for a joint investigation by the AP and USA TODAY Network that found accidental shootings involving young children often go unpunished, even when adults recklessly store loaded guns within easy reach. http://apne.ws/2rAJ9JO http://apne.ws/2qWZiGV http://apne.ws/2qX4ydz http://apne.ws/2qhlBpw
In a classic case of keeping an open mind during reporting, APâs Jim Mustian and Kim Chandler started out reporting one story, but found themselves reporting exclusively that an Alabama state trooper, arrested on charges he raped an 11-year-old girl, had used a forged letter and lied on his application to get hired after being removed from the FBI — also on serious allegations of sexual misconduct.
To federal law enforcement reporter Mustian, this initially appeared as yet another case of the FBI allowing an accused agent to quietly move on with his career. But just as he was about to publish, the FBI said the bureau letter Christopher Bauer submitted to Alabama authorities when he was hired was ânot legitimate.â Meanwhile, Chandler, Montgomery statehouse reporter, tracked down Bauerâs application for the trooper job, in which he said he was still employed by the FBI and had never been forced to resign because of disciplinary action.
This had become the story of a former agent, and perhaps others, falsifying his record. The piece was among the weekâs top stories on AP News, with nearly 200,000 pageviews.
For deep reporting that followed the story wherever it took them, Mustian and Chandler earn this weekâs Best of the States award.
Christopher Sherman, newsperson, Mexico City; Arnulfo Franco, photographer, Panama City, and Gerardo Carrillo, videojournalist, Mexico City, for detailing abuses by Nicaraguan security forces against protesters, including a young woman arrested without charges and beaten until she lost her pregnancy. https://bit.ly/2Mjws1s
You know your scoop has touched a nerve when it gets tweeted by both Ann Coulter and Chelsea Clinton.
Such was the case with Colleen Longâs multiplatform APNewsBreak that the U.S. approved thousands of requests by men to have their child or adolescent brides admitted to the United States. The story not only pointed to problems in immigration law, but also lax state laws that make immigration by child brides possible.
The story started with a tip from Ron Nixon, APâs new international investigations editor, who had been told by a source that data requested by the Senate Homeland Security Committee would be startling.
Nixon passed the information to Long, the Washington-based homeland security reporter, who persuaded committee staff to give her the story exclusively. She also went beyond the striking data to give readers a sense of how the issue affects womenâs lives, speaking with women who had been married as children. A compelling video accompanied the piece.
On a busy news day, the story was one of APâs most widely used, fronting many news websites and posted to Facebook by multiple news organizations. The video piece also had a strong showing, receiving thousands of YouTube streams and 27 customer downloads.
For revealing a little-known loophole in immigration policy that raises concerns over security and exploitation, and for connecting the data to women victimized by the policy, Colleen Long wins this weekâs Best of the AP.
Photographer Maye-E Wong wanted to find a new way to tell the stories of those who suffered from clergy abuse, emphasizing that they were survivors, not victims.
Her plan: She would photograph them with a Polaroid camera, then soak the prints and release the thin fragile membranes that held the images. The images were imperfect â wrinkled and distressed â but they endure, a metaphor for the survivors they portrayed.
Wong and reporter Juliet Linderman traveled the country to interview and photograph survivors, spending days with them and listening to their stories. The result was a stunning presentation that set AP viewership records and earned praise from both the subjects and the public.
For an arresting package of inspired photography and sensitive, insightful reporting, Wong and Linderman receive this weekâs Best of the States award.
