In today’s newsletter: Michigan communities are turning back the clock on water fluoridation; Georgia workers are exploited under a farmworker visa program; a Massachusetts law makes rape cases impossible to prosecute after 15 years; and more from our newsroom.
As federal agencies review their guidance on fluoridation and the nation’s top health official calls fluoride “industrial waste,” state and local governments are pulling back on the practice, upending a decadeslong public health success story.
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“People think that there’s no slavery anymore. There is, and you were doing it right here in our state.”
— Judge Lisa Godbey Wood, sentencing Javier Sanchez Mendoza Jr. to 30 years in prison in March 2022.
Mendoza pleaded guilty in 2021 to conspiracy to engage in forced labor, after bringing more than 565 people to work on farms in Georgia under a farmworker visa program. A federal investigation exposed widespread abuses of H-2A workers across Georgia. ProPublica reporter Max Blau detailed that investigation and, using police records, court documents and testimony in federal court, chronicled the story of one woman’s harrowing experience entering the U.S. under the H-2A program, which led to her abuse and ultimate survival.
Mendoza declined multiple requests for an interview and did not provide comments in response to ProPublica’s letters detailing the case.
A new investigation from WBUR and ProPublica foundthat as many as 47 states allow more time to charge rapes or similar assaults of adults than Massachusetts, where attempts to lengthen the statute of limitations have failed every legislative session since 2011. Here’s what else you need to know:
A National Outlier: Most states allow at least some old rape cases to be prosecuted, but attempts to lengthen the statute of limitations in Massachusetts have failed every year since 2011.
A Short Window: Massachusetts law prevents prosecution of rape suspects after 15 years, even when investigators think new evidence, including DNA, could lead to a conviction.
A Rare Look: Police reports of rape cases are secret under an unusual state law. But one Boston-area case offers a rare look into the impact of the short statute of limitations.
