Malaysian govt denies cover-up in Kelantan prince scandal

By Channel NewsAsia's Malaysia Bureau Chief Melissa Goh

Posted: 03 June 2009 0029 hrs

Manohara Odelia Pino, 17, is kissed by her mother as she arrives at her residence in Jakarta

KUALA LUMPUR : The Malaysian government has denied any cover-up in the alleged abuse of the teenage Indonesian model wife by her Malaysian prince husband.

The Minister in the Prime Minister's department Nazri Aziz will investigate if a formal report is lodged, as he said no one is above the law.

Meanwhile, the Kelantan royal family has denied all allegations of wrongdoing by Tengku Mohd Fakhry, also known as Tunku Temengganong.

17-year-old Manohara Odelia Pinot made the front page of Malaysian papers after news of her dramatic escape shocked the nation.

The teary teenage model claimed that she was sexually abused and tortured by her husband Tengku Mohd Fakhry, who treated her, she said, like a toy.

Last August, the then 16-year-old Manohara, whose father is French, married the 31-year-old prince.

Now back in Jakarta, she said she has had enough, and is filing for a divorce.

Manohara's mother Daisy Fajarina has also vowed to press charges against the prince pending a full medical report.

Speaking in Kuala Lumpur, government officials say they are in the dark as there has been no formal report lodged so far.

"He just happens to be the son of the Sultan... no one is above the law. This report is criminal act against the state and we will take action," said Minister Nazri, a Minister in the Prime Minister's department.

The Kelantan royal family, has also dismissed the allegations as slanderous and defended its youngest prince.

"Prove it. Manohara must be prepared to go to an independent doctor in Australia or France, only then it's fair," argued Mohd Sabri Shafiee, a spokesman for Tengku Fakhry.

Mohd Sabri, who is a close friend of Tengku TT - as the prince is commonly known - also expressed hopes that Manohara will apologise to clear the air.

He said: "Impossible as a human being that he can be cruel when we all know that he loves her so much. Tengku will not run away; we'll make sure the truth comes out.

He later produced footage of the couple's happy moments together. "To repair the damage, Manohara needs to tell the truth, seek the husband's forgiveness and Tengku TT will take her back," said Mohd Sabri.

He blamed Manohara's mother, whom he described as materialistic, for messing up the daughter's marriage which otherwise could have worked.

"She wants everything - house, cars, you name it. I don't want to go into details," said Mohd Sabri.

In a statement issued, the Kelantan royal family urged the media to respect their privacy and not to play up on the scandal that is fast becoming a major embarrassment to the royal family. - CNA /ls

From ChannelNewsAsia.com; see the source article here.

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Couple leap to their deaths carrying dead son

Image by Manav Gupta via Flickr

This is a very sad story…

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LONDON — A grieving couple appear to have plunged to their deaths from a cliff on the south coast of England, clutching a rucksack containing the body of their five-year-old boy after he died of meningitis.

Mr Neil Puttick and his wife Kazumi drove to the Beachy Head beauty spot in East Sussex, south of London, a day or two after their son, Samuel, died at home in Wiltshire in the west of England.

They are thought to have leapt together with two rucksacks, one holding the body of their son and the other filled with some of the child's favourite cuddly toys and a model tractor.

Samuel, who was left paralysed by a car accident four years ago, was taken ill on Tuesday last week.

On Friday he was sent home from hospital in Bristol, western England, when it became clear that he was not going to live.

The child was certified dead by a doctor at his home on Friday evening. It seems that, at the weekend, his parents drove 225km to Beachy Head.

Their bodies were spotted at the foot of the cliffs on Sunday evening and, because of the terrain, were only recovered the following day. The Guardian

From TODAY, World – Wednesday, 03-Jun-2009

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Film star sex video scandal grips Philippines

And some things that aren't supposed to be discussed with young people at home, suddenly gets a prime time slot on national airtime… Kids will ask questions after questions… it is hard being a parent. And what more if you are the parent of the man, or the woman, in this scandal? The father of the guy I knew had a heart attack, who was the first doctor in the family himself…

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Posted: 01 June 2009 2218 hrs

Philippines film actress Katrina Halili

MANILA - Steamy sex videos of a cosmetic surgeon and his celebrity patients indulging in more than the standard nip and tuck have gripped the devoutly Roman Catholic Philippines.

Home movies showing Hayden Kho going beyond the usual doctor-patient boundaries with a rising film star and commercial model are spreading around the Internet, as hawkers on Manila's street corners sell DVDs of their trysts.

The videos and the manner in which they came into the public domain have fascinated and repulsed this deeply religious country.

One of the unwitting stars of the films is up-and-coming actress Katrina Halili, 23, who has now filed a criminal complaint.

