Losing their religion: why US churches are on the decline

Adam Gabbatt
Sun, January 22, 2023 

Photograph: Ed Jones/AFP/Getty Images

Churches are closing at rapid numbers in the US, researchers say, as congregations dwindle across the country and a younger generation of Americans abandon Christianity altogether – even as faith continues to dominate American politics.

As the US adjusts to an increasingly non-religious population, thousands of churches are closing each year in the country – a figure that experts believe may have accelerated since the Covid-19 pandemic.

Related: Friend of Satan: how Lucien Greaves and his Satanic Temple                   are fighting the religious right

The situation means some hard decisions for pastors, who have to decide when a dwindling congregation is no longer sustainable. But it has also created a boom market for those wanting to buy churches, with former houses of worship now finding new life.

About 4,500 Protestant churches closed in 2019, the last year data is available, with about 3,000 new churches opening, according to Lifeway Research. It was the first time the number of churches in the US hadn’t grown since the evangelical firm started studying the topic. With the pandemic speeding up a broader trend of Americans turning away from Christianity, researchers say the closures will only have accelerated.

“The closures, even for a temporary period of time, impacted a lot of churches. People breaking that habit of attending church means a lot of churches had to work hard to get people back to attending again,” said Scott McConnell, executive director at Lifeway Research.

“In the last three years, all signs are pointing to a continued pace of closures probably similar to 2019 or possibly higher, as there’s been a really rapid rise in American individuals who say they’re not religious.”

Protestant pastors reported that typical church attendance is only 85% of pre-pandemic levels, McConnell said, while research by the Survey Center on American Life and the University of Chicago found that in spring 2022 67% of Americans reported attending church at least once a year, compared with 75% before the pandemic.

But while Covid-19 may have accelerated the decline, there is a broader, long-running trend of people moving away from religion. In 2017 Lifeway surveyed young adults aged between 18 and 22 who had attended church regularly, for at least a year during high school. The firm found that seven out of 10 had stopped attending church regularly.

The younger generation just doesn’t feel like they’re being accepted in a church environment or some of their choices aren’t being accepted
Scott McConnell, Lifeway Research

Some of the reasons were “logistical”, McConnell said, as people moved away for college or started jobs which made it difficult to attend church.

“But some of the other answers are not so much logistics. One of the top answers was church members seem to be judgmental or hypocritical,” McConnell said.

“And so the younger generation just doesn’t feel like they’re being accepted in a church environment or some of their choices aren’t being accepted by those at church.”

About a quarter of the young adults who dropped out of church said they disagreed with their church’s stance on political and social issues, McConnell said.

A study by Pew Research found that the number of Americans who identified as Christian was 64% in 2020, with 30% of the US population being classed as “religiously unaffiliated”. About 6% of Americans identified with Judaism, Islam, Hinduism and Buddhism.

“Since the 1990s, large numbers of Americans have left Christianity to join the growing ranks of US adults who describe their religious identity as atheist, agnostic or ‘nothing in particular’,” Pew wrote.

“This accelerating trend is reshaping the US religious landscape.”

In 1972 92% of Americans said they were Christian, Pew reported, but by 2070 that number will drop to below 50% – and the number of “religiously unaffiliated” Americans – or ‘nones’ will probably outnumber those adhering to Christianity.

Stephen Bullivant, author of Nonverts: The Making of Ex-Christian America and professor of theology and the sociology of religion at St Mary’s University, said in the Christian world it had been a generational change.

While grandparents might have been regular churchgoers, their children would say they believe in God, but not go to church regularly. By the time millennials came round, they had little experience or relationship with churchgoing or religion.

In the Catholic church, in particular, the sexual abuse scandal may have driven away people who had only a tenuous connection to the faith.

“The other thing is the pandemic,” Bullivant said.

“A lot of people who were weakly attached, to suddenly have months of not going, they’re then thinking: ‘Well we don’t really need to go,’ or ‘We’ve found something else to do,’ or thinking: ‘It was hard enough dragging the kids along then, we really ought to start going again … next week.’”

Bullivant said most other countries saw a move away from religion earlier than the US, but the US had particular circumstances that slowed things down.

“Canada, Britain, France, Australia, New Zealand, the nones rise much earlier, the wake of the 1960s the baby boom generation, this kind of big, growing separation of kind of traditional Christian moral morality,” Bullivant said.

“What happens in America that I think dampens down the rise of the nones is the cold war. Because in America, unlike in Britain, there’s a very explicit kind of ‘Christian America’ versus godless communism framing, and to be non-religious is to be un-American.

“I think that dampens it down until you get the millennial generation for whom the cold war is just a vague memory from their early childhood.”

When people leave, congregations dwindle. And when that gets to a critical point, churches close. That has led to a flood of churches available for sale, and a range of opportunities for the once holy buildings.

Brian Dolehide, managing director of AD Advisors, a real estate company that specializes in church sales, said the last 10 years had seen a spike in sales. Frequently churches become housing or care homes, while some of the churches are bought by other churches wanting to expand.

But selling a church isn’t like selling a house or a business. Frequently the sellers want a buyer who plans to use the church for a good cause: Dolehide said he had recently sold a church in El Paso which is now used as housing for recent immigrants, and a convent in Pittsburgh which will be used as affordable housing.

“The faith-based transaction is so different in so many ways from the for-profit transaction. We’re not looking to profit from our transactions, we’re looking for the best use that reflects the last 50 years or 100 years use if possible.”

The closures aren’t spread evenly through the country.

In Texas, John Muzyka said there were fewer churches for sale than at any point in the last 15 years. He believes that is partly down to Texas’s response to the pandemic, where the governor allowed churches to open in May 2020, even when the number of new Covid cases was extremely high.

“I would say if a church stayed closed for more than a year, it was really hard to get those people to come back. When you were closed for three months, you were able to get over it,” Muzyka said.

That aside, closures are often due to a failure of churches to adapt.

“A church will go through a life cycle. At some point, maybe the congregation ages out, maybe they stop reaching young families.

“If the church ages and doesn’t reach young people, or the demographics change and they don’t figure out how to reach the new demographic, that church ends up closing.

“Yes, there’s financial pressures that will close a church, but oftentimes, it’s more that they didn’t figure out how to change when the community changed, or they didn’t have enough young people to continue the congregation for the next generation.”

COWBUNGA (WO)MAN
Big waves to deliver storied Hawaii surf contest The Eddie

Sat, January 21, 2023 



HONOLULU (AP) — One of the world’s most prestigious and storied surfing contests is expected to be held Sunday in Hawaii for the first time in seven years.

And this year female surfers will be competing alongside the men for the first time in the 39-year history of The Eddie Aikau Big Wave Invitational.

The event — alternatively known simply as The Eddie — is a one-day contest held in Waimea Bay on Oahu’s North Shore only when the surf is consistently large enough during the winter big wave surfing season from mid-December through mid-March. The wind, the tides and the direction of the swell also have to be just right.

“Large enough” means 20 feet (6 meters) by Hawaii measurements. That's equivalent to about 40 feet (12 meters) when measured by methods used in the rest of the U.S. Before this year, conditions have only aligned for it to be held nine times since the initial competition in 1984.

Organizer Clyde Aikau said at a news conference Friday that he was expecting waves to reach 25-30 feet (7.6-9 meters) by Hawaii measurements or 50-60 feet (15-18 meters) on the national scale.

