers in 17 states and a few foreign countries, plus a few dozen other animals at a cost of more than $1.3 million. Dozens of the tigers originated from just one cub petting operation. Indiana is one of the few states that still have almost no laws prohibiting the private possession of dangerous wild animals.

'Shootout at the O.K. Corral': Embattled Wildlife in Need owner vows to fight shutdown

HB 1200 was a commonsense and reasonable solution to improving animal welfare and public safety in the state. Unfortunately, the House Natural Resources Committee never voted on the bill following a Jan. 21 hearing.

Without a law like HB 1200, reckless people who possess and exploit dangerous wild animals have an incentive to set up shop in Indiana and the responsibility of paying costs related to escapes, attacks, and neglect cases falls on taxpayers. WIN is not the first troubled exhibitor in the state, and it won’t be the last without a stronger law.

All professionally run zoos, sanctuaries, and responsible wildlife exhibitors in the state should speak out in support of HB 1200.

Erin Huang is an Indianapolis attorney and former Indiana state director for the U.S. Humane Society.

This article originally appeared on IndyStar: Opinion: Indiana should ban private possession of dangerous wild animals

New York marijuana: 5 reasons why the legal weed industry is excluding communities of color

David Robinson and Joseph Spector, New York State Team

Watch: Lawmakers vow no marijuana deal without revenue plan

Politicians, regulators and advocates nationally have so far failed to deliver on lofty promises that legalized recreational marijuana would benefit victims of the racially biased war on drugs.

Communities of color devastated by disproportionate marijuana arrests have, in many ways, been excluded from the green rush, which is generating hundreds of millions of dollars in legal weed sales in 11 states across the country. 

© Joseph Spector Assemblyman Mark Weprin, D-Queens, spoke at a rally in January 2020 at the state Capitol on the need to make sure revenue from marijuana sales goes back into communities of color.

The social equity struggles elsewhere have loomed large over the push this year to legalize marijuana use for adults over 21 in New York.


Gov. Andrew Cuomo and Democratic lawmakers have pledged to find a way to make amends for the decades-long injustice done to black, Latino and Hispanic Americans.

Still, how much of the revenue from marijuana sales goes back into communities of color is the key issue as the sides look to have a deal as part of the state budget for the fiscal year that starts April 1.

"We’re not moving forward unless we get the commitment on how the revenue needs to be spent," Sen. Liz Krueger, D-Manhattan, the bill's sponsor, said last month.
How much legal marijuana money is at stake in New York

Advocates are demanding large portions of the projected $300 million per year in pot tax collections go to benefit communities hit hardest by the historic injustice of marijuana policing.

Civil rights leaders also urged lawmakers to prevent big cannabis companies from excluding people of color from New York’s legal weed industry, which is expected to hit sales of between $1.7 billion and $3.5 billion per year.

Efforts to legalize marijuana last year failed -- first in the state budget and then again at the end of the legislative session in June.

Gov. Andrew Cuomo said Wednesday he is hopeful a deal is reached in the budget, saying it likely would not pass as a standalone bill.

"Marijuana, I believe if we do not get it done in the budget then we do not get it done," Cuomo said on WAMC, a public radio station based in Albany.

"I believe we need to get it done, and it is a major priority for me. I said it in the State of the State."

He announced Thursday he would travel to states that have legalized marijuana, including Massachusetts, Illinois, California and Colorado.

"One of those issues that everybody has goals. We want a goal of social equity; we want to make sure young people can't get it, et cetera," he said.

"We want to make sure there are advantages to communities that have been oppressed. But, then you look at the aftermath and many of those goals haven't been met, right?"

More: 7 things to know about Gov. Cuomo’s bill to legalize recreational pot
What are the legal marijuana jobs numbers

As New York debates legalizing cannabis, politically charged efforts across the country seek to create more marijuana jobs for illicit pot dealers, chefs, immigrants and entrepreneurs alike.

Despite the threat of federal authorities cracking down, the marijuana industry already has more than 120,000 workers and is poised to add 500,000 more over the next decade.

To grasp the stakes in New York, consider that legalizing recreational pot could create about 30,700 jobs, according to a Rockefeller Institute of Government study.

That would surpass the 13,000 workers in craft brewing, but fall below the 62,000 in the state’s thriving wine industry led by the Finger Lakes, the study noted.

More: Legalizing marijuana in New York: How it hinges on how money goes to communities of color
How many minority-owned marijuana businesses in other states
Click to expand

Video: Cuomo announces tour of states with legal weed


In Massachusetts, which legalized recreational pot in 2016, only about 6% of roughly 700 marijuana business licenses have gone to minority-owned applicants, prompting protests from civil rights advocates and minority business leaders.

Everything from financing hurdles to business training gaps have kept it beyond the reach of many people of color, according to aspiring cannabis entrepreneur Richard Harding.

“Massachusetts cannabis business is very dominated by large companies that are often owned by rich white males, and there are plenty of people out in the state who we believe ought to have an opportunity,” said Harding.

To understand the inequity, consider the state's population is 22% Latino or African-American. And that same demographic makes up 75% of people imprisoned under mandatory minimums for drug crimes.© Submitted Richard Harding, part owner of Green Soul Organics, which is seeking to open cannabis businesses in Massachusetts.

Harding is a part owner in Green Soul Organics, a 100% minority owned startup seeking to open several cannabis businesses in Massachusetts. He is also an organizer behind the advocacy group Real Action for Cannabis Equity, or RACE.

Similarly, Illinois recently became the 11th state in the nation to allow the sale of recreational marijuana. But when stores opened in Chicago on Jan. 1, white men were the ones raking in profits, city officials said.

More: New York marijuana: What to know about decriminalization, criminal records, pot possession

What are the plans to promote social equity in legal marijuana industry 

© Bebeto Matthews, AP Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Wolf, second from left, New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, center, Connecticut Gov. Ned Lamont, second from right, and New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy, far right, co-host a regional summit on public health issues around cannabis and vaping, Thursday Oct. 17, 2019, in New York.

