Russia: Syrian chemical weapons under control

 Russia's foreign minister says the Syrian government has consolidated its chemical weapons in one or two locations amid a rebel onslaught.
Sergey Lavrov says Russia, which has military advisers training Syria's military, has kept close watch over its chemical arsenal. He says the Syrian government has moved them from many arsenals to just "one or two centers" to properly safeguard them.
U.S. intelligence says the regime may be readying chemical weapons and could be desperate enough to use them. Both Israel and the U.S. have also expressed concerns they could fall into militant hands if the regime crumbles.
Lavrov also told reporters on a flight from an EU summit late Friday that countries in the region had asked Russia to convey an offer of safe passage to President Bashar Assad.

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Kate and William to spend Christmas Day with her parents

 Prince William and his pregnant wife Kate will spend Christmas Day with her parents, their office said on Saturday, in a break with the tradition of royals joining The Queen at her country estate at Sandringham.
The Duke and Duchess of Cambridge will celebrate in private with Carole and Michael Middleton at their home in the village of Bucklebury, about 50 miles (80 km) west of London.
"The Duke and Duchess of Cambridge will spend Christmas Day privately with the Middleton family," a St James's Palace spokesman said.
The couple's decision was taken with the approval of the Queen. They are expected to visit Sandringham, in eastern England, for part of the Christmas holiday.
Kate, 30, who married the second-in-line to the throne in April 2011, spent four days in hospital this month with an acute form of morning sickness.
Members of the British royal family usually spend Christmas at Sandringham and stay until February, following a custom set by Queen Elizabeth's father and grandfather. Kate and William spent Christmas there last year, meeting scores of well-wishers.
The Middletons are likely to join millions of Britons in watching Queen Elizabeth's annual Christmas broadcast, a tradition that her grandfather George V started in 1932.
For the first time, the monarch has recorded her television broadcast in 3D. It will be shown at 1500 GMT on December 25.

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UK prosecutors consider charges over royal hoax call

 British detectives investigating the death of a nurse found hanged after she took a prank phone call at a hospital treating Prince William's pregnant wife Kate have passed an evidence file to prosecutors, police said on Saturday.
Public prosecutors must decide whether the case is strong enough to bring charges over a stunt that was condemned around the world and fuelled concerns about media ethics.
Indian-born Jacintha Saldanha, 46, was found hanging in her hospital lodgings in London, days after she answered the hoax call from an Australian radio station, an inquest heard.
She put the call through to a colleague who disclosed details of the Duchess of Cambridge's condition during treatment for an extreme form of morning sickness in the early stages of pregnancy.
"Officers submitted a file to the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) for them to consider whether any potential offences may have been committed by making the hoax call," London's Metropolitan Police said in a statement.
A CPS spokesman confirmed it had received the file, but declined to comment on the timing or nature of possible charges.
"That is what we will be considering," he said.
Prime Minister David Cameron has described the case as a "complete tragedy" and has said many lessons will have to be learned from the nurse's death.
Australia's media regulator has launched an investigation into the phone call. Southern Cross Austereo, parent company of radio station 2Day FM, has apologised for the stunt.
Britain's own media is already under pressure to agree a new system of self-regulation and avoid state intervention following a damning inquiry into reporting practices.
The presenters who made the call, Mel Greig and Michael Christian, have apologised for their actions.

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Prince William to spend Christmas with the in-laws

 Prince William will spend Christmas with his pregnant wife Kate and his in-laws in the southern England village of Bucklebury, royal officials said Saturday.
That means a family Christmas for the Duchess of Cambridge, who was recently hospitalized after suffering from severe morning sickness.
A statement from St. James' Palace, William's official residence, didn't go into much detail, saying only that the prince and Kate would spend their time in Bucklebury "privately." But a recent article penned by Kate's sister, Pippa Middleton, gave some insight into what a Bucklebury holiday might look like for the royal pair.
"The Middletons' Christmas should be blissfully calm. We're good at keeping each other's spirits up," Pippa wrote in the most recent edition of Britain's Spectator magazine. She added that her father, Michael, liked to surprise the family with bizarre costumes.
"He buys a new costume each year and typically gets a bit carried away — a couple of Christmases ago, he appeared in an inflatable sumo outfit," she wrote.
British royals traditionally spend the holidays at Sandringham, a vast estate in eastern England, and a spokesman for William said that royal couple would pay a visit at some point over the festive season. He noted that William's absence from Sandringham had been approved by his grandmother, Queen Elizabeth II, and her husband, Prince Philip.
He spoke on condition of anonymity because palace rules forbid his identification in the press.