“Yes, The Eddie will go on Sunday,” he said.

Other places around the world have big wave surfing events: Mavericks in California, Nazare in Portugal and Peahi on Hawaii's Maui Island. But author Stuart Coleman says The Eddie is distinguished by how it honors Eddie Aikau, a legendary Native Hawaiian waterman, for his selflessness, courage and sacrifice.

“What makes this contest the most unique is that it’s in memory of a particular individual who really has transcended his time and place when he lived,” said Coleman, who wrote “Eddie Would Go,” a biography of Aikau.

Edward Ryon Makuahanai Aikau rose to prominence as the first lifeguard hired by Honolulu to work on Oahu’s North Shore and was revered for saving over 500 people during his career. He’s also famous for surfing towering waves that no one else would dare ride.

Aikau died in 1978 at the age of 31 during an expedition to sail a traditional Polynesian voyaging canoe from Honolulu to Tahiti. Just hours out of port, the giant double-hulled canoe known as the Hokulea took on water and overturned in stormy weather. Aikau volunteered to paddle several miles to nearby Lanai Island on his surfboard to get help for the rest of the crew but was never seen again.

The U.S. Coast Guard rescued the remaining crew a few hours later after being alerted by a commercial plane that spotted the canoe.

Coleman said The Eddie is about the best of big wave surfing and the best of Hawaiian culture.

“They always say at the opening ceremony, where they gather to launch the holding period, ’This is not just a contest. We’re not surfing against each other. We’re surfing in the spirit of Eddie,”′ Coleman said.

This year organizers have invited 40 competitors and 18 alternates from around the world, including Kelly Slater, who has won a record 11 world surfing titles. John John Florence, who hails from the North Shore and who has won two back-to-back world titles, has also been asked to join.

Keala Kennelly of Kauai, a women's big wave surf champion, is among the female invitees.

Mindy Pennybacker, a surf columnist for the Honolulu Star-Advertiser and author of the upcoming book “Surfing Sisterhood Hawaii: Wahine Reclaiming the Waves” said there's long been an assumption that Waimea was too dangerous for women and they couldn't surf there.

She said they've had to fight to be included and have meanwhile shown that they could handle big waves in spots around the world.

“To see women — not only women surfing Waimea but women and men sharing the same event together, with mutual respect and equality — I’m just really thrilled at the thought,” Pennybacker said.

The contest is expected to attract tens of thousands of spectators to the two-lane highway winding through the North Shore and the small towns that dot the coastal community.

Kathleen Pahinui, the chairperson of the North Shore Neighborhood Board, said it will be good for businesses, restaurants and shops. She urged visitors to carpool and take the bus because the roads will be congested.

“I wish all the participants the best of luck," she said.

Audrey Mcavoy, The Associated Press

Shift to less boozy beverages already underway, industry voices say

Sat, January 21, 2023 

A bartender mixes a non-alcoholic cocktail. Several people who work in Ottawa's alcohol industry say drinking attitudes were already changing well before new guidelines around alcohol consumption came out this week. (Heather Gillis/CBC - image credit)

As new recommendations come out suggesting Canadians should dramatically reduce the amount of alcohol they drink, several people in Ottawa's alcohol industry say they've already been seeing a palpable shift toward lower or non-alcoholic beverages.

The Canadian Centre on Substance Use and Addiction (CCSA) released new guidelines earlier this week suggesting that consuming even a small amount of alcohol — more than two drinks a week — can put people at an increased risk for certain types of cancer.

More than seven drinks a week can also increase the risk of heart disease and stroke, the CCSA said. The updated guidelines are a big change from previous recommendations that women and men have no more than 10 or 15 drinks per week, respectively.

"Most times it's a life choice, People want to better themselves, and that's what we're seeing a lot of," said Jesse Baillie, a bartender at both Union Local 613 and Jabberwocky Supper Club.

"You're still having people come to these spaces ... and drinking non-alcoholic [beverages] just to enjoy themselves."

Darryl Dyck/The Canadian Press

Baillie was one of a trio of industry folks who spoke with CBC Radio's All In A Day Friday about the CCSA's new report, which also recommends adding warning labels to alcoholic drinks.

Steve Morrier said he started to see a shift a few years ago, enough so that he began to rebrand his Split Tree Cocktail Company products so customers would know they could add his mixes straight to soda water, no spirits required.

"A lot of times, people are just looking for something a little more sophisticated," said Morrier, the company's chief alchemist. "They want something with some flavour that they can sit and enjoy — and not, you know, feel like they're loading up on sugar."

Even if someone isn't completely cutting out alcohol, they might be seeking products that are both higher-end, with less alcohol content, said Andrew Rasta, co-owner of the ByWard Wine Market.

"The interest for wine consumption is still there," he told All In A Day. "But the 'how' is shifting a little bit."

Other options?

Producers are beginning to step up efforts to produce non-alcoholic alternatives that are similar in taste to their alcoholic counterparts.

While they can be on the pricier end, Baillie said there are non-alcoholic spirits out there that can be "a bartender's dream tool" for crafting a booze-free drink that's virtually identical to the original.

"These are going to be things that allow us to make mocktails," he said.

"It's going to allow you to have non-alcoholic martinis at home that have all this robust flavour and quality that we're not necessarily seeing in the mass produced non-alcoholic spirits."

Lula accuses Bolsonaro of genocide against Yanomami in Amazon

Tom Phillips in Rio de Janeiro
Sun, 22 January 2023 

Brazil’s new president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, has accused Jair Bolsonaro’s far-right administration of committing genocide against the Yanomami people of the Amazon, amid public outrage over a humanitarian catastrophe in the country’s largest Indigenous territory.

Lula visited the Amazon state of Roraima on Saturday to denounce the plight of the Yanomami, whose supposedly protected lands have been plunged into crisis by government neglect and the explosion of illegal mining.

“More than a humanitarian crisis, what I saw in Roraima was a genocide. A premeditated crime against the Yanomami, committed by a government impervious to the suffering of the Brazilian people,” Lula tweeted on Sunday, one day after visiting an overcrowded clinic for Yanomami patients in Roraima’s capital, Boa Vista.

Lula’s justice minister, Flávio Dino, said he would order a federal police investigation into “strong indications” the Yanomami had suffered crimes including genocide – meaning the deliberate attempt to partially or completely destroy an ethnic, national, racial or religious group.

Horrifying photographs of emaciated Yanomami children and adults emerged on the eve of Lula’s trip, laying bare the scale of the health crisis facing the territory’s estimated 30,000 Indigenous inhabitants.

“The photos really shook me because it’s impossible to understand how a country like Brazil neglects our Indigenous citizens to such an extent,” the leftist president told reporters in Boa Vista.

Lula, who became president on 1 January, blamed his far-right predecessor for forsaking Indigenous communities and emboldening the thousands of wildcat miners who flooded the Portugal-sized Yanomami enclave during Bolsonaro’s 2019-2022 government.

Those miners contaminated rivers and wrecked forests, depriving remote Yanomami communities of key food sources – fish and other animals such as monkeys and wild boars – while simultaneously spreading malaria and hampering the efforts of government health workers.

“As well as the disregard and neglect of the last government the main cause of this genocide is the invasion of 20,000 illegal miners, whose presence was encouraged by the ex-president. These miners poison rivers with mercury, causing destruction and death,” Lula wrote, pledging: “There will be no more genocides.”

