Across the country, newly formed task forces made up of local, state and federal law enforcement officers are starting to view what was once seen as run-of-the-mill prostitution as possible instances of sex trafficking.
With support and funding from the FBI and the Justice Department, agencies are starting to work together to identify and rescue sex trafficking victims and arrest their pimps.
The new approach is being hailed by victims of trafficking and their advocates as a much-needed paradigm shift — and, the FBI says, is reaping results.
Ron Riggin, a Maryland State Police sergeant who recently retired from a long career spent searching for missing children and runaways, says he's been aware of the problem for some time, but just hasn't had the resources or cooperation to effectively combat it. The recent infusion of support and coordination from the feds, he says, has been a game changer.
"At this point, there's a federal task force that covers just about every state in the union, as far as I know, so that makes it easy for us when we have interstate cases," Riggin said recently during a Maryland Human Trafficking Task Force sting operation near Baltimore. To tackle the problem, the task force regularly peruses online escort ads, conducts stings, and offers services and support to the women they encounter.
Some sex worker advocates say that the approach is throwing the net too wide and leading to the arrests of too many women who are in control of their situations.
But the feds point to their results as their justification. Since 2008, task forces like the one Riggin is a part of have recovered more than 2,700 sexually trafficked children and convicted more than 1,350 pimps.
Looking For A Sense Of Belonging
The volume of cases is exposing a problem that has long been hidden in plain sight: Child prostitution, or sex trafficking of minors, happens in every state in the country, in poor and rich communities alike. And more often than not, victims are children and are American-born.
"Typically they are not the ones who are highly supervised at home," Riggin says. "I think they are running away from something at home, whether it's emotional or physical abuse or lack of love, or call it what you will. There is usually a reason they are leaving home. They don't have a reason to go to somebody."
The pimps, Riggin says, give the victims the attention and sense of belonging that vulnerable children desire.
The emergence of social media and online escort ads, experts say, has only exacerbated the long-standing problem.
"This can happen in any town," says Ron Hosko, assistant director of the FBI's Criminal Investigative Division. "We've seen it happen in very affluent areas of the country. Each of our field offices has reported these crimes, so we think that it's everywhere."
Last year, Hosko oversaw a team that uncovered a sex trafficking ring in affluent Fairfax County, Va. In that case, gang members recruited several adult women and at least eight high school girls through social media networks and contacts inside local schools. They plied them with drugs and alcohol, and controlled them with violence and intimidation.
Getting To The Local Level
Congress changed the legal definition of sex trafficking in 2000 to include recruiting or transporting a person by force, fraud "or coercion." As minors are legally unable to give their informed consent, anyone under the age of 18 is typically considered a victim.
It wasn't until 2008, though, that federal efforts to bring local protocol more in line with federal law took off. Since then, the FBI and DOJ have pumped resources into training law enforcement officers around the country on what to look for, how to approach potential victims, and how to connect them with services like housing, job training and counseling.
They have also made it a priority to gather evidence needed to prosecute their pimps.
The number of sex trafficking cases investigated and prosecuted at the local level is not yet known, but the FBI is gathering that data for the first time as part of its 2013 Uniform Crime Report.
Advocates, including Suzanne Tomatore of the Freedom Network, a national coalition of anti-human trafficking service organizations, say the new approach is making a difference.
But, she adds, there's still a ways to go — in training officers, in providing resources to those who want to help the victims build new lives and in making sure that victims' rights are protected.
"We all want to do the right thing, but I think it is important that the individual rights come first and [the victims] aren't pressured into cooperating with law enforcement," she says.
Renee Murrell, a victims advocate at the FBI field office in Baltimore, says that just a few years ago, most police departments dealt with these cases as child prostitution and simply put the victims into juvenile detention facilities.
"[A victim] was seen as a delinquent child," she says. "Because they're giving her drugs, so she may have a drug charge. She might get a shoplifting charge. All of that was masked as the issue when the trafficking was really the issue."
Of course, many law enforcement agencies still take that approach.
Hosko says that mindset is still the biggest ongoing obstacle for federal efforts to recast child prostitution cases.
"If a particular local law enforcement officer sees what they perceive as purely a prostitution issue, and they don't dig deeper or take it to the next level, or don't collaborate with someone who is interested in taking it to the next level, it is a revolving door," he says.
