In the 1970s, women’s health advocates were highly suspicious of mastectomies. They argued that surgeons — in those days, pretty much an all-male club — were far too quick to remove a breast after a diagnosis of cancer, with disfiguring results.
But today, the pendulum has swung the other way. A new generation of women want doctors to take a more aggressive approach, and more and more are asking that even healthy breasts be removed to ward off cancer before it can strike.
Researchers estimate that as many as 15 percent of women with breast cancer — 30,000 a year — opt to have both breasts removed, up from less than 3 percent in the late 1990s. Notably, it appears that the vast majority of these women have never received genetic testing or counseling and are basing the decision on exaggerated fears about their risk of recurrence.
In addition, doctors say an increasing number of women who have never had a cancer diagnosis are demanding mastectomies based on genetic risk. (Cancer databases don’t track these women, so their numbers are unknown.)
“We are confronting almost an epidemic of prophylactic mastectomy,” said Dr. Isabelle Bedrosian, a surgical oncologist at M. D. Anderson Cancer Center in Houston. “I think the medical community has taken notice. We don’t have data that say oncologically this is a necessity, so why are women making this choice?”
One reason may be the never-ending awareness campaigns that have left many women in perpetual fear of the disease. Improvements in breast reconstruction may also be driving the trend, along with celebrities who go public with their decision to undergo preventive mastectomy.
This month Allyn Rose, a 24-year-old Miss America contestant from Washington, D.C., made headlines when she announced plans to have both her healthy breasts removed after the pageant; both her mother and her grandmother died from breast cancer. The television personality Giuliana Rancic, 37, and the actress Christina Applegate, 41, also talked publicly about having double mastectomies after diagnoses of early-stage breast cancer.
“You’re not going to find other organs that people cut out of their bodies because they’re worried about disease,” said the medical historian Dr. Barron H. Lerner, author of “The Breast Cancer Wars” (2001). “Because breast cancer is a disease that is so emotionally charged and gets so much attention, I think at times women feel almost obligated to be as proactive as possible — that’s the culture of breast cancer.”
Most of the data on prophylactic mastectomy come from the University of Minnesota, where researchers tracked contralateral mastectomy trends (removing a healthy breast alongside one with cancer) from 1998 to 2006. Dr. Todd M. Tuttle, chief of surgical oncology, said double mastectomy rates more than doubled during that period and the rise showed no signs of slowing.
From those trends as well as anecdotal reports, Dr. Tuttle estimates that at least 15 percent of women who receive a breast cancer diagnosis will have the second, healthy breast removed. “It’s younger women who are doing it,” he said.
The risk that a woman with breast cancer will develop cancer in the other breast is about 5 percent over 10 years, Dr. Tuttle said. Yet a University of Minnesota study found that women estimated their risk to be more than 30 percent.
“I think there are women who markedly overestimate their risk of getting cancer,” he said.
Most experts agree that double mastectomy is a reasonable option for women who have a strong genetic risk and have tested positive for a breast cancer gene. That was the case with Allison Gilbert, 42, a writer in Westchester County who discovered her genetic risk after her grandmother died of breast cancer and her mother died of ovarian cancer.
Even so, she delayed the decision to get prophylactic mastectomy until her aunt died from an aggressive breast cancer. In August, she had a double mastectomy. (She had her ovaries removed earlier.)
“I feel the women in my family didn’t have a way to avoid their fate,” said Ms. Gilbert, author of the 2011 book “Parentless Parents,” about how losing a parent influences one’s own style of parenting. “Here I was given an incredible opportunity to know what I have and to do something about it and, God willing, be around for my kids longer.”
Even so, she said her decisions were not made lightly. The double mastectomy and reconstruction required an initial 11 1/2-hour surgery and an “intense” recovery. She got genetic counseling, joined support groups and researched her options.
But doctors say many women are not making such informed decisions. Last month, University of Michigan researchers reported on a study of more than 1,446 women who had breast cancer. Four years after their diagnosis, 35 percent were considering removing their healthy breast and 7 percent had already done so.
Notably, most of the women who had a double mastectomy were not at high risk for a cancer recurrence. In fact, studies suggest that most women who have double mastectomies never seek genetic testing or counseling.
