The 'Wiches Cauldron food truck in action. Photo courtesy 'Wiches Cauldron

"I am Muslim & I love Jihad" was probably not the message people were expecting when they went to the website of Stittsville, ON food truck 'Wiches Cauldron on Wednesday, but it's the one they got.

For some reason, a group called Team System DZ hacked the food truck's website to display a pro-ISIS message declaring, "Islamic State List to restore the rights of Muslims who have been killed by your governments savage and unjust."

Craig Beaudry, chef and co-owner of 'Wiches Cauldron, said he also has no idea why the group chose his business' website. "I don't know how to tie in radical Islam to a food truck in Stittsville," he said bemusedly. "Zero idea. I don't even think there can be a motive."

This is not the first time Team System DZ has hacked seemingly random websites in Canada: in October, the group took down the University of New Brunswick students' union's site with a similar message. The group's reasoning for that defacement appears to have been that Parliament had voted to join in on airstrikes in Syria six days prior. So far, no such reasoning has been made public about today's hack.

Screenshot of 'Wiches Cauldron's website

Several sources claim Team System DZ is a group of "anti-Israeli Arab teenagers," while CBC reported in October that the group is "part of an Algerian Technology News Website committed to spreading the perspective of Arab youth peacefully." The group's (current) Facebook page offers few clues.

The defacement of the UNB site lasted just a few hours, but curious spectators likely have a few days to check out DZ's latest work. Beaudry said he's talking to police right now and won't get around to working with his developer on getting the site back up until after that progresses.

A request for comment sent to the Team System DZ email address displayed on the 'Wiches Cauldron website has so far gone unanswered.

Follow Tannara Yelland on Twitter.

This article originally appeared on VICE UK.

What do you make to this, reader: A team of adventurers join a man (who claims to have psychic powers) on a hunt for an ancient chamber hidden beneath the earth in a remote part of Iceland—a chamber that's rumored to contain ancient documents related to the Holy Grail. A cryptographer found a secret code hidden in Dante's Divine Comedy that revealed the chamber's location, and the team have set out to investigate.

Sounds like Dan Brown cashing in his chips so he can buy a slightly bigger yacht—maybe one with manservants dressed like John the Baptist but covered in pentagrams and other weird shit, right? Wrong.

When Italian cryptographer Giancarlo Gianazza first claimed to have unearthed this code, he wasn't taken particularly seriously—apart from, that is, by David Heath, a self-proclaimed psychic. David claimed that he had been instructed by another powerful psychic to help hunt for the exact location of the documents, as Giancarlo was having trouble finding the precise spot they were hidden in and only knew the vague area.

David had a psychic experience that led him to a hill in the Icelandic wilderness. A geophysical survey later confirmed that there was indeed a chamber hidden deep within this hill. Giancarlo is now leading a team to excavate this site and discover what lies beneath it. I caught up with him, David, and another of their teammates, Geir Magnusson, to find out more about their quest.

VICE: Can you explain the background of the expedition?
Giancarlo Gianazza: Back in 2002, I realized that a tercet of Dante Alighieri's Divine Comedy might refer to an island close to the Arctic Circle. In the following months, I was able to locate a subtext in between the lines of the poem: There was a coded message based on line numeration that led to Iceland. The code also pointed to the Kjölur Route [a route between two large glaciers in the Highlands of Iceland], and the right latitude on that ancient road connecting the south with the north of the island.

Dante went up a river by walking along its bank, and gave a description of it. From that description, it's possible to recognize Jökulfall, the river going from the Kjölur Route to the Gýgjarfoss Waterfall, the confluence with Blákvísl [a stream]. I also found hidden clues in Botticelli's Primavera, which some regarded as possibly depicting Dante's Garden of Eden [the Garden of Eden features in Divine Comedy, along with other Dante works], and [the painting] Madonna and Child with Six Saints. There were others in Leonardo Da Vinci's The Last Supper. Botticelli was an apprentice at the workshop of Verrocchio with Leonardo, so they were likely to have shared the same expertise. The confirmation provided by these paintings was the first fact that made me think that something important could be found in Iceland. I had no choice but to go there.

Related: Watch our film 'Nest of Giants,' about the huge amount of very strong people to emerge from the tiny island of Iceland

What made you want to get involved in all this, Geir?
Geir Magnusson: When I heard about the team's adventures—fording deep rivers, crossing rocky plains, and doing other seemingly impossible things—I asked if I could join them.