Model plant misled scientists about multicellular growth
PUBLIC RELEASE DATE:
22-Oct-2013
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Contact: c.j.bunting@leeds.ac.uk c.j.bunting@leeds.ac.uk 0044-113-343-2049 University of Leeds
Scientists have misunderstood one of the most fundamental processes in the life of plants because they have been looking at the wrong flower, according to University of Leeds researchers.
Arabidopsis thalianaalso known as thale cress or mouse-ear cressgrows abundantly in cracks in pavements all over Europe and Asia, but the small white flower leads a second life as the lab rat of the plant world.
It has become the dominant "model plant" in genetics research because of its simple genetics and ease of use in a research environment. Thousands of trays of the humble weed are cultivated in laboratories across the world, but it turns out they may actually contain a rather oddball plant.
A study by researchers at the University of Leeds found that Arabidopsis thaliana was exceptional in not having a "censorship" protein called SMG1.
SMG1 was known to play a vital role in the growth of animals as multicellular organisms, but scientists thought that plants built their complex life fundamentally differently. That conclusion, it turns out, was built on a dummy sold by Arabidopsis thaliana.
Professor Brendan Davies from the University of Leeds' School of Biology, who led the study, said: "Everybody thought that this protein was only in animals. They thought that because, basically, most of the world studies one plant: Arabidopsis thaliana."
Gene expressionthe process by which the information from a genome is converted into the differentiated cells that make up complex liferelies on processes that turn genes on, when their genetic messages are required, and off when they are not.
"Switching genes on and off is really what life is about. If you can't do that, you can't have life," said Professor Davies. "There are various ways this is done, but one way in more complex life such as animals and plants is through a sort of 'censorship' process. The system looks at the messages that come out of the nucleus and effectively makes a judgement on them. It says 'I am going to destroy that message now' and intervenes to destroy it before it takes effect."
Scientists know that this "censorship" processcalled Nonsense Mediated mRNA Decay (NMD)is used by both plants and animals, but thought the two types of organism did it in different ways.
Because Arabidopsis thaliana does not have SMG1, which plays a key role in triggering the censorship system in animals, scientists had concluded that SMG1 was not present in any plant.
However, the Leeds researchers discovered that the plant that has established itself as the standard reference plant for all of biology is in fact an anomaly.
"We have found that SMG1 is in every plant for which we have the genome apart from Arabidopsis and we have established that it is being used in NMD. Rather than being just in animals, we are suggesting that the last common ancestor of animals and plants had SMG1," Professor Davies said.
The study also found SMG1 in Arabidopsis lyrata, a close relative of Arabidopsis thaliana, which suggests that the missing protein has been lost relatively recently in evolutionary time, perhaps in the last 5-10 million years.
The next key question for researchers is to explain how organisms without SMG1, such has funghi and Arabiposis thaliana, work without the protein.
As for Arabidopsis thaliana, it may not have met its Waterloo just yet. "It is still a fantastically useful model. We would not be anywhere close to where we are in understanding plant biology without it, but this is a lesson to us all about the dangers of extrapolating from a single model, however successful that model has been, and the importance of studying processes in a range of models. Evolution does strange and unpredictable things," Professor Davies said.
The flower, which is a member of the mustard family, was first recorded by Johannes Thal in the Harz mountains of northern Germany in the 16th century, but its scientific career really took off at the very end of the 1970s and the early 1980s when molecular geneticists chose it as the ideal model.
Its simple genome, small size, ease of cultivation, and rapid life cycle have since made it an institution in plant genetics with books, web sites and academic conferences devoted to it. In 2008 alone, 3,500 papers on Arabidopsis thaliana were added to the PubMed database, which logs important publications in the life sciences.
The plant has a history of leaving scientists scratching their heads. In the 18th century, it was categorised as one of the Arabis genus but had to be renamed "Arabidopsis," meaning "resembling Arabis" after the original classification was found to be incorrect.
###
The paper, published in The Plant Journal, was co-authored by Professor Davies and University of Leeds PhD student James Lloyd. The research was funded by a grant from the Gatsby Charitable Foundation.
Further Information:
Professor Brendan Davies and James Lloyd are available for interview.
