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SELECTED NEWSPAPER REPORTS
MAD MAX CREATOR tries to stub out Screen Violence.
Lynden Barber ( Film writer 27/5/99 Australian )
As Hollywood faces mounting political pressure to tone down violent movies, one of Australia’s leading film makers, George Miller, has attacked film and television violence. "To say that there is no hard evidence of the harmful effects of media violence seems to me to be as disingenuous as the cigarette companies and their medical scientists, who for so long defended tobacco with the same cries," writes the director of the Babe and Mad Max films.
In a book called Second Take: Australian Film Makers Talk, to be published next month, Miller says he finds similarities between the debates on media violence and tobacco.
It wasn’t until the 1960s that people were alerted to the latter’s harmful effects, despite its use for several centuries " and even then it took a decade or two to do something about it", he says, adding that cinema is much younger and computer games younger yet. His article follows recent comments by another leading Australian director, Peter Weir, that movie violence and media overload could make children capable of acts such as the Denver school massacre.
Miller writes that as a "practising story-teller, I could hardly fail to notice that movies and television impinge on behaviour."
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ATTENBOROUGH FIRES BOTH BARRELS
( The West Australian 25/ 10/ 2000.)
Lord Attenborough, the doyen of the British camera, has accused Madonna’s boyfriend Guy Ritchie of succumbing to the "pornography of violence". He said the young British film maker - director of Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels and Snatch - was debasing movies by glamorising violence in order to sell his films. Lord Attenborough directed the Oscar-winning film Gandhi. He said that film makers such as Ritchie were pandering to the demands of Hollywood, which, he claims, dictates that only films with "sex and violence " are screened at cinemas. "I don’t want to make a film like Snatch," Lord Attenborough said. "I’ll accept Two Barrels, or whatever it was called , because that was the first - but to do that crap again for purely commercial reasons, to succumb to the pornography of violence because it is a prerequisite for commercial success, that I want no part of. Violence on screen is much worse than sex . It makes us lose the capacity to be shocked or moved. I don’t want to be guilty of that. And if that means that I make movies that some people find boring, then so be it. "
Snatch released in Britain in August and starting in Perth next month, covers the same ground as the highly successful Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels. Both are set in the East end of London and deal with a group of cartoonish villains carrying out acts of brutality interlaced with scenes of slapstick humour. The cast includes Brad Pitt and Vinnie Jones, a former soccer player who once released a video of his favourite fouls. Ritchie did not comment but a friend of the director said: "I do not think this will worry him too much. I mean, how old is Attenborough?" He must be nearly 107.
A spokesman for Jones, in Los Angeles working to establish himself as a Hollywood actor, said that Jones was proud of Snatch and of his performance. He said "Lord Attenborough is entitled to think what he wants to think. He has had a long and distinguished career in the films but surely he appeared in enough war movies to try to glamorise that. I think he should get back in his box."
Lord Attenborough’s outburst follows the news that his latest film Grey Owl, starring Pierce Brosnan will be available only on video in the US, although it will be released in British cinemas this month.
Studio executives in Hollywood decided the story would not be popular with American audiences and would flop if it were given a cinema release.
Grey Owl is based on the true story of an Englishman who fell for a Mohawk woman in Canada in the 1930s and became an Indian environmentalist.
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Perth Band’s Killing Spree Music Video Axed
( Sean Cowan - The West Australian 5/99 )
A Perth band’s music video has been taken off the shelves because it shows a policeman, a teacher and Pauline Hanson being shot.
The move follows a complaint by Liberal MLA Chris Baker and a review of the video by the censorship office of WA. Sony music withdrew the video after discussions with the office.
Beaverloop’s Splatterpunk video was sold in a package with the band’s Resistance Is Useful album. It is a graphically literal interpretation of the song, which tells the story of a skate-boarding psychopath who kills people using an object which has been blurred, but looks very much like a gun. Only 100 copies were made. Beaverloop manager Paul Sloan, said he could not comment about the decision because he had not been told the reasons for the withdrawal.
"We know that it has obviously been taken out of context by someone along the line, though, he said. "They ( Beaverloop ) are pro-active politically. The band’s music and the band itself has always been anti-gun, anti-violence, anti-racism and pro-environment. That’s their stand."
But Mr Baker said it seemed as if violence was being used as a commercial marketing tool. "We already have some problems in Perth with gangs and this sort of thing may cause young people who are not totally mentally stable to do something," he said.
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No one can explain why Grandson chose to Murder.
(The killer: Anthony Lauritsen lived on a diet of violent music and movies)
Margaret Lauritsen, 67, was sitting quietly in her favourite armchair when her grandson – who had feasted on a diet of violent movies and satanic death-metal music since he was 13 – bludgeoned her with a lawn edger.
No one, except 23 year-old Anthony Grant Lauritsen, knows why he did it. Chillingly, psychiatrists say he is sane.
Lauritsen’s bewildered, bereaved family, who are now calling for the death penalty, cannot explain the frenzied bloodlust which drove him to kill his grandmother and her poodle Susie on March 16 last year – the eighth anniversary of his father’s suicide.