Speaking before flying to Roraima with Lula, the minister of Indigenous peoples, Sônia Guajajara, said that protecting Yanomami children from outrageous levels of malaria, verminosis, malnutrition and diarrhoea was her absolute priority. “Every 72 hours a child is dying from one of these illnesses, according to the information we’ve received,” Guajajara said, calling for the expulsion of the miners in the next three months.

On Sunday another key Lula ally, former Brazilian president Dilma Rousseff, said the 570 Yanomami children who had reportedly died of hunger or mercury poisoning since 2019 were proof of the “Yanomami genocide”.

“There is a motive: the greed of the miners who invaded their lands. And there is a perpetrator: Jair Bolsonaro, who championed this invasion and denied medical assistance to the Indigenous,” Rousseff wrote on Twitter.

“All of those who are responsible, Bolsonaro included, must be prosecuted, judged and punished for genocide,” Rousseff added.

Bolsonaro denied responsibility, calling such accusations a “left-wing farce”. The former president – who is notorious for his prejudiced comments about black and Indigenous citizens - claimed Indigenous healthcare had been one of his government’s priorities.

But activists scoff at such claims, noting how Amazon deforestation rose nearly 60% thanks to Bolsonaro’s dismantling of environmental and Indigenous protection.

“It was a government of blood,” the Yanomami leader Júnior Hekurari told the Guardian last month in Boa Vista.

During a campaign visit to Roraima, before his 2018 election, Bolsonaro warned supporters that foreign rivals might invade Indigenous territories, whose creation he opposed. “Sooner or later, other powers might turn these areas into other countries,” Bolsonaro said of reserves he believed should be opened up to commercial development.

But it was illegal miners, including at least one multi-millionaire businessman with ties to Bolsonaro, who laid siege to Yanomami lands, with the estimated number of garimpeiros [small-scale miners] operating there jumping from 5,000 to 20,000 during Bolsonaro’s government.

Critics accuse Bolsonaro’s administration of doing nothing to stop the growing Yanomami disaster.

Hekurari said he had sent about 50 written pleas for help to Bolsonaro’s government as a result of the gold mining invasion and soaring levels of malnutrition, malaria and deaths. “He ignored our cry for help,” the activist tweeted on Saturday.

Brazil declares public health emergency for Yanomami people


Brazilian President-elect Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva stands with his Health Minister Nisia Trindade during an event where he announced those who will lead ministries in his upcoming government in Brasilia, Brazil, Thursday, Dec. 22, 2022. 

 (AP Photo/Eraldo Peres) 

CARLA BRIDI
Sat, January 21, 2023 

BRASILIA, Brazil (AP) — Brazil’s government has declared a public health emergency for the Yanomami people in the Amazon who are suffering from malnutrition and diseases such as malaria as a consequence of illegal mining.

The decree, signed by Health Minister Nisia Trindade late Friday, has no expiration date and allows for hiring extra personnel. It determines that the team in charge has to publish reports regarding the Indigneous group’s health and general well-being.

President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva also created a multiministerial committee, to be coordinated by his chief of staff, for an initial period of 90 days. He is traveling to Roraima state’s capital, Boa Vista, where many ill Yanomami have been admitted to specialized hospitals.

The Yanomami are the largest native group in Brazil, with a population of around 30,000 that lives in an area larger than 9 million hectares (22 million acres), in the northern area of the Amazon rainforest, close to the border with Venezuela.

In recent years, specialists had sounded the alarm about humanitarian and sanitary crisis taking shape. The report “Yanomami Under Attack,” written by the nonprofit Socio-Environmental Institute, points out that in 2021 the region was responsible for 50% of the malaria cases in the country. The same report said that more than 3,000 children were malnourished.

Illegal mining is the main root of the problems faced by the Yanomami people. Activists accuse miners of death threats, sexual violence and alcohol and drug abuse, especially against Indigenous children. The same report shows that the region had more than 40 illegal airstrips made by miners and that they had taken over some of the government health centers installed in the region.

Earlier this week, the Health Ministry had already designated a team for a special health mission in the Yanomami region. Lula scheduled an emergency trip to Roraima state following a report by independent local news website Sumauma, featuring shocking pictures of malnourished children.

According to the report, during the last four years of former President Jair Bolsonaro’s government, the death of children age 5 or less had jumped 29% in comparison to the previous government. The same report shows that 570 Yanomami children died between 2019 and 2022 from curable diseases.

Lula tweeted that the government received information on the “absurd situation” of malnourishment in Yanomami children. The president will be accompanied by several of his ministers in Boa Vista.

WHEN I TOOK ANTHROPOLOGY AT UNIVERSITY IN 1980 ONE OF THE PEOPLES WE STUDIED WERE THE YANOMAMI, THE OTHER WERE THE 'MODERN PEASANTS' OF NEWFOUNDLAND.

After Brazil unrest, painstaking effort to restore damaged treasures
Sat, 21 January 2023


Randall Felix delicately handles the wood on a 19th century chair whose armrest was ripped off when supporters of Brazil's' far-right former president Jair Bolsonaro stormed Congress earlier this month.

"The shock is great," the 63-year-old master craftsman at the Senate museum told AFP. "It's all part of our life, so when we see that a piece has been treated like that, it's very difficult."

The chair on Felix's desk is just one of dozens of precious objects destroyed in the unrest, when on January 8, Bolsonaro backers ransacked the presidential palace, Supreme Court and Congress in Brasilia, refusing to recognize his election defeat.

The rioters destroyed priceless works of art, rare furniture that is part of the national heritage, and left the walls of the historic government buildings covered in graffiti messages calling for a military coup.

Damages inflicted in the riots total 18.5 million reais (around $3.5 million), according to government estimates.

- 'Sense of loss, of anguish' -

Since then, employees who are usually busy with Congress heritage preservation have been hard at work trying to save the institution's priceless pieces of art and furniture.

In the museum of the Chamber of Deputies, Congress' lower house, several containers are filled with fragments of shattered vases and other objects, which now can only be identified thanks to old photographs.

Most of them used to decorate the iconic Green Room, where Brazilian lawmakers usually address the press and where several dozen items donated by foreign countries were on display.

"We grabbed flashlights and went to look for fragments. We had to do archaeological work in the middle of the rubble," said Gilcy Rodrigues, head of restoration at the museum.

After painstakingly identifying and cataloging the remains, Rodrigues and his colleagues got to work repairing paintings, tables, rugs, ornaments, and sculptures.

Rodrigues, who for 30 of his 58 years watched over the museum's assets, cannot hold back her tears.

"This is not our job... it's our home," he said. "This is what we do. We take care of the institution's assets. That's why we have a feeling of loss, of anguish."

- 60 percent restored -

Thanks to their efforts, some 60 percent of the objects damaged in the Chamber of Deputies have been successfully restored -- though at a great cost to the staff.

"It was an extremely difficult job, emotionally exhausting for everyone and a great trauma," lamented Marcelo Sa de Sousa, who heads the Chamber of Deputies museum.

His colleague Ismail Carvalho, who is in charge of the Senate's restoration laboratory, echoes that view.