“Breast cancer becomes very emotional for people, and they view a breast differently than an arm or a required body part that you use every day,” said Sarah T. Hawley, an associate professor of internal medicine at the University of Michigan. “Women feel like it’s a body part over which they totally have a choice, and they say, ‘I want to put this behind me — I don’t want to worry about it anymore.’ ”
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Americans are going to chow down on 1.23 billion chicken wings during Super Bowl weekend this year. But there will be fewer wings available and they’ll cost more, according to an annual report.
The NFL championship game, this year between the San Francisco 49ers and the Baltimore Ravens, is the biggest day of the year for chicken wings, according to the National Chicken Council.
This time around, however, there will be 12.3 million fewer wings eaten than last year, or a 1% decline, according to the trade group.
The group attributed the slide to fewer chickens in 2012, as corn and animal feed prices soared to record highs amid a severe summer drought and ethanol fuel production regulations.
And with shrinking supply and strong demand, the chicken council said wholesale wings will be at their “most expensive ever.” Wings are currently the highest priced portion of a chicken and cost $2.11 a pound in the Northeast, up 12% from a year earlier.
So are we headed for a hot wings equivalent of the bacon shortage predicted last year? Not to worry, said Bill Roenigk, chief economist for the chicken trade group.
“The good news for consumers is that restaurants plan well in advance to ensure they have plenty of wings for the big game,” he said. “And some restaurants are promoting boneless wings and some are offering flexible serving sizes.”
One caveat, however.
“If you’re planning to cook your own wings, I wouldn’t advise being in line at the supermarket two hours before kickoff,” Roenigk said.
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Fifteen years before the clergy sex abuse scandal came to light, Archbishop Roger M. Mahony and a top advisor discussed ways to conceal the molestation of children from law enforcement, according to internal Catholic church records released Monday.
The archdiocese's failure to purge pedophile clergy and reluctance to cooperate with law enforcement has previously been known. But the memos written in 1986 and 1987 by Mahony and Msgr. Thomas J. Curry, then the archdiocese's chief advisor on sex abuse cases, offer the strongest evidence yet of a concerted effort by officials in the nation's largest Catholic diocese to shield abusers from police. The newly released records, which the archdiocese fought for years to keep secret, reveal in church leaders' own words a desire to keep authorities from discovering that children were being molested.
In the confidential letters, filed this month as evidence in a civil court case, Curry proposed strategies to prevent police from investigating three priests who had admitted to church officials that they abused young boys. Curry suggested to Mahony that they prevent them from seeing therapists who might alert authorities and that they give the priests out-of-state assignments to avoid criminal investigators.
One such case that has previously received little attention is that of Msgr. Peter Garcia, who admitted preying for decades on undocumented children in predominantly Spanish-speaking parishes. After Garcia's discharge from a New Mexico treatment center for pedophile clergy, Mahony ordered him to stay away from California "for the foreseeable future" in order to avoid legal accountability, the files show. "I believe that if Monsignor Garcia were to reappear here within the archdiocese we might very well have some type of legal action filed in both the criminal and civil sectors," the archbishop wrote to the treatment center's director in July 1986.
The following year, in a letter to Mahony about bringing Garcia back to work in the archdiocese, Curry said he was worried that victims in Los Angeles might see the priest and call police.
"[T]here are numerous — maybe twenty — adolescents or young adults that Peter was involved with in a first degree felony manner. The possibility of one of these seeing him is simply too great," Curry wrote in May 1987.
Garcia returned to the Los Angeles area later that year; the archdiocese did not give him a ministerial assignment because he refused to take medication to suppress his sexual urges. He left the priesthood in 1989, according to the church.
Garcia was never prosecuted and died in 2009. The files show he admitted to a therapist that he had sexually abused boys "on and off" since his 1966 ordination. He assured church officials his victims were unlikely to come forward because of their immigration status. In at least one case, according to a church memo, he threatened to have a boy he had raped deported if he went to police.
The memos are from personnel files for 14 priests submitted to a judge on behalf of a man who claims he was abused by one of the priests, Father Nicholas Aguilar Rivera. The man's attorney, Anthony De Marco, wrote in court papers the files show "a practice of thwarting law enforcement investigations" by the archdiocese. It's not always clear from the records whether the church followed through on all its discussions about eluding police, but in some cases, such as Garcia’s, it did.
