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Gabriel Roche killed a 17 year old classmate after selling him methamphetamine.  Roche believed the 17 year old, Weston North, was a police informant.   “You don’t show your demons if you’re not going to let them out,” Roche allegedly told deputies in December 2011.  “He begged and begged,” Roche said of his alleged victim. “Just like a coward.”

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“Satan gets into people and makes them do things they don’t want to.” - Herbert Mullin, an American serial killer who killed 13 people in California in the 1970s. He was convinced that through human sacrifice, he was saving California from a cataclysmic earthquake.

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Meeting the Needs of Older LGBTQ People

The 519 has a long history of working to build inclusive care environments for older LGBTQ people, including delivering training to care providers. Given the aging population in Canada, we want to continue to build upon those efforts.

The current generation of older LGBTQ people have experienced a lifetime of discrimination due to their sexual orientation, gender identity and gender expression and they face very specific challenges as they age:

- They are less likely to seek health care when they need it;

- They often do not disclose their sexual orientation and/or gender identity and expression to their care providers for fear of discrimination;

- They report more feelings of isolation from their communities;

- They are at a higher risk for negative health outcomes later in life, including depression, suicide, substance abuse, smoking, etc.  

(Brotman & Ryan, 2008)

The 519 Education and Training Team offer workshops and resources that support safe, welcoming and inclusive care environments for LGBTQ older people. The training supports organizations and individuals to understand the needs of older LGBTQ people. Workshops will help participants to:

- Identify and discuss reasons an older LGBTQ person may be distrustful of the health or social care systems and/or reluctant to seek the care they need;

- Demonstrate and share an empathetic understanding of the barriers faced by older LGBTQ people;

- Make appropriate use of pronouns;

- Propose ways to foster a safe and LGBTQ-inclusive care environment for older people, their friends and chosen families.

For more information about training and resources, please contact:

Steven Little

Manager, Education and Training

416-355-6772

slittle@the519.org

#respectyourelders #nobystanders

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The Disappearance of Kayla Berg

The night of August 11th, 2009, Kayla Berg (15) went to a McDonald’s in Antigo, Wisconsin, to visit a friend of hers that was working there. She stayed there briefly before saying she was going to “ride in the car for a while”. The car wasn’t hers; her ride was Kevin Kielcheski, a 24 year old who was a friend of her brother’s.

According to Kevin’s testimony, the two drove around for a while and smoked pot, and then he dropped her off at her boyfriend’s house in Wasau, a 40 minute drive from Antigo. He said the time was between 9:00 and 11:00 pm, couldn’t be sure, and that the lights were off in the house. He didn’t saw her get inside and just left.

However, there was no boyfriend in that house. The place had actually been condemned a few weeks earlier so it was impossible anyone would be living there. It’s uncertain if Kayla would have known that, but she likely did. The boyfriend, who was 19 years old at the time, said he never saw her that day nor planned to meet her.

Kayla hasn’t been seen or heard of since that night.

To make things worse, she wasn’t reported missing until six days later. Her parents were separated, so apparently they each thought their daughter was at the other’s house. Her brother, on the other hand, thought she was with a friend. (I’m trying very hard not to judge here, but how do you let six days pass without talking to your 15 year old daughter?)

The descriptions of what Kayla was wearing the night she disappeared had been contradictory, and police said her friends were very uncooperative so they at first believed she was a runaway and they were helping to hide her. Kielcheski was charged in October 2009 with endangering Kayla but the charges were later dropped. He lawyered up, however, and refused to talk to police again about the case.

In October 2016, this case got new attention after this video was discovered on Youtube. It had been posted two months after Kayla went missing. The less than a minute recording is of a young man who identifies himself as “Patrick” and wants to introduce his new girlfriend to a “Walter”. He then shows a girl chained in a bathroom, screaming in fear. Some people, including some of Kayla’s friends, believed the girl resembled her. Police investigated it, and reported the video was fake, an acting skit that had no connection to Kayla whatsoever. (The video is sort of creepy, but it looks pretty fake to me).

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I hope everyone & their loved ones are safe, this is tragic.

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David Smith, despite being merely seventeen years old when he did so, singlehandedly put a stop to the Moors Murders. He is pictured above with his then-wife, Maureen Hindley. 

 His friend (if you could call him such a thing), Ian Brady, viciously and remorselessly killed teenager Edward Evans in front of Smith; hoping it would impress him enough to join him and his girlfriend Myra Hindley in their devilish ways, resulting in the creation of a sort of depraved murder cult. 

Instead, David went to the police the following morning and revealed all that he had witnessed. This lead to the arrests and eventual convictions and imprisonments of both Brady and Hindley, and yet David was shunned and attacked for many decades afterwards. People, including the mother of murdered Keith Bennett, believed David was more involved in the Moors Murders than he was letting on, and that he only informed police of what he had seen in order to save his own neck. 

David died in May 2012, at the age of 64.

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An ectopic pregnancy occurs when a fertilised egg implants itself outside of the womb, most commonly in one of the fallopian tubes. It isn’t possible to save the pregnancy and it has to be aborted.

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Most motorcycle clubs don’t allow women to join, so what did Jen Baquial from New York do? She created her own motorcycle club for women called The Sirens Women’s Motorcycle Club of New York City. If that alone isn’t badass, the fact that this nonprofit organisation collects and pasteurises breast milk to deliver to newborn babies and mothers in New York hospitals, certainly is. In addition to this kind gesture, they also raise money for the New York Milk Bank.