"It's more than aesthetics," he said. "Suddenly, in an insane act, all our work literally went down the drain. It's very sad."

val-sf/md/dw

Tate Britain’s rehang to focus on slavery in ‘inclusive revamp’

Craig Simpson

THE TORY LOVING ANTI WOKE TELEGRAPH
Sat, 21 January 2023

Curators at the Tate have been working on a rehang intended to create a ‘more inclusive narration of British art and history’ - Tate Images

Tate Britain has filled its galleries with paintings linked to slavery and colonialism while removing prized national artworks in an “inclusive” overhaul that critics have branded a “polemic against the past”.

Curators have been working on a rehang intended to create a “more inclusive narration of British art and history”.

Paintings linked to the British Empire have been taken out of storage and displayed with labels explaining connections to racism, colonialism and the slave trade.


Meanwhile, various landscapes, classical scenes, and portraits with uncontroversial histories - including works by English masters William Hogarth and John Constable - have been removed.

Joseph van Aken’s An English Family At Tea is labeled: ‘Tea was a bitter drink sweetened with sugar produced in British colonies’ - Tate Images

The “Tate Britain Rehang”, which was first proposed by its director Alex Farquharson in 2018 and began last year, was conceived as a chronological overview of British art over five centuries.

Covid interrupted the work, and the Black Lives Matter movement prompted the gallery to address racial inequality and its links to Britain’s “colonial past” through the sugar trade.

But since a project manager was hired last spring to “relate art to society in ways that resonate for us today”, dozens of paintings with slavery links have been taken out of Tate storage and put on display in chronologically ordered galleries.

First is the 1610 Marcus Gheeraerts’ portrait A Man in Classical Dress, whose sitter Peter Herbert made money from “colonial trading interests” with the Virginia Company which “colonised the east coast of America”, according to its new label.

Viewers of a newly added 1699 still life by Edward Collier are told that the globe depicted in the painting shows the Pacific Ocean, an area “Europe was actively colonising at the time”.

Marcus Gheeraerts’ A Man in Classical Dress states its sitter Peter Herbert made money from ‘colonial trading interests’ - Alamy Stock Photo

Moving into the 18th century, visitors now see Joseph van Aken’s 1720 work An English Family At Tea, and an accompanying label explaining: “Tea was a bitter drink sweetened with sugar produced in British colonies.”

Among the dozens of artworks now on display is Benjamin West’s 1775 canvas Mrs Worrell as Hebe, which states that the sitter’s husband made money from a plantation which “used the labour of enslaved Africans”.

A similar point is made alongside several other newly added portraits, including Thomas Gainsborough’s painting of 1784 work The Baillie Family, the label for which states that the children in the painting would grow up to inherit wealth generated by “enslaved people”.

The ‘Tate Britain Rehang’ was first proposed by its director Alex Farquharson in 2018 - James Veysey/Camera Press

Other new additions come with explanations of London receiving “goods from colonised countries”, the “violence underpinning” British colonialism in the Caribbean, and the “colonial sentiment” of the British to their Indian servants.

Artworks from the 20th century do not escape scrutiny, either, with the label for a 1914 painting by British artist and writer Wyndham Lewis recently added to the gallery walls states that he supported Adolf Hitler for a period.

However, other comparatively innocent works have been removed from Tate Britain’s walls.

Sir Edwin Henry Landseer’s 1827 painting, A Scene at Abbotsford, depicting some dogs has been taken down, as has Sir Joshua Reynolds’ 1785 image of an angelic child (Child’s Portrait in Different View).

William Hogarth’s 1734 treatment of Paradise Lost, entitled Satan, Sin and Death is no longer available to view, nor is John Constable’s bucolic landscape at Flatford Mill, of 1816.

Thomas Gainsborough’s The Baillie Family’s label states children in the painting would grow up to inherit wealth generated by ‘enslaved people’

- Hulton Fine Art Collection

Paintings of a man playing a flute, an idyllic roadside inn, and the religious image The Resurrection, Cookham by Sir Stanley Spencer - previously relabelled to highlight that there were generic black figures in the scene - are among the artworks removed.

Art critic JJ Charlesworth has derided the results of the rehang so far, telling the Telegraph: “There is a reflex now, which is to see the lens of historical evils, and that is a serious problem. There is a tendency to see the past through the lens of present obsessions.

“It reduces important national collections to the status of a social history document. The context of art-historical movements, what people in the past may have enjoyed artificially, culture, and even aesthetics are totally irrelevant to this approach, which is simply a polemic against the past.

A project manager was hired by the Tate last spring to ‘relate art to society in ways that resonate for us today’ - Guy Bell /Alamy Stock Photo

“Art becomes a means to make a political point, it’s basically an excuse to stick a label on the wall explaining why this or that was bad, and attack the past. It is totally moralistic.”

Other historical social ills have been highlighted in the rehang. New labels point out the Enclosure Acts caused suffering for the rural poor, that a painting of some rural workers by George Stubbs possibly “denies the harsh realities of work for sentimental effect”, and that sellers of the Daily Worker were concerned that many would die in “future war defending capitalism”.

Tate Britain has said that the rehang will only be completed by May this year, and artworks may come and go as the project progresses. A spokeswoman said: “We are in the middle of redisplaying our British art collection to share more of the collection and our research about it with our visitors.

“The labels for works are regularly updated and we seek to share historical, artistic and cultural information that will help visitors enjoy and understand the paintings they are seeing.”

SOLITARY IS TORTURE, ABOLISH IT

British prisoner ‘breaks world record’ for longest time in solitary confinement

Andy Gregory
Sat, 21 January 2023

Robert Maudsley,  British serial killer

A British prisoner has broken a “world record” for the longest time spent in solitary confinement.

Robert Maudsley is thought to be the longest-serving inmate in Britain, having spent 49 years behind bars.

Known within the prison system as “Hannibal the Cannibal”, Maudsley has spent nearly 45 of those years – some 16,000 consecutive days – in solitary confinement, according to the Daily Mirror.

Maudsley is now reported to have surpassed the world record for time spent in solitary, spending 23 of every 24 hours in his cell.

That unenviable benchmark had previously been set by US prisoner Albert Woodfox, who died last August, six years after his release, having spent 43 years in isolation. Woodfox’s case has been described as one of America’s worst miscarriages of justice.

Maudsley, aged 69, was jailed for the murder of John Farrell in 1974. Maudsley is said to have flown into a rage after Farrell – who had hired him as a sex worker – revealed that he had previously abused children.

It was while imprisoned in Broadmoor psychiatric hospital that Maudsley committed the crime that cemented his infamy, allegedly torturing a fellow patient who was a paedophile for nine hours before holding his dead body aloft to guards who had been bargaining for the hostage’s life.

One guard is reported to have described the victim’s head as being “cracked open like a boiled egg” with a spoon hanging out of it and part of his brain missing – earning Maudsley the “cannibal” moniker, despite Maudsley denying such claims.

Maudsley is held in a special cell in HMP Wakefield (PA)

On 28 July 1978, weeks after being sent to HMP Wakefield, Maudsley killed two fellow inmates and is claimed to have calmly handed guards the murder weapon, remarking that they would be two inmates short on the next roll-call.

He is reported to have been in solitary ever since, much of it spent confined in a glass cage in the cellar of Wakefield prison, which has been likened by some to the cell occupied by Hannibal Lecter in the film The Silence of the Lambs.