Mahony, who retired in 2011, has apologized repeatedly for errors in handling abuse allegations. In a statement Monday, he apologized once again and recounted meetings he's had with about 90 victims of abuse.
"I have a 3 x 5 card for every victim I met with on the altar of my small chapel. I pray for them every single day," he wrote. "As I thumb through those cards I often pause as I am reminded of each personal story and the anguish that accompanies that life story."
"It remains my daily and fervent prayer that God's grace will flood the heart and soul of each victim, and that their life-journey continues forward with ever greater healing," he added. "I am sorry."
Curry did not return calls seeking comment. He currently serves as the archdiocese's auxiliary bishop for Santa Barbara.
The confidential files of at least 75 more accused abusers are slated to become public in coming weeks under the terms of a 2007 civil settlement with more than 500 victims. A private mediator had ordered the names of the church hierarchy redacted from those documents, but after objections from The Times and the Associated Press, a Superior Court judge ruled that the names of Mahony, Curry and others in supervisory roles should not be blacked out.
Garcia's was one of three cases in 1987 in which top church officials discussed ways they could stymie law enforcement. In a letter about Father Michael Wempe, who had acknowledged using a 12-year-old parishioner as what a church official called his "sex partner," Curry recounted extensive conversations with the priest about potential criminal prosecution.
"He is afraid ... records will be sought by the courts at some time and that they could convict him," Curry wrote to Mahony. "He is very aware that what he did comes within the scope of criminal law."
Curry proposed Wempe could go to an out-of-state diocese "if need be." He called it "surprising" that a church-paid counselor hadn't reported Wempe to police and wrote that he and Wempe "agreed it would be better if Mike did not return to him."
Perhaps, Curry added, the priest could be sent to "a lawyer who is also a psychiatrist" thereby putting "the reports under the protection of privilege."
Curry expressed similar concerns to Mahony about Father Michael Baker, who had admitted his abuse of young boys during a private 1986 meeting with the archbishop.
In a memo about Baker's return to ministry, Curry wrote, "I see a difficulty here, in that if he were to mention his problem with child abuse it would put the therapist in the position of having to report him … he cannot mention his past problem."
Mahony's response to the memo was handwritten across the bottom of the page: "Sounds good —please proceed!!" Two decades would pass before authorities gathered enough information to convict Baker and Wempe of abusing boys.
Federal and state prosecutors have investigated possible conspiracy cases against the archdiocese hierarchy. Former Dist. Atty. Steve Cooley said in 2007 that his probe into the conduct of high-ranking church officials was on hold until his prosecutors could access the personnel files of all the abusers. The U.S. attorney's office convened a grand jury in 2009, but no charges resulted.
During those investigations, the church was forced by judges to turn over some but not all of the records to prosecutors. The district attorney's office has said its prosecutors plan to review priest personnel files as they are released.
Mahony was appointed archbishop in 1985 after five years leading the Stockton diocese. While there, he had dealt with three allegations of clergy abuse, including one case in which he personally reported the priest to police.
In Los Angeles, he tapped Curry, an Irish-born priest, as vicar of clergy. The records show that sex abuse allegations were handled almost exclusively by the archbishop and his vicar. Memos that crossed their desks included graphic details, such as one letter from another priest accusing Garcia of tying up and raping a young boy in Lancaster.
Mahony personally phoned the priests' therapists about their progress, wrote the priests encouraging letters and dispatched Curry to visit them at a New Mexico facility, Servants of the Paraclete, that treated pedophile priests.
"Each of you there at Jemez Springs is very much in my prayers and I call you to mind each day during my celebration of the Eucharist," Mahony wrote to Wempe.
The month after he was named archbishop, Mahony met with Garcia to discuss his molestation of boys, according to a letter the priest wrote while in therapy. Mahony instructed him to be "very low key" and assured him "no one was looking at him for any criminal action," Garcia recalled in a letter to an official at Servants of the Paraclete.
In a statement Monday on behalf of the archdiocese, a lawyer for the church said its policy in the late 1980s was to let victims and their families decide whether to go to the police.
"Not surprisingly, the families of victims frequently did not wish to report to police and have their child become the center of a public prosecution," lawyer J. Michael Hennigan wrote.
He acknowledged memos written in those years "sometimes focused more on the needs of the perpetrator than on the serious harm that had been done to the victims."