In New York, Cuomo’s cannabis bill includes a variety of social equity measures, such as small business incubators and low- to no-interest loan programs catering to those affected by marijuana prohibition.

There are also measures to spend New York pot tax revenue on local community impact grants outside of the cannabis industry.

"Because these communities need help and they need investment and need resources, and not all of them want to engage in the cannabis industry, which can be a volatile industry," said Norman Birenbaum, the director of cannabis programs for Cuomo’s administration.

Cuomo’s plan also encourages giving priority to granting business licenses to minorities, women and other disadvantaged groups, although many specific rules would be set by a commission tapped to oversee the cannabis industry.

Other states are also using policies that incentivize hiring of minority and economically disadvantaged workers in the cannabis industry.
How New York plans to spend legal marijuana tax money

© Hans Pennink, AP Assembly Majority Leader Crystal D. Peoples-Stokes, D- Buffalo, walks outside the Assembly Chamber after legislators completed the state budget in the early morning hours at the state Capitol Monday, April 1, 2019, in Albany, N.Y.

So far, Cuomo has offered indistinct measures for spending marijuana tax money on social equity, a stance that many advocates blamed for killing legal weed legislation last year.

The debate over including specific pot tax spending rules instead of more flexible ones remains the most substantial legislative sticking point.

“We’re narrowing that gap, and there are a few details that we look forward to ironing out with them,” Birenbaum said in an interview with USA TODAY Network.

Some advocates, however, are skeptical of Cuomo's plan to keep the money in the state budget's general fund — instead of one exclusively dedicated to social equity and other marijuana-related programs focused on public health, safety and education.

The difference is key to ensuring the money doesn't go to unintended purposes, such as plans to repair New York City's subways discussed last year, advocates and lawmakers said.

Assembly Majority Leader Crystal Peoples Stokes, D-Buffalo, said she's hopeful a deal will be reached in New York in the budget.

"I think it’s very likely," she told reporters early this month. "I believe that the administration and many people around here believe that if it’s not in the budget, it won’t get passed."

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David Robinson is the state health care reporter for the USA TODAY Network New York. He can be reached at drobinson@gannett.com and followed on Twitter: @DrobinsonLoHud

This article originally appeared on New York State Team: New York marijuana: 5 reasons why the legal weed industry is excluding communities of color

Arkansas Republican goes out on a limb in Congress with one trillion tree pitch

Gray News Staff

WASHINGTON (KAIT/GRAY DC) - A green offensive in the war on climate change. Republicans in the House of Representatives are introducing legislation they say will help capture carbon and reduce the impact of greenhouse gases. A former forester is leading the charge. 

 

© Provided by Jonesboro KAIT Republicans in the House of Representatives are introducing legislation they say will help capture carbon and reduce the impact of greenhouse gases. A former forester is leading the charge.

“I found out I’m the only person in the House that went to forestry school,” said Rep. Bruce Westerman (R-AR).

It is a passion project for the House’s foremost tree expert.

According to a report from Gray News, Westerman thinks planting one trillion trees across the world will lead to eliminating carbon in the atmosphere. His introduction of the One Trillion Trees Act stems from a Swiss study that shows the effort could remove two-thirds of all man made carbon since the Industrial Revolution. Westerman claims there will be little to no added cost for taxpayers because private companies will pitch in.

“Teddy Roosevelt said it a long time ago that trees are the lungs of the earth and they’re really the most efficient and effective and widespread tool that we have to remove atmospheric carbon,” said Westerman.

The legislative offensive comes after President Trump touted the idea in his State of the Union Address in early February. But Westerman sits in the minority in the House. He only has Republican cosponsors as of now, though he claims he is hearing interest from Democrats.

“If there’s anything that should be bipartisan it should be trees and how we are better stewards of the environment,” said Westerman.

Westerman believes putting a cap on emissions for the fossil fuel industry is a gut-punch to the economy. He prefers his nuanced approach. But the National Resource Defense Council Action Fund says filling forests is not nearly enough.

“House Republicans want to sound like they care about climate change but they are not yet ready to do anything to limit the pollution from burning coal, oil, or gas,” said David Doniger, a senior adviser to the NRDC Action Fund.

Doniger supports tree planting, but he thinks this is a GOP effort to skirt other climate responsibilities. He thinks Republicans are being forced into taking climate action because it is an election year.

“Members of the GOP are feeling pressure to address climate change. The voters care about this and want action,” said Doniger.

He says it will take too long, potentially hundreds of years, for these trees to have a positive impact. Doniger notes climate change will impact the ability of the trees to grow into climate change combatants. His sights are set on holding the fossil fuel industry accountable.

“The action they’re proposing now is too little and not itself a serious proposal. So they have a long way to go,” said Doniger.

The trillion trees bill is sitting in committee in the House, but with only GOP lawmakers on board its future is up in the air.

A bartender is calling out the service industry for low wages with a viral TikTok of her $9 paycheck for 70 hours of work


Margot Harris 2/13/2020

© Alliyah Cortez/Tik Tok

Aaliyah Cortez, who works as a server and bartender at a sports bar in Texas, posted a video to TikTok of her $9.28 paycheck.

She said it was the net amount of money she earned for working over 70 hours, not including tips.

In the clip, Cortez stresses the importance of tipping people in the service industry.

The video, which has gone viral and received nearly 100,000 likes, is opening up a broader discussion online about the realities of working in the service industry.

Bartender and server Aaliyah Cortez is opening up a discussion about the realities of working in the service industry, thanks to a TikTok video she uploaded of her paycheck on January 28.

Cortez's video has since received nearly 100,000 likes and thousands of comments on the platform.

America’s Clean Water Crisis Goes Far Beyond Flint. There’s No Relief in Sight

Justin Worland
This project was supported by the Pulitzer Center

© Matt Black—Magnum Photos for TIME Gap, Ariz. | 

Nellie Yellowhorse, 90, at her family’s ranch home in the Navajo Nation; 

she lives with her two elderly sisters in the house, which has no running water

The wheels are still attached to the house trailer that Pamela Rush calls home, but the 49-year-old mother of two is trapped. A lifelong resident of Lowndes County, Alabama, she lives off disability checks, struggling to pay the bills on a ninth-grade education. It’s hard to attribute her situation to any one cause—she was born in one of the poorest counties in one of the poorest states and, like the rest of the county’s mostly African-American population, she wrestles with the legacy of slavery and systemized discrimination. Just down the road from her home are the sharecroppers’ quarters where she was born.