He has also spent stints in specially constructed cells in Parkhurst on the Isle of Wight and at Woodhill in Buckinghamshire, at the latter alongside notorious inmates Charles Bronson and Reginald Wilson.

In one letter more than a decade ago, Maudsley wrote: “I am left to stagnate, vegetate and to regress; left to confront my solitary head-on with people who have eyes but don’t see and who have ears but don’t hear, who have mouths but don’t speak. My life in solitary is one long period of unbroken depression.”

Maudsley has described intense physical abuse during his childhood, and has previously been quoted as saying: “All I remember of my childhood is the beatings. Once I was locked in a room for six months and my father only opened the door to come in to beat me, four or six times a day.”

In 2017, the Daily Mirror reported that Maudsley had marked his 64th birthday by setting a UK record for solitary confinement.

A Prison Service spokesperson said: “There is no such thing as solitary confinement in our prison system. Some prisoners will be segregated if they pose a risk to others but this is reviewed regularly.

“Like other prisoners, they are allowed time in the open air every day, visits from relatives, phone calls, access to legal advice and medical care.”

Peru closes Machu Picchu amid violent protests against President Dina Boluarte's government

Sat, 21 January 2023 


Peruvian authorities have closed the iconic tourist attraction Machu Picchu amid ongoing protests that have left dozens of people dead since they began a month ago.

Demonstrations have spread through the Andean nation since early December, with new clashes reported in Cusco, the gateway to the nearby Inca trail and ancient ruins of Machu Picchu.

Cultural authorities in Cusco said in a statement that "in view of the current social situation in which our region and the country are immersed, the closure of the Inca trail network and Machu Picchu has been ordered, as of 21 January and until further notice".

Protesters attempted to take over the city's airport, used by many foreign tourists to access the area, leaving 37 civilians and six police officers injured, according to health workers.

Airports in Arequipa and the southern city of Juliaca were also attacked by demonstrators, damaging Peru's tourism industry.

Protests and road blockades against Peruvian President Dina Boluarte's government and in support of ousted president Pedro Castillo also broke out in 41 provinces, mainly in Peru's south.

Some of the worst violence came on Monday when 17 people were killed in clashes with police in the city of Juliaca, near Lake Titicaca. Protesters later attacked and burned a police officer to death.

On Friday security forces in the capital Lima unleashed tear gas to repel demonstrators throwing glass bottles and stones, as fires burned in the streets.

Unrest was sparked in early December by the destitution and arrest of Castillo, Peru's first president of humble, rural roots, following his widely condemned attempt to dissolve Congress to avoid an impeachment trial.

Left-wing lawyer Dina Boluarte was sworn in on the same day, after serving as vice-president to Pedro Castillo.

The protesters, mainly from neglected, rural areas of the country still loyal to Castillo, demand immediate elections, Boluarte's resignation, Castillo's release.

They also want justice for the protesters killed in clashes with police.

Dozens of civilians have been killed in clashes with police and at least seven have died in traffic accidents related to the barricades.

LA REVUE GAUCHE - Left Comment: Search results for PERU PROTESTS 

Jacinda Ardern: political figures believe abuse and threats contributed to PM’s resignation

Ardern says she slept soundly ‘for the first time in a long time,’ as colleagues in New Zealand deplore her treatment as PM and race begins to replace her

Jacinda Ardern speaks to the media a day after announcing her resignation as prime minister of New Zealand. Photograph: Ben Mckay/EPA

Tess McClure in Auckland
GUARDIAN AUSTRALIA

Fri 20 Jan 2023

Jacinda Ardern has said she slept soundly after her shock resignation “for the first time in a long time”, as speculation grows that abuse and threats against the prime minister contributed to her stepping down.

Speaking briefly with reporters outside Hawke’s Bay airport on Friday, Ardern said she was feeling “a range of emotions” and had no regrets about leaving the job.

“I of course feel sad – but also I do have a sense of relief.”


‘So many rabbit holes’: Even in trusting New Zealand, protests show fringe beliefs can flourish

On Thursday, the prime minister said abuse or threats to her and her family had not been a decisive factor in her decision to resign, and that she simply “no longer [had] enough in the tank to do it justice”.


Prominent New Zealand political leaders and public figures, however, say that “constant vilification,” abuse and personal attacks have contributed to that burnout – with some MPs saying the prime minister was “driven from office”, and calling for New Zealand to reexamine its political culture.

“It is a sad day for politics where an outstanding leader has been driven from office for constant personalisation and vilification,” Māori party co-leader Debbie Ngarewa-Packer said in the wake of Ardern’s surprise resignation on Thursday.

“Her whānau [family] have withstood the ugliest attacks over the last two years with what we believe to be the most demeaning form of politics we have ever seen”.

Former prime minister Helen Clark, New Zealand’s first female elected leader, said that Ardern had faced “unprecedented” attacks during her tenure.

“The pressures on prime ministers are always great, but in this era of social media, clickbait and 24/7 media cycles, Jacinda has faced a level of hatred and vitriol which in my experience is unprecedented in our country,” she said. “Our society could now usefully reflect on whether it wants to continue to tolerate the excessive polarisation which is making politics an increasingly unattractive calling.”

How the world fell in love with Jacinda Ardern – video

In 2022, New Zealand police reported that threats against the prime minister had nearly tripled over three years. While police could not determine motives for every individual threat, documents they released showed anti-vaccination sentiment was a driving force of a number of threats, and opposition to legislation to regulate firearms after the 15 March mass shooting in Christchurch was another factor.

From stardust to an empty tank: one-of-a-kind leader Jacinda Ardern knew her time was up

A weeks-long anti-vaccine-mandate occupation of parliament’s lawns descended into a violent riot in early 2022, with protesters calling for the prime minister’s execution. The protests, coupled with increased threats and abuse against the prime minister and other MPs, prompted New Zealand’s typically open and accessible parliament to up security measures.

Over the past year, a number of men have been arrested, formally warned or faced criminal charges for threatening to assassinate Ardern, with one found guilty of sabotage in an attempt to destroy the country’s power grid connections. Public appearances by the prime minister increasingly attracted small, at times abusive groups of protesters.

In one ugly incident, protesters in a car chased the prime minister’s van, shouting obscenities and screaming that she was “a Nazi”, at one point forcing it on to the footpath, and in February 2022, shouting protesters again chased the prime minister’s van down a driveway as she visited a primary school.

Kate Hannah, director of the Disinformation Project which monitors online extremism at research centre Te Pūnaha Matatini, said the program had seen a significant increase in abusive, threatening material directed at Ardern, and believed it had likely contributed to her leaving the role.

“The scope of what we’ve observed over the last three years is such that there’s no way it could not have been a contributing factor – for any person,” she said.

“What we see now is absolutely normative, extremely vulgar and violent slurs … incredibly violent use of imagery around death threats.”

Jacinda Ardern resigns as prime minister of New Zealand in shock announcement – video

In her resignation announcement on Thursday, Ardern was asked how threats to her safety had played into her decision. “It does have an impact. We are humans after all, but that was not the basis of my decision,” she said.

“I am human, politicians are human. We give all that we can for as long as we can. And then it’s time. And for me, it’s time,” she said.