"That is part of the past," Hennigan wrote. "We are embarrassed and at times ashamed by parts of the past. But we are proud of our progress, which is continuing."
Hennigan said that the years in which Mahony dealt with Garcia were "a period of deepening understanding of the nature of the problem of sex abuse both here and in our society in general" and that the archdiocese subsequently changed completely its approach to reports of abuse.
"We now have retired FBI agents who thoroughly investigate every allegation, even anonymous calls. We aggressively assist in the criminal prosecution of offenders," Hennigan wrote.
Mahony and Curry have been questioned under oath in depositions numerous times about their handling of molestation cases. The men, however, have never been asked about attempts to stymie law enforcement, because the personnel files documenting those discussions were only provided to civil attorneys in recent months. De Marco, the lawyer who filed the records in civil court this month, asked a judge last week to order Curry and Mahony to submit to new depositions “regarding their actions, knowledge and intent as referenced in these files.” A hearing on that request is set for February.
In a 2010 deposition, Mahony acknowledged the archdiocese had never called police to report sexual abuse by a priest before 2000. He said church officials were unable to do so because they didn't know the names of the children harmed.
"In my experience, you can only call the police when you've got victims you can talk to," Mahony said.
When an attorney for an alleged victim suggested "the right thing to do" would have been to summon police immediately, Mahony replied, "Well, today it would. But back then that isn't the way those matters were approached."
Since clergy weren't legally required to report suspected child abuse until 1997, Mahony said, the people who should have alerted police about pedophiles like Baker and Wempe were victims' therapists or other "mandatory reporters" of child abuse.
"Psychologists, counselors … they were also the first ones to learn [of abuse] so they were normally the ones who made the reports," he said.
In Garcia's 451-page personnel file, one voice decried the church's failures to protect the victims and condemned the priest as someone who deserved to be behind bars. Father Arturo Gomez, an associate pastor at a predominantly Spanish-speaking church near Olvera Street, wrote to a regional bishop in 1989, saying he was "angry" and "disappointed" at the church's failure to help Garcia's victims. He expressed shock that the bishop, Juan A. Arzube, had told the family of two of the boys that Garcia had thought of taking his own life.
"You seemed to be at that moment more concern[ed] for the criminal rather than the victum! (sic)" Gomez wrote to Arzube in 1989.
Gomez urged church leaders to identify others who may have been harmed by Garcia and to get them help, but was told they didn't know how.
"If I was the father … Peter Garcia would be in prison now; and I would probably have begun a lawsuit against the archdiocese," the priest wrote in the letter. "The parents … of the two boys are more forgiving and compassionate than I would be."
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MOSCOW (Reuters) – President Vladimir Putin has ordered Russian authorities to protect state computers from hacking attacks, the Kremlin said on Monday, after an Internet security firm said a spy network had infiltrated government and embassy computers across the former Soviet bloc.
Dubbed Red October, the network used phishing attacks – or unsolicited emails to intended targets – to infect the computers of embassies and other state institutions with a program designed to harvest intelligence and send it back to a server.
Putin signed a decree on January 15 empowering the Federal Security Service (FSB) to “create a state system for the detection, prevention and liquidation of the effects of computer attacks on the information resources of the Russian Federation”.
State computer and telecommunications networks protected by the cyber security system should include those inside Russia and at its embassies and consulates abroad, according to the decree, which was published on a Kremlin website on Monday.
The Russian Internet security firm Kaspersky Labs said last week that the computer espionage network, discovered last October, had been seeking intelligence from Eastern European and ex-Soviet states including Russia since 2007. (http://r.reuters.com/mag45t )
Many of the systems infected belonged to diplomatic missions, Vitaly Kamluk, an expert in computer viruses at Kaspersky Labs, said last week. He declined to name specific countries.
Kamluk said last week that the network was still active, and that law enforcement agencies in several European countries were investigating it.
Kaspersky Labs said the infiltrators had created more than 60 domain names, mostly in Russia and Germany, that worked as proxies to hide the location of their real server.
The FSB declined immediate comment last week when asked whether Russia had taken action to bring any suspected members of the espionage network to justice, or acted to improve Internet security in light of the discovery.
The FSB – the main successor agency of the Soviet KGB – requested a written query, to which it has not yet responded. The Kremlin declined immediate comment on Monday when asked whether Putin’s decree was linked to Red October.