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Pope pardons ex-butler who stole, leaked documents

 Pope Benedict XVI granted his former butler a Christmas pardon Saturday, forgiving him in person during a jailhouse meeting for stealing and leaking his private papers in one of the gravest Vatican security breaches in recent times.
After the 15-minute meeting, Paolo Gabriele was freed and returned to his Vatican City apartment where he lives with his wife and three children. The Vatican said he couldn't continue living or working in the Vatican, but said it would find him housing and a job elsewhere soon.
"This is a paternal gesture toward someone with whom the pope for many years shared daily life," according to a statement from the Vatican secretariat of state.
The pardon closes a painful and embarrassing chapter for the Vatican, capping a sensational, Hollywood-like scandal that exposed power struggles, intrigue and allegations of corruption and homosexual liaisons in the highest levels of the Catholic Church.
Gabriele, 46, was arrested May 23 after Vatican police found what they called an "enormous" stash of papal documents in his Vatican City apartment. He was convicted of aggravated theft by a Vatican tribunal on Oct. 6 and has been serving his 18-month sentence in the Vatican police barracks.
He told Vatican investigators he gave the documents to Italian journalist Gianluigi Nuzzi because he thought the 85-year-old pope wasn't being informed of the "evil and corruption" in the Vatican and thought that exposing it publicly would put the church back on the right track.
During the trial, Gabriele testified that he loved the pope "as a son loves his father" and said he never meant to hurt the pontiff or the church. A photograph taken during the meeting Saturday — the first between Benedict and his once trusted butler since his arrest — showed Gabriele dressed in his typical dark gray suit, smiling.
The publication of the leaked documents, first on Italian television then in Nuzzi's book "His Holiness: Pope Benedict XVI's Secret Papers" convulsed the Vatican all year, a devastating betrayal of the pope from within his papal family that exposed the unseemly side of the Catholic Church's governance.
The papal pardon had been widely expected before Christmas, and the jailhouse meeting Benedict used to personally deliver it recalled the image of Pope John Paul II visiting Mehmet Ali Agca, the Turkish gunman who shot him in 1981, while he served his sentence in an Italian prison.
The Vatican spokesman, the Rev. Federico Lombardi, said the meeting was "intense" and "personal" and said that during it Benedict "communicated to him in person that he had accepted his request for pardon, commuting his sentence."
Lombardi said the Vatican hoped the Benedict's pardon and Gabriele's freedom would allow the Holy See to return to work "in an atmosphere of serenity."
None of the leaked documents threatened the papacy. Most were of interest only to Italians, as they concerned relations between Italy and the Vatican and a few local scandals and personalities. Their main aim appeared to be to discredit Benedict's trusted No. 2, the secretary of state, Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone.
Vatican officials have said the theft, though, shattered the confidentiality that typically governs correspondence with the pope. Cardinals, bishops and everyday laymen write to him about spiritual and practical matters assuming that their words will be treated with the discretion for which the Holy See is known.
As a result, the leaks prompted a remarkable reaction, with the pope naming a commission of three cardinals to investigate alongside Vatican prosecutors. Italian news reports have said new security measures and personnel checks have been put in place to prevent a repeat offense.
Gabriele insisted he acted alone, with no accomplices, but it remains an open question whether any other heads will roll. Technically the criminal investigation remains open, and few in the Vatican believe Gabriele could have construed such a plot without at least the endorsement if not the outright help of others. But Lombardi said he had no new information to release about any new investigative leads, saying the pardon "closed a sad and painful chapter" for the Holy See.
Nuzzi, who has supported Gabriele as a hero for having exposed corruption in the Vatican, tweeted Saturday that it appeared the butler was thrilled to speak with the pope and go home. "Unending joy for him, but the problems of the curia and power remain," he wrote, referring to the Vatican bureaucracy.
A Vatican computer expert, Claudio Sciarpelletti, was convicted Nov. 10 of aiding and abetting Gabriele by changing his testimony to Vatican investigators about the origins of an envelope with Gabriele's name on it that was found in his desk. His two-month sentence was suspended. Lombardi said a pardon was expected for him as well. He recently returned to work in the Vatican.
Benedict met this past week with the cardinals who investigated the origins of the leaks, but it wasn't known if they provided him with any further updates or were merely meeting ahead of the expected pardon for Gabriele.
As supreme executive, legislator and judge in Vatican City, the pope had the power to pardon Gabriele at any time. The only question was when.

