Divvys Blog

May 22, 2018

Dancing plastic surgeon who cut woman ‘like Freddie Krueger’ left patient brain-damaged

A plastic surgeon who made videos of herself singing and dancing around the operating theater as she performed procedures was accused of leaving a patient with ‘catastrophic’ brain damage.

Dr. Windell Davis Boutte settled the tummy-tuck lawsuit as it emerged she uploaded over 20 clips of herself gyrating next to patients while singing along to ‘Cut It’ by O.T. Genasis, and even sliced some open for the camera.

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported that Icilma Cornelius, 55, suffered heart failure after being cajoled into having a pre-wedding tummy tuck at Boutte’s clinic in Lilburn, Ga during February 2016.

Her heart stopped eight hours into the $11,000 procedure, but Boutte’s office was not equipped to handle the medical emergency, meaning they had to call 911. Paramedics restarted Cornelius’ heart, but were delayed in putting her into the ambulance because Boutte had to suture her skin to try and prevent her open wounds becoming infected.

Dancing plastic surgeon who cut woman 'like Freddie Krueger' left patient brain-damaged

They hit a further snag when the stretcher the stricken woman was on would not fit in an elevator, forcing them to carry it down the stairs. When she finally made it to hospital, doctors diagnosed Cornelius was permanently brain-damaged from lack of oxygen, leaving the woman severely disabled facing a lifetime of care.

The lawsuit against dematologist Boutte was filed by her son Ojay Liburd, 26, who said: ‘She just wanted to be perfect for her wedding dress. ‘She had everything going for her.’ Sisters Mitzi McFarland and Kristine Dolly, who also filed a suit against Boutte, said they visited her hoping to have a laser lipo procedure offered on her website.

However, they instead underwent traditional invasive liposuction and were appalled at the results, with McFarland saying telling WSBTV2: ‘It’s more like Freddie Krueger cut my stomach.’

Dolly added: ‘I don’t feel like a normal person. I just feel deformed.’ Another patient told how she woke up after surgery in a hotel room with a McDonalds sandwich in her hand. Boutte, who has settled five malpractice suits in the last four months, with four more pending, is still working as a cosmetic surgeon.

May 22, 2018

Gay couple beaten up ‘for holding hands outside nightclub’

by RITEBET, in

A gay couple were allegedly beaten up outside a nightclub after they held hands.

Andy Millin, 32, and his partner Cameron Stringer, 26, were attacked when leaving CC Blooms, in Edinburgh, Scotland, at around 3am on Sunday.

Mr Millin was punched on Union Street while defending Mr Stringer and suffered facial injuries.

Gay couple beaten up 'for holding hands outside nightclub'

He told the Scottish Sun: ‘We crossed the road holding hands and there was a couple of guys behind us. One of them ran up and kicked Cameron in the back.

‘He was about to attack him but my first instinct was to get him out of the way. I got punched and then I blacked out.’

Mr Millin, who works in a hotel, said one of the men came back and punched his boyfriend Mr Stringer from behind when he was helping him. He suffered minor injuries as a result.

Mr Millin added a gesture they made had referred to the couple holding hands. The two suspects fled down Leith Walk following the attack.

The couple called the police and an ambulance once they got home but Mr Millin was not happy with the initial response from officers because they did not arrive at his home until 1.30pm the next day.

Mr Stringer, who works as a letting agent in the city, said officers were studying CCTV. He added: ‘We’ve been worried because we couldn’t remember their appearance so we wouldn’t recognise them in the street.

So we’ve been walking past people a bit paranoid.’ A Police Scotland spokeswoman said they were treating incident as a hate crime. ‘Police are investigating after two men were assaulted in the street in Edinburgh city centre in the early hours of Sunday morning on May 20,’ she said.

‘At around 2.45am the men, in their 20s and 30s, were kicked and punched on Union Street by two other men who ran off along Leith Walk. ‘Officers are carrying out inquiries and this incident is being treated as a hate crime.’

May 22, 2018

Johnstown solicitors, council members sued over 'forensic audit'

by RITEBET, in

JOHNSTOWN — Last week five members of Johnstown City Council voted to accept a forensic audit that may not be a forensic audit.