Yet the most immediate source of Rush’s troubles is immediate: the puddle of sewage that has collected in her backyard, brewing with human feces. Whenever the toilet inside is flushed, the waste travels through a 10-ft. pipe straight to her backyard. Thousands of the county’s residents are in the same situation. Local government won’t pay to build infrastructure to connect them to proper wastewater-disposal lines, so they’re left to deal with the myriad problems caused by living in sewage that bubbles up into showers and bathtubs. A 2017 study of county residents found that 34% of participants suffer from hookworm, a parasitic infection contracted by walking barefoot on soil contaminated by fecal matter; among the issues associated with the disease is slow development in children. Charlie Mae Holcombe, 71, who lives in the area, said that the lack of sanitation accounts for the allergies, asthma and heart problems pervasive in the county. “Everyone’s dying,” she tells photographer Matt Black. Hers is one of dozens of stories Black gathered as he documented America’s water crisis for over a year.

For most Americans, water does not get a second thought. It flows at the turn of a knob, at a cost that is all but negligible. This is as it should be. Being essential to life, clean water is a right under international law and U.N. declarations. Yet in the U.S., it’s far from guaranteed. More than 30 million Americans lived in areas where water systems violated safety rules at the beginning of last year, according to data from the Environmental Protection Agency. Others simply cannot afford to keep water flowing. As with basically all environmental and climate issues, poor people and minority communities are hit hardest.

In Denmark, S.C., local officials added the untested chemical HaloSan to drinking water, intending to combat rust-like deposits but leaving residents to deal with a slew of unexplained skin ailments. Suspicious of the water, Eugene “Horseman” Smith and his wife Pauline Ray Brown have collected samples for a decade, sharing them with scientists and an attorney. “Denmark is like a third-world country,” says Smith.

In Inez, Ky., residents still battle the remnants of millions of gallons of toxic sludge, replete with arsenic and mercury, that leaked into the water two decades ago. Locals face liver and kidney damage, as well as increased risk of cancer.

© Matt Black—Magnum Photos for TIME Red Mesa, Ariz. | The remains of a water­storage tank razed because of uranium contamination; for decades during the Cold War, mines in the Navajo Nation produced the uranium used for nuclear weapons | Matt Black—Magnum Photos for TIME

It’s a public-health problem, the root of which varies from place to place—old pipes silently poisoning entire cities with lead, industrial sites leaking the carcinogenic industrial chemical known as PFAS into the waterways, uranium seeping into groundwater from where it’s been mined. But the downstream effects are strikingly similar: damage to health that exacerbates the trials of poverty and a frayed social safety net. These in turn become years wiped off life expectancy and points lost from IQ scores.

In the Navajo Nation, where more than 300,000 people reside in a territory that stretches across parts of Utah, New Mexico and Arizona, residents unknowingly drank and played in water that uranium mining had made extremely hazardous. “Growing up, they didn’t talk about how dangerous it was,” said Melissa Sloan of Tuba City, Ariz., before she died in December of kidney cancer. “I drank the water; I bathed in the water.”

A striking number of people, including babies, show traces of uranium in their blood. Infections develop in those who dare to shower. Summer Wojcik, a triage nurse at Utah Navajo Health System, says health care providers ask patients with infections if they have access to clean water. If not, they may keep them in a health care facility for a few days, to improve the odds of healing. “You’ll hear those types of stories all over—infections, cancers,” she says. “We have got to get fresh water for these people.”

Beyond the diseases, contaminated water helps account for social decay. Residents on a desperate quest for safe water routinely drive for hours to buy and stash it. Jeremiah Kerley, 61, says he hitchhikes to Flagstaff to sell his plasma. “It’s a source of income,” he says. “I use that to pay for our water.”

For those without it, water amounts to an ongoing crisis. But no great urgency is felt in Washington, D.C., or in state capitals. Laws may be out of date, and existing rules ignored, but as an “issue,” water seems to sprout up only when a seemingly one-off event like the Flint water crisis captures public attention.

But Flint is not a one-off event. In Michigan, officials put an entire community at risk to save money, then lost a bet that the risks would go unnoticed. Similar wagers are placed by politicians and policymakers across the country. “Legal standards are often compromises between what the data shows in terms of toxicity and risk, and how much it’s going to cost,” says Alexis Temkin, a toxicologist at the Environmental Working Group, a research and advocacy organization.  

© Matt Black—Magnum Photos for TIME Gap, Ariz. | Nellie Yellowhorse, 90, at her family’s ranch home in the Navajo Nation; she lives with her two elderly sisters in the house, which has no running water | Matt Black—Magnum Photos for TIME

The odds are getting worse. A 2017 report card from the American Society of Civil Engineers gave the nation’s drinking-water infrastructure a rating of D, and assessed that the U.S. needs to invest $1 trillion in the next 25 years for upgrades. The alternative is more erosion, not by water but by the damage that occurs in its absence.

In Inez, Ky., where the local riverway has been contaminated since 2000 by a giant runoff of coal-mining by-products, water bills have skyrocketed, and yet the residents say the problem hasn’t been fixed. The tap produces what one resident called “fishy water.” But local police made news when they arrested a resident for refusing to pay for water. “They’ve destroyed the waterways to mine coal,” says Nina McCoy, an Inez resident. “We’re all fighting our little fires, and we’re not realizing that the fire is coming from above, and it’s raining down on us.” —With reporting by Kara Milstein

This article is part of a special project about equality in America today. Read more about The March, TIME’s virtual reality re-creation of the 1963 March on Washington and sign up for TIME’s history newsletter for updates.

Trump loves a big crowd. He’ll get one of his biggest in India.