I've heard that you, David, played a role in identifying the spot that the documents are supposedly hidden under.
David Heath: The team was investigating a spot down by a river, and I had a long conversation with Thórarinn, who is the team's archaeologist. At the end of it, he sat back and said, "Well, all knowledge is at the top of the mountain," sounding like some kind of Buddhist master. There was a hill relatively near to us, so I said, "Oh, why don't we walk to the top of the mountain, then?" It was a joke, but me and him still walked to the top. When I stood at the top, I had this incredible psychic experience that told me that what they were looking for was right underneath me.

After a year of discussion, Giancarlo told me that he thought I might be right. I went to the psychic woman who sent me to help the team, and she told me roughly where the entrance to the chamber was. Last year, I went back to the same spot and had a massive psychic experience that showed it to me. Later, a ground-penetrating radar was used, which showed exactly what I had seen, which was a cave and a tunnel.

What makes you think that documents related to the Holy Grail might be hidden there?
Gianazza: At several points, the Divine Comedy reveals Dante's liking for the Knights Templar. Iceland was politically independent and with great cultural fervor for a long time, until the Norwegian invasion of the 13th century. The memory of that time was preserved and handed down through several sagas, the most famous of which was Edda by Snorri Sturluson. Snorri was also a successful lawyer and politician. In 1215, he was elected law speaker at the Icelandic parliament, the Althing. In 1217, Snorri is recorded as having attended a summer session of the Parliament with a military escort of 80 foreigners. Those men had shields and armor and were all dressed in the same way. We believe that those 80 knights were Templars, hence the connection to the Grail [there is a widespread belief that the Templars were the guardians of the Holy Grail].

Heath: Lots of people think the Holy Grail's a golden cup that was used at the last supper, but it's actually a cup of golden knowledge that people can drink from, which is what the documents that are buried under the hill might be.

Doesn't this project make you the tiniest bit wary, given what happened in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade?
Magnusson: I've never seen it, so I don't have the faintest idea what I should worry about.

Heath: The Grail stories come from our collective subconscious. When we die, we become one with everything and know everything. When we're reborn, this knowledge is still in our subconscious minds, but we don't have access to it; it's just a strong feeling. But this is finally the real thing that allows us to drink the golden truth, that we are eternal beings who reincarnate to fulfill our souls' destiny over many lives.

READ ON VICE SPORTS: Life as Struggle—How Iceland Became the World's Best Pound-for-Pound Football Team

I've heard that there's a Kickstarter campaign to raise funds for a documentary about your quest. Can you say a bit about that?
Magnusson: The young people making the film are doing an outstanding job and deserve all the financial help that we can give them. I will be contributing to the project, and urge all to do the same.

Finally, given that it's looking likely that your excavation will actually uncover something, whether it's the Holy Grail or not, what advice would you give to others who embark on missions like this that many might be skeptical of?
Gianazza: If you don't persevere at doing what you believe, then no one else will.

Meat photo via Flickr user Paul Joseph

BBC reports that Chinese authorities seized over 100,000 tons of meat from smugglers in the Hunan province, some dating back to the Carter Administration, as part of a nationwide crackdown on poor food standards. The estimated $438 million worth of flesh—which had been frozen, thawed, and refrozen again during its trek from places like Brazil and India through neighboring countries and into the bellies of unsuspecting consumers—included beef, chick feet, and duck necks.

While Chinese anti-smuggling authorities are investigating 21 gangs, having already arrested 20 people in the Hunan province alone, this seizure coincides with news of a Chinese food safety watchdog urging the Shaanxi province to order a recall on three milk producers in the area, after finding a curiously high amount of nitrate levels in infant formula powders.

Food standard issues are nothing new to the country that engineers genius babies and uses the black market to coax white English speakers to come teach. Back in 2008, Chinese milk producers released a product contaminated by melamine, killing six kids and leaving some 300,000 others ill—and there's also that whole dog meat festival thing.

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Dylann Roof, from his website

A few days ago, a manifesto purportedly written by the Charleston shooter Dylann Roof surfaced online, in essence a listicle of his opinions about various racial groups in the US. His rhetoric is a flat brew of old-timey racial pseudoscience, Stormfront blather, and adolescent burp-talking. It is worth parsing, not for its nuance, but as a pure, unusually bald-faced demonstration of racist assumptions.