And none of the psychiatrists who have examined Lauritsen since can explain why he took to his grandmother’s body with a serrated kitchen knife.
What is certain is that Lauritsen admired Port Arthur killer Martin Bryant, endlessly watched the movie Silence of the Lambs, listened to death-metal music and had fantasies about killing people since adolescence. In the Supreme Court yesterday, Lauritsen pleaded guilty to wilfully murdering Mrs Lauritsen in her Calista home.
Calling for strict security life imprisonment, prosecutor Evelyn Vicker told the court Lauritsen was a danger to the community and his family. A psychiatric report indicated he did not have a psychiatric defence to the charge.
Ms Vicker said Lauritsen had lived with his grandmother and his aunt, Helen Lauritsen, until about seven weeks before the murder, when he tried to attack his aunt with an axe. He was arrested, fined and banned from the house. But on the day of the murder he met his grandmother at a shopping centre and returned home with her.
Lauritsen used a lawn edger, a hammer and a knife to carry out the killing and mutilate the body. He rinsed the implements and left them on Helen Lauritsen’s bed, so she could find them. He later told a psychiatrist he was going to kill Helen Lauritsen too.
"He wanted her to experience the trauma of discovering the disembowelled body, and then be killed herself," Ms Vicker said. He was arrested after neighbours called police.
Defence lawyer Dominic McKenna told the court Lauritsen had been abandoned by his Mother and abused by another family member as a child. "From the age of about 13, he fantasised about taking a gun, going to school and killing people," Mr McKenna said.
The killing was triggered after his grandmother said he was just like his father and should never have been born. Lauritsen was remanded in custody for further submissions and possible sentencing on Thursday.
(The West Australian May 4, 1999 – Front Page)
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Kids Copy TV Violence at School.
( Sun- Herald April 19, 1987. Bruce Jones )
"WARNING - research shows violent and sexually degrading entertainment has a harmful effect on children and adults."
Inclusion of this or a similar message on videos is being considered by a Federal Parliamentary committee. Dr Dick Klugman, of the Joint Select Committee on Video material, wants to give consumers a better idea of what they are getting. US psychiatrist Dr Thomas Radecki, told the committee violent entertainment was a major cause of violence in society. Dr Radecki, research director of the National Coalition on Television Violence, said there were more than 30 studies on violent entertainment. In one, Yale University researchers made parents keep records of the programes their children watched and their behaviour at school. They found violent entertainment at home was the cause of between 10 and 25 per cent of anti-social behaviour in the playground . "They also found the children most harmfully affected by violent entertainment were those watching it with their parents, Dr Radecki said. "When a parent watches a violent program with their child the parent is usually enjoying it. The parent who does not enjoy that type of program will urge their child to change channels." Another study in Britain showed even where the "goodies" beat the "badies" , violent programs had a negative effect.
Dr Radecki said by the age of four, children were beginning to drift away from programs like Sesame Street to violent cartoons with super heroes. His talks with Australian schoolchildren showed a common activity was playing "Transformer" war games. Children playing these games were more likely to loose their tempers and get into fights than children with skipping ropes or playing ball, he said.
Research also showed children who developed aggressive attitudes in school were more likely to get into drugs.
Dr Radecki said the Australian Censorship Board had given "Transformers" a G- rating. "It is an extremely violent war cartoon
produced by Hasbro Toys, America's second largest toy company, in order to maximise sale of Transformer war toys," he said.
Even the ABC was carrying violent war cartoons that were almost certain to increase anger and violence in children. The programs were Battle of the Planets and Mysterious Lost City of Gold.
In the US, violent entertainment was a $ 20 billion a year industry, with war toy sales of $1.2 billion.
He also supported a suggestion that that videos carry stickers warning that normal children and adults were affected by violent material. "In the US, the average adult,by the age of 21, will have watched 10,000 hours of violent entertainment," he said.
"You can't watch that amount without being affected."
Dr Radecki said his own patients told him that on nights when their husbands watched pornography they were more rough and uncaring in bed. And a survey of more than 900 women, 89 reported being raped when they knew pornographic had played a key role. Dr Radecki said it was unfair to dump the problem entirely on film and broadcasting industries.
He said the government must ensure video consumers were informed about possible harmful consequencs.
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Violent programs pulled off TV…
Television network programmers reacted to the massacre (Martin
Bryant Murders in Tasmania) by immediately pulling any series or
film with a violent content.
On Monday night, as the tragedy was still unfolding,
the Ten Network decided to replace an episode of The Simpsons
titled Bart, The Murderer and arranged a replacement for
the Charles Bronson film Death Wish II,
scheduled for Friday night.
At the Nine Network, programmers immediately replaced
tonight's planned movie Goodfellas, a particularly
violent gangster film, with the drama The Power of One.
( from page 5 of The Mercury, May 1, 1996 )
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State to seek ban on very Violent Videos.
Tasmania would move for extremely violent films to
be excluded from the classification system so that they could not
be shown in cinemas or on television, Attorney-General Ray Groom
said yesterday.