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Europe mulls banning 'boxes' for abandoned babies

German pastor Gabriele Stangl says she will never forget the harrowing confession she heard in 1999. A woman said she had been brutally raped, got pregnant and had a baby. Then she killed it and buried it in the woods near Berlin.
Stangl wanted to do something to help women in such desperate situations. So the following year, she convinced Berlin's Waldfriede Hospital to create the city's first so-called "baby box." The box is actually a warm incubator that can be opened from an outside wall of a hospital where a desperate parent can anonymously leave an unwanted infant.
A small flap opens into the box, equipped with a motion detector. An alarm goes off in the hospital to alert staff two minutes after a baby is left.
"The mother has enough time to leave without anyone seeing her," Stangl said. "The important thing is that her baby is now in a safe place."
Baby boxes are a revival of the medieval "foundling wheels," where unwanted infants were left in revolving church doors. In recent years, there has been an increase in these contraptions — also called hatches, windows or slots in some countries — and at least 11 European nations now have them, according to United Nations figures. They are technically illegal, but mostly operate in a gray zone as authorities turn a blind eye.
But they have drawn the attention of human rights advocates who think they are bad for the children and merely avoid dealing with the problems that lead to child abandonment. At a meeting last month, the United Nations Committee on the Rights of the Child said baby boxes should be banned and is pushing that agenda to the European Parliament.
There are nearly 100 baby boxes in Germany. Poland and the Czech Republic each have more than 40 while Italy, Lithuania, Russia and Slovakia have about 10 each. There are two in Switzerland, one in Belgium and one being planned in the Netherlands.
In the last decade, hundreds of babies have been abandoned this way; it's estimated one or two infants are typically left at each location every year, though exact figures aren't available.
"They are a bad message for society," said Maria Herczog, a Hungarian child psychologist on the U.N. committee. "These boxes violate children's rights and also the rights of parents to get help from the state to raise their families," she said.
"Instead of providing help and addressing some of the social problems and poverty behind these situations, we're telling people they can just leave their baby and run away."
She said the practice encourages women to have children without getting medical care. "It's paradoxical that it's OK for women to give up their babies by putting them in a box, but if they were to have them in a hospital and walk away, that's a crime," Herczog said. She said the committee is now discussing the issue with the European Parliament and is also asking countries which allow the practice to shut them down.
Herczog also said it's wrong to assume only mothers are abandoning these children and that sometimes they may be forced into giving up children they might otherwise have kept. "We have data to show that in some cases it's pimps, a male relative or someone who's exploiting the woman," she said.
In some countries — Australia, Canada and Britain — it is illegal to abandon an infant anywhere. Yet, in the U.S. there are "safe haven" laws that allow parents to anonymously give up an infant in a secure place like a hospital or police department. A handful of other countries including Japan and Slovakia have similar provisions.
Countries that support this anonymous abandonment method contend they save lives. In a letter responding to U.N. concerns, more than two dozen Czech politicians said they "strongly disagreed" with the proposed ban. "The primary aim of baby hatches, which (have) already saved hundreds of newborns, is to protect their right to life and protect their human rights," the letter said.
However, limited academic surveys suggest this hasn't reduced the murder of infants. There are about 30 to 60 infanticides in Germany every year, a number that has been relatively unchanged for years, even after the arrival of baby boxes. That's similar to the per capita rate in Britain where there is no such option.
Across Germany, there is considerable public support for the boxes, particularly after several high-profile cases of infanticide, including the grisly discovery several years ago of the decomposed remains of nine infants stuffed into flower pots in Brandenburg.
Officials at several facilities with baby boxes say biological parents sometimes name the infant being abandoned. "The girl is called Sarah," read one note left with a baby in Lubeck, Germany in 2003. "I have many problems and a life with Sarah is just not possible," the letter said.
The secretive nature also means few restrictions on who gets dropped off, even though the boxes are intended for newborns. Friederike Garbe, who oversees a baby box in Lubeck, found two young boys crying there last November. "One was about four months old and his brother was already sitting up," she said. The older boy was about 15 months old and could say "Mama."
Still, Germany's health ministry is considering other options. "We want to replace the necessity for the baby boxes by implementing a rule to allow women to give birth anonymously that will allow them to give up the child for adoption," said Christopher Steegmans, a ministry spokesman.
Austria, France, and Italy allow women to give birth anonymously and leave the baby in the hospital to be adopted. Germany and Britain sometimes allow this under certain circumstances even though it is technically illegal. Eleven other nations grant women a "concealed delivery" that hides their identities when they give birth to their babies, who are then given up for adoption. But the women are supposed to leave their name and contact information for official records that may be given one day to the children if they request it after age 18.
For German couple Andy and Astrid, an abandoned infant in a baby box near the city of Fulda ended their two-year wait to adopt a child nearly a decade ago.
"We were told about him on a Sunday and then visited him the next day in the hospital," said Astrid, a 37-year-old teacher, who along with her husband, agreed to talk with The Associated Press if their last names were not used to protect the identity of their child. The couple quietly snapped a few photos of the baby boy they later named Jan. He weighed just over 7 pounds when he was placed in the baby box, wrapped in two small towels.
When Jan started asking questions about where he came from around age 2, his parents explained another woman had given birth to him. They showed him the photos taken at the hospital, introduced him to the nurses there and showed him the baby box where he had been left.
Earlier this year, the couple began the procedure to adopt a second child, a boy whose mother gave birth anonymously so she could give him up for adoption.
Astrid said Jan, now 8, loves football, tractors and anything to do with the farming that he sees daily in their rural community. She said it's not so important for her and her husband to know who his biological parents are.
But for Jan, "it would be nice to know that he could meet them if he wanted to," she said. "I want that for him, but there is no possibility to find out who they were."

