Bizarre: 'Rape can't cause pregnancy'

US: Women do not get pregnant when raped because "the juices don't flow, the body functions don't work" during an attack, a state lawmaker said yesterday.

Republican Representative Henry Aldridge made the remarks to the House Appropriations Committee as it debated a proposal to eliminate a state abortion fund for poor women.

"The facts show that people who are raped - who are truly raped - the juices don't flow, the body functions don't work and they don't get pregnant," said Aldridge, a 71-year-old periodontist. "Medical authorities agree that this is a rarity, if ever."

Aldridge's comments outraged women's advocates and some legislators from both parties.

"It's really common for rape victims to be blamed for being raped," said Margaret Henderson, president of the North Carolina Coalition Against Sexual Assault.

"But this is the first time I've heard of rape victims being blamed for becoming pregnant. I am both flabbergasted and offended by this man's remarks."

Aldridge had the floor during the committee meeting as he was trying to apologize for earlier remarks implying that victims of rape or incest are sexually promiscuous.

"I would invite the representative from Pitt to ask any woman who is the victim of rape or incest if she is being sexually promiscuous," Democratic Representative Dan Blue told him at the time.

Later, Aldridge defended his comments.

"To get pregnant, it takes a little cooperation. And there ain't much cooperation in a rape," he said.

Republican House speaker Harold Brubaker said Aldridge's comments "are not the opinion of the leadership of the House".

A subcommittee had recommended cutting the fund from $1.2 million to $50,000 next year. Abortions would have been limited to cases of rape, incest or pregnancies that put the mother's life at risk.

Republican Representative Ken Miller later withdrew his proposal, saying that it had been misinterpreted. (AP)
 
Man's platonic love for balloons

ARKANSAS: A male piano teacher in the American town of Arkansas has fallen in love with a bunch of balloons, so much so that he has 65,000 of them and even considers them to be his offsprings.

The man was quoted by a TV channel as saying that he cuddles them and his heart breaks when they pop. He claims that his platonic relationship with his 'children' is 'pure'. He even sleeps with one tucked under his shirt.

"They create a world of sleeping on clouds and I want to feel the love emanating from these beautiful, beautiful balloons," he claimed in the episode.

According to the experts, such people, who can feel a deep sense of attachment to inanimate objects, are defined as ‘looners’.

The fetish could also be considered a kind of mental illness if it interferes with his daily functioning, believe experts who deal with stress management.
 
Missing girl raped for two months

INDIA: A young girl who travelled from her village in Rajasthan to the pilgrimage town of Mathura was kidnapped and raped over two months by two boys who also hail from her place.

The girl had travelled with her relatives for some religious ritual. However, while the ritual was in progress, the girl was taken away from the scene by the two boys to an isolated place, reports news agency Press Trust of India.

She was raped and beated up with an iron rod when she refused to do what the rapists asked her to do.

After two months of rape and physical torture, she was sent to Ajmer by train. On reaching her destination, she narrated her story to the police officials. She was escorted home by the officials and the police is on the lookout for the rapists.
 
Man has to try twice to get arrested in this town

DETROIT:  A man suspected of fatally shooting two men and seriously wounding two others had to turn himself in twice before Detroit Police could arrest him, authorities said.

Detroit Police said the 36-year-old man got into an argument at a party on Saturday, retrieved a gun and opened fire. Four people were shot, and two others died. The man turned himself in at a fire station about two hours later, and officials called police, but no officers turned up.

Police said in a statement that "due to area patrol units being busy handling high priority runs, no units were dispatched to the location."

The man eventually went to a police station, where he was arrested.

Police Chief Ralph Godbee said he has ordered an investigation into why no patrol car was sent to the fire station.

Police should have made "every effort to ensure that this person was taken into custody," he said in the statement sent late Saturday by the department.

Police spokeswoman Sgt. Eren Stephens told The Associated Press on Sunday that the department would examine what police units were doing at the time the suspect tried to surrender, including whether they might have been involved in other aspects of the shooting investigation.

Police did not immediately release the name of the suspect or the victims or provide details on the shooting investigation. They said the men who were shot ranged in age from 19 to 37.

Detroit police have undergone serious personnel cuts under Mayor Dave Bing's state-supervised effort to close a large budget deficit and avoid a state financial takeover. The city recently imposed a 10 percent pay cut and 12-hour work day for officers.

Stephens said the police department wouldn't immediately comment on the adequacy of its staffing.

Bing spokeswoman Naomi Patton said Sunday that the mayor's office "had nothing else to say beyond what's in the police statement." (AP)

Girl burned and raped 29-yr-old woman

US: A young woman was charged with murder Friday in the gruesome death of a woman found covered in burns and wailing in agony on the side of a rural Ohio road last weekend.
 
In addition to aggravated murder, 20-year-old Katrina Marie Culberson of Canton was charged with kidnapping and aggravated arson in the death of 29-year-old Celeste Fronsman, according to the Muskingum County Sheriff's Office. It's unclear whether Culberson has an attorney.
 
A driver found Fronsman early Sunday on a road northeast of Zanesville. She had been raped and burned, and had a strap around her neck. She died two days later at a Columbus hospital.
 
Dr. Jan Gorniak, the Franklin County coroner, ruled the death a homicide but said it will take four to six weeks before the exact cause of death can be determined because of extensive second-, third- and fourth-degree burns on about 80 percent of Fronsman's body.
 
Muskingum County Sheriff Matt Lutz said Culberson was arrested Wednesday and that detectives have interviewed her, although he declined to discuss the contents of their talk.
 
Lutz also declined to say what detectives believe was the motive or whether anyone else participated in the killing, saying only that "there are other people of interest that investigators are trying to contact."
 
"We're going to do everything we can do to prosecute all the people involved in it," said Lutz, who has called Fronsman's killing "one of the most gruesome things I've ever seen in 231/2 years in law enforcement."
 
He also has said investigators believe that whoever killed Fronsman knew her. "This was not a random thing," he said.
 
Court records show that Fronsman lived a dangerous life, having had dozens of brushes with the law since 2003.
 
In less than 10 years, Fronsman was arrested more than 20 times on charges mostly involving domestic violence, cocaine possession and prostitution, records in Canton and Stark County courts show.
 
In all, Fronsman was arrested and convicted of soliciting for prostitution six times since 2005, most recently in March. Her most recent arrest occurred on May 28 for having drug paraphernalia.
 
Her sister, Sarah Gulosh, told the Zanesville Times Recorder that despite her trouble with the law, Fronsman was a loving mother and a good sister and never failed to tell her grandparents how much she loved them.
 
"She was a good person," she said, adding that Fronsman had a heart of gold.
 
Gulosh said her sister was left tortured by the death of her 2-year-old daughter, Jordyn, in 2005, and the death of her mother in 2009.
 
"We always told her she needed to stop what she was doing and ask God for forgiveness," Gulosh said. "But she loved God, and she told us she had asked him for forgiveness." (AP)

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