A standing committee of federal, state and territory
attorney-generals was considering revised guidelines on the
classification of films and video, Mr Groom told Parliament.
In the wake of the Port Arthur tragedy Mr Groom said
he would ask the July meeting of the standing committee to remove
extremely violent films from the R classification.
"I will be suggesting to the standing committee
that these guidelines be amended to remove from the R category
into the refused classification some films and videos that deal
with extreme violence," Mr Groom said.
"Those extremely violent films and videos really
have to be given very careful consideration and should not be
available generally within the community." Mr Groom said he
would discuss Tasmania's position at the committee meeting
because a national approach to film classification was required.
"Many believe that we have developed a culture
of violence through the influence of these sorts of films and
videos," Mr Groom said.
"Also, there is a good deal of hard evidence of
links between many crimes and the fact that those involved in the
crimes have actually seen videos and films of a very violent
nature, and sometimes the detail of a crime can be related
directly to the content of a particular film or video."
( from page 7 of The Examiner, May 10, 1996 and from page 2 of The Mercury, May 10, 1996 )
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TV Violence rubs off on Children: Expert.
Children who regularly watched violent movies on television or videos became more aggressive, a Senate Inquiry into film censorship was told yesterday.
Psychologist Peter Sheehan - an adviser to the Office of Film Literature Classification on censorship guidelines - said there was a link between what children watched and how aggressive they were. Professor Sheehan, from Queensland University, said children aged between nine and 11 were particularly vulnerable.
His findings were backed by classification office director John Dickie, who told the inquiry that parents had a duty to stop children getting a constant diet of any kind of film.
"It is up to Mum to at least break up viewing- to tell them to play outside" Mr Dickie said. Professor Sheehan said he was not certain whether the dangers of violent viewing also applied to computer game players because children became distracted by the game.
"The children that immerse themselves in that sort of media are caught up in learning competencies and skills," he said.
"They are exposed to aggressive material but it is their being able to win or get a high score which is important. This is a different thing to sitting passively before television violence or video violence hour after hour."
Professor Sheehan also warned of harmful material on the Internet,
"As that grows and people become more technologically educated, we are going to have to face the issue of exposure to offensive material on the Internet," he said. If one logs on to the Internet now there is clearly offensive material ... bordering between pornography and sexual violence.
"But people that worry me are children who have a steady diet and involvement and participation probably more in one outlet rather than sampling across the range."
The office overhauled its cinema ratings in January and the inquiry members were shown the films as an example of how the new guidelines worked.
They were told Sorority Sluts was banned because it demeaned women.
Mr Dickie said the movies selected were benchmarks in film classification.
Also shown was Child’s Play III selected because it was identified in reports as being connected with the Port Arthur massacre.
Federal Cabinet will today consider a recommendation that V-chips be made compulsory on all new television sets as part of a package to tighten restrictions on television and video violence in the wake of the Port Arthur shootings.
But Federation of Australian Commercial Television Stations general manager Tony Branigan said the scheme had limited value in Australia.
"The V-chip will appeal to concerned middle-class parents who are already making good use of the existing system," he said.
"But because you have to buy a new set with a chip in and have several goes at programming it before you get it right, it probably won’t make any difference in the 10 to 15 per cent of households where parents really aren’t bothered what their children watch."
( The West Australian 9/7/96 )
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TV Killing copied in NZ Street.
A 20 year old university student was stabbed to death in a street in Wellington, New Zealand, yesterday.
The attack occurred about ten minutes after the State run TV2 channel finished the screening of the programme in the British made "Rumpole of the Bailey" series.
The programme was about a youth in a group who suddenly stabbed a young man in a bustling crowd in one of London’s busiest streets. In the programme, a coloured youth was captured and charged with attempted murder. Rumpole defended him. The story’s theme was that the attack defied explanation. The victim was unknown to his assailant.
In Rumpole’s words: "The lad stabbed the fellow simply because he was there – wrong place, wrong time." - AAP
(The West Australian 16th April 1980, page 44.)
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VIOLENT TV UPSETS CHILDREN.
BONN - Children who see too much violence and brutality on TV not only become much too aggressive but sometimes even ill according to a West German research team. The team spent 18 months at the audio-visual centre in Hildersheim, West Germany, observing the effects TV violence had on 36 children aged between eight and 11.
Professor Herbert Heinrichs a university lecturer, who headed the investigation claimed the results proved that many programs considered as "suitable" for children by TV companies were in fact "highly dangerous".
He said the children involved in the German tests were split into two groups with one group watching normal programs for youngsters, and the other seeing films in which numerous acts of brutality were portrayed.
Prof. Heinrichs said that some of those subjected to the programs with acts of violence suffered from sickness, diarrhoea, sleeplessness and nightmares.
There was a tendency for them to be much more aggressive at school, bad-tempered when taking part in games, and inattentive in the classroom
One 10 year-old boy had run out of the TV room at home after witnessing one particular torture
scene, and had suffered for 36 hours from the shock caused by the program.
Four 10-year-old boys including the son of the project leader, who were subjected to a series of programs known for their violent tendencies, showed afterwards an extraordinary increase in aggression.