(Reporting by Steve Gutterman and Thomas Grove; Editing by Kevin Liffey)
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NEW YORK (AP) — The second inauguration of President Barack Obama gave television networks a chance to bask in the majesty of a Washington event that unites Americans of all beliefs and ideologies — at least for a moment.
Then it was back to business as usual: the dissemination of widely divergent views on what people had just seen for themselves.
ABC, CBS and NBC, along with the cable news networks, cast aside regular programming on Monday to carry the ceremonial swearing-in and Obama's inaugural address. It didn't carry the same sense of history that Obama's first inauguration did. In 2009, even ESPN and MTV covered the swearing-in. This year, ESPN stuck to talk about the upcoming Super Bowl, and MTV aired "Catfish: The TV Show."
Until the ceremony actually began, the networks were all challenged with the television equivalent of vamping for time. On MSNBC, Andrea Mitchell interviewed singer John Legend, who noted that one of his songs was on Obama's Spotify playlist. NBC discussed first lady Michelle Obama's new hairstyle.
"Well, what else are we going to talk about?" anchor Brian Williams said apologetically.
Obama's inaugural address lasted about 18 minutes, seemingly only slightly longer than the inaugural poem and definitely shorter than the evaluations of on-air pundits paid to dissect it.
CBS veteran Washington hand Bob Schieffer, sifting through a transcript of Obama's speech after it was delivered, said he "didn't hear a line that kind of sums it all up." His colleague, Scott Pelley, called it a civil rights speech and noted Obama's citation of key moments in fights for equality among black Americans, women and gays.
"I felt during much of the speech, I felt like I was listening to a Democratic Ronald Reagan," said ABC News correspondent Jonathan Karl. "Where Reagan was unabashedly conservative, Obama was unabashedly progressive."
While Karl's colleague, conservative commentator George Will, said too much of the speech reprised campaign themes, he found links in language used by Obama and inaugural addresses by Abraham Lincoln and John F. Kennedy.
On CNN, historian and Obama biographer David Marannis said Obama's address was much more positive and active than his first inaugural speech four years ago. "I could feel his heart beating this time," he said.
Chris Matthews said on MSNBC that parts of the speech were "going to drive the right crazy." A click away on the TV remote at Fox News Channel, analyst Charles Krauthammer was proving it.
"I found this sort of unrelenting," Krauthammer said. "You get a sense of a man who said, 'Alright, I've won my second election. I never have to face the electorate again. I'm going to be who I want to be, and I'm going to change the ideological trajectory of this country. That's my job, and that's why I'm here historically.'"
Fox's Brit Hume drew a joking rebuke from a colleague when the camera showed a picture of Beyonce, and he said, "She looks stunning, doesn't she?"
"Watch out," Chris Wallace quickly said. "Brent Musburger got in trouble for that, my friend." After the recent college football national championship, ESPN announcer Musburger was scolded by his bosses for lingering on the beauty of Alabama quarterback AJ McCarron's girlfriend, the 2012 Miss Alabama USA.
Beyonce "is an incredibly beautiful woman, and there's nothing wrong with pointing it out," Fox's Megyn Kelly said.
When the inauguration festivities moved indoors and cameras panned over politicians circling through the crowd, MSNBC's Rachel Maddow struck a note that a regular cable news viewer might question as too hopeful.
"I think the ceremony is cool, and the usual celebration is cool," she said. "It is also really nice to see Republicans and Democrats, and liberals and conservatives, chatting very casually with each other without talking politics."
As she spoke, the cameras focused on Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts smiling but standing alone.
No one knows what causes colic, the intense pain and stomach cramping that commonly begins in otherwise healthy infants at about a month and disappears a few months later. But now researchers have found a possible explanation: the kinds of microbes that inhabit babies’ intestines.
Researchers at Radboud University and Wageningen University in the Netherlands collected nine stool samples from each of 12 colicky babies and 12 age-matched babies without colic over their first 100 days of life. All the babies and mothers were healthy. But as early as the first weeks, the scientists found significant differences in the intestinal microbes of colicky and noncolicky babies. Those with colic had more proteobacteria — including species that produce gas and inflammation — and fewer bifidobacteria, especially the lactobacilli known to combat inflammation.