Contact: Chris Bunting, Senior Press Officer, University of Leeds; phone: +44 113 343 2049 or email c.j.bunting@leeds.ac.uk
The full paper: James P. B. Lloyd, Brendan Davies, 'SMG1 is an ancient nonsense-mediated mRNA decay effector' The Plant Journal (2013) is available to download (DOI 10.1111/tpj.12329; URL: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/tpj.12329/abstract)
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Model plant misled scientists about multicellular growth
PUBLIC RELEASE DATE:
22-Oct-2013
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Contact: c.j.bunting@leeds.ac.uk c.j.bunting@leeds.ac.uk 0044-113-343-2049 University of Leeds
Scientists have misunderstood one of the most fundamental processes in the life of plants because they have been looking at the wrong flower, according to University of Leeds researchers.
Arabidopsis thalianaalso known as thale cress or mouse-ear cressgrows abundantly in cracks in pavements all over Europe and Asia, but the small white flower leads a second life as the lab rat of the plant world.
It has become the dominant "model plant" in genetics research because of its simple genetics and ease of use in a research environment. Thousands of trays of the humble weed are cultivated in laboratories across the world, but it turns out they may actually contain a rather oddball plant.
A study by researchers at the University of Leeds found that Arabidopsis thaliana was exceptional in not having a "censorship" protein called SMG1.
SMG1 was known to play a vital role in the growth of animals as multicellular organisms, but scientists thought that plants built their complex life fundamentally differently. That conclusion, it turns out, was built on a dummy sold by Arabidopsis thaliana.
Professor Brendan Davies from the University of Leeds' School of Biology, who led the study, said: "Everybody thought that this protein was only in animals. They thought that because, basically, most of the world studies one plant: Arabidopsis thaliana."
Gene expressionthe process by which the information from a genome is converted into the differentiated cells that make up complex liferelies on processes that turn genes on, when their genetic messages are required, and off when they are not.
"Switching genes on and off is really what life is about. If you can't do that, you can't have life," said Professor Davies. "There are various ways this is done, but one way in more complex life such as animals and plants is through a sort of 'censorship' process. The system looks at the messages that come out of the nucleus and effectively makes a judgement on them. It says 'I am going to destroy that message now' and intervenes to destroy it before it takes effect."
Scientists know that this "censorship" processcalled Nonsense Mediated mRNA Decay (NMD)is used by both plants and animals, but thought the two types of organism did it in different ways.
Because Arabidopsis thaliana does not have SMG1, which plays a key role in triggering the censorship system in animals, scientists had concluded that SMG1 was not present in any plant.
However, the Leeds researchers discovered that the plant that has established itself as the standard reference plant for all of biology is in fact an anomaly.
"We have found that SMG1 is in every plant for which we have the genome apart from Arabidopsis and we have established that it is being used in NMD. Rather than being just in animals, we are suggesting that the last common ancestor of animals and plants had SMG1," Professor Davies said.
The study also found SMG1 in Arabidopsis lyrata, a close relative of Arabidopsis thaliana, which suggests that the missing protein has been lost relatively recently in evolutionary time, perhaps in the last 5-10 million years.
The next key question for researchers is to explain how organisms without SMG1, such has funghi and Arabiposis thaliana, work without the protein.
As for Arabidopsis thaliana, it may not have met its Waterloo just yet. "It is still a fantastically useful model. We would not be anywhere close to where we are in understanding plant biology without it, but this is a lesson to us all about the dangers of extrapolating from a single model, however successful that model has been, and the importance of studying processes in a range of models. Evolution does strange and unpredictable things," Professor Davies said.
The flower, which is a member of the mustard family, was first recorded by Johannes Thal in the Harz mountains of northern Germany in the 16th century, but its scientific career really took off at the very end of the 1970s and the early 1980s when molecular geneticists chose it as the ideal model.
Its simple genome, small size, ease of cultivation, and rapid life cycle have since made it an institution in plant genetics with books, web sites and academic conferences devoted to it. In 2008 alone, 3,500 papers on Arabidopsis thaliana were added to the PubMed database, which logs important publications in the life sciences.
The plant has a history of leaving scientists scratching their heads. In the 18th century, it was categorised as one of the Arabis genus but had to be renamed "Arabidopsis," meaning "resembling Arabis" after the original classification was found to be incorrect.
###
The paper, published in The Plant Journal, was co-authored by Professor Davies and University of Leeds PhD student James Lloyd. The research was funded by a grant from the Gatsby Charitable Foundation.