Halili is the only woman who has identified herself as one of four appearing separately with Kho in the videos.

"I fully gave my heart and soul to a man who was doing his own movie," she said.

"In our culture, this will stigmatise me for life."

She now has what many young actresses aspire to -- instant name recognition -- but for all the wrong reasons.

In a country that Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Stanley Karnow once described as "300 years in a Catholic convent and 50 years in Hollywood" this fame is working against her.

This week workers began pulling down from Manila's main avenue a large billboard of Halili endorsing a popular local brand of lingerie.

The young actress later confirmed she had lost an endorsement contract and that film and modelling offers had also dried up since the tapes went public.

Kho, 29, has issued a public apology and suspended his medical practice as calls increase for him to have his licence revoked -- all the while insisting he was not the one who made the recordings public.

Now suspicion has shifted to the cuckolded boyfriends or girlfriends -- or their associates -- of some of the personalities in the videos.

Fifty-something Vicki Belo, another cosmetic surgeon to Filipino movie stars and one-time lover of Kho, said she learnt of her estranged boyfriend's activities with other women from video files stored on her clinic's computer.

But despite saying in a sworn statement that she was aware Kho had made a similar recording of their own lovemaking, Belo has denied spreading the videotapes of Kho having sex with the younger women.

Recording the videos and making them public without the women's consent "is a form of violence," said Sylvia Claudio of the University of the Philippines Centre for Women's Studies.

"We're seeing that even with this new technology, it still tends to go along the lines of old problems. Women's status is low in society, so we see this new technology where a lot of women are being hurt," she said in a television forum on the controversy.

Halili is now appealing for the public to stop watching the recordings, saying: "You also have daughters, sisters, girlfriends, wives."

But so far, her appeal has fallen on deaf ears. A middle-aged street vendor who would identify himself only by his first name, Jose, openly hawked a "Katrina-Hayden Scandal" video disc outside Manila's largest shopping mall, alongside his usual fare of pirated copies of Hollywood films.

"It's all over the Internet now, so sales are not that brisk as last week. But people still come here to buy them," Jose said.

A blue-collar worker who called himself "Joe" said he bought a copy because he had no Internet access.

"Every red-blooded Filipino male dreams of being in bed with Katrina Halili," he said. - AFP/vm

From ChannelNewsAsia.com; see the source article here.

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Police arrest 16 men over child-rape video download

So much for your being a voyeur, even a crime at that! Having no shame already?

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AUSTRALIA

Australian police arrested 16 men yesterday for downloading a video showing the rape of a girl believed to be an eight-year-old from Russia.

The arrests followed after German police identified more than 9,000 suspects worldwide believed to have viewed the video.

The rapist and victim are still unknown but the video's backdrop indicates Russia. AFP

From TODAYOnline.com; see the source article here.

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Constant TV is bad for babies: study

Time is GMT + 8 hours

Posted: 2-Jun-2009 06:47 hrs

Having the television on constantly in a household with infants and toddlers is bad for brain and language development because it reduces the number of words the kids hear and say, a study showed Monday.

"Audible television clearly reduces speech for both infants and their caregivers within the home and this is potentially harmful for babies' development," said University of Washington professor of pediatrics Dimitri Christakis, who led the study.

The study found that for every hour that the television is on with the volume turned up in a household with small children, the children heard between 500-1,000 fewer words from adults.

"Adults typically utter approximately 941 words per hour. Our study found that adult words are almost completely eliminated when television is audible to the child," said Christakis.

"These results may explain the association between infant television exposure and delayed language development," Christakis said.

Constant exposure to television could also explain attentional and cognitive delays in children, he said, since language development is believed to be key in brain development in early childhood.

For the study, 329 children ranging in age from two months to four years wore special vests with a chest pocket that held a small digital recorder.

The children wore the vests on random days for up to two years. The recorder captured everything the child said and heard during continuous 12 to 16 hour periods, and was only removed when the child napped or slept, was bathed or went for a ride in the car.

When the researchers counted the number of words uttered by adults and vocalizations by children, as well as vocal interactions between grown-ups and kids, they found that having the telly on resulted in significant reductions in all speech, regardless of whether it was being actively watched or just on in the background.

"Since 30 percent of American household report having the television always on, even when no one is watching, these findings have grave implications for language acquisition and perhaps even early brain development," Christakis said, counseling grown-ups against using the telly as a babysitter.

"Television is not only a poor caregiver substitute, but it actually reduces the number of language sounds and words babies hear, vocalize and therefore learn," he said.

"We are increasingly technologizing infancy, which may prove harmful to the next generation of adults."

The study was published in the June issue of the Archives of Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine. — AFP

From TODAYOnline.com; see the source article here.