By Anita Kumar

AHMEDABAD, India — Heading into election season, President Donald Trump is looking to surround himself with sympathetic officials, create made-for-TV spectacles and gin up massive, adoring crowds. 

© Ajit Solanki/AP Photo Indian policemen on Saturday walk

 past a billboard in Ahmedabad, India, welcoming President Donald Trump.

He’ll find it all in India — he made sure of it.

Just a few weeks before Trump was set to jet off to India, the president sent aides scrambling with the seemingly last-minute decision to hold a rally with 110,000 people at the world’s largest cricket stadium — a colossal structure that’s not even technically open yet.

There, he’s expecting an enthusiastic reception as he appears alongside the Indian prime minister, Narendra Modi, who shares Trump’s nationalist streak.

“I’ve always said the president is the greatest showman of our time, which in politics is a good thing,” said Ohio state Rep. Niraj Antani, one of the few elected Indian-American Republicans in the U.S. and a Trump supporter whose family hails from Modi’s home state, where the rally will be held.

Trump’s whirlwind two-day visit to India — which also includes a tour of the famed Taj Mahal, the inspiration for Trump’s ill-fated casino — is ostensibly about discussing a limited trade deal to temper long-simmering economic tensions between the two countries. But Trump downplayed expectations about a deal before he left town, even as officials touted an anticipated announcement of a $2.6 billion deal for India to buy Seahawk helicopters from American company Lockheed Martin.

Instead, the excursion is something of a super-size redux of 2019’s “Howdy Modi” rally at a cavernous football stadium in Houston. There, Trump and Modi rallied with 50,000 people, mostly Indian-Americans, as the two leaders heaped praise on one another. It was hailed as the largest event in the U.S. for a leader of a foreign nation.

Now, Modi is returning the favor with “Namaste Trump” at the brand-new Motera Stadium in the prime minister’s home state of Gujarat, featuring more than twice as many people.

© Ajit Solanki/AP Photo An Indian woman looks at a wall painted with portraits of President Donald Trump and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi ahead of Trump's visit to Ahmadabad, India.

Trump is looking to appeal in his reelection campaign to Indian-American voters, a growing force in the U.S. that has generally backed Democrats.

Republicans have been trying for years to make inroads with Indian-Americans, one of the fastest-growing ethnic groups in the United States, who register and vote at high rates.

“Riding on Modi’s popularity, being a friend of India is going to help him,” said Rupesh Srivastava, a Michigan businessman and founding member of the Republican Hindu Coalition.

Modi — like Trump — rode to office on a wave of populist rhetoric and launched a “Make in India” campaign. He remains popular despite widespread protests over a new citizenship law that favors all religions over Islam.

In recent days, Trump has talked about the crowds he expects to see in India, telling reporters that Modi promised him seven million people would line the streets between the airport and stadium.

“He said we will have millions and millions of people,” he said.

Trump wrote in a Tweet on Saturday that he is looking "so forward to being with my great friends in INDIA!"

Trump loves a big crowd. He often boasts about the size of his audiences and mocks his opponents, Republicans or Democrats, for what he deems lackluster support at events. He even told his first press secretary, Sean Spicer, to insist — wrongly — that he had summoned the largest inaugural crowd sizes of any president.

“This is a loud and boisterous country, and that exactly in some ways really fits with the Trump style,” said Tanvi Madan, director of the India Project at the center-left Brookings Institution. “I think the optics — he will get more of them than other presidents do, because I think the Indians recognize that that is something that he will want.”

Dwight D. Eisenhower was the first president to visit India in 1959 as the United States began to see the country as a counter to China, speaking to hundreds of thousands in what was then open grounds in Delhi. But that isn’t the norm. Trump, who will be making his first visit to India as president, is the fourth consecutive president to visit the country.

Tim Roemer, who served as ambassador to India for Barack Obama, said American presidents have always been popular in India. He recalled that in 2010 when Obama was leaving India following his first trip there, he jokingly told the president he may want to stay because he was more popular in India than he was in the United States.

“That is something traditionally true for all U.S. presidents,” he said. “It is a symbol of the respect and close relationship between our two countries.”

Indians support Trump because he has attacked Pakistan for harboring terrorists and gone after China over its economic practices. India has long-standing tensions with both countries. Fifty six percent of them have confidence in him to do the right thing on world affairs, a higher mark than Trump receives in most countries, according to a Pew Research survey released in January.

But it’s different in the United States.

Trump’s job approval among Indian-Americans was only 28 percent in 2018, according to the Asian American Voter Survey, a poll of registered Asian American voters. About 66 percent of respondents disapproved.

Some Indian-Americans, whose families came to the United States legally to study or work, support Trump because of his economic agenda — especially the 2017 tax cuts — and don’t mind Trump’s rhetoric on immigration, because it’s primarily about illegal immigration. But he has angered some in the community by kicking India out of a trade preference program for developing countries and insisting Modi asked him to mediate in the longstanding dispute between India and Pakistan over the region of Kashmir.

"The decision to hold the rally in Gujarat, the home state of Prime Minister Modi, may appear to represent good electoral politics in appealing to Indian-Americans,” said North Carolina state Sen. Jay Chaudhuri, an Indian-American and Democratic leader in the state who has spoken out against Trump. “However, a rally in Texas last year and a rally in Gujarat this month can't mask a president and his policies that run counter to our communities interest like education, immigration and gun safety."

The first time he ran for office, Trump promised to work with Indian-Americans. He spoke to 10,000 Hindus waving “Trump for Hindu Americans” signs at a Bollywood-themed event in Edison, N.J., home to a robust Indian community. “I am a big fan of Hindu, and I am a big fan of India,” Trump said awkwardly.

During that campaign, a wealthy Indian-American businessman Shalabh Kumar from Illinois, donated nearly $1 million to the joint fundraising campaign made up of Trump’s campaign and the Republican National Committee.