In a mandamus lawsuit filed Monday, council members Jack Williams and Charlene Stanton argue that the 134-page “Economic Development Loan Review Report” of the city's Department of Economic Development, prepared by London-based Ernst & Young and approved by colleagues on city council, did not satisfy the referendum approved by voters last May. They are suing council members Frank Janakovic, Richard Britt, Sylvia King, Marie Mock and David Vitovich, as well as City Hall and the municipality's legal team, for violating Article XII of the Home Rule Charter by having a review of the city's loan program instead of a forensic audit.

Williams and Stanton spearheaded the push for a forensic audit, which was approved by approximately 79 percent of voters last May after Williams uncovered through Right-to-Know requests that more than $1 million in city loans to select local business owners had been “written off,” including several to companies still in operation.

“The solicitors blew this,” Williams said of the situation. “They blew it big time. This was not debatable because it was an action of the voters.”

Other members of city council and city solicitor Elizabeth Benjamin of Beard Legal Group were asked for comment via email and have not yet responded. Mayor Frank Janakovic said only that he would be out of town on personal business until May 29.

At issue is the nature and scope of the work performed by Ernst & Young. A disclaimer on the second page of the 134-page document states that the company “did not render an assurance report or opinion under the agreement, nor did our services constitute an audit, review, examination, forecast, projection or any other form of attestation as those terms are defined by the AICPA (American Institute of Certified Public Accountants).”

A forensic audit is different than a review in that it follows a specific set of standards, is generally more expensive and is universally admissible as evidence in a court of law. Our Town asked Ernst & Young to confirm or deny whether their report was a forensic audit.

The company replied with a one-line sentence: “We do not comment on client matters.”

Stanton said she was “shocked and disgusted” to learn the contract executed on the city's behalf by solicitor Benjamin with Ernst & Young did not specifically ask for a forensic audit.

“In my opinion, the ball has been dropped — by the city, the solicitor and five members of city council,” Stanton said. “This was to be a forensic audit, per detailed language in the voter referendum and cannot be changed . . . and in the resolution passed in August. The city solicitor was to prepare a contract with the auditing firm to conduct a forensic audit.”

In their mandamus suit, Williams and Stanton are asking for new requests for proposals to be sent for a forensic audit; for all submissions to be reviewed by the Cambria County Court of Common Pleas or people designated by the court who have no affiliations with City Hall; and for their council colleagues and Beard Legal Group to reimburse not only court costs, but also the full $90,000 promised to Ernst & Young.

“I'm sure that'll cause some heartburn,” Williams said of their call for reimbursement. “If council had any b---- at all they'd blame it on (the solicitors).”

The special meeting of city council last week was called for by Williams and Stanton. They did not, however, attend the meeting, noting that they didn't think they had a legible copy long enough to read the entire document prior to the vote.

“In my opinion, the people are being misled currently, by (council members) voting to approve a referendum calling for a forensic audit, and one not being done,” Stanton said.

“Forensic audits are precise in nature and and are designed to uncover fraud and malfeasance. They are also used in court proceedings should illegalities be uncovered.”

Tom Caulfield — faculty at the Association of Certified Fraud Examiners, former member of the Department of Justice National Procurement Fraud Task-Force and chief operating officer of Procurement Integrity in Stafford, Virginia — agreed to look over a portion of the Ernst & Young report.

“The acceptance of this report or not in a court is not driven by the title, but the quality of the work reflected within — which I can not render an opinion,” Caulfield said.

“As for it being a forensic audit or not — (Ernst & Young) called it a review, so they determined it was not a forensic audit.”

A more detailed account of the mandamus and contents of the report will appear in next week's print edition of Our Town.

May 22, 2018

Dovey Johnson Roundtree, Barrier-Breaking Lawyer, Dies at 104

by RITEBET, in

The jurors were looking at her when they filed into court. That, Dovey Johnson Roundtree knew, could have immense significance for her client, a feebleminded day laborer accused of one of the most sensational murders of the mid-20th century.

Little had augured well for that client, Raymond Crump Jr., during his eight-day trial in United States District Court in Washington: Mr. Crump, who had been found near the crime scene, was black and poor. The victim was white, glamorous and supremely well connected. The country, in the summer of 1965, seethed with racial tension amid the surging civil rights movement.