Now, the race is on for Labour to find a replacement for Ardern. Their caucus will meet on Sunday to vote on candidates for a new leader. A nominee must gain two-thirds of the caucus vote to clinch the leadership – if not, the vote will be taken to the party’s wider membership. The eventual winner will be tasked with leading the party into a tough 14 October election.

Chris Hipkins, 44, is the early frontrunner after Ardern’s deputy Grant Robertson swiftly ruled himself out of the race.

Other names in the mix are Justice Minister Kiri Allan, one of Labour’s senior Maori MPs, and Immigration Minister Michael Wood. None of the three has so far confirmed they will contest the ballot.

Allan, a former commercial lawyer who entered parliament in 2017, has been touted as possibly New Zealand’s first Maori prime minister.

Stoking a culture war? No, Nicola Sturgeon, this is about balancing conflicting rights

Sonia Sodha

The Guardian
Sat, 21 January 2023

Photograph: Murdo MacLeod/The Guardian

The term “culture war” once had meaning: the weaponisation of socio-cultural issues to foment division. But, like the words bigoted and phobic, it is being rendered impotent by how often it is now used to mean “opinion I disagree with”.

Not just in social media spats: Nicola Sturgeon last week accused the Conservative government of “stoking a culture war” by using section 35 of the Scotland Act to block reforms allowing anyone over the age of 16 to change their sex for legal purposes through self-declaration. She claims UK ministers are thwarting a purely administrative reform that benefits a marginalised minority – trans people – to pick an illegitimate constitutional fight.

That argument collapses under scrutiny. Even as Scottish ministers claimed in Holyrood that this is an administrative matter, they were arguing in court that it has profound consequences for how someone is treated in the eyes of the law. They won; the courts have now clarified that if someone male gets a gender recognition certificate, they must be treated as though they were female for almost all legal purposes.

This has a number of knock-on effects on legal protections for women and girls. If someone male who identifies as female has changed their legal sex, it becomes more difficult to lawfully exclude them from female-only services and spaces, such as changing rooms, sexual assault services, prisons and hospital wards. It becomes impossible to exclude them from single-sex schools and clubs. It can affect whether or not a woman has a pay discrimination claim at work. It makes it more difficult to provide single-sex intimate care for disabled women.

All trans people have the same robust legal protections against discrimination under the Equality Act as other groups at risk of discrimination. But at the moment, someone needs a medical diagnosis of gender dysphoria to acquire the rights that come with changing your legal sex. The Scottish bill removes that safeguard, opening it up to any man who might want them and is happy to exploit this reform.

Related: Nicola Sturgeon says Scotland secretary is acting like a governor general

On the basis of Scottish government predictions of the increase in annual applications, MBM Policy estimates this would mean about 6,000 of Scotland’s 25,000 trans population will eventually change their sex; on the basis of UK government predictions, 11,000. No one really knows, but it will be significantly more than the 600 or so Scottish certificates issued at present. This will probably make service providers more reluctant to provide genuinely single-sex services; it is a criminal offence to inadvertently reveal someone has changed their legal sex, so the more common this is, the more they will lean towards treating all males who identify as female as though they have.

It further opens the door to dangerous men qualifying for enhanced rights of access: there are already violent male sex offenders locked up with vulnerable women in prisons in Scotland. It harms the privacy and dignity of women and girls who want to be able to undress, or receive medical care, without male strangers present. It shifts social norms in a way that makes it more difficult for women to challenge men who may want to commit voyeurism and exposure: in California, where these reforms have already happened, a woman who complained about someone who it later emerged was a convicted sex offender for exposing himself in a female-only spa had her concerns dismissed as transphobic across the media.

The culture wars frame suits Sturgeon as it positions her as defender of minorities against a dastardly Tory government

These issues were not properly explored by Holyrood. Sturgeon dismissed women’s concerns as invalid and artificial. Despite poll after poll highlighting the unpopularity of the reforms, the evidence sessions were skewed against their opponents. The SNP voted down amendments to protect women in prison, to allow single-sex hospital wards and female-only intimate care and to ban sex offenders from changing their legal sex. Concerns of the UN special rapporteur on violence against women and girls and the Equality and Human Rights Commission went ignored, including that the bill would have unaddressed cross-border impacts.

If Scotland were independent, that would be the end of it. But section 35 of the Scotland Act gives the Scottish secretary, Alister Jack, the power to block any Holyrood bill that modifies “the law as it applies to reserved matters” that he has “reasonable grounds” to believe would adversely affect laws that apply to the whole of the UK. This power has never been used, so the nature of this test has never been clarified by the courts. But some constitutional experts, including the former supreme court judge Lord Hope, believe that the Scottish government has a weak challenge in this instance because its reforms modify a law that affects the operation of the UK-wide Equality Act and Jack has set out good reasons for why it is reasonable to believe there are adverse impacts.

The culture wars frame suits Sturgeon because it positions her as defender of minorities against a dastardly Tory government. But it doesn’t fit the facts. To lazily adopt it – as many of the government’s opponents have done – is to subsume a delicate rights conflict into a blunt political attack. If anyone is guilty of waging culture wars, it’s the politicians misleading the public about the effects of their reforms who, a few years ago, were rightly quick to call rightwingers out for spreading misinformation about how much leaving the EU would free up funds to spend on the NHS.

The rights at stake – protections for women and girls that remain a Westminster matter – mean the government was correct to trigger section 35. It remains to be seen if the courts find it meets the legal test. Either way, it has bought a pause that the government could use to resolve many of the issues by amending the Equality Act to make clear its definition of sex is biological sex. That is a compromise that would be the antithesis of a culture war.

• Sonia Sodha is an Observer columnist

UK

Rolling school strikes feared as hard-Left activist leads teachers’ union race

THAT'S HOW THEY STRIKE IN SCOTLAND

Louisa Clarence-Smith

THE TORY LOVING TELEGRAPH
Sat, 21 January 2023

Daniel Kebede - Guy Smallman/Getty Images

A hard-Left activist is leading the race to take over the leadership of the country’s biggest teachers’ union, raising the prospect of rolling school strikes later this year.

Daniel Kebede, who works as a teacher in the north-east of England, is campaigning to become the next general secretary of the National Education Union.

Mr Kebede, a militant trade unionist in his mid-30s, has led and joined protests on issues including racism, the Government’s response to refugees, and the pro-Palestine movement.

The Momentum-supporting Corbynite’s campaign pledges to create a “united, campaigning union” that must be mobilised “in its entirety” to “take on this shambolic Government”.

He has urged teachers across the country to take strike action, saying: “We need an inflation plus pay rise that is fully funded. We don’t need more tax cuts for the rich. It’s time for the Government to listen.”

Activists for 101 NEU districts have declared their support for Mr Kebede ahead of the general secretary election, which begins on Feb 6 and runs until March 31. He is running against Niamh Sweeney, a sixth form college teacher and Labour councillor in Cambridge who is seen as a moderate.

The winning candidate will take over in September for a five-year term, replacing Dr Mary Bousted and Kevin Courtney, who have served as joint general secretaries of the NEU since it was formed in 2017.

Under Ms Bousted and Mr Courtney, there have been no national NEU strikes – but this week the NEU revealed that it has met legal thresholds for members to strike over pay in England and Wales on seven dates, starting on Feb 1.

Mr Kebede said: “My aim is to make the National Education Union strong and influential enough that it doesn’t need to take strike action by building on the success of our current general secretaries and by reaching out to other unions such as NASUWT.