After reading through his gassy rants on Blacks, Jews, and Hispanics, I got to the section labeled "East Asians," expecting to be perversely flattered by Roof's hatred. But instead:

I have great respent [sic] for the East Asian races. Even if we were to go extinct they could carry something on. They are by nature very racist and could be great allies of the White race. I am not opposed at all to allies with the Northeast Asian races.

There was some interesting stuff for me to consider here—for instance, how Roof strangely implies that he cares more about the endurance of racism than of white people. Or why he would glaringly omit Southeast Asians, South Asians, and Middle Easterners (skin color, I'd bet). Or his calm assertion that Asians are "by nature very racist," which is true only in the sense that most people everywhere are.

But my first response was to cringe as hard my face would support: Possibly worse than hate speech is unequivocal endorsement by a white supremacist. Certainly it ranks high on the list of all-time Least Wanted Compliments.

Of course you can't take seriously someone whose grasp of Japanese culture amounts to "chopsticks, sliding doors, kimonos, and the koto." But still it seems sensible to consider what a mass-murdering white supremacist finds so honorable and useful in me. His praise illuminates how the pernicious Asian model-minority stereotype is entirely of a piece with hate crimes against black people—another hissing head on the hydra of racism. There's been enough writing on the model-minority stereotype to fill an internet, but the gist is that the existence of a model minority is one of the mechanisms on which white supremacy depends and thrives.

How so? For one thing, it not-so-subtly implies that if one minority can succeed (selectively, mind you), then racism must not exist in any form. Bill O'Reilly squirted out a fine specimen of this nonsense when he rhetorically asked whether the higher graduation rates, median incomes, and nuclear family percentages were proof of "Asian privilege"—conveniently failing to distinguish between types of Asians (some of whom are below-average on those cherry-picked metrics), nor pointing out that Asians are sorely underrepresented in media and leadership positions.

Watch our documentary on how the KKK is recruiting veterans:

Believing in a model minority also reassures whites that they aren't truly racist, since they feel so positively about Asians—it's just those other people who're the problem. This also permits them to avoid confronting any latent and unexamined negative stereotypes they might have. And to tiringly repeat the achievements of Asians only obscures the history and ongoing existence of overt prejudice and hate crimes against Asians, from Japanese internment to the murder of Vincent Chin (today is the killing's 33rd anniversary), to the shooting of three Muslim students in Chapel Hill four months ago. Oh hey, does anyone remember how Mark Wahlberg severely beat two Asian men in 1988 while calling them "slant-eyed gooks"? No? All right, have fun at Ted 2.

To some extent the survival of a model minority depends on getting Asians themselves to buy into it, either out of misplaced flattery, misplaced resentment of other minorities, ethnic snobbery, or the simple acceptance of cliché. Naturally white supremacy loves to see non-white minorities rip each other apart, and any Asian person dumb enough to sign up for this kind of co-optation is also probably willing to see whites and Asians as allied against "lazier" minority groups—to take a recent example, there's Mindy Kaling's brother Vijay Chokalingam (the DeVito to Kaling's Schwarzenegger), who attempted to prove reverse racism with a lame, methodologically unsound hoax, and was nonetheless predictably lauded by conservatives.

Roof, from his website

But even if an Asian person is cynical/racist enough to try and get ahead by shitting on blacks and kissing white ass, it won't benefit them, since the same racial pecking order that supposedly elevates Asians above blacks also traps them under the so-called bamboo ceiling. So whenever anyone, white or Asian, extols the "smart" or "respectful" or "hard-working" Asian culture, I think of that Onion headline from Our Dumb Century about World War II: "Japan Forms Alliance With White Supremacists in Well-Thought-Out Scheme."

In making these points about Asians, I don't want to distract anyone from the crux of Roof's attack—far more than anything else, it's about the long history of white extremist terrorism against blacks. But the broader issue—what's to be done, who's to do it—is not a mere matter of Southern white conservatives furling up a hateful flag. Everyone's got to pivot. Racism against blacks depends, in some part, on Asian complicity, as much as it relies (to paraphrase the writer Frank Guan) on the willingness of self-satisfied middle-class white liberals to pass the buck to "white trash." Sexism, too: Right before the shooting, Roof announced, "You rape our women and you're taking over our country. And you have to go." See how white supremacy validates itself in the notion of women as property to be defended, and how smoothly racism, patriarchy, and nationalism elide.