Prof. Heindrichs said that the investigation had proved that without doubt that some programs shown on the two main West German television stations were ‘highly dangerous" for children.
A Munich children’s doctor said that the tremendous influence and effect TV had on a child’s development had greatly been under-rated by the TV authorities.
He warned parents from allowing their children to sit for hours at a time watching TV.
( From Clive Freeman The Herald 10/10/72 )
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Judge blames TV for Killing.
Los Angeles, Wed: A judge blamed television and the film industry for its glorification of violence when he found a 14 year-old boy guilty of murder.
In Stockton, California, yesterday, Judge Frank Kim said he was convinced that Jesse Cecil Mimmit jun. beat up an 80-year-old man in the grounds of a school for money.
After the judge made his findings, he said: " The film industry and television produce such a glorification of violence that a lot of children think it is all right – like a license to kill. "Throughout the world, human life is taken by too many to be almost meaningless."
The judge called on parents to teach their children respect for human life and all living things. A witness said that Mimmit showed no remorse about the killing while awaiting his court appearance.
"I don’t care, I’m not going to worry about it. I killed somebody else before," he was quoted as saying.- AAP-AP.
(The West Australian May 21 1981 page 60)
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Natural Born Killers…
Oliver Stone has begun answering questions in a law suit that faults his movie Natural Born Killers for sparking a crime spree that left a woman paralysed.
The family of Patsy Byers, who was shot and later died of cancer, says Stone’s film triggered the attack on the convenience store clerk in 1995. The lawsuit seeks damages from Stone and movie distributor Time Warner. Byers was shot by Sarah Edmondson, then turned 18, during a two state crime spree with her boyfriend, Benjamin Darras. Both are now in prison. Edmondson said she and Darras had watched Stone’s movie about a young couple who commit a series of murders. The film-makers say the lawsuit has no legal basis because the movie is protected by free-speech provisions in the First Ammendment.
(The West Australian TODAY - 25th July, 2000 – page 3)
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Wrestlers called in Kill Case.
The lawyer for a 13 year old boy accused of killing a six-year-old by slamming her into a table has subpoenaed two professional wrestlers to testify at the forthcoming murder trial.
Jim Lewis said his client had been mimicking wrestling moves he had seen on television.
Mr Lewis served subpoenas on terry "Hulk Hogan" Bollea and Steve "Sting" Borden during a World Championship Wrestling show on Sunday. Earlier this month Mr. Lewis subpoenaed World Wrestling Federation champion Dwayne Johnson.
Mr Lewis wants the three to show how professional wrestlers made their televised action appear authentic.
He said the boy did not realise the injuries that could be caused when he allegedly gave the girl a bear hug, dropped her on a table and then swung her into a railing last July.
Associated Press…
(The West Australian March 22, 2000 page 23)
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Judge Judy Decides….
If the events or cases that come to TV’s Judge Judy are actually true, then one case that came before her was an incident involving two bys. One was suing the other for damages.
It seems that one of the boys was "wrestling " with his group of friends and the other boy who was not part of the group, picked up a folding chair and slammed it into the back of the other boy (a manoeuvre seen many times on TV’s wrestling)………
(Perth TV September 2000)
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Violent Sex Attacks on Kids shock Koreans.
SEOUL- South Koreans have been jolted by a sudden upsurge in reports of violent sexual assaults on children. In recent weeks, local news media have carried almost daily reports on sexual child abuse cases in which the victims were attacked in school toilets, lifts, apartment roof-tops and suburban hills.
In a prosperous residential block in southern Seoul, a nine year-old girl was murdered last month in a school toilet by a teenager who tied to rape her, then stabbed her repeatedly. The attacker, identified by police as a 15 year-old middle-school boy from a middle-class family, confessed after his arrest that he had sexually abused six other children.
At a primary school in Buchon, in the southern suburbs of Seoul, parents decided to patrol the neighbourhood after 20 children were sexually abused in the past two months by thugs who also forced the children to steal.
Police also arrested a 23 year-old unemployed man who had sexually abused six children. Police also pointed out that parents were reluctant to report sex attacks to police for fear of publicity.
Psychologists have attributed the increase of such crimes to the spread of pornographic books and videos along with the breakdown of the extended family unit, lack of dialogue between money-orientated parents and their kids, a lack of proper sex education at school and generally rapid changes in lifestyle. - AFP
(The Straits Times June 10, 1989.)
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Children copy TV Sex.
An increasing number of young children are repeating sexual behaviour they see on television, in movies or at home and acting it out with other children, according to a world-renowned sex therapist.
Toni Cavanagh Johnson said few children molested other children. But the number of children under 2 who displayed abnormal sexual behaviour was growing.
Films that affected them did not have to contain explicit pornography. Exposure to R-rated adult movies would push a child’s sexual behaviour beyond what was considered normal educational play.
Other influential factors included being allowed to roam the streets too much, seeing adolescent or adult behaviours, hanging around bars or discos or witnessing too much sex at home.
Children who displayed abnormal sexual behaviour might also have been victims of abuse.