obtained exclusively the results of the opera unionâs investigation of sexual harassment accusations against superstar Placido Domingo, revealing that 27 people told investigators that they either had been harassed or had witnessed inappropriate behavior by Domingo. AP was also the first to report Domingoâs apology. Geckerâs story moved about nine hours before the union released an extremely brief description of its findings, offering few details. As a result of her reporting, a new accuser came forward to speak to the AP on the record, and a cascade of performance cancellations began among music companies in Domingoâs native Spain, where he previously had been staunchly defended. https://bit.ly/2Io9lOEhttps://bit.ly/2Io9amIhttps://bit.ly/2Q4TER1https://apnews.com/PlacidoDomingo
for wrenching stories from survivors of sex abuse carried out by Boy Scout leaders. Changes in statute-of-limitation laws in various states have triggered a new wave of litigation against the Boy Scouts by men who said they were abused by unit leaders decades ago. What was missing from those stories were detailed accounts from abuse survivors â a gap filled by a powerful all-formats package that received tremendous play. https://bit.ly/2EU7ekq
for breaking the news that the costs of the Jerry Sandusky scandal at Penn State have reached at least $237 million, well above figures reported a year ago: http://es.pn/2j9DzXQ
for exclusively reporting that a 14-year-old Pennsylvania girl who was raped, tortured and killed at her adoptive mother's home had been abused or neglected over the years in at least two other homes, raising questions about whether public agencies had dropped the ball. https://yhoo.it/2jAV46i
for being the only reporter to obtain the results of the state Democratic Partyâs investigation into a domestic abuse accusation against U.S. Rep. Keith Ellison. https://bit.ly/2A4Ucyk
New York-based federal law enforcement reporter Jim Mustian never gives up on a story.
Sticking with a case he began covering at another news organization in another state more than two years ago, Mustian landed a jaw-dropping exclusive for the AP: That a trove of hundreds of confidential emails has surfaced allegedly showing executives of the NFLâs New Orleans Saints doing public relations damage control for the areaâs Roman Catholic archdiocese amid its clergy sexual abuse crisis.
The story had an immediate, visceral impact with readers and earned praise from fellow journalists.
Mustian will continue to chip away at this story and, hopefully, reveal more about the Saints and their involvement with the church. But for now, Mustianâs sticktoitiveness and tough accountability reporting earns him this weekâs Best of the States award.
When San Francisco-based data reporter Camille Fassett obtained a national dataset on police use of force, she and Washington-based law enforcement team leader Colleen Long pored over the numbers, looking for a new angle on the well-trod issue. Then investigative fellow Helen Wieffering hit on something â the data included numerous instances of force used against teens and kids.
Looking closer, what they found was stunning: 3,000 cases over 11 years where police used force against children, some as young as 6.
To put faces and voices to the numbers, the reporters spent months interviewing children, teens and parents. The team also secured police body camera footage that backed up the stories. The resulting package was a remarkable all-formats look at how Black and brown children are disproportionately affected by police force.For a deeply reported story that explores a little-recognized aspect of police use of force, the team of Fassett, Long and Wieffering is APâs Best of the Week â First Winner.
deconstructed how the Louisiana State Police scandal of beatings and cover-ups could have gone on for so long, digging deeper into the institutional thinking of the agency, its history and the background of key figures. They interviewed dozens of current and former troopers and uncovered thousands of pages of documents that described an entrenched culture of impunity, nepotism and in some cases outright racism.This story, the latest in their investigative series stemming from the deadly 2019 arrest of Black motorist Ronald Greene, was built around a father who rose to second in command of the state agency despite being reprimanded for racist behavior, and his son who became one of the state policeâs most violent troopers â with the brunt of his use of force directed at Black people.Mustian and Bleiberg, federal law enforcement reporters, also had never-before-reported details of a 2019 cheating scandal in the state police academy that targeted the entire class for dismissal. In the end, nearly everyone in the class was allowed to graduate. And they conducted a revealing interview with the head of the state police in which he admitted he doesnât know how many other cases like Ronald Greeneâs could still be out there because âweâve not looked at every video.âThe story, accompanied by video and photos by multiformat journalist Allen Breed, added to calls for a federal investigation, and Louisiana lawmakers created a special committee to dig into reports of excessive force. The piece also resonated with readers, scoring strong play online and ranking as one of the most-engaged stories of the week.https://aplink.news/3zuhttps://aplink.video/ysmhttps://aplink.news/xda
After a prominent Philadelphia neurologist was charged with groping several patients at his clinic, Pennsylvania reporter Michael Rubinkam began digging into the neurologist's past to see if he had been accused of wrongdoing elsewhere.