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Bounce houses a party hit but kids' injuries soar

They may be a big hit at kids' birthday parties, but inflatable bounce houses can be dangerous, with the number of injuries soaring in recent years, a nationwide study found.
Kids often crowd into bounce houses, and jumping up and down can send other children flying into the air, too.
The numbers suggest 30 U.S. children a day are treated in emergency rooms for broken bones, sprains, cuts and concussions from bounce house accidents. Most involve children falling inside or out of the inflated playthings, and many children get hurt when they collide with other bouncing kids.
The number of children aged 17 and younger who got emergency-room treatment for bounce house injuries has climbed along with the popularity of bounce houses — from fewer than 1,000 in 1995 to nearly 11,000 in 2010. That's a 15-fold increase, and a doubling just since 2008.
"I was surprised by the number, especially by the rapid increase in the number of injuries," said lead author Dr. Gary Smith, director of the Center for Injury Research and Policy at Nationwide Children's Hospital in Columbus, Ohio.
Amusement parks and fairs have bounce houses, and the playthings can also be rented or purchased for home use.
Smith and colleagues analyzed national surveillance data on ER treatment for nonfatal injuries linked with bounce houses, maintained by the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission. Their study was published online Monday in the journal Pediatrics.
Only about 3 percent of children were hospitalized, mostly for broken bones.
More than one-third of the injuries were in children aged 5 and younger. The safety commission recommends against letting children younger than 6 use full-size trampolines, and Smith said barring kids that young from even smaller, home-use bounce houses would make sense.
"There is no evidence that the size or location of an inflatable bouncer affects the injury risk," he said.
Other recommendations, often listed in manufacturers' instruction pamphlets, include not overloading bounce houses with too many kids and not allowing young children to bounce with much older, heavier kids or adults, said Laura Woodburn, a spokeswoman for the National Association of Amusement Ride Safety Officials.
The study didn't include deaths, but some accidents are fatal. Separate data from the product safety commission show four bounce house deaths from 2003 to 2007, all involving children striking their heads on a hard surface.
Several nonfatal accidents occurred last year when bounce houses collapsed or were lifted by high winds.
A group that issues voluntary industry standards says bounce houses should be supervised by trained operators and recommends that bouncers be prohibited from doing flips and purposefully colliding with others, the study authors noted.
Bounce house injuries are similar to those linked with trampolines, and the American Academy of Pediatrics has recommended against using trampolines at home. Policymakers should consider whether bounce houses warrant similar precautions, the authors said.