In 2016, about 1.2 million Indian-American were registered to vote, according to Asian American and Pacific Islanders Data. That number is expected to rise to 1.4 million in 2020. Still, more than 80 percent of Indian-Americans voted for Trump’s 2016 opponent, Hillary Clinton, according to polling by the Asian American Legal Defense and Education Fund.

After he got into office, Trump celebrated Diwali, the most important holiday for most Indians, and appointed Indian-Americans to numerous high-ranking positions. Nikki Haley was named ambassador to the United Nations, Seema Verma became administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, Neomi Rao was tapped for the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit and Ajit Pai became chairman of the Federal Communications Commission.

Richard Rossow, who worked at the U.S.-India Business Council and now holds the Wadhwani Chair in U.S.-India Policy Studies at the Center for Strategic & International Studies, predicted Indians won’t treat Trump as a lame duck on this trip because they think he has a good chance at being reelected.

“President Trump is making a concerted effort to strengthen his own political base among Indian-Americans,” he said. “It is a growing ethnic group in the United States, retaining strong bonds to India. So a large rally in India could both augment overall people-to-people ties, but could also yield modest political dividends in the United States.”

CANADA HAS ITS OWN EPSTEIN

The Bahamian pleasure palace featured a faux Mayan temple, sculptures of smoke-breathing snakes and a disco with a stripper pole. The owner, Peter Nygard, a Canadian fashion executive, showed off his estate on TV shows like “Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous” and threw loud beachfront parties, reveling in the company of teenage girls and young women.

Warning: This story includes graphic language of a sexual nature 

Next door, Louis Bacon, an American hedge fund billionaire, presided over an airy retreat with a lawn for croquet. Mr. Bacon preferred hunting alone with a bow and arrow to attending wild parties, and if mentioned at all in the press, was typically described as buttoned-up


The neighbors had little in common except for extreme wealth and a driveway. But when Mr. Nygard wasn’t allowed to rebuild after a fire, he blamed Mr. Bacon. Since then, the two have been embroiled in an epic battle, spending tens of millions of dollars and filing at least 25 lawsuits in five jurisdictions. Mr. Nygard, 78, has spread stories accusing Mr. Bacon of being an insider trader, murderer and member of the Ku Klux Klan. Mr. Bacon, 63, has accused Mr. Nygard of plotting to kill him.

The latest charge is particularly incendiary: Lawyers and investigators funded in part by Mr. Bacon claim that Mr. Nygard raped teenage girls in the Bahamas.

This month, a federal lawsuit was filed by separate lawyers in New York on behalf of 10 women accusing Mr. Nygard of sexual assault. The lawsuit claims that Mr. Nygard used his company, Nygard International, and employees to procure young victims and ply them with alcohol and drugs. He also paid Bahamian police officers to quash reports, shared women with local politicians and groomed victims to recruit “fresh meat,” the lawsuit says. Through a spokesman, Mr. Nygard denied the allegations.

Over months of interviews with The New York Times, dozens of women and former employees described how alleged victims were lured to Mr. Nygard’s Bahamian home by the prospect of modeling jobs or a taste of luxury.

“He preys on poor people’s little girls,” said Natasha Taylor, who worked there for five years.

But this is not just a story of abuse allegations. It’s also a story about the lengths two rich men can go to in a small developing nation where the minimum wage is just $210 a week. Together, Mr. Nygard and Mr. Bacon are worth close to the annual budget of the government of the Bahamas, an archipelago off the coast of Florida with ritzy tourist resorts that belie the country’s pockets of poverty.

Their battle became a cottage industry for opportunists.

Investigators and lawyers tied to Mr. Bacon offered Nygard associates generous incentives to build an abuse case against the Canadian — Cartier jewelry, a regular salary or a year’s rent in a gated community, according to documents and interviews. Smaller payments filtered down to some accusers, which could be used to undermine their credibility in any court case or investigation.

Mr. Nygard used his wealth to intimidate critics and buy allies. He had employees sign confidentiality agreements and sued those he suspected of talking. Multiple women said he had handed them cash after sex, helping to buy silence. And he paid tens of thousands of dollars to people providing sworn statements to use against Mr. Bacon in lawsuits, according to court records, interviews and bank statements.

Some women said they felt exploited by both men — by Mr. Nygard for sex, and by Mr. Bacon against his enemy.

“They’re messing up people’s lives in the middle of their fight,” said Tamika Ferguson, who claims Mr. Nygard raped her when she was 16. She said she intended to join the lawsuit.

The Times interviewed all the women who eventually signed on to the suit, which identified them as Jane Does to protect their privacy. Reporters also spoke with five other women, who said Mr. Nygard sexually assaulted them in the Bahamas when they were teenagers. Three said they were under 16 at the time, the age of consent there. But two later recanted, saying they had been promised money and coached to fabricate their stories.

This isn’t the first time that Mr. Nygard, whose company sells women’s clothes at his own outlets and Dillard’s department stores, has been accused of sexual misconduct. Over the past four decades, nine women in Canada and California have sued him or reported him to the authorities. He has never been convicted.

Mr. Nygard declined multiple interview requests. One of his lawyers said he had “never treated women inappropriately” and called the allegations “paid-for lies.”

Ken Frydman, his spokesman, denied all the claims and said Mr. Bacon had spent more than a decade trying “to smear Peter Nygard by coercing women to fabricate and manufacture sordid stories about him.” Mr. Nygard also accused Mr. Bacon in a lawsuit of masterminding a conspiracy “to plant a false story” in The Times about sexual misconduct.

Mr. Bacon, who founded New York-based Moore Capital Management, said he felt obliged to take action after hearing of possible sexual abuse by his neighbor. His associates have spent two years finding women to bring claims against Mr. Nygard.

“I of anybody knew what it was like to have this guy come at you,” Mr. Bacon said in an interview. “So my heart went out to these women.”

‘8th Wonder of the World’

Mr. Nygard’s property was unlike any other in Lyford Cay, one of the most exclusive communities in the Bahamas. His estate looked like something out of Las Vegas.

He called it the “Eighth Wonder of the World”: a lush retreat with sculptures of roaring lions and a human aquarium where topless women undulated in mermaid tails.

