On Monday September 26, 27-year-old Kelvin Acosta of the Bronx pleaded guilty to one count of sexual exploitation of a child. Acosta used the internet to prey on young girls—one as young as 13. Acosta first made contact with his victims using Facebook, where he tricked them into revealing personal information. Using that information, he hacked his victims’ email accounts and told them he had their sex videos or nude photographs. He then told his teen victims that unless they created pornography for him or gave him money, he would send the images to their families, friends, and schools.
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Legal Momentum, the Thomson Reuters Foundation, and Orrick, Herrington & Sutcliffe spearhead a call to action with legislators, FBI representatives, and advocates to end sextortion, a growing form of cyber-crime against women and children.On Wednesday, September 21, Legal Momentum will host a program at the Roosevelt House in New York City to shed light on an insidious form of cyber-violence known as “sextortion,” which the FBI has called “by far the most significantly growing threat to children.” Sextortion is a form of extortion where sex or sexual images, rather than money,
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Legal Momentum Board member Loria Yeadon moderated an event with Legal Momentum in Palo Alto, California—in the heart of Silicon Valley—on July 21 to raise awareness of online sex trafficking of minors today and address ways to end this growing problem.
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New York (July 19, 2016) — A new legal report issued by the Thomson Reuters Foundation, Legal Momentum and Orrick, Herrington & Sutcliffe provides an unprecedented framework for ending “sextortion,” a growing form of cyber violence aimed at teens, girls and women.
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In what, to some, might at first glance seem like an unremarkable decision, on Monday, the Supreme Court demonstrated a deep understanding of how domestic violence is perpetrated. On its face, the Court’s decision in Voisine v. United States was a sterile, hyper-technical legal analysis primarily hinging on the meaning of the word “use,” where the Court refrained from discussing domestic violence at any length.
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Legal Momentum applauds the Supreme Court’s decision in Voisine v. United States, which will most certainly protect the lives not only of domestic violence victims, but also members of the general public. The U.S. Supreme Court held that under federal law, convicted perpetrators of reckless or intentional misdemeanor domestic violence are prohibited from possessing firearms.
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—For Immediate Release—
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Judges demand sex in exchange for visas or favorable custody decisions, landlords threaten to evict tenants unless they have sex with them, supervisors condition job security on sex, and principals condition student graduation on sex. These are only a few faces of “sextortion.” Throughout the world, those in power extort vulnerable women and girls by demanding sex, rather than money. Victims have no choice but to comply. Noncompliance leads to life-altering and irreversible harm, such as losing one’s children, deportation, homelessness, incarceration, or unemployment.
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We are committed to ensuring that all girls are free from gender violence and sexual assault, and to eliminating injustice in our justice system.Legal Momentum is helping to lead the national discussion on the culture of complacency surrounding rape and campus sexual assault. Lynn Hecht Schafran, who directs Legal Momentum’s National Judicial Education Program, spoke on NPR’s “The Takeaway” on June 7 about the slap-on-the-wrist sentence given to the Stanford University athlete and rapist Brock Turner.
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The six-month sentence imposed on a Stanford student athlete found guilty in a widely publicized rape case has instigated widespread public outrage. In this segment on NPR's The Takeaway, Legal Momentum's Senior Vice President and Director of the National Judicial Education Program (NJEP) Lynn Hecht Schafran discusses the case and the issues involved with host John Hockenberry. NJEP has been educating judges and other court professionals about the realities sexual assault and domestic violence, and their intersection, since 1980.
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Today is the second annual National Gun Violence Awareness Day. Across the nation, people are wearing orange to honor the millions of lives affected by gun violence and spur action to prevent gun violence nationwide. The Wear Orange campaign is spearheaded by Everytown for Gun Safety. It was inspired by a small group of teens at a South Side Chicago high school who wore orange—the color that hunters wear in the woods to protect themselves and others—to honor the life of a classmate killed by gun violence in 2013.