Further Information:
Professor Brendan Davies and James Lloyd are available for interview.
Contact: Chris Bunting, Senior Press Officer, University of Leeds; phone: +44 113 343 2049 or email c.j.bunting@leeds.ac.uk
The full paper: James P. B. Lloyd, Brendan Davies, 'SMG1 is an ancient nonsense-mediated mRNA decay effector' The Plant Journal (2013) is available to download (DOI 10.1111/tpj.12329; URL: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/tpj.12329/abstract)
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Share
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AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.
Katharine McPhee is "embarrassed" by the pictures of her kissing married Smash director Michael Morris. Plus, Kate Middleton and Prince William release the official portraits from Prince George's christening: See Us Weekly's top stories from Thursday, Oct. 24, in the daily roundup.
If only Smash had been this consistently riveting onscreen. Katharine McPhee is "embarrassed" by the photos of her kissing married director Michael Morris, a source tells Us of the star, who separated from husband Nick Cokas at least six months ago.
Picture perfect. One day after celebrating Prince George's christening at the Chapel Royal at St. James's Palace in London, Kate Middleton and Prince William have released four official portraits from the happy occasion. The images, taken by celeb photographer Jason Bell, were snapped immediately following the Oct. 23 baptism in the Morning Room at Clarence House.
Mary McCormack apparently didn't appreciate what she saw "in plain sight." Married to Smash director Michael Morris for ten years, the actress, 45, allegedly threw Morris out of their Los Angeles home late Sunday -- shortly before photos emerged of Morris making out with his former series star Katharine McPhee in a parking lot, Page Six reports.
Welcome to the big (sexy) time, Jamie Dornan! After weeks of speculation about a crowded field of hunky, if not-so-well known, contenders, the Irish actor and model, 31, has been cast as Christian Grey in the film adaptation of Fifty Shades of Grey following Charlie Hunnam's talked-about exit, Us Weekly can confirm.
Miley Cyrus set tongues wagging -- again -- with a racy new Twitter photo of her sitting on a countertop with a mystery man standing between her legs. See the pic
A patient believed to be one of the National Guardsmen injured near the naval base in Millington, Tenn., was taken to The Med in Memphis, Tenn., early Thursday afternoon, Oct. 24, 2013. Two ambulances arrived carrying two injured men shortly after the shooting ocurred. (AP Photo/The Commercial Appeal, Karen Pulfer Focht)
A patient believed to be one of the National Guardsmen injured near the naval base in Millington, Tenn., was taken to The Med in Memphis, Tenn., early Thursday afternoon, Oct. 24, 2013. Two ambulances arrived carrying two injured men shortly after the shooting ocurred. (AP Photo/The Commercial Appeal, Karen Pulfer Focht)
Police Chief Rita Stanback and Fire Chief Gary Graves, second from left, of Millington, Tenn., brief reporters about a shooting near a U.S. Naval Support Activity Mid-South on Thursday, Oct. 24, 2013, in Millington, Tenn. The Navy said two soldiers were wounded, though neither had life-threatening injuries. (AP Photo/Adrian Sainz)
Locates site of U.S. Navy base shooting; 2c x 3 inches; 96.3 mm x 76 mm;
MILLINGTON, Tenn. (AP) — A member of the National Guard opened fire at an armory outside a U.S. Navy base in Tennessee, wounding two soldiers before being subdued and disarmed by other soldiers, officials said Thursday.
Millington Police Chief Rita Stanback said the shooter was apprehended Thursday by other National Guard members, and that he did not have the small handgun used in the shooting in his possession by the time officers arrived. Stanback said two National Guard members were shot, one in the foot and one in the leg.
"I'm sure there could have been more injury if they hadn't taken him into custody," Stanback said.
Maj. Gen. Max Haston, Tennessee's adjutant general, said at a news conference that the victims were being treated at a local hospital and he expected them to be released.
The Tennessee National Guard late Thursday identified those shot as Maj. William J. Crawford and Sgt. Maj. Ricky R. McKenzie. The shooter's name has not been released.
In a news release, Guard spokesman Randy Harris said the two were shot while disarming the gunman.
Haston said all three of the men were recruiters. He said the shooter was a sergeant first class who had been in the Guard about six or seven years and that the victims were his superiors. He said the recruiters who were shot were based in Jackson, Tenn.