Reviewing documents in three states, and checking with medical centers and law enforcement, he was able to determine that at least 17 women in Pennsylvania, New York and New Jersey have stepped forward to accuse Cruciani of sexual misconduct that goes back at least a dozen years. Two days after Rubinkamâs story ran, Cruciani pleaded guilty to groping seven patients.
For reporting exclusively that Cruciani has left behind a trail of sex abuse claims in at least three states, and obtaining powerful accounts of how he was able to prey on vulnerable patients, Rubinkam wins this weekâs Best of the States award.
for back-to-back Vatican sex abuse scoops, reporting exclusively on a confidential Vatican letter to U.S. bishops about proposed responses to the scandal, and exclusive Vatican confirmation that an Argentine bishop hand-picked by the pope for a top Holy See job was under investigation for sexual misconduct.https://bit.ly/2D2ELsihttps://bit.ly/2RFk1Pi
New Delhi-based investigative reporter Tim Sullivan spent months looking into whispers that Indian nuns had endured sexual pressure by Catholic priests. What he found, after months of reporting into the closed-off world of Catholic convents, was a pattern of abuse that went back decades, ranging from drunken priests barging into nunsâ rooms to outright rape. He also found a culture of silence that had long kept these attacks hidden. Slowly, though, Sullivan found sisters willing to open up about their attacks, and others who could give perspective on why theyâd been kept secret for so long. Finally, he and New Delhi photographer Manish Swarup traveled to southern Indiaâs Catholic heartland to meet with nuns who had become pariahs in their community for defending a sister who accused a bishop of rape.
Sullivanâs powerful narrative attracted widespread attention. Accompanied by Swarupâs evocative photos, it was one of the APâs most-read stories for the week, with excellent reader engagement. AP clients specializing in Catholic affairs ran the story prominently.
The standout work by Sullivan and Swarup contributed to the weekâs remarkable body of work across the AP in covering abuse by clergy. For exposing long-held scandals in Indiaâs Catholic ministries, Sullivan and Swarup share APâs Best of the Week.
for scoring an APNewsBreak on one of the most important details of how Olympic leaders in the United States are handling sexual abuse cases, finding that $2.2 million in key federal funds could not be used for the most pressing need of investigating any cases, with a backlog of more than 800 to be resolved. https://bit.ly/2TbqAqE
made AP the first news organization to report that coronavirus-linked hunger is leading to the deaths of 10,000 more children a month over the first year of the pandemic, according to the United Nations.The story was sparked by a riveting set of photos and video by Mednick, showing an emaciated baby in Burkina Faso who had lost half her (already low) birth weight because her mother couldnât feed her enough. Hinnant decided to tell the story of the worldwide increase in hunger through children, arranging with the United Nations to share the grim statistics with AP.The numbers went along with a global effort to talk to children, families, doctors and aid workers across five countries in various regions. In reporting on Yemen, AP went back to the family with a hungry baby whom we had spoken to previously â only to find out that the baby had died.The widely used story struck a nerve with readers, some of whom reached out seeking to help the families.https://bit.ly/3kenos1https://bit.ly/2F2DJjv
for securing the first TV and photo access to the secretive Vatican tribunal that processes clergy sexual abuse cases. The result was an exclusive on-camera interview with the head of the tribunalâs discipline section, an unprecedented tour of the room where appeals are heard and a look at the trolleys of files documenting all the worldâs known Catholic sex abuse cases. The office says it has seen a record 1,000 reports of clergy abuse this year. https://bit.ly/2ETTPsghttps://bit.ly/2rqSyFR
for breaking the news of the first-ever statewide investigation by U.S. prosecutors of abuse by Pennsylvania clergy, including exclusive details of what was in federal subpoenas. https://bit.ly/2CW8jsC