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U.S. kids getting recommended amount of sleep: study

 Children in the U.S. appear to be getting as much shut-eye as the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) recommends, according to a new study.
"We can't say this is the amount that they should be sleeping," said Jessica Williams, the lead author of the study and a graduate student at the University of California, Los Angeles.
"All we could really do is compare our estimated norms with what is recommended, and it seems like it falls pretty well in line with the recommendations," she told Reuters Health.
Williams and her colleagues point out in their study, published in the Archives of Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine, that there has been concern that U.S. kids are getting too little sleep.
Insufficient sleep has been tied to all sorts of issues in kids and teens, from behavior problems to heart health risks (see Reuters Health reports of October 2, 2012 and October 16, 2012).
But there isn't a lot of hard evidence on how much shut-eye children typically get, Williams said, so the group set out to get an estimate of average sleep duration from birth to age 18.
The researchers gathered data from a nationwide survey that has tracked families for decades.
For this study, they focused on parents' reports of their children's sleep, beginning in 1997.
At the time, 2,832 children were included. In 2002 and 2007 the families were surveyed again and there were 2,520 and 1,424 children included, respectively.
Dr. Maurice Ohayon, director of the Stanford Sleep Epidemiology Research Center in Palo Alto, California, said one of the big strengths of the study is that it tracked changes in sleep among the same children as they aged.
"We have an evolution of the sleep during the childhood," said Ohayon, who was not involved in the study. "That is the unique thing."
Williams's team found that until their second birthday, babies in the study slept an average of 12 to 14 hours during each 24-hour period.
By age four that had dropped to about 11 hours of sleep and by age 10, to 10 hours. By age 16, kids were getting an average of about nine hours of sleep per night.
The findings suggest most kids' sleep habits are in step with government guidelines.
According to the CDC, toddlers should be getting 12 to 14 hours of sleep. Preschoolers should get 11 to 13 hours of sleep, and adolescents age 10 to 17 should get 8.5 to 9.5 hours.
The researchers didn't find any differences in the amount of sleep between boys and girls, and only a slight gap between white and Hispanic kids.
Hispanic children tended to sleep 19 minutes longer than white children after age nine, but Williams said that difference is too small to matter for individual kids.
Parent reports of how much sleep their kids get are not perfectly accurate, and they often can't describe the quality of sleep, such as whether kids wake up in the night. Williams said it's still possible individual children aren't sleeping enough, because the study could only measure reports of sleep duration, and not sleep quality.
Tracking sleep in a laboratory is more precise, but would cost too much for a study this size, said Ohayon.
He told Reuters Health the study still offers a good sense of how much sleep children typically get, which is valuable in helping to gauge whether a child has a sleep disorder.
"What we are hoping to do with these norms is give some sort of reference to be used by clinicians and parents to see if children fall far from average," said Williams.

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Gay Men, Moms Sue NJ Conversion Therapists for Fraud