Roof is correct in one sense: Asians would make great allies. But he'll have to find his own.

Follow Tony on Twitter.

The 18-wheeler is a symbol of American freedom and blue-collar pride if ever there was one. But beyond a wary pass in the left hand lane, most of us don't give much thought to the giant Peterbilts and Macks barreling down the highway 24 hours a day. Recently, however, I found myself thinking more about these ubiquitous monsters. Who are the people driving them and what does it look like inside the cab? To find out, I spent two days at truck stops in New York and Pennsylvania soliciting random truckers to let me take a look inside their rigs.

The cabins of today's trucks are basically the industrial-grade cousin of your own passenger car, with the steering wheel, stick shift, and pedals all where you'd expect them only tougher, stronger looking. All the knobs and switches have the no-nonsense simplicity of heavy machinery designed to last. Despite their sleek design, many of these dashboards are buried under a nest of wires, power adapters, and the plastic cradles of cell phones, GPS devices, and satellite radios. The extended sleeper cabs allow for months of hauling at a time, and the extra living space functions as an all-in-one bedroom, kitchen, tool bench, closet, and dining room. There's no need to leave the truck for anything more than a bathroom break.

Like photos of other people's spaces? Look at these from the homes of America's bachelors.

Through the blur of early mornings and late nights, the small space becomes a messy assortment of personal and practical. Automotive supplies mix with DVDs and drink caddies, and everything eventually gets draped in dirty laundry. Containing one's whole life, these cabins are intensely personal spaces that reflect their occupant's background and personality. Photos of friends and family adorn the walls along with keepsakes, crosses, and other tokens of home. These stand-ins for family only serve as a reminder of their absence and speak to the loneliness of this profession. Perhaps this is why so many drivers were willing to have me aboard.

Carl Vera, swears by his vintage Peterbilt

The Fullers, a couple who sometime take their granddaughter with them on the road.

John Collins, 57, operates out of, Fort Meyers, Florida. John has been driving for 20 years. He operates a 2013 Peterbilt with a flatbed trailer for larger, industrial loads.

Eddie Edwards, 75, has been driving a truck for 55 years.

Frank and Linda Fuell. After Linda retired from nursing, she joined her husband on the road. They hope to earn enough money to remodel their home before Frank retires.

Jimmy and Crystal McQueen have been driving together for 20 years. They operate out of Georgia, and their main cargo is frozen chicken.

Fred Fredrickson, 65, has been driving for 35 years. He currently drives a 2013 Volvo for Ashley Furniture.

Steven Proofs

Student debt is basically a death wish. But he's kinda cool. Image via Flickr user DonkeyHotey.

Last week, the Ontario Student Assistance Program (OSAP) announced its partnership with Higher Ed Points, a program that will allow students to transfer Aeroplan miles into hard cash towards paying off tuition and other student debt.

The average student debt in Canada is $27,000, according to the Canadian Federation of Students. According to Stats Can, Ontario alone had 302,355 full-time borrowers in 2013, an increase of nearly 100,000 students in less than five years.

Higher Ed points was launched in November 2013, and started with only two schools, in Fredericton and Toronto. The program now has 67 institutions on board, including Student Aid Alberta and now, OSAP.

"We have a public figure of over $100,000 of transfers being made so far," said the program's founder, Suzanne Tyson, who has previously worked for Student Awards, a program that connects students to scholarships.

With many universities and colleges that are now on board missing the beginning of last year's school year, Tyson says that this coming September should be even more successful.

The Higher Ed program works by converting 35,000 Aeroplan miles to $250 that can be used toward tuition, rent, textbooks, meal plans, and even student cards on certain campuses. Anyone can donate their points to a student, and so, students are encouraged to ask their parents and grandparents to donate. To put this in perspective, however, you earn about one mile per dollar spent with many plans and participating brands.

That means that it's students with relatives of means that are most likely to benefit from the program.

The day that Higher Ed Points announced their partnership with OSAP, the Ontario branch of the CFS put out their own press release—denouncing the government for using the program and once again, calling on the province to reinvest into public post-secondary education to lower student debt. They claim the government is treating the solution to student debt like it's "extreme couponing."

"It seems this is not a real solution, as families who can't afford education, probably can't afford to spend money through their Aeroplan miles either," said Rajean Hoilett, chairperson for the CFS-O. "That is about $3.1 million if you're looking at paying for your entire student debt with Aeroplan points."