Dr Cananagh Johnson, a licensed clinical psychologist in private practice in California, has worked with thousands of children whose sexual behaviour ranges from healthy and normal to coercive and dangerous.
In a paper published by the Sex Information Education Council of the United States, she identified four types of child sexual behaviour.
The most common - natural play - involved children voluntarily each other’s bodies visually and through touch, such as playing doctor or "I’ll show you mine, if you show me yours" games.
Other children were sexually reactive and often felt shame, guilt and anxiety about sexuality.
Many in this group were sexually abused, some had been exposed to explicit sexual material and some lived in households where there was too much open sexuality.
"Young children who watch excessive amounts of soap operas or cable television and videos and who live in sexually explicit environments may display a multitude of sexual obsessive behaviours.
The third group engage in mutual and adult sexual behaviour generally with children the same age.
Their thoughts and actions were often prevaded with sexuality and they forced their partners into the activities.
Dr Cavanagh Johnson stressed that most children who engaged in inappropriate sexual behaviour were not like adult sex offenders. Labelling them, molesters could cause them harm.
It was important to treat children who were coercing other children into unwanted sexual activities.
But parents and professionals also had to be careful they did not overact to some sexual behaviour. DR Cavanagh Johnson was speaking at a workshop at Relationships Australia.
by Catherine Fitzpatrick ( The West Australian 26/7/96 )
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Scream Movie inspired Killers.
Los Angeles - Two teenage cousins, Mario Padilla, 17 and Samuel Ramirez, 16 said the slasher movie Scream inspired them to kill Mario’s mother, Gina Castillo in a frenzied stabbing attack - have been jailed.
On January 13, 1998, the two boys burst into the Padilla home where Mario grabbed his mother from behind as she sat in front of her computer. Then while Ramirez held her down, Padilla used at least four different knives and a screwdriver to stab his 37 year-old mother 45 times.
Evidence at a preliminary hearing showed the boys were obsessed with the Scream and its sequel, Scream 2. In the movies, killers in Grim Reaper costumes stab teenagers.
The boys said they murdered and robbed Mrs Castillo to get money to buy costumes like those used by the movie killers. They then planned to kill several classmates while wearing the costumes. – Associated Press
(The West Australian July 24, 1999 - page 20 )
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Girl "Trapped" in Video.
Scream
Mask 
Scream Video Cover
A 10 year-old is in a psychiatric ward with a severe trauma after watching a violent video. Doctors say her mind is "trapped inside" the movie. The girl from a south-eastern Melbourne suburb, watched the horror movie Scream at a sleepover birthday party with other children. Doctors say she began role-playing characters in the movie and became extremely violent. Two other children who saw the movie, which has a Mature Audience classification, have suffered regular nightmares.
The girl’s mother came home from work to find her daughter lying on the couch "looking shattered and twisting her fingers". "Her pupils were dilated and she had a glazed look," her mother said. "But we thought she may have just been very, very tired."
That night the parents woke to find their dazed daughter wandering around their house. She went back to sleep the next morning woke totally confused. On the advice of their family doctor they took her to Frankston Hospital where blood and urine tests confirmed there were no drugs in her body. Eighteen hours later she was admitted to Melbourne’s Royal Children’s Hospital.
"She could not recognise people and gave doctors silly answers to questions they asked," her father said. "A doctor held out his tie and asked her what it was. She replied it was a watch. He then pointed to his watch and asked her what it was. She said she didn’t know." The girl spent five days in hospital and then doctors decided she had made enough progress to return home for the weekend. But in the car on the way home, she became extremely agitated, staring and rubbing her arms and hands as if to wipe something off them.
"Next thing," said her mother, "she started yelling at me, ‘you are not my mother, you are a bad mother’. She started slapping and kicking me. She managed to get the window open and started to try climb out as we were moving."
The mother stopped the car and called the ambulance. As they waited, the girl locked her teeth into the mother’s arm. Then she bit her mother’s finger.
Ambulance officers restrained her but she bit through one of the restraints on the trolley. "She had incredible strength," her mother said. "She was fighting, in her mind, for her life." At the hospital she began screaming, and punched a nurse.
The next day doctors decided to transfer her to a specialist psychiatric facility at the Austin Hospital.
The deputy convenor of the Film and Literature Board, child psychiatrist Dr. Brent Waters, said the case highlighted the need for parents to be aware of what children were watching.
(Sunday Times 26th April 1999)
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Horror Show.
Paris: A teenage boy obsessed by the new film Scream 3 put on a cloak and mask and stabbed his parents with a kitchen knife. His parents survived.
(Sunday Times 23rd April, 2000 – page 30)
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Creator of Scream.
Hollywood’s master of horror, Wes Craven who also directed Nightmare on Elm Street says that he makes no apologies for the violence in the Scream films, which are often blamed (rightly or wrongly) for real-life urban violence.
(The West Australian TODAY - 22 March, 2000 – page 8)
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Star of "Scream" Says…
"I'm so bad when it comes to horror films. I'm one of those people who cries and screams a lot and then has nightmares for months afterwards, but I've come to really appreciate them, obviously."