Federal prosecutors had amassed a welter of circumstantial evidence — including 27 witnesses and more than 50 exhibits — to argue that on Oct. 12, 1964, Mr. Crump had carried out the execution-style shooting of Mary Pinchot Meyer, a Washington socialite said to have been a former lover of President John F. Kennedy.

By contrast, Ms. Roundtree, who died on Monday at 104, had chosen to present just three witnesses and a single exhibit to the jury, which comprised men and women, blacks and whites. Her closing argument was only 20 minutes long.

Now, on July 30, 1965, the jury, having deliberated, was back. The court clerk handed the verdict slip to the judge, Howard F. Corcoran. For most observers, inside the courtroom and out, conviction — and an accompanying death sentence — was a foregone conclusion.

“Members of the jury,” Judge Corcoran said. “We have your verdict, which states that you find the defendant, Ray Crump Jr., not guilty.”

Ms. Roundtree’s defense, which hinged partly on two forensic masterstrokes, made her reputation as a litigator of acuity, concision and steel who could win even the most hopeless trials. And this in a case for which she had received a fee of one dollar — and in a courthouse where she was not allowed to use the law library, cafeteria or restroom.

“As a woman, and as a woman of color in an age when black lawyers had to leave the courthouse to use the bathrooms, she dared to practice before the bar of justice and was unflinching,” Katie McCabe, the co-author of Ms. Roundtree’s memoir, “Justice Older Than the Law,” said in an interview for this obituary in 2016. “She was a one-woman Legal Aid Society before people used that term.”

Officer, Lawyer, Minister

Ms. Roundtree’s victory in the Crump case was not her first noteworthy accomplishment, and it was by no means her last. Born to a family of slender means in the Jim Crow South, Ms. Roundtree — or the Rev. Dovey Johnson Roundtree, as she was long formally known — was instrumental in winning a spate of advances for blacks and women in midcentury America, blazing trails in the military, the legal profession and the ministry.

As an inaugural member of the Women’s Army Auxiliary Corps (later the Women’s Army Corps), she became, in 1942, one of the first women of any race to be commissioned an Army officer. Attaining the rank of captain, she personally recruited scores of African-American women for wartime Army service.

As a Washington lawyer, she helped secure a landmark ban on racial segregation in interstate bus travel in a case that originated in 1952 — three years before Rosa Parks refused to yield her seat in Montgomery, Ala.

(In the mid-1990s, after Cicely Tyson was cast as Carrie Grace Battle, the crusading civil-rights lawyer at the center of the NBC series “Sweet Justice,” she looked for a real-life role model on whom to base her character. She chose Ms. Roundtree.)

As a cleric, Ms. Roundtree was one of the first women to be ordained a minister in the African Methodist Episcopal Church.

In 2009, in a statement honoring the publication of “Justice Older Than the Law,” the first lady, Michelle Obama, said, “As an Army veteran, lawyer and minister, Ms. Roundtree set a new path for the many women who have followed her and proved once again that the vision and perseverance of a single individual can help to turn the tides of history.”

Yet for all her perseverance, and all her prowess, Ms. Roundtree remained, by temperament, choice and political circumstance, comparatively unknown.

“One has to start with the fact — and I think it’s an acknowledged fact — that the civil rights movement was notoriously sexist,” Ms. McCabe said in 2016. “There were many men who did not appreciate being ground up into hamburger meat by Dovey Roundtree. There are many, many white lawyers — male — in Washington who were humiliated by having been beaten by a black woman. And I think that played out in a number of ways. And one of those ways has been a diminution in the recognition that I think her accomplishments merit.”

A Jim Crow Heritage

The second of four daughters of James Eliot Johnson, a printer, and Lela (Bryant) Johnson, a domestic, Dovey Mae Johnson was born in Charlotte, N.C., on April 17, 1914. Her father died in the influenza epidemic of 1919, and Dovey, her mother and sisters were taken in by her maternal grandparents, the Rev. Clyde L. Graham, a minister in the A.M.E. Zion Church, and Rachel Bryant Graham.