Four gay men and two of their mothers filed a lawsuit today against a New Jersey conversion therapy group that claims to rid men of same-sex attractions and turn them straight.
The lawsuit, filed in Superior Court of New Jersey Hudson County, alleges that methods used by the Jersey City-based Jews Offering New Alternatives to Healing (JONAH) do not work and constitute fraud under the state's consumer protection laws.
Arthur Goldberg, JONAH's co-director, and Alan Downing, a "life coach" who provides therapy sessions, were also named in the suit.
The plaintiffs include Michael Ferguson, Benjamin Unger, Sheldon Bruck and Chaim Levin, all of whom used the services of JONAH when they were in their teens or young 20s.
Two of the men's mothers, Jo Bruck and Bella Levin, who paid for therapy sessions that could cost up to $10,000 a year, were also plaintiffs.
One of the plaintiffs alleges that therapy sessions that involved a virtual "strip tease" in front of an older male counselor, as well as reliving abuse and homophobia were "humiliating."
They are seeking declaratory, injunctive and an undisclosed amount of monetary relief, as well as court costs, according to the lawsuit.
The plaintiffs have received legal help from the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), which claims in the lawsuit that conversion therapy is a dangerous practice that has been "discredited or highly criticized" by every major American medical, psychiatric, psychological and professional organization.
Three of the young plaintiffs are from an ultra orthodox Jewish background; Ferguson came from a Mormon background and met Downing at a "Journey Into Manhood" retreat, according to the lawsuit.
JONAH appears to cater to orthodox Jews, but its methods "do not have a strong religious aspect," according to SPLC lawyer Sam Wolfe.
The lawsuit alleges that some of the methods used included: telling boys to beat a pillow, the "effigy of the client's mother," with a tennis racket; encouraging "cuddling" between younger clients and older male counselors; and even instructing attendees to remove their clothing and hold their penis in front of Downing.
Attendees were also subjected to ridicule as "faggots" and "homos" in mock locker room and gym class role playing, according to the lawsuit.
"It's definitely cruel and unusual and doesn't work," said Wolfe. "They are peddling bogus techniques that have no foundation in science and are basically ridiculous and even harmful."
Wolfe paraphrased JONAH's message as: "All you have to do is put in the work to overcome your sexual attractions. If you follow our program your true orientation emerges and will turn you into a straight person."
"Often if what the conversion therapist tells them doesn't work, it's their fault," Wolfe added.
In 2008, when the plaintiffs were seeking help from JONAH, the cost of an individual therapy session was $100 and for a group session, $60. JONAH also "strongly pushed" attending weekend retreats that could cost as much as $700, said Wolfe.
Arthur Goldberg said he "knows nothing about the lawsuit," which was filed this morning, and referred ABCNews.com to JONAH's website.
"We have a lot of people who were a success and were healed," he said of JONAH's 14 years in service. "Hundreds of the clients we serve are satisfied ... Our therapy is very conventional."
When asked about the group's practices, he said, "I can't tell you about the methodology." Goldberg admitted he had "no background specifically in counseling."
"I am the administrator," he said. "I used to teach family law."
When asked about instructing boys to take off their clothes, he said, "I know nothing about that."
Goldberg also said he had "no idea" how to reach Downing because he was an "independent contractor."
According to JONAH's mission statement on its website, the nonprofit group is "dedicated to educating the world-wide Jewish community about the social, cultural and emotional factors which lead to same-sex attractions."
"Through psychological and spiritual counseling, peer support, and self-empowerment, JONAH seeks to reunify families, to heal the wounds surrounding homosexuality, and to provide hope," the statement reads.
JONAH's Goldberg, who runs the business side of the nonprofit, says on the website that "change from homosexual to heterosexual is possible … homosexuality is a learned behavior which can be unlearned, and that healing is a lifelong process."
According to the lawsuit, JONAH cites the "scientific" work of Joseph Nicolosi, one of the primary proponents of conversion therapy and Richard A. Cohen, who was permanently expelled from the American Counseling Association in 2002 for "multiple ethical violations."
Nicolosi's methodology is based on the belief that a weak father-son relationship and a dominating mother contribute to homosexuality. He advocates "rough and tumble games," as well as father-son showers, according to the lawsuit.
Cohen uses a technique called "bioenergetics" that includes having male patients beat a pillow, which represents their mother, as a way of stopping same-sex attraction, according to the lawsuit.
Conversion therapists also cite child abuse and bullying as a "primary cause" of homosexuality, according to the lawsuit.
APA Calls Gay Conversion Therapy Risky
The American Psychiatric Association and the World Health Organization, among other mental health groups, have cited the potential risks of reparation therapy, including "depression, anxiety [and] self-destructive behavior," according to the lawsuit.
Chaim Levin, the most vocal of the plaintiffs, is now 23 and a gay rights advocate who writes a blog, Gotta Give 'Em Hope.
He grew up in a Jewish ultra orthodox community in Brooklyn where religious leaders threw him out of the Hebrew-speaking yeshiva at the age of 17, when they learned he was gay.
Levin told ABCNews.com that he had been abused as a boy and that he was "confused" by his sexuality and took a rabbi's advice and began 18 months of gay conversion therapy at JONAH.
[Levin filed a civil lawsuit against his cousin in July, alleging he was abused for three years from the time he was 6.]
When Levin met co-director Goldberg, he said the defendant told him JONAH could change his sexual orientation, "as long as I tried hard enough and put enough effort into it."
"He told me, 'You will marry a woman and have a straight life,'" said Levin.
"Given where I came from, with three older siblings who were married with kids and not knowing any gay people or English, I was sure I could change," he said. "That was the theology."
Levin first did a retreat with Downing, then saw him weekly at therapy sessions in Jersey City.
"A lot of the therapy involves reliving the experience," he said. Levin alleges he was forced to relive the sexual abuse by his cousin, "with no counseling afterwards."
But the most "humiliating" experience, the one that Levin alleges made him quit therapy, was being asked by Downing to take off his clothes, article by article and told to touch his "private parts" -- to hold his penis in front of a mirror to "be in touch with my masculinity."
"I told him I wasn't comfortable, but I desperately wanted to change and was ready to do anything," said Levin. Afterward, he said he felt "degraded and violated."
Today, Levin no longer identifies as orthodox, but said his parents have been "supportive" of the lawsuit.
Some Jewish denominations and many congregations are inclusive of homosexual congregants, and even New York's orthodox communities are more open-minded now, according to Levin.
"I had gone for help and they had misrepresented themselves," he said.