For one birthday, he flew in models who danced before him in body paint. His workers said they regularly lit torches at sunset and played the title song from “The Phantom of the Opera.” Michael Jackson and former President George H.W. Bush visited the property, which the Canadian businessman renamed “Nygard Cay.” (He named many things after himself: his jet, an electric shade of blue, bottled water.)

An avowed playboy who once joked that his attempt at celibacy was “the worst 20 minutes of my life,” Mr. Nygard wore his gray hair long and shirts open. He traveled with an entourage of models and women who described themselves as “paid girlfriends,” dated tabloid regulars like Anna Nicole Smith and fathered at least 10 children with eight women. Using himself as a human guinea pig, Mr. Nygard tried to fight off aging with stem cell injections and talked of cloning himself, one close friend said.

On many Sunday afternoons at his Bahamian estate, Mr. Nygard threw “pamper parties” that offered female guests free massages, manicures, horseback rides and endless alcohol. And he demanded a steady supply of sex partners, according to six former employees who said they recruited young women at shops, clubs and restaurants.

“One time, he was like: ‘I don’t know where you find these girls from, but there’s pretty girls in the ghetto as well,’” recalled Freddy Barr, Mr. Nygard’s personal assistant in the early 2000s. “‘You need to find pretty girls in need.’”

Eventually his staff compiled an invitation list, provided to The Times, with names of more than 700 women. Former workers said they photographed guests when they arrived, uploading the images for their boss’s perusal. Only those who were young, slim and with a curvy backside — which Mr. Nygard called a “toilet” — were supposed to be allowed inside, according to the ex-employees, including Ms. Taylor. (She asked to be identified by her maiden name to keep people from knowing her connection with Nygard Cay.)

The actress Jessica Alba, who attended a Nygard party while filming “Into the Blue” in 2004, later described it as “gross.” “These girls are like 14 years old in the Jacuzzi, taking off their clothes,” she said on a press tour.

Once the party got going, the former employees and girlfriends said, they coaxed teenagers and young women into Mr. Nygard’s bedroom, sometimes with the aid of alcohol and drugs.

Mr. Nygard did not respond to most of The Times’s questions. Instead, his spokesman, Mr. Frydman, sent affidavits from former employees who asserted that their boss had never abused women and that no underage girls were allowed at Nygard Cay. One even called Mr. Nygard the Bahamas’ “most generous and honest expatriate.”

Others cast aspersions on Mr. Bacon, claiming he had paid Nygard employees to dig up dirt and had objected to black Bahamians visiting Lyford Cay.

Mr. Nygard, estimated to be worth roughly $750 million in 2014 by Canadian Business magazine, had long blended his professional and personal lives. He literally lived at work. A 1980 news article described an area of his office in Winnipeg — the city in Manitoba where he built his company — as a “passion pit” with a mirrored ceiling and a couch that transformed into a bed at the “push of a button.”

Over the years, he was repeatedly accused of demanding that female employees satisfy him sexually. There were the nine women in Winnipeg and Los Angeles who accused Mr. Nygard of sexual harassment or assault. But The Times spoke with 10 others who said he had proposed sex, touched them inappropriately or raped them. Only one of them is a plaintiff in the lawsuit.

Debra Macdonald, hired as his secretary in 1978 when she was 19, said Mr. Nygard continually harassed her and tried to grab her breasts. Once, he summoned her into his Winnipeg office as a pornographic film played on television, she said in an interview. “I was so disgusted,” she said.

Ms. Macdonald quit in 1980, shortly after the Winnipeg police charged Mr. Nygard with raping an 18-year-old woman. The case was dropped after the woman refused to testify.

Another former employee said that on a business trip to Hong Kong that same year, Mr. Nygard slipped into her hotel room while she slept. The woman, Jonna Laursen, then 32, told The Times that he raped her. A single mother from Denmark, she said she worried the police wouldn’t take her seriously and she’d lose her reputation and job.

“I knew the right thing would be to report it,” Ms. Laursen said, “but somehow I felt that I would come out the loser.”

Just over a year later, she said, she was fired without cause. She then described the episode to a colleague, Dale Dreffs, who confirmed hearing it. When Ms. Laursen threatened to go to the press, a company manager offered her $6,700 and a letter of recommendation for her silence, she said.

In 1995, a new hire was taken from the airport to Mr. Nygard’s Winnipeg office-apartment, where he had sex with her “against her will,” a lawsuit said. The woman’s lawyer confirmed that the suit led to a nondisclosure agreement. Then, in 1996, Mr. Nygard’s company settled sexual harassment complaints against him by three former workers — for about $15,000, according to The Winnipeg Free Press.

In 2015, another former employee said, Mr. Nygard came into her locked room while she slept at his Los Angeles home and raped her. He later fired her, she said. Emails shown to The Times confirmed that she contacted a lawyer at the time about suing him. The woman, who wanted to remain anonymous, is the only non-Bahamian to join the new lawsuit.

Separately, two women sued Mr. Nygard last month for sexual battery. One, who was not identified, said she was under 18 — the California age of consent — when she visited Mr. Nygard’s Los Angeles home in 2012. Her lawsuit said Mr. Nygard knew her age “yet repeatedly had sexual intercourse with her.”

In the other lawsuit, a former employee, Maridel Carbuccia, claimed Mr. Nygard drugged and sexually assaulted her at his Los Angeles home in 2016. Ashamed to tell her family, she said, she continued working for him for more than two years before she was fired.

Clash of the Titans

In 2009, a blaze erupted at Nygard Cay, damaging several cabanas, the so-called grand hall and the disco. The fire department said it was accidental, probably caused by an electrical fault. But some Nygard Cay employees said their boss blamed Mr. Bacon, an ardent conservationist who had accused Mr. Nygard of illegally mining sand to create new beachfront.

The government refused to let Mr. Nygard rebuild. Within days, the war began.

Mr. Nygard sued over changes his neighbor had made years earlier to their driveway. Then he sued the government, saying it was colluding with Mr. Bacon to force him off the island.