Reared in her grandfather’s shotgun-shack parsonage in one of Charlotte’s black districts, Dovey was profoundly influenced by her grandmother, who despite having only a third-grade education became a revered member of the community.

Born not long after the Civil War ended, Rachel Graham had weathered the death of her first husband at the hands of the Ku Klux Klan. She lived with feet so badly crippled that she was in constant pain: When she was a teenager, she had thwarted a white man’s attempts to rape her by running. Enraged, he stomped her feet, shattering them, to ensure she would never run again.

Long afterward, Ms. Roundtree recalled huddling beneath her grandmother’s kitchen table with her mother and sisters as Klansmen raged through their community on horseback. Rachel Graham stood guard on the front porch, wielding her household broom as the hooded riders thundered by. It was an index of her grandmother’s formidable mien, Ms. Roundtree said, that it did not occur to her until years later how slender an armament a broom really was.

Encouraged by a friend of her grandmother’s, the distinguished black educator Mary McLeod Bethune, young Dovey Johnson set her sights on becoming a doctor. She enrolled at Spelman College, the Atlanta women’s college then known as the black Vassar.

There, Ms. Roundtree later wrote, “I was in my own way an outsider — a poor working student in a sea of black privilege.” She held three simultaneous jobs, including domestic work for a white family, in order to remain in school. She graduated in 1938 with a double major in English and biology.

With no money for medical school, she spent the next three years teaching seventh and eighth grade in Chester, S.C. In 1941, she made her way to Washington and Dr. Bethune’s office at the National Council of Negro Women.

Dr. Bethune and her close friend, Eleanor Roosevelt, the first lady, were just then pressing for the creation of the Women’s Army Auxiliary Corps, which would admit a cohort of women for training as Army officers. Dr. Bethune helped ensure that 40 of the 440 women in that cohort would be black.

The corps was established in May 1942 and Dovey Johnson joined up, reporting for training at Fort Des Moines in Iowa.

United by the war effort, the black and white women on the base forged an easy camaraderie, Ms. Roundtree recalled. But in the Army as a whole, Jim Crow was alive and well: The United States military would be desegregated only in 1948, by executive order of President Harry S. Truman.

On the base, Ms. Roundtree risked court-martial by confronting white commanding officers about segregationist practices, including “colored only” tables in the mess hall. In that effort she was successful, and the signs came down.

Life outside the base was harder still. In 1943, on a recruiting trip through the South, Ms. Roundtree, in uniform, was ordered to relinquish her seat on a Miami bus to a white Marine. Threatened with arrest, she was forced to disembark.

Such episodes, she later said, marked the start of her interest in the law as a tool of social justice.

In 1947, she entered Howard University’s law school on the G.I. Bill, one of only five women in her class. The law quickly became a consuming passion, so much so that it cost her her marriage to her college sweetheart, William A. Roundtree, whom she had wed in 1946. The couple separated after eight months and divorced not long afterward.

Ms. Roundtree graduated from law school in 1950. Admitted to the District of Columbia bar the next year, she went into practice with a classmate, Julius Winfield Robertson. In 1962, despite a storm of protest from its members, she became the first African-American admitted to the Women’s Bar Association of the District of Columbia.

There was little remunerative work for Robertson & Roundtree at first. Committed to helping disenfranchised clients, the partners were often paid, Ms. Roundtree recalled in a 1994 interview, with “two dozen eggs, a bag of greens and leftover poundcake.” Mr. Robertson moonlighted on the night shift at the post office.

A Bus Ride to History

Then, in 1952, they took on a case that would quietly become a landmark: Sarah Keys v. Carolina Coach Company.

Sarah Louise Keys was a young black private in the Women’s Army Corps. Earlier that year, in uniform, she had traveled by bus from Fort Dix, in New Jersey, to her home in North Carolina.

In Roanoke Rapids, N.C., a new driver ordered her to give up her seat to a white Marine, just as Ms. Roundtree had been told to do years before. Ms. Keys demurred and was arrested and jailed for disorderly conduct.

Ms. Keys’s lawsuit sought to challenge the country’s longstanding “separate but equal” doctrine. Confirmed by the Supreme Court in Plessy v. Ferguson — a seminal decision of 1896 that has long been considered one of the court’s least felicitous — the doctrine enfranchised the separation of the races in public facilities.