“However, if our members are fed up with pay cuts, funding erosion, excessive workload and not being valued by the Government and want to take action, I will back them.”

A Newcastle Labour party source who knows Mr Kebede said: “In terms of the encouragement that someone like Daniel would give to their membership, I’m certain that he would have a very harsh stance towards a Conservative government and I’m certain he would push for industrial action during disputes.”

A source close to several school leaders in England said: “If Daniel gets elected, it’s not hard to see how you could envisage the prospect of rolling strikes.”

Mr Kebede is the former partner of Laura Pidcock, the ex-Labour MP for North West Durham, who quit the party’s ruling body last year and said it had become “hostile territory for socialists” under Sir Keir Starmer.

He quit the Labour Party in 2020 and has voiced his support for members of the Northern Independence Party, a democratic socialist party that seeks to make Northern England an independent nation and has urged voters to “reject the Westminster establishment”.

Union leaders met officials in the Department for Education on Friday in an attempt to resolve the dispute over pay and working conditions.

But Geoff Barton, the general secretary of the Association of School and College Leaders, said after the talks that he was not hopeful about an improvement to this year’s pay award and warned that “the prospects appear gloomy for next year’s pay award too”.

A Department for Education spokesman said that officials “held constructive discussions” with union leaders.

Atlanta protest against shooting death of activist briefly turns violent

Sat, January 21, 2023 

By Cheney Orr

ATLANTA (Reuters) - A protest in Atlanta briefly turned violent on Saturday as demonstrators set a police car on fire and smashed windows of buildings.

Marchers had gathered to protest the killing of an activist by law enforcement on Wednesday during a raid to clear the construction site of a public safety training facility that activists have derided with the nickname "Cop City".

The demonstration started peacefully, then abruptly escalated with some protesters throwing fireworks and rocks and smashing buildings' windows with hammers, according to a Reuters witness.

As police moved on the marchers, the violence quickly fizzled without anyone injured. A Reuters photographer saw a protester who was carrying a banner being handcuffed by law enforcement.

The demonstrators were protesting an incident that occurred on Wednesday, when Manuel Teran, 26, was inside a tent and did not comply with officers' "verbal commands" as law enforcement cleared Weelaunee People's Park. Some activists had been camping there since last year to protest the facility.

According to the Georgia Bureau of Investigation (GBI), Teran shot a state trooper and was shot and killed by officers returning fire.

On Friday, GBI released a photo of a handgun police say was in Teran's possession at the time of the shooting.

Opponents of the $90 million project south of Atlanta, which would be built by the Atlanta Police Foundation, say building it would lead to destruction of hundreds of acres of forest and greatly damage the environment.

(Reporting by Cheney Orr in Atlanta, writing by Maria Caspani, Editing by David Gregorio)

'Homicide in slow motion': Police urged to tackle stalking amid rise of tracking tech


Sat, January 21, 2023



VANCOUVER — Stephanie Forster did everything right.

She obtained a restraining order, changed her phone number and moved three times in six months. She once found an Apple AirTag in her car so she asked police to search the vehicle for other trackers.

But none of it helped, her sister and a women's advocate say.

Forster, 39, was shot and killed outside her Coquitlam, B.C., home on Dec. 8, and while the police investigation is ongoing, her estranged husband, who died days later, was the main suspect.

"Stalking is homicide in slow motion," Angela Marie MacDougall, executive director of Battered Women Support Services, said in an interview.

She said stalking is "a very serious and largely misunderstood part of an abusive relationship."

Tracking technology, like AirTags, gives stalkers even more access to already vulnerable women, and her group is urging police to take all forms of harassment seriously, MacDougall said.

"In our work, we've seen that police are very resistant to wanting to take action on stalking. AirTags specifically are quite alarming (because) there's very little, frankly, that survivors can do."

Forster's friends and family gathered Saturday for her celebration of life in her hometown of Selkirk, Man.

MacDougall said Forster's experience of violence leading to her death is a case study in all of the ways that abusive partners can be lethal, but it also highlights the limitations of law enforcement.

Two days after her death, Forster's estranged husband, Gianluigi Derossi, shot himself while his vehicle was pulled over by police. He died later in hospital.

"Derossi was identified as a suspect in the homicide, prior to his death," the Integrated Homicide Investigation Team, or IHIT, said in an email. "Though Derossi is now deceased, the file remains open, and IHIT continues to investigate."

Stephanie's sister, Rhiann Forster, is calling for more police accountability.

"This was foreseeable and preventable, you know, he escalated in a textbook fashion."

She said Coquitlam police, the Metro Vancouver force where her sister complained about the harassment, "dropped the ball hard, really hard."

"This is somebody who knew what she was supposed to do, and she did every single thing and they still failed her. To me, that really paints a picture of how profoundly the system is broken."

Forster said the family has been working to piece together the events that led to Stephanie's death.

"She didn't give any one person the full story because she was so embarrassed," Forster explained.

The couple met in the fall of 2021, and they were married by December. It wasn't until February that her sister discovered his true identity, Forster said.

Derossi had been convicted as a serial romance fraudster under the name Reza Moeinian.

Stephanie Forster called the police and Derossi was arrested. He was eventually released under conditions, including that he can't contact his wife, her sister said.

Still, Stephanie faced months of harassment.

She sought an annulment on the grounds that Derossi had falsely represented himself, then later asked for a divorce, which he was contesting, Forster said.

Battered Women Support Services helped her obtain a protection order, but Derossi breached that at least six times, MacDougall said.

"We have seen increasingly over the years, and particularly the last three years, an erosion of the enforcement side of the protection orders," she said.

Forster said Derossi breached the protection order "way more than six times."

"It was six times that the police went to arrest him and didn’t," she said.

"He was aggressively, actively stalking her on a full-time basis. He was texting, calling, emailing, following her, showing up at her work (and) when she went on vacation. This was an ongoing daily occurrence that was affecting every single decision she made every single day."

While many respect protection orders, those who are the most abusive tend to violate them, MacDougall said.

"A portion will engage in what is called criminal harassment and stalking behaviours, and those, in terms of research, evidence, and in Stephanie Forster's case, are the ones that hit all the notes with respect to the potential for lethal violence."

The homicide team said it was aware that a warrant had been issued for Derossi's arrest, before his death, related to the breached protection order.

"Enforcement of protection orders is handled by the detachment of jurisdiction and IHIT is not in a position to comment on their protocols," it said.

Coquitlam RCMP said it could not comment on the case because IHIT was leading the investigation.

A Statistics Canada report from last October shows police-reported family violence increased for the fifth consecutive year in 2021, with a total of 127,082 victims. On average, every six days a woman is killed by an intimate partner, the agency said.

It found criminal harassment was 10 per cent higher in 2021 than in the two years before, while indecent and harassing communications increased by 29 per cent since 2019.

Rhiannon Wong, technology safety project manager at Women's Shelters Canada, said digital forms of intimate partner violence also began increasing in 2020, as technology became more integrated because of the pandemic.

"Perpetrators are using technology as another tool for their old behaviours of power and control, abuse and violence," she said.

In August 2021, the BC Society of Transition Houses surveyed anti-violence programs across the province. Out of 137 respondents, 89 per cent said women they worked with had disclosed some form of technology-facilitated abuse.