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How Social and Emotional Learning Could Harm Our Kids

Editor's note: The following is a critique of a social and emotional learning program called MindUP that I have covered in other blogs (see list below) and in a feature in Scientific American Mind (visit " Schools Add Workouts for Attention, Grit and Emotional Control"). Please also read a response to this critique, posted separately, from MindUP's Rebecca Calos. I hope this debate provides food for thought about how to best encourage healthy social and emotional development in our children.
By Tina Olesen
"Self-regulation" is the latest buzz word in education, and the MindUP curriculum for schools, conceived by actor Goldie Hawn, capitalizes on it. MindUP is marketed to teachers as a means of helping children to develop self-regulation, which is another way of saying "self-control." The program's "core practice" involves teaching children focused breathing techniques while they also practice non-judgmental awareness of their thoughts, which is supposed to help them calm down and be less anxious. Hawn's curriculum is also supposed to make children feel happier and more optimistic. This is all purported to help them to be better able to learn. The truth is that MindUP can interfere with a child's innate self-regulator, the conscience, impeding his moral development and thus his ability to learn. Rather than help him develop self-control, it trains him to manipulate his mind and manipulate others to get pleasurable feelings for himself.
The "core practice" taught in MindUP is akin to certain forms of Buddhist-style mindfulness meditation including Anapanasati and Samadhi. In MindUP, the teacher strikes a Zenergy chime, and students are generally asked to sit cross legged, palms up and eyes closed. They are to direct their attention to the sound of the chime and focus intently on their breathing. The chime can gradually evoke a conditioned response in the children, as similar tools do in Buddhist monks. Teachers are encouraged to use this core practice several times a day. Mindfulness meditation such as this can be a way of bringing the mind into an altered state of consciousness. Many people who practice meditation have encountered unexpected negative side effects such as a sensation of being disconnected from one's body or from reality, among other frightening reactions. Teachers of MindUP are exposing children to these potential dangers.
To teach a child to practice non-judgmental awareness is to risk interfering with the child's ability to heed his sense of right and wrong. A child must make judgements to choose between right and wrong actions. When he acts in accordance with his sense of what is right, he grows in moral character, and develops greater self-control. While MindUP claims to be teaching non-judgmental awareness of thoughts and feelings, it actually teaches a child to judge any thought or feeling besides optimism and happiness as bad. It shows him how to escape the warnings of his conscience with pleasurable feelings--to make himself feel good even when he has done or experienced something that he ought to feel bad about. The program even encourages a child to do things for others with the motive of getting a pleasurable sensation, a dopamine high, for himself. Thus, rather than practicing self-control, children instead practice self-indulgence. They learn to escape from reality and difficult relationships, rather than working through them.
The way to help the child develop real self-control is tried and true: a caring adult patiently and unflaggingly commits to the moral training of that child. Directing, warning, correcting and disciplining day by day, hour by hour, moment by moment, the adult encourages the child to do what is right, whether or not it feels good. When a child consistently chooses to act in accordance with what is right, he develops moral character. As he develops moral character, he becomes increasingly capable of governing himself and applying himself to his studies, and he develops the self-control required for learning. This can be a long and arduous process that requires self-sacrifice and much patience on the part of a parent or teacher. There are no short cuts. As Swiss philosopher Henri-Fr?d?ric Amiel once said, "The test of every religious, political or educational system is the man which it forms. If a system injures the intelligence it is bad. If it injures the character it is vicious. If it injures the conscience it is criminal." As a society, we risk injury to our children's consciences at our own peril.
Tina Olesen is a school teacher on Vancouver Island in British Columbia, Canada. She examined the MindUP curriculum after hearing about it in her local school district.

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