In early 1953, the United States District Court for the District of Columbia dismissed the Keys suit on jurisdictional grounds. But because Ms. Keys’s journey had involved the crossing of state lines, Ms. Roundtree and Mr. Robertson realized that they might profitably plead the case before the Interstate Commerce Commission. A federal agency, the commission was charged with regulating railroads, buses and the like.

In 1954, the commission rejected their case. But by then, the Supreme Court’s ruling in Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, handed down that year, had outlawed segregation in public schools. Ms. Roundtree and Mr. Robertson approached the commission again, arguing that the Brown decision should apply equally to transportation.

On Nov. 7, 1955, the commission issued its decision, banning segregation on interstate bus travel. Though the ruling would not be enforced for six years — in 1961, amid the violence against Freedom Riders in the South, the United States attorney general, Robert F. Kennedy, pressured the commission to do so — it was a civil rights watershed.

“The Negro traveler will now have the freedom to ride (on train or bus) and the freedom to wait (in waiting rooms and at stations) as a human being,” the columnist Max Lerner wrote in The New York Post after the ruling. “I light a candle in my heart with the knowledge that white and black alike, we can now ride together across the state lines of 48 states.”

In 1961, Mr. Robertson died of a heart attack, at 45, leaving Ms. Roundtree to run the practice. By this time she had grown disheartened with the law’s ability to improve the lives of the country’s most marginalized people. Her thoughts had turned increasingly toward providing spiritual succor, and she dreamed of entering the ministry.

After the A.M.E. Church approved the full ordination of women in 1960, Ms. Roundtree entered Howard’s divinity school. Ordained the next year, she took a pulpit at Allen Chapel A.M.E. Church in Anacostia, a largely black, predominantly low-income neighborhood in southeast Washington, while continuing to practice law.

She would bring both her lawyerly and her ministerial capacities to bear on the case of Raymond Crump.

A Masterly Defense

A slight, intellectually fragile man of 24, Mr. Crump had been apprehended near the Washington canal towpath where Ms. Meyer, 43, had been shot at point-blank range as she took her daily walk.

A court-appointed psychiatrist deemed Mr. Crump fit to stand trial. But on meeting him, Ms. Roundtree said, she realized that he could never have carried out so well-planned and methodical a crime.

“Lawyer,” he beseeched her, “what is it they say I done?”

“They say you killed a lady, Mr. Crump,” she replied, very gently.

The first of Ms. Roundtree’s defensive masterstrokes came as she combed police reports about the crime. Two witnesses had spoken of seeing a black man standing over Ms. Meyer’s body. That man, they said, was about 5-foot-8, 185 pounds.

“You hold in your hands the life of a man,” Ms. Roundtree told the jury in her closing remarks. “A little man, if you please.”

Ms. Roundtree’s second masterstroke came in the choice of her single exhibit. She offered three character witnesses on Mr. Crump’s behalf, but knowing that Mr. Crump could not weather a cross-examination, did not put him on the stand.

And thus her sole exhibit — Exhibit A, she told the jurors — was Raymond Crump himself. Indicating him, she admonished them, “I leave this little man in your hands.”

The jury deliberated for 11 hours before voting to acquit. No one else has ever been charged with the crime.

Ms. Roundtree, who practiced law into her 80s, was a founding partner, in 1970, of Roundtree, Knox, Hunter & Parker, a Washington firm that endures to this day. In later years she specialized in domestic and juvenile cases, while continuing her ministerial work, before retiring to Charlotte.

Her other clients included the National Council of Negro Women, for which she served as general counsel, and the national A.M.E. Church, for which she was a special legal consultant.

Ms. Roundtree’s survivors include her cousin and law partner, Jerry L. Hunter; her goddaughter, Charlene Pritchett-Stevenson, whom she considered a daughter; and Ms. Pritchett-Stevenson’s son, James Andrew Pritchett

Her death, in Charlotte, where she had lived for the past two decades, was confirmed by Ms. McCabe.

Among Ms. Roundtree’s honors is the Margaret Brent Women Lawyers of Achievement Award from the American Bar Association, presented in 2000.