Haston characterized Thursday's activity as disheartening.
"You never think something like this is going to happen on your watch or in good old Tennessee here," he said.
Stanback said at an earlier news conference that the soldiers' conditions were not immediately known, though the Navy said on its official Twitter account that neither had life-threatening injuries.
The shooter was a recruiter who had been relieved of duty, said a law enforcement official briefed on the developments. The official was not authorized to discuss the investigation publicly and spoke on condition of anonymity.
Asked about this at the news conference, Haston would only say that there were "administrative policies and procedures that we were going through with him." He did not elaborate.
Stanback said the shooting happened inside an armory building just outside Naval Support Activity Mid-South. There are more than 7,500 military, civilian and contract personnel working on the base, according to the facility's official website. The facility is home to human resources operations and serves as headquarters to the Navy Personnel Command, Navy Recruiting Command, the Navy Manpower Analysis Center and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Finance Center.
The Navy said the base was briefly placed on lockdown as a precaution, though the lockdown was lifted in the afternoon.
On Thursday afternoon, yellow crime scene tape remained around the front of the building where the shooting happened. Law enforcement had blocked off streets with access to the armory, which is across the street from the army base.
Get Dear Prudence delivered to your inbox each week; click here to sign up. Please send your questions for publication to prudence@slate.com. (Questions may be edited.)
Got a burning question for Prudie? She'll be online at Washingtonpost.com to chat with readers each Monday at noon. Submit your questions and comments here before or during the live discussion.
Dear Prudie, I have been seeing a really sweet guy for three months. He is intelligent, fun, considerate, and generous. My issue is that he is a virgin and doesn't seem very interested in changing that. We are both in our early 30s. I am recently divorced—my husband was a compulsive cheat—and have a 2-year-old son. I have discussed sex with “James” and he said that he originally wanted to wait until marriage for religious reasons, but now doesn't feel that is necessary, he just wants it to be with the right person. We were making out the other night and I whispered to him how much I wanted him. He said he wanted me, too, but he sounded awkward and unconvincing. He always tells me that we can't do anything because he doesn't have condoms, but he hasn't made any attempts to purchase some. I can tell he is aroused when we kiss, but I’m worried that he just isn't very interested in sex. That would be tough for me to handle long term. Is it wrong that I expect our relationship to be further along after three months? My friends say I need a man with more heat and passion but I am hesitant to pass up an otherwise great guy.
—Thirty-Year-Old Virgin
Dear Virgin, “I don’t have a condom” is “The dog ate my homework” of the lifetime virgin. You say you’re worried he’s not interested in sex. Since he’s never had it, despite your giving him the opportunity, you may be onto something. Of course, it’s possible he is interested in sex but, having gotten to this point in life without knowing what to do, he may be terrified about disappointing a sophisticated woman like you. It could be that he has some kind of sexual hang-up, or feels self-conscious about his body for some reason. But here he is, with a knowledgeable partner eager to get him over the hump, and he keeps balking. You have just been deeply hurt by the man you thought you would spend your life with, and I understand there is not an abundance of lovely, eligible men. But having a partner you’re certain will never cheat on you because he’s apparently incapable of doing the deed is not the answer. You also must know that even if you do get him in bed, it’s likely to be a frustrating experience. See the hilarious consummation scene at the end of The 40-Year-Old Virgin. I believe in the value of going slow, but three months is long enough to see if a relationship is worth investing more time; one way to find out is to explore your sexual compatibility. If you’re willing to lead the guy by the hand, then have a discussion with him explaining you think it’s time, and you will purchase the condoms. If you two still can’t get into bed, that’s evidence enough your relationship won’t survive outside it.
Dear Prudence: Failure to Communicate
Dear Prudence, My wife and I have been married for 18 months and have a baby girl. We have a strong marriage. When we were engaged, I noticed that my future wife was spending lots of money on fancy name brand items. She does not come from a wealthy family and it was concerning to me. About two weeks before our wedding I went shopping with her and her sister and they confessed and told me that they wear most of the items once and return them. I was a bit floored as I come from a very honest hard-working family, and we would never stoop so low. What she does makes me sick, and I have confronted her many times about this, but I can't get through. My respect for her and her family has taken a hit. I don’t want our children thinking this is acceptable behavior. I want them to know that through hard work they can obtain the items they want, but also that it isn't necessary to show off your brand names. This has become the underlying issue in most of our arguments.