The allegations became more bizarre: One street protest in Nassau featured men in white hoods and placards proclaiming, “Bacon Is KKK.” New websites funded by Mr. Nygard claimed Mr. Bacon was responsible for several murders, court records show. A video made by Nygard staff, according to a former contractor, superimposed Mr. Bacon’s face on the collapsing Twin Towers.

“It was an assault on me, my reputation, my safety,” Mr. Bacon said.

Mr. Nygard was a formidable opponent. Police officers and local journalists dined at his home; one later admitted in court that Mr. Nygard had paid him to smear Mr. Bacon. Mr. Nygard also had allies in the Progressive Liberal Party, which he wanted to legalize stem cell injections. He bragged he’d given the party $5 million during the 2012 election campaign — legally, as the Bahamas has no campaign finance laws. After it won the election, a Nygard YouTube channel posted a video featuring six ministers visiting his estate.

He threatened — or sued — media outlets that investigated him. He slow-walked lawsuits, filing countless motions and requesting delays, exhausting his foes. A judge referred to his “scorched-earth” tactics in a protracted fight over child support.

But Mr. Bacon was a rare adversary. His wealth was valued at more than double Mr. Nygard’s.

He helped form a nonprofit called Save the Bays to target environmental abuses, starting with Nygard Cay. Fred Smith, a prominent human-rights lawyer, came on board.

Mr. Bacon and his older brother, Zack, hired a small army of lawyers and private investigators, including veterans of the F.B.I. and Scotland Yard. They persuaded some of Mr. Nygard’s allies to provide evidence for a defamation lawsuit, filed in 2015. They launched their own lawsuits. And they paid well.

Two self-described former gang members, Livingston “Toggie” Bullard and Wisler “Bobo” Davilma, told the Bacons’ investigators that Mr. Nygard had hired them for dirty work, like torching his ex-girlfriend’s hair salon and staging anti-Bacon rallies, according to court records. The men claimed Mr. Nygard had given them a “hit list” that included Louis Bacon and Mr. Smith. Mr. Nygard has denied this.

Mr. Bullard and Mr. Davilma, working with the Bacon investigators, hatched a plan to videotape Mr. Nygard. The private eyes acted like secret agents, using encrypted phones and dropping cash for the two men in a box behind a post office. Eventually, the Bacons paid the two about $1.5 million, mostly for secretly recording five meetings with Mr. Nygard.

The videos turned up no sign of Mr. Nygard’s plotting murder. “I can’t get into killing,” he said in footage obtained by The Times.

Instead, a video from June 2015 captured him on a favorite topic. Looking out a car window, Mr. Nygard said there were many women with whom he hadn’t yet had sex.

“Do you see those toilets?” he asked.

The Hunt

The Bacons said they were disturbed by stories they heard about Mr. Nygard having sex with teenage girls. In late 2015, they hired TekStratex, a new Texas security firm, to push American law enforcement officials to investigate him for sex trafficking.

The firm’s leader, Jeff Davis, told Zack Bacon that he’d worked for the C.I.A. for 10 years — including in something called “the ghost program,” Mr. Bacon recalled.

The F.B.I. looked into Mr. Nygard twice, but only briefly. In April 2016, the Department of Homeland Security dug in.

To help the inquiry, the Bacons moved five witnesses — two former Bahamian employees of Mr. Nygard and three former girlfriends — to the United States and covered their living expenses. Mr. Davis told them that Mr. Nygard had “put out hits on them,” several recalled in interviews. Burly bodyguards drove them to different houses and hotels, swerving through traffic and changing cars, saying they were being followed.

Despite the Bacons’ efforts, the Homeland Security investigation fizzled after nine months, suspended because of “unforeseen circumstances” and “lack of prosecutorial evidence,” according to an agency email.

Mr. Davis turned out to be a fraud. Instead of being an ex-spy, he was a former car broker with a string of debts and failed businesses. The Bacons had shelled out about $6 million. “I fired him,” Zack Bacon said.

He soon focused on a lawsuit, hoping to draw on the #MeToo movement and “the most aggressive lawyers in the world,” Zack Bacon said in a recording provided to The Times.

By last summer, Mr. Smith and the private investigators had introduced about 15 Bahamian women to American lawyers at the DiCello Levitt Gutzler firm. They were planning to bring a lawsuit in New York, where Mr. Nygard’s company had its corporate headquarters. His portrait hung outside a flagship store near Times Square, golden muscles flexing.

At Mr. Smith’s suggestion, six women went to the Bahamian police — a big step, as law enforcement is considered the most corrupt public institution in the country, according to a 2017 Transparency International study, and sex crimes are notoriously underreported. Only 55 rapes were tallied there in 2018, while Cleveland, with a similar population size, had 585. The Bahamian police are still investigating.

The stories echoed one another. The lawsuit would later claim that women were sodomized and forced into other acts they found degrading.

One woman, now involved in the suit, told The Times she was 14 when she met Mr. Nygard at one of his stores in 2015; she has a photo with him that day. She said she was later invited for a modeling interview at Nygard Cay, where he assaulted her. She said she had never told anyone what happened.

Another woman in the suit said in an interview that she was 14 when she attended a pamper party in 2011, after her mother asked Mr. Nygard to sponsor her in a beauty pageant. “Is this what my life can be?” she recalled thinking of the models in the room.

Her glass of wine never seemed to empty, she said. Later, she recalled, she swallowed pills Mr. Nygard told her models took. Then, she said, he took her upstairs and raped her. Drawn by the money and promise of modeling gigs, she later returned, recruiting other women, she said.

Tamika Ferguson found her way to Nygard Cay in 2004 after being kicked out of high school. An orphan from a poor neighborhood, she said a D.J. had invited her to a pamper party. She drank too much and ended up in a bathroom barefoot in her bikini, she said. When she emerged, her friends had gone. She said Mr. Nygard steered her upstairs and raped her.

Ms. Ferguson said she returned multiple times and had sex with Mr. Nygard because she felt she couldn’t say no; he sent people to her home to pick her up. She gave The Times two photographs of herself at Nygard Cay; three people — a former Nygard girlfriend, an ex-employee and a guest — said they remembered her there.