Neve Campbell (Star of Scream)
(December 20, 1996 Web posted at: 11:45 p.m. EST NEW YORK – CNN Website)
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Girl Traumatised by Horror Film.
Parents are being warned to do their homework on movies their children see at cinemas these holidays.
A 12-year-old Perth girl is still having difficulty sleeping after seeing the horror/thriller What Lies Beneath.
Her Mother, Lucy, said although a month had passed, her daughter was still too scared to sleep alone. She said she was surprised the movie was only given a M rating – recommended for mature audiences 15 years and over. But there were no legal restrictions.
(The Sunday Times, January 7, 2001 page 8)
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TRIADS , VIDEOS INCITE VIOLENCE.
A street war has broken out in Perth between gangs which model themselves on violent Asian triads.
The M’bros and the Spider Boys are fighting a running battle across the northern suburbs and Northbridge.
The war came to a head on July 12 when a 15-year old boy of Vietnamese origin was attacked with machetes and baseball bats.
His skull was fractured and bone fragments were removed from his head wounds.
Police said members of the M’bros had attacked the boy because he was a Spider Boy. After the attack police launched Operation Machete. Police said it appeared members of the M’bros were responsible for a range of assaults across the metropolitan area. The M'bros model themselves on characters from a violent Asian gangster movie series called Young and Dangerous. "They have even given themselves names from characters in the movie," Mirrabooka District Supt. Fred Zagami said.
( Ben Harvey - West Australian 2/9/2000. )
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Police battle to get killers.
Melbourne: The burgeoning murder rate has prompted Victoria’s homicide squad to ask how much longer its 26 officers can continue to cope. The state now has its highest murder toll since the squad was formed in 1943. Head of the state squad, Chief Inspector Brendan Cole said the high murder rate was symptomatic of an increasing desensitising of the community, largely through the violence in film and on television.
(The West Australian – 28th December, 1987 – page 55)
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Wrong script for luckless Hold-up Pair.
Two television-watching teenagers thought a quick armed hold-up would be an easy solution to their financial problems. But Andrew McGonigal and Kimberley Swayn, both 19, found that their assault on a Malaga lunch bar did not go accordingly to the script. They netted only $66 between them in the robbery, and each was sentenced yesterday to an effective six years’ jail with only three years before they would be eligible for parole.
Mr. Justice Smith said that the two out-of-work youths had hatched the plot after watching TV on June 9.
(The West Australian 3rd October, 1987 – page 25)
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Death List: Students Banned…
(Copycat after Columbine shootings in the US)
Six boys have been suspended from a Sydney school after a "massacre list" of students and teachers was found in the bag of a Year 10 pupil.
The note, which alluded to last month’s school massacre at Littleton, Colorado, ended with the phrase, "Kill them all".
The list included the names of two teachers and the principal of the Campbelltown Performing Arts School as well as "the girl in my home room" , "stupid" dancing girls and "anyone who doesn’t like (Marilyn) Manson.
It is the latest in a series of copycat incidents at seven NSW schools since the massacre. Two involved direct references to Columbine High School in Colorado.
Police said they were treating the latest incident seriously, but believed it was a tasteless prank.
"It is most disturbing that not only did this incident at Littleton have an impact on us – we felt for the students and parents at Columbine – but that disturbingly the incident had a distressing flow-on here in NSW," said Mr Aquilina, NSW Education Minister.
Twelve students and a teacher were killed by the so-called Trench Coat mafia in Littleton last month. The killers posted their threats on the Internet before killing their targets and then themselves.
(The West Australian May 14 1999 page 3)
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Attacker Naked: Accused.
A 17-year-old youth accused of bashing Kensington truck driver Peter Templeman was playing out a scene from an Australian movie The Idiot Box when he walked over the top of Mr. Templeman’s car.
Mr. Templeman came out from his house at 2 o’clock in the morning to investigate the disturbance while only wearing a towel. But the towel had dropped when Mr. Templeman had grabbed and struggled with the youth’s 16 year old female friend. The youth who had just come from a party with his friends, had re-joined his friends half way across the park when he heard her screams, decided to run back to help thought that the naked man was trying to rape the girl. Thinking this was the case, the youth then proceeded to kick him in the head and punch Mr. Templeman, 40 and attack him with a wooden stake until the youth saw him slump to the ground. Mr. Templeman suffered permanent brain damage and a fractured jaw.
(The West Australian May 2, 2000 – page 3)
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Video ‘Desensitised’ the Accused Killer.
Violent videos showing real scenes of torture and killing desensitised a teenager accused of killing a 15-year-old boy, a court was told yesterday.
Crown prosecutor Mark Tedeschi QC told a New South Wales Supreme Court jury that Matthew O’Grady got a rush or thrill watching the videos Traces of Death.
"Videos which show real live scenes of killing, cruelty, torture, accidents, post-mortem examinations, horror, pain, suffering, indeed they were videos of the most obnoxious and most horrendous kind," he said.