Dear Keep It, Your wife has unlocked the secret of how to be a woman who never wears the same thing twice—and never pays for it, either. What your wife does is bad for retailers’ bottom line, but it’s better for yours that she’s a compulsive returner and not just a compulsive shopper. I share your distaste for this practice. This recent Wall Street Journalarticle shows that while Nordstrom’s will take back just about anything, the return is then subtracted from the commission of the original sales person. And this follows up on another Journal story on how sporting goods retailer REI had to limit its return policy from forever to one year, because too many customers were returning worn items bought decades ago. I agree your wife is being somewhat dishonest—although let’s give her credit for wearing the stuff only once—and that she should build a real instead of virtual wardrobe, one she can afford. But you’re not going to win this argument. I bet the whole process of selecting items beyond her budget, showing up dressed to kill, then getting her money back gives her a kind of high. You’ve said your piece about her rag trade, and this simply is not worth collapsing your marriage over. Since the retailers won’t even back you up, you need to back off. Let’s just hope stores start balking when your wife tries to return spittle-covered onesies your daughter has outgrown.
FILE - In this Oct. 18, 2013, file photo, Aledo High School player Ryan Newsom (17), runs between Western Hills' Shane Little, left, and Jacoby Powell during the first quarter of a high school football game in Aledo, Texas. Buchanan said district administrators notified him that the bullying complaint filed from a parent of the losing team after Fort Worth Western Hills' 91-0 loss has been cleared Wednesday, Oct. 23. (AP Photo/The Fort Worth Star-Telegram, Bob Haynes, File)
FILE - In this Oct. 18, 2013, file photo, Aledo High School player Ryan Newsom (17), runs between Western Hills' Shane Little, left, and Jacoby Powell during the first quarter of a high school football game in Aledo, Texas. Buchanan said district administrators notified him that the bullying complaint filed from a parent of the losing team after Fort Worth Western Hills' 91-0 loss has been cleared Wednesday, Oct. 23. (AP Photo/The Fort Worth Star-Telegram, Bob Haynes, File)
File - In this Aug. 31, 2013, file photo, Aledo High School football coach Tim Buchanan watches from the sideline during the second half of a game against Highland Park, in Allen, Texas. Buchanan said district administrators notified him that the bullying complaint filed from a parent of the losing team after Fort Worth Western Hills' 91-0 loss has been cleared Wednesday, Oct. 23. (AP Photo/The Fort Worth Star-Telegram, Bob Booth, File)
AUSTIN, Texas (AP) — No one likes a bully. So when a recent Texas high school football game ended in a score of 91-0, one angry parent filed a complaint alleging the contest had crossed the line from tough loss to unlawful torment.
In a state where football is king, school investigators found no bullying. But the blowout has spurred deep discussion among coaches, parents and politicians over sportsmanship and whether it's time to enact a "mercy rule" in Texas to put a stop to games when the score gets out of hand.
High school football is a merciless business in Texas, where state championships are played in the Dallas Cowboys' 80,000-seat stadium and the state spends $1.5 million steroid-testing high school athletes. Texas high schools play mostly by college rules, while most other states employ national prep guidelines. Like many other states, it has no mercy rule for 11-man football.
The conversation has changed following Aledo High School's crushing victory last week over Fort Worth Western Hills — the game that led to the unusual bullying complaint against Aledo's coaches.
"Losing is an important lesson that needs to be learned by all kids. But the lesson ceases to be much of a lesson where someone is likely to get hurt because of the substantial mismatch," said state Land Commissioner Jerry Patterson, a Texas-tough politician who wears two guns to his office and says America would be better off without states like California and New York.
In California, one youth football league for kids 7 to 13 years old suspends coaches when a team wins by 35 or more points On the high school level, California doesn't "mercy-rule" blowouts with abrupt endings but does keep the clock running to hasten the game.
Texas employs similar running-clock measures in blowouts — something that was done during the Aledo game at the suggestion of the winning coach, Tim Buchanan. He also benched his starters late in the game. But even he said the fallout has left him in favor of mercy rules.
Buchanan said his team takes no pleasure in piling on easy touchdowns and humiliating the other side.