In her 90s, Ms. Roundtree lost her sight to diabetes, from which she had suffered for many years.

That did not keep her, in November 2008, from going to the polls in Charlotte, the city where the Klan had rampaged past her home. There, with the help of a sighted friend, she cast her ballot for Barack Obama

May 22, 2018

Avicii’s funeral will be a private ceremony, his family confirms

by RITEBET, in

Avicii’s family has revealed that only those closest to the DJ will be attending his private funeral.

The DJ, real name Tim Bergling, died on 20 April in Oman at the age of 28. His cause of death was confirmed by his family as suicide.

Now, the family of the Levels hitmaker have said that his funeral will be a private occasion.

In a statement released to Billboard, the Bergling family said: ‘There have been many inquiries regarding the funeral arrangements for Tim Bergling, known by music fans as Avicii.

‘The Bergling family has now confirmed that the funeral will be private, in the presence of the people who were closest to Tim. ‘They kindly ask media to respect this.

There is no additional information forthcoming.’ Avicii’s family commented on his cause of death in a heartbreaking statement a week after his death.

They said: ‘Our beloved Tim was a seeker, a fragile artistic soul searching for answers to existential questions. An overachieving perfectionist who travelled and worked hard at a pace that led to extreme stress.

‘When he stopped touring, he wanted to find a balance in life to be happy and be able to do what he loved most – music. He really struggled with thoughts about Meaning, Life, Happiness. He could not go on any longer.

‘He wanted to find peace. Tim was not made for the business machine he found himself in; he was a sensitive guy who loved his fans but shunned the spotlight.

‘Tim, you will forever be loved and sadly missed. The person you were and your music will keep your memory alive. We love you, Your family.’

May 22, 2018

Little girl writes the most adorable motivational note to herself ahead of SATs

by RITEBET, in

We can all take inspiration from a 10-year-old girl who wrote herself a motivational note the morning of her SATs.

Little Aoife’s dad, Simon Breakell, from London, shared the note to Twitter, explaining that his daughter had left the note to herself last night explaining ‘her coping strategies for her SATs exams’.

He wrote: ‘I think we can all taken inspiration from the last line: “Be happy, like a unicorn eating doughnuts on a rainbow”.’

The inspirational note read: ‘Today you have SATs, your only test is reading. If you get up, you can have eggs on toast so you have some brain food.

‘You only have two more days of SATs and then you are done! I think you are cycling, so plaits today.

Be happy, like a unicorn, eating doughnuts on a rainbow.’

My daughter left herself a note last night explaining her coping strategies for her SATS exams. I think we can all taken inspiration from the last line: “be happy, like a unicorn eating doughnuts on a rainbow” 🌈 🦄 🍩 😀 #sats2018 pic.twitter.com/rHZQSD17Dr
— Simon Breakell (@simonbreakell) May 16, 2018

Simon told HuffPost UK that his daughter has always had an imagination, and leaves herself a motivational note as a reminder of what her plans are for the following day almost every night.

He said: ‘If she knows she’s got a challenge, be that a test, a class presentation or in this case an exam, she will always remind herself that she can achieve her best.

‘I guess as any parent would do, we try to make our children believe in themselves, be positive and don’t beat yourself up if things don’t quite go to plan.’

Simon added: ‘There’s something quite profoundly innocent about wanting to be a unicorn and eat doughnuts on a rainbow.

‘I’ve even taken it into my day. I find that last line just so delightful… and in many ways, quite a mature outlook – things will be fine, don’t worry.’ We think we could all take some inspiration from Aoife.

We should all start leaving ourselves motivational notes every evening for the following morning – especially if they include unicorns eating doughnuts on a rainbow.

May 22, 2018

Cristiano Ronaldo and Georgina Rodriguez together at the beach in Ibiza

by RITEBET, in

Football legend Christiano Ronaldo and his girlfriend Georgina Rodriguez put their perfect bodies on display as they spent time together at the beach in Ibiza.

Georgina, who welcomed a daughter only six months ago flaunted her very flat stomach and also sported a diamond ring on her wedding finger.

The sportsman, 33, and his partner, 24, looked very much in love as they kissed and cuddled in the water, while larking around with his eldest son, Cristiano Jnr, seven.

More photos below.