Mr. Tedeschi said Mr. O’Grady shot Christopher nine times, reloading the rifle after firing six or seven shots. Christopher was shot six times in the head, once in the shoulder, once in the thigh and once in the heart.
Mr. Tedeschi said Mr. O’Grady then had sex with a 14 year old girl who had been walking with them. She had been told to wait in the bush while the boys went to look for the fictitious marijuana.
(The West Australian October 25, 2000 – page 39)
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Killer nicknamed "Satan" at High School.
The man who admits killing Woollongong mayor Frank Arkell and a local shopkeeper was nicknamed Satan by his former classmates at school, the New South Wales Supreme Court was told yesterday. Mark Mala Valera has pleaded guilty to the manslaughter of Mr. Arkell and Dapto shopkeeper David O’Hearn, but not guilty to their murder.
Forensic psychiatrist and defence witness Dr. Hugh Jolly said the nickname might have developed because Valera’s former surname was Van Krevel which rhymed with evil.
The doctor said Valera did not have a psychiatric illness, but he suffered an abnormality of the mind and at the time of the killings he had entered into an altered state of consciousness.
Dr. Jolly said when Valera’s two victims crouched down in a sexual position the 21 year-old had flashbacks to when his father Jack Van Krevel, had sexually abused him.
The doctor said Valera’s delusions were influenced by a combination of satanic music and a picture he believed was devilish and fiendish.
"he felt he was under the influence of something in the picture, he felt the figures were moving and had taken almost an active role," Dr. Jolly said.
(The West Australian July 29, 2000 page 34)
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Comic blamed on Mother’s brutal attack.
A man who gouged his mother’s eyes out and tried to suffocate her told police he had been influenced by a heavy metal comic magazine, a court was told yesterday.
Maisie Derbin, 55, was attacked by her son after she tried to turn down the volume as he played music by the band Metallica in their Sydney home.
Pweter Derbin, 22, later told police he had been listening to the songs No Remorse or Seek and destroy, Justice Morris Ireland told the New South Wales Supreme Court.
Justice Ireland described the case as macabre and tragic. Swearing at his Mother during the assault, Derbin had thrust his fingers down her throat and stuck his fingers in her eyes as she tried to crawl away. Justice Ireland said one of Mrs. Derbin’s eyeballs was removed in the attack and the other was displaced from its eye socket so badly it had to be removed surgically.
The force employed in the attempted suffocation was such that several of her natural teeth were knocked out and her denture was broken.
Justice Ireland said Derbin was guilty of "a determined effort……to murder the victim, a defenceless woman, in a vicious, violent, unjustified and persistent manner".
Derbin had described being influenced by reading a comic-style magazine called Heavy metal in which the gouging out of a person’s eyes by another is depicted.
The judge told the court Mrs Derbin hasd tried to turn down the volume of her son’s music because his grandfather was about to go to bed.
Derbin responded by pushing her away and slapping her several times after she fell on to his bed. She slapped him back and returned to her bedroom.
Mrs Derbin had said he went to her room 10 or 15 minutes later and "stuck his fingers down my throat and tried to choke me".
In her description of the attack, Mrs. Derbin said: "Peter was swearing at me through the entire attack.
"Peter had his fingers in my eyes. He was pulling at them. He was gouging at them while I was trying to crawl away on the floor. "He was sticking his fingers right behind my eyes. Everything was black".
She said she pleaded with her son not to kill her, and the next thing she remembered was being on the floor with a pillow over her face.
"I couldn’t breathe. The pillow was suffocating me," she said. "That’s when I passed out."
Derbin told police that after the attack, he went to the refrigerator to get a drink of orange juice and then prepared to drive away. Instead, he threw the car keys into bushes because he thought he would be more easily caught in a car. Derbin told police he sometimes heard voices but did not ascribe his conduct on the night of the offences to any hallucinatory commands. The judge said Derbin had drunk beer and smoked cannabis earlier on the day of the attack.
(The West Australian November 21, 1998 page 39)
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Book lands man in Gaol.
About 1 am on Sunday 5 April, 1981, a woman photographer, 31 was walking on the Upper Esplanade, St. Kilda when a man with a knife demanded money. He forced her into a car park where he tied her up with rope and tape and drove about 60 kilometres with her tied up in the boot, finally parking in a reserve outside Melbourne, where he assaulted her. He pleaded guilty.
When the man was arrested, he told police: "I have been reading books on bondage and I felt a strong urge to act out what was in the books. I knew it was wrong but I couldn’t help myself. It’s those bondage books, sex feeds on sex, that’s what has done it those rotten books, where women like to be tied up and spanked, and at the time you know it’s serious but you don’t think you’re doing wrong. The books show women need to be dominated, and that to grab a woman off the street and tie her up and rape her isn’t really wrong, and as I said to (her) that night that I had to do it once to get it out of my system, you know….."
(Sunday Age 17th November, 1991)
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X Videos lead to home invasion & Rape.