Still, he acknowledged a mercy rule isn't an easy sell in Texas: "If they voted on it, I'm not sure how many coaches in our membership would be in favor of it."
The state's infatuation with high school football was celebrated on the TV series "Friday Night Lights," including an episode in which the coach of the pitiful East Dillon Lions forfeited a game at halftime because they were being beaten so badly. The Lions' prideful players fumed.
In real life, the person most offended by Aledo's 13-touchdown victory was a Western Hills father. In a complaint with the Aledo school district, the parent, whose name has been withheld by the district, cited "everyone in the football stadium" as witnesses to the bullying.
"Picking up my son from the fieldhouse after the game and taking him home was tough," the complaint read. "I did not know what to say to my son on the ride home to explain the behavior of the Aledo coaches for not easing up when the game was in hand."
Under state law, school districts must investigate all bullying complaints. Buchanan said he was told the district found no grounds to support the allegations.
Three years ago, New Mexico imposed a mercy rule that ends 11-man games when one team is up by more than 50 points at halftime or later.
"When a team is up by 70 points, is it really good for a team to be out there?" said Dusty Young, associate director for the New Mexico Activities Association, which oversees high school sports. "We wanted to hopefully avoid some unsportsmanlike situations where a team might be becoming frustrated. Really, just trying to protect the kids."
Dan Gould, director of the Institute for the Study of Youth Sports at Michigan State University, said he is unaware of any research on the effects of one-sided games and humiliating losses on young athletes, "but if you were getting beat 90-0 repeatedly, I can't see it building your self-esteem." He said the biggest risk is the potential for injury.
Proposals for mercy rules in 11-man football in Texas have been submitted in the past but not in recent years, said Kate Hector, spokeswoman for the state's University Interscholastic League. Texas does have mercy rules for six-man football, which is popular in small towns that can't field a full team.
Dallas Cowboys wide receiver Cole Beasley, who played high school and college football in Texas, said the state doesn't need mercy rules. "Just go to work, get better and don't get beat that bad," he said. "It may sound harsh, but it's football, man. It's a competitive game."
Buchanan's Aledo Bearcats are undefeated through seven games and are a state championship contender, but with 45 seniors on the roster, next year might not be so easy for the suburban Fort Worth powerhouse.
"Odds are," Buchanan said, "it may be us getting mercy-ruled next year."
___
Follow Paul J. Weber on Twitter: www.twitter.com/pauljweber
German Chancellor Angela Merkel, right, arrives for an EU summit on Thursday, Oct. 24, 2013. A two-day summit meeting of EU leaders is likely to be diverted from its official agenda, economic recovery and migration, after German Chancellor Angela Merkel complained to U.S. President Barack Obama that U.S. intelligence may have monitored her mobile phone. (AP Photo/Geert Vanden Wijngaert)
BRUSSELS (AP) — German Chancellor Angela Merkel said Thursday the 17-nation eurozone must achieve a stronger coordination of its economic policies to remain competitive and spur growth.
Merkel's comments at the outset of a summit of European leaders in Brussels came as her government seeks to convince its partners to hand the EU Commission, the bloc's executive arm, more powers to oversee member states' economic policies.
The EU's 28 national leaders were also set to discuss the timeline for the next steps in creating the planned banking union, a set of new authorities and rules that aims at stabilizing the financial system.
They still disagree over how to set up and fund a European authority capable of bailing out or winding down bust banks, the so-called single resolution mechanism. The leaders weren't expected to reach an agreement on the issue Thursday, only to reaffirm their commitment to find a solution over the next two months, diplomats said ahead of the meeting.
EU nations have already agreed to set up a joint banking supervisor anchored at the European Central Bank. Before formally taking over that task, the ECB will review the assets of the bloc's biggest banks through 2014 to identify possible weak spots, such as insufficient capital. The ECB insists the resolution authority should be in place by the end of the review to prop up or shut down banks if necessary.
If that can't be achieved, every government, even those with weakened finances, will have to fend for themselves.
"Countries need to take all possible measures regarding the preparation of their national systems, so if serious issues surface from the bank reviews, that they can also be dealt with," said Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte on the way into the meeting.
Merkel said the bloc cannot limit itself to integrating its financial system, but also needs a more coherent economic policy to increase competitiveness and innovation.
"I'm convinced that we have to collaborate yet more," Merkel said.
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