The researchers, writing last week in Pediatrics, suggest that probiotic supplements, which contain beneficial bacteria and sometimes decrease symptoms, may work by displacing harmful bacteria.
But the lead author, Carolina de Weerth, cautioned against routinely giving probiotics to infants. “We actually haven’t determined causality,” she said. “We need randomized controlled studies to see if there’s a causal effect and to see if it’s safe.”
The craft beer revolution kept charging ahead in 2012, when 12% more barrels were shipped than the year before, the sixth straight year of growth.
Of 27 major craft brewers – all of which saw some gain – 16 had double digit increases, according to industry research group Beer Marketer’s Insights' Craft Brew News publication.
In all, the craft beer industry enjoyed a 1.5 million barrel boost to 13.7 million barrels total.
Samuel Adams Boston Lager maker Boston Beer led the segment, with craft beer shipments rising as much as 3% to nearly 2.2 million barrels. But the company’s share of the industry has slid to 15.7% from 21% in 2008, according to the report.
Sierra Nevada, a brewer based in Chico, is the second largest in the sector. It’s 12.6% shipping gain to 966,000 barrels was its best advancement in more than a decade.
Petaluma brewer Lagunitas Brewing had a blockbuster year, with shipments booming 46% to 235,000 barrels. The company – which makes labels such as Hop Stoopid Ale and Little Sumpin’ Sumpin’ Ale, has more than quintupled its shipments in five years.
Unlike the general beer industry, where Anheuser-Busch and MillerCoors control some 80% of business, craft beer operators exist in more of a diaspora. More than three-quarters of the craft beer segment is split among 2,000 smaller rivals.
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The U.S., Britain and other countries sought to learn the fate of their citizens Sunday after Algeria announced that the death toll from a hostage crisis at a remote gas refinery was expected to rise beyond a previous estimate of 23.
It was another painstaking day for security officials trying to determine how a band of Islamist militants overran the gas complex last week, and for families and nations awaiting word of new deaths. Britain confirmed that three of its citizens were killed and three are unaccounted for.
Algerian officials said security teams defusing mines and explosive booby-traps at the Sahara Desert site had found “numerous” bodies, according to the Associated Press. Algerian communications minister Mohamed Said Belaid was quoted by the state news agency as saying: "I am afraid unfortunately to say that the death toll will go up."
As many as seven U.S. hostages are missing, along with about 14 Japanese. Other captives included Norwegians, Malaysians and French. Algerian officials said a final death count would be released in the coming hours.
Nearly 700 Algerians and 107 foreigners had been freed or had escaped from the gas field in eastern Algeria during the four-day, bloody ordeal that ended Saturday. Officials said at least 23 hostages and 32 militants had been killed. But discrepancies remained over the nationalities of the dead and the exact number of those who died.
“The priority now must be to get everybody home from Algeria," said British Prime Minister David Cameron. "This is a stark reminder once again of the threat we face from terrorism the world over. We have had successes in recent years in reducing the threat from some parts of the world, but the threat has grown particularly in northern Africa.”
Cameron, who had earlier appeared irritated that the Algerians did not inform foreign capitals before troops first stormed the refinery Thursday, tempered his criticism.
"People will ask questions about the Algerian response to these events,” he said. “But I would just say that the responsibility for these deaths lies squarely with the terrorists who launched this vicious and cowardly attack. And I'd also say that when you’re dealing with a terrorist incident on this scale, with up to 30 terrorists, it is extremely difficult to respond and to get this right in every respect.”
The natural gas complex at In Amenas -- near the Libyan border -- is operated by BP, Statoil and Sonatrach, the Algerian national oil company. BP said four of its employees were missing.
Militants linked to Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb raided the facility before dawn Wednesday. They claimed it was to avenge French airstrikes on Islamic rebels in neighboring Mali. But officials from the U.S. and other countries indicated the attack was planned ahead of this month’s French military action.
Belaid said the militants were "nationals of Arab and African countries, and of non-African countries."
jeffrey.fleishman@latimes.com
(Times staff writer Henry Chu in London contributed to this report)
(Reuters) – Notre Dame football star Manti Te’o has denied ever being in on an elaborate hoax, telling ESPN he had believed his relationship with a woman who turned out to be an online fabrication was real.