“He messed with my whole life,” said Ms. Ferguson, now 32. “And everybody knew what was going on except for me.”

‘A Gift From Our Boss’

For years, Mr. Nygard had insisted that Louis Bacon paid people to lie about him. The hedge fund founder maintained that wasn’t true.

But his team created vulnerabilities, giving money and gifts to witnesses and accusers in the Bahamas, The Times found. Mr. Bacon and his brother said they were unaware of any gifts and payments, and expressed confidence in Mr. Smith’s professionalism.

The Bahamian lawyers and investigators were not paid by the Bacons directly. Instead, they were paid by a nonprofit Mr. Smith created, called Sanctuary, to support sexual assault victims; both he and Mr. Bacon donated generously to that.

“They are handing the defendant arguments,” said Jeanne Christensen, a New York lawyer focusing on sexual harassment.

The private investigators and Mr. Smith compensated two witnesses who found alleged victims: Litira Fox, a former girlfriend of Mr. Nygard’s who said she recruited for him, and Richette Ross, a former massage therapist at Nygard Cay who said she did the same. Through a spokesman, Mr. Nygard said that he did not remember Ms. Fox, and that neither woman recruited for him.

Ms. Ross did well. After she told Mr. Smith that unknown assailants had shot up her former home, killed her family dog and broke into her car in different incidents, Mr. Smith moved her into a gated community, paying $5,000 a month.

The story was familiar: She had told a variation to Mr. Nygard two years earlier, emails show. “I sent you money to buy a new dog,” Mr. Nygard wrote after his company wired her almost $10,000.

“Call police immediately,” he said. “Put in a charge against BACON.”

Mr. Smith also gave Ms. Ross $500 a week to work on another potential lawsuit against Mr. Nygard, this one for workplace abuses.

Accusers received smaller payments. Ms. Fox, who earned $2,000 a month, said she passed some of that to the women she brought to meetings with lawyers and investigators — often $200 for a visit. Mr. Smith acknowledged giving about $1,000 collectively to four or five alleged victims, but said that was for their time and expenses.

“I’m not going to give them $100 to lie, for goodness’ sake,” he said.

There were more substantial gifts. Deidre Miller said Ms. Fox invited her to the Baha Mar luxury resort in August 2018 to meet with investigators. She was a valuable witness — she would later tell The Times she had dated Mr. Nygard for years and had seen two teenagers in his bed, one in her school uniform.

Afterward, Ms. Miller said, the investigators took her and Ms. Fox to the resort’s Cartier store. There, she said, the men bought each woman a matching 18-carat gold bracelet and necklace for $9,350. Ms. Miller provided a photo of the receipt, though the man whose name was on it denied making the purchase.

“He was like, ‘It’s a gift from our boss,’” Ms. Miller recalled. “They said they were working for Louis Bacon.”

The Lie

For more than a year, Marvinique Smith and her sister, Marrinique, were central to the developing lawsuit.

They told their stories repeatedly to lawyers, investigators and the Bahamian police. Marvinique said she was invited to a pamper party in 2010, when she was 15. There, she said, Mr. Nygard talked to her about modeling and had sex with her. Her sister recounted a horrific tale: Mr. Nygard had raped her as cartoons played on TV. She said she was 10.

But in October, the sisters told a very different story to Times reporters: They had never been assaulted by Mr. Nygard. They had never even met him. They claimed Ms. Ross had paid them to make everything up.

Marvinique Smith said Ms. Ross suggested she might collect as much as a half-million dollars in a settlement, and then could give Ms. Ross a cut.

She coached them on Mr. Nygard’s pickup lines, bedroom layout and sexual proclivities, the sisters said. Meanwhile, she gave them cash — $150 here, $350 there — for every meeting, they said.

Ms. Smith said she confessed to lying because Ms. Ross, who was dating her boyfriend’s father, stopped paying her. She and her sister felt guilty and scared. “I couldn’t do it anymore,” Ms. Smith said, adding, “There might be girls that it actually happened to, but it didn’t happen to me and my sister.”

Ms. Ross denied paying anyone to fabricate stories about Mr. Nygard, and passed a lie-detector test to that effect, according to Robert Ennis, a polygrapher hired by her lawyers.

In an interview, she speculated that Mr. Nygard had paid the Smith sisters to recant — a notion they rejected.

Ms. Ross had undisclosed connections with other women she brought to the lawyers. Two were relatives. Two were related to a close friend. All were included as plaintiffs in the lawsuit.

She had also sent a note to a former Nygard employee, asking to talk about the case. “It will pay very handsomely,” she wrote. When asked about that, Ms. Ross said she meant it would pay in “justice.”

Since the American lawyers filed the suit, they said, they’ve received calls from more than three dozen women alleging abuse as far back as the 1970s. The new allegations, mainly from women in Canada and the United States, show their case has nothing to do with the neighbors’ feud, the lawyers said.

“It’s a good cause, regardless of what you think may have been the motivation,” said Greg Gutzler, the lead lawyer in the lawsuit. He said his firm, which operates on contingency and has no financial ties to Mr. Bacon, had done its own investigation and never paid any accuser or witness. The lawyers hope the claim will become a class action.

Facing legal troubles over his property, Mr. Nygard hasn’t been to the Bahamas in more than a year. Even as he recently attended a fashion show flanked by models in Canada, he insisted he was too ill to travel to the Bahamas for court hearings.

Eric Gibson, a former Nygard employee and longtime friend, called The Times on his behalf. He said Mr. Nygard was a “kind, conscientious” man who would not have harmed anyone.

“Women in the Bahamas throw themselves at Peter Nygard,” Mr. Gibson said. “He is the one that all the girls want to be with.”

Research was contributed by Susan C. Beachy, Kitty Bennett, Johanna Lemola and Declan Schroeder.


If you or someone you know experienced sexual assault and is seeking resources, call the National Sexual Assault Hotline at 1-800-656-HOPE (4673).