At 2am on Thursday 21 March, 1991, a young woman, 35, was sleeping in her Bundoora home with her daughter, 3, beside her and her other two children, 8 and 6, asleep in another room. She woke up and found a man on top of her, wearing a mask. The man placed a stocking in her mouth and taped it using medical tape he obtained from a hospital where he worked. He raped her repeatedly.
When arrested the man, who pleaded guilty, told police: "I’ve sat home watching videos – X rated videos, for a while. Earlier I had no idea – I had intentions of doing anything like this but as I was watching the videos and that, just sorta – I thought – thought about it and then it came to mind. I thought ‘ I’ll go out for a walk and see what happens’ and that’s when – as I was walking I was trying to say, you know, don’t do it, don’t do it and that’s when – it just kept you know, coming into my mind to do it because I had everything prepared just in case. I took my gloves and all that".
(Sunday Age 17th November, 1991)
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8 Year old Girl Abducted.
An aboriginal youth who watched a pornographic video and then abducted an eight-year old girl was goaled for at least nine months yesterday.
Mr Bruno Illari, for Rawlins, said that Rawlins had been drinking on November 18 last year and had become aroused after watching the video, "Rape Squad". Rawlins then visited the hostel and escaped with the girl tucked under his arm. Her screams woke a hostel guardian who chased the defendant through the bush calling for Rawlins to release her. Mr Illari said that once Rawlins realised what he was doing, he dropped the girl unharmed. He said that Rawlins had been unable to deal with alcohol and that the offence was typical of crimes committed by Aboriginal youths from remote communities. The offence would not have happened if Rawlins had been able to deal with the clash of sexual values between European and Aboriginal cultures, he said.
(The West Australian - 15/ 5/ 87 )
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GIRL BLACKMAILED - NUDE PHOTOS.
After watching X-rated videos, a teenager dared a primary schoolgirl into posing for nude photographs which he later used to blackmail her into having sex. The so-called photograph sessions went on for some time, followed by sexual assault last year, until she summoned the courage to tell her father. As a result, Benjamin Clarke 19 of Armadale, pleaded guilty to two charges of aggravated sexual assault, including anal assault on the girl who was 11 at the time. Ms Shauna Deane ,for the crown ,said Clarke asked the girl to pose for nude photographs, telling her it was "a kind of bravery test". The reason, Ms Deane said, was to have material with which to blackmail her so she would not complain to her parents. He first began taking photos at the end of 1986. When he gained a hold over the girl he coerced her into sexual activity. Ms Deane said he also threatened to use violence against the girl’s family. But the girl eventually told her father and Clarke was arrested in October.
Defence counsel, Mr Alan Dodd, pointed to Clarke’s good record in scouting and in his completed apprenticeship as an electrical fitter. He also noted Clarke’s exposure to scenes of explicit sexuality. He said that when Clarke was 16 the girl’s family obtained some explicit video tapes. Clarke saw the girl, then aged 9 or 10, watching an X-rated video with a boy of about the same age. He warned her father but later watched videos himself. Mr Dodd said Clarke had lived in a caravan park for some months and had not felt any urge during this time to approach young children. Mr Justice Smith remanded Clarke in custody for pre-sentence and psychological reports.
( The West Australian - 16/ 1/ 88 )
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CENSORSHIP AND SEX.
It is time Australians broke their silence on domestic violence, which is a "repugnant scourge" on our society, the Prime Minister Mr Hawke, said in naming National Domestic Violence Awareness Month .
A Queensland Federal Opposition MP, Mr Don Cameron , responded by calling on the government to prove it was serious about stemming violence in the home by banning X- rated videos in the national capital.
There was overwhelming evidence of a link between censorship laws and sex-related crimes, including domestic violence, Mr Cameron claimed. In Western Australia, reported rapes more than doubled (from 6.13 per 100,000 in 1981-82 to 13.89 in 1985-86) after the states censorships laws were relaxed and fell again (to 11.79) after they were tightened in 1986.
Reported rapes in South Australia, which has the least restrictive censorship laws, rose by 600% (to 44.53 per 100,000) between 1974 and 1987 - compared with Queensland, where rape statistics have stayed in single figures per 100,000 with rigid censorship laws.
( The Australian Evangelical May-June 1989 )
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INDEFINITE TERM FOR RAPIST (17)
A youth who carried a 10- year old girl from her bed and subjected her to what was described in court as a " horrific sex ordeal was ordered yesterday to be detained indefinitely. In the Supreme Court, Mr Justice Rowland said that he could not tell whether Jason Thompson (17) showed any remorse at all. Thompson was convicted by a jury in April of rape and breaking and entering. He had admitted indecent dealing. On the day of the offence, Thompson had been drinking beer and watching R-rated videos. He had seen the girl through a bedroom window, broken into her house through an unlocked back door and carried her from her bed……….
In a separate case, a man who pushed a 10-year old girl off her bike and tried to rape her was sentenced to a minimum sentence of one year, nine months and a maximum of four years.
Barry Wauhop (20) , of Third Street , Bicton , had admitted indecent dealing and the attempted rape of the girl behind the Leopold Hotel, in Bicton. Mr Justice Rowland said that it had been a cowardly attack.
( The West Australian May 31,1986 )
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