"Harassment has been ranked the most popular form of tech-related violence that increased significantly during the COVID-19 pandemic," the report said.

Stephanie Forster suspected there might be another AirTag in her car, like the one she had previously found.

Rhiann Forster said her sister had an appointment with RCMP to search for tracking devices on Dec. 9, the day after she was killed.

She said her family was initially divided on their feelings about Derossi's death and the fact that he would never stand trial.

"But I think generally speaking, we were all just relieved that he wasn't a danger to anyone else and that he wouldn't get away with it," she said.

Forster said she will remember Stephanie for her adventurousness, her "silliness" and her ability to "find joy in everyday situations."

Forster said she hopes there is some way to ensure her sister's death has meaning for other victims.

She said she believes there should be mandatory criminal record checks of a potential spouse before a marriage licence is granted and reform of the way police handle breaches of protection orders.

"They need to change how they're enforcing those policies, because they're not doing anything to protect women."

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Jan. 21, 2023.

Brieanna Charlebois, The Canadian Press

Prominent Quebec Cardinal Marc Ouellet denies second allegation of sexual misconduct

Sat, January 21, 2023 



MONTREAL — Quebec Cardinal Marc Ouellet is denying allegations of sexual misconduct made against him by a woman in 2020.

On Friday, the Roman Catholic archdiocese of Quebec City confirmed that it had received a second complaint against Ouellet, the former archbishop in the provincial capital

A Vatican investigation was conducted in the wake of the second complaint against Ouellet, but Pope Francis decided “not to retain the accusation against the cardinal” who now serves as head of the Vatican’s bishops’ office

In a written statement sent to media today, Ouellet confirmed his participation in the investigation and says he has “nothing to hide,” adding he acted with “complete transparency” during the entire process.

Ouellet denies having committed any “reprehensible behaviour” towards the woman and says no complaint has been filed against him in civil or criminal court.

Allegations concerning the cardinal first surfaced last summer in a class-action lawsuit against the archdiocese of Quebec, and last week one of the complainants revealed her identity and accused the Catholic Church of trying to silence her through “threats and intimidation.”

Paméla Groleau, one of 140 complainants behind the suit, said she initially kept her identity secret to protect her family, her job and her mental health.

In the lawsuit, Groleau accused Ouellet of several incidents of sexual assault between 2008 — when she was 23 — and 2010, including sliding his hand down her back and touching her buttocks at an event in Quebec City.

The allegations have not been tested in court, and Ouellet last month countersued Groleau in Quebec Superior Court for defamation, denying the allegations and seeking $100,000 in damages

The second allegation was reported this week by the French Catholic weekly Golias Hebdo, which also published a letter with the woman’s name redacted - dated June 23, 2021. In the letter, current Quebec City archbishop Gérald Cyprien Lacroix informed her that her complaint would not be pursued.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Jan. 21, 2023.

The Canadian Press

François Legault accuses Justin Trudeau of attacking Quebec's democracy and people

Sat, January 21, 2023 

MONTREAL — Quebec Premier François Legault is criticizing Prime Minister Justin Trudeau for "attacking Quebec's democracy and people" by proposing to limit the use of the notwithstanding clause.

In a Tweet posted this morning, Legault said that this expressed desire by Trudeau is a "frontal attack" on the Quebec nation's ability to protect its collective rights.

Legault was reacting to an interview the prime minister gave to La Presse in which he noted his intention to better regulate the use of the notwithstanding clause, which permits provincial and territorial governments to override certain provisions of the Constitution. He told La Presse he's also considering referring the matter to the Supreme Court.

Legault says no Quebec government has ever adhered to the 1982 Constitution Act, which he says "does not recognize the Quebec nation."

He says governments led by the Parti Québécois, the Liberal Party and the Coalition Avenir Québec have all used the notwithstanding clause, notably to protect the French language.

He says it is up to Quebec's national assembly to decide on the laws that will govern the province and Quebec would never accept such a weakening of its rights.

Since first coming to power in 2018, Legault's government has invoked the notwithstanding clause twice to protect a recently introduced secularism law and language law reforms from potential legal challenges.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Jan. 21, 2023.

—

This story was produced with the financial assistance of the Meta and Canadian Press News Fellowship.

The Canadian Press

WAIT, WHAT?   Qu'est-ce

99-year-old Quebec woman threatened with criminal charges for failing to appear for jury duty

Sat, January 21, 2023

Marion Lenko, 99, is bedridden and under 24-hour care in Montreal's West Island. (Submitted by Edward Ritchuk - image credit)

Edward Ritchuk's 99-year-old mother-in-law is in a long-term care home, bedridden, hard of hearing and unable to hold a conversation.

So he found it pretty odd when Marion Lenko was summoned to court for jury selection.

"When I first received the letter, I thought it was a joke," he said.

The summons was delivered first to her seniors' residence. Then in December, it was sent to Ritchuk's home in Beaconsfield, Que., an on-island Montreal suburb. She was expected to appear for selection earlier this month.

Richuk said he emailed her son, who lives in Florida and is legally responsible for Lenko. But he said her son never responded to the summons, failing to ask for an exemption.

"Then this week, I received a letter from the justice ministry saying that she has to appear on the 31st of January in court or procedures will be taken against her," he said.

Lenko was born in July 1923 and is now living under 24-hour medical care in Dollard-des-Ormeaux, Que., in the West Island.

Ritchuk said he can't believe that there was no verification done before his mother-in-law was sent a letter saying she may be criminally liable for not fulfilling her jury duty.

Unable to get through on phone

Ritchuk says he tried calling the number provided in the letter, but was sent to an automated system and says he was unable to get through to anyone.

As far as he could tell, someone needs to appear in person. But Ritchuk can't represent his mother-in-law. It's her son who has power of attorney, and he's more than 2,400 kilometres away.

Ritchuk's wife died a couple of years ago and he has stayed in touch with Lenko, having known her since 1972. Now, he says he's stuck in the middle and is unsure what to do next.

Valeria Cori-Manocchio/CBC

Isabelle Boily, a spokesperson for the Ministry of Justice, said a person may be disqualified from serving as a juror or there may be circumstances preventing them from fulfilling their obligations.

"If so, it is possible to request an exemption or postponement of participation by completing the form received with the notice," Boily said in an email.

"This form must be sent to the sheriff with the supporting documents within 20 days of receiving the notice."

In addition, as indicated in the notice of summons of the prospective juror, it is possible for prospective jurors over the age of 65 to request the exemption by calling the sheriff's office within the required 20-day period.

Boily said it is possible for a family member to call in their place.

Lawyer calls situation 'shameful'

Eric Sutton, a criminal defence attorney in Montreal, said any Canadian citizen over the age of 18 can be summoned for jury duty. Information on exemptions comes with the summons, and the summons is sent by the sheriff's office based on the polling list, not birthdays.

It's up to the person who receives the summons to invoke or apply for the exemption with the forms provided, he said. He said the documents need to be filled out and proof provided.

He's skeptical that a simple phone call to the ministry or sheriff's office would be enough.

"From what I understand, this family tried to phone and to no avail," Sutton said, noting the exception would have very likely been accepted in this case were the documents filled out.

"Now she's facing this fear of possibly being fined or imprisoned. I saw it in the paperwork. That's pretty tough medicine for a 99-year-old woman who is hard of hearing. Shameful."