The tragic story of his girlfriend and her injuries from a car accident and death from leukemia was one of the most widely recounted U.S. sports stories last year as Notre Dame made a drive toward the national championship game.
“I wasn’t faking it,” Te’o told ESPN in an off-camera interview on Friday, excerpts of which were posted on ESPN.com. “I wasn’t part of this.”
When asked whether he had made up the tale to support his chances of winning the Heisman Trophy, the highest individual honor for a college football player, Te’o replied: “Well, when they hear the facts they’ll know. They’ll know that there is no way that I could be part of this.”
The interview was Te’o's first since the sports blog Deadspin.com on Wednesday exposed the heart-wrenching tale of his girlfriend, Lennay Kekua, and her death as a hoax and that a friend of Te’o's named Ronaiah Tuiasosopo was behind it.
Te’o told ESPN that Tuiasosopo called him on Wednesday and admitted he was behind the hoax and it was then Te’o was sure the woman had never existed.
“I don’t wish an ill thing to somebody,” Te’o said of Tuiasosopo, according to ESPN. “I just hope he learns. I think embarrassment is big enough.”
Outside Tuiasosopo’s home in Palmdale, California, on Thursday, a member of his family who did not identify himself told reporters they had no comment.
Te’o acknowledged in a statement on Wednesday that he had never met the woman in person, though he considered her his girlfriend and said he had been duped.
In the ESPN interview, Te’o said he tried to video chat with her several times, but she could never be seen on the other end. He also said he intentionally told people stories about her in a way that would make people believe they had met in person.
“I even knew that it was crazy that I was with somebody that I didn’t meet,” Te’o said.
NATIONAL PROMINENCE
ESPN said the interview was held at a training facility in Florida where Te’o has been preparing for the National Football League draft. The star linebacker was expected to be a high draft pick before the hoax was revealed.
Te’o sprang to national prominence last fall when he led Notre Dame to a victory over Michigan State within days of learning his grandmother and girlfriend had both died. The grandmother’s death was real.
The story grew to become a big feature in coverage of the team, which went undefeated in the regular season and reached the national championship game. Alabama defeated Notre Dame in the title game on January 7.
Notre Dame, one of the most powerful institutions in U.S. collegiate athletics, held a news conference within hours of the Deadspin.com article to say that Te’o had been duped.
Notre Dame Athletic Director Jack Swarbrick said on Friday the Indiana university was comfortable, based on a private investigation it launched and on four years experience with Te’o, that he was the victim and encouraged Te’o to speak publicly.
(Reporting by David Bailey in Minneapolis; Editing by Eric Beech)
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NEW YORK (AP) — Veteran ABC newswoman Barbara Walters has fallen at an inauguration party at an ambassador's home in Washington and has been hospitalized.
Walters, 83, fell Saturday night on a step at the residence of Britain's ambassador to the United States, Peter Westmacott, ABC News spokesman Jeffrey Schneider said. The fall left Walters with a cut on her forehead, he said.
Walters, out of an abundance of caution, went to a hospital for treatment of the cut and for a full examination, Schneider said on Sunday. She was alert and was "telling everyone what to do, which we all take as a very positive sign," he said.
It was unclear when Walters might be released from the hospital, which ABC didn't identify.
Walters was TV news' first female superstar, making headlines in 1976 as a network anchor with an unprecedented $1 million annual salary. During more than three decades at ABC, and before that at NBC, her exclusive interviews with rulers, royalty and entertainers have brought her celebrity status. In 1997, she created "The View," a live weekday talk show that became an unexpected hit.
Walters had heart surgery in May 2010 but returned to active duty on "The View" that September, declaring, "I'm fine!"
Even in her ninth decade, Walters continues to keep a busy schedule, including appearances on "The View," prime-time interviews and her annual special, "10 Most Fascinating People," on which, in December, she asked New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie if he considered himself fit enough to be president someday. (Christie, although acknowledging he is "more than a little" overweight, replied he would be up to the job.)
Last June, Walters apologized for trying to help a former aide to Syrian President Bashar Assad land a job or get into college in the United States. She acknowledged the conflict in trying to help Sheherazad Jaafari, daughter of the Syrian ambassador to the United States and a one-time press aide to Assad. Jaafari helped Walters land an interview with the Syrian president that aired in December 2011.
Walters said she realized the help she offered Jaafari was a conflict and said, "I regret that."