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Teen model escapes 'abusive' Malaysian prince

This is the version from Yahoo! News…

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AFP - Tuesday, June 2

JAKARTA (AFP) - - A teenage US-Indonesian model has returned to her family in Indonesia with tales of abuse, rape and torture at the hands of a Malaysian prince, after her dramatic escape with the help of Singapore police.

Manohara Odelia Pinot, 17, told reporters she was treated like a sex slave after her marriage last year to Tengku Temenggong Mohammad Fakhry, the prince of Malaysia's Kelantan state.

Her mother, Daisy Fajarina, said she would press charges against the 31-year-old prince, and blamed the Malaysian and Indonesian governments for trying to cover up the alleged abuse.

"The things I've been afraid of were revealed to be true. Manohara has suffered physical abuse. She's got several razor cuts on her chest," Fajarina told AFP on Monday.

"No parent could be silent if their child was treated in such a barbaric way."

The Malaysian government had ignored her pleas for access to her daughter and had blocked her from entering the country, she said, while the Indonesian embassy had said that Manohara was fine with her new husband.

But the young woman -- a well-known socialite in Jakarta -- said her life at the royal palace involved a "daily routine" of rape, abuse, torture and occasional drug injections that made her vomit blood.

She said she was usually held under guard in her bedroom at the palace and was injected with tranquilisers whenever she complained.

"I am still traumatised by all that happened and it has left an impact on me," she told reporters in Jakarta on Sunday, after escaping the royal family during a trip to Singapore over the weekend.

"Sexual abuse and sexual harassment were like a daily routine for me, and he did that every time I did not want to have sexual intercourse," she was quoted as saying in The Jakarta Globe.

"I could never think a normal man could do such things," she said, adding: "Some parts of my body were cut by a razor."

"I've been treated like an animal. I'm like his property and I was in his room and whenever he wants to play with me he just goes into the room and plays with me. I'm like an object."

The teenager -- whose fairy-tale wedding to a prince captured the imagination of Indonesia -- said she would be tortured if she did not appear to be happy when she attended social functions with Fakhry.

She said she secretly called Singaporean police and pleaded for help after the royal family took her to Singapore when they accompanied Fakhry's father, Sultan Ismail Petra Shah II, for medical treatment.

"The police told Fakhry that he would be held in jail if he did not let me go. No one could force me against my will in Singapore and I knew I had a chance to escape," she said.

The model once voted as being among Indonesia's "100 Precious Women" said she escaped her guards by pushing the Singapore hotel elevator's emergency button.

They were reluctant to chase her because they knew the scene would be captured on security cameras.

She blasted the Indonesian embassy in Malaysia, saying: "They made it worse by telling lies, saying that I was fine while I was suffering in Kelantan."

A spokesman for the Indonesian foreign ministry insisted the embassy had done everything it could to help Manohara and said the government would assist her if she wanted to file charges against her husband.

But Malaysian Deputy Prime Minister Muhyiddin Yassin said the government would not investigate the allegations.

"I think this is more of a personal matter. To date we have not been dragged into it, so we want to leave it as it is," he told reporters in Kuala Lumpur.

Malaysia's royal rulers used to enjoy immunity from criminal and civil charges but the privilege was removed in 1993.

There has been no comment from the Kelantan royal family.

Manohara's lawyer, Yuri Darmas, said she would have a medical examination to back up her allegations of abuse.

"We need one to two days to gather evidence before we file a lawsuit to the Malaysian police," he said, adding that he intended to pursue criminal and civil lawsuits against the prince.

Manohara has already filed for divorce, her mother said.

From Yahoo! News; see the source article here.

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Model flees, claiming sex abuse by prince

Some things never change; a prince at this age and time, still thinks like a prince in the many, many decades past – that he is in full control of his subjects, let alone his wife…

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JAKARTA — Indonesian model Manohara Odelia Pinot, whose family claimed she was abused by her Kelantan prince husband, fled for Indonesia yesterday from Singapore, where the royal family was accompanying the Kelantan sultan for medical treatment.

Indonesian media reports said that the Indonesian-American met her mother in Singapore and flew back to Indonesia yesterday morning.

She told reporters she was no longer in love with the Kelantan prince, Tengku Temenggong Mohammad Fakhry, whom she accused of sexual abuse and violence.

"I am afraid of the daily sex abuse and violence," the Banjarmasin Post quoted the 17-year-old as saying.

Ms Manohara married the Kelantan prince last year.

Her mother, Mdm Daisy Fajarina, earlier alleged that Ms Manohara suffered "emotional and physical abuse" at the hands of her husband, who was holding her against her will in Malaysia.

THE MALAYSIAN INSIDER

From TODAYOnline.com –World News, Monday, 01-Jun-2009; see the source article here.

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