The CFS has been advocating for freezing tuition fees and the possibility of free post-secondary education.

Tyson says she knows this is not a solution, but that she made the program to create another currency for people to pay off debt. So far, the organization has shouldered all the costs involved in building the program and the technology involved.

"The rate is set by Aeroplan," said Tyson. "We've had conversations and, based on the economics of their program, I don't really have any influence over what rate they charge."

Tyson says that she would never advise for a student to start using Aeroplan to make use of the Higher Ed Point program, but that this is more suited for adults who have extra points from shopping and flying. She is trying to get other loyalty programs on board such as Air Miles, Scene, and Shoppers Optimum.

"As a private enterprise, as an entrepreneur, and taking two years out of my life and investing a ton of money, it's disheartening that, you know, we're held up as an evil when we're actually here trying to help," she said.

Follow Sierra Bein on Twitter.

Dzhokhar Tsarnaev. Photo courtesy of the FBI

Boston Bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev returned to court today for the first time since a federal grand jury sentenced him to die on May 15. His sentencing hearing brought victims and their families face-to-face with the infamous terrorist, offering them a chance for catharsis—and the usually stoic Tsarnaev broke down into tears and expressed regret for his crime.

"I would like to apologize to the victims and survivors," he said, later adding, "I am Muslim. My religion is Islam. I pray to Allah, to bestow his mercy on those affected in the bombing and their families. I pray for your healing."

There was never any doubt about the defendant's guilt. When the trial first began in March, Tsarnaev's attorney blatantly said, "It was him." The defense team spent the rest of the trial trying to convince the jury that their client was under the influence of his radicalized older brother, Tamerlan, when he placed a pressure cooker near the finish line of the 2013 marathon, killing three and injuring 260.

Until Wednesday, Tsarnaev has never spoken in public after the bombing, except to plead "not guilty." Rather than take the stand to beg for forgiveness during the penalty phase of the trial, the defendant and his legal team relied on a famous nun who met with him in prison and testified that he was "truly sorry." His silence left jurors trying to peer inside his mind with little new material to focus on besides the security camera still of Tsarnaev flicking off a camera in custody.

Ultimately, a jury didn't believe that he was coerced, or that he was remorseful, according to a complicated checklist they filled out to determine their verdict.

But on Wednesday, Tsarnaev, who has nothing to lose at this point, finally spoke up. "Immediately after the bombing, of which I am guilty of, there is little doubt about that, I learned their faces, their names," he reportedly said while crying.

Before Tsarnaev said his piece, family members of the victims got to express their anger and frustration while standing only about 20 feet away from the young man who caused them so much grief.

"What you did to my daughter was disgusting," Patricia Campbell, whose daughter died in the blast, told the 21-year-old. "I don't know what to say to you. I think they jury did the right thing."

Today was also the last anyone will see of Tsarnaev before he's locked up at the federal prison in Terre Haute, Indiana, to await a death that is probably years away (a lengthy appeals process is likely). The judge was the one who officially handed down the decree, but judges are required by law to follow the sentencing advice of juries in death penalty cases like this one, according to the Washington Post.

"I sentence you to the penalty of death by execution," District Judge George A. O'Toole Jr said, before piling on: "No one will remember that your teachers were fond of you, that you were funny, a good athlete. Whenever your name is mentioned, what will be remembered is the evil you have done."

Follow Allie Conti on Twitter.

Photo via Flickr user Elvert Barnes

In the midst of social and political upheaval in Baltimore, retired police officer and US Marine Corps veteran Michael A. Wood Jr. turned to Twitter on Wednesday to share stories of all the awful shit he claims to have witnessed as a local cop. Apparently, Wood decided to tell his story after he "virtually begged local media to give [him] a voice." Wood previously spoke out about his time in the force during a radio interview. A spokesperson for the Baltimore Police Department confirmed to the Huffington Post that Wood was a former officer who retired last year.

"What's really hard to convey is that some things are so common place," Wood wrote, "[that] they didn't register until I was on the other side."

Read a selection of his tweets below.

So here we go. I'm going to start Tweeting the things I've seen & participated in, in policing that is corrupt, intentional or not.
— Michael A. Wood Jr. (@MichaelAWoodJr) June 24, 2015

A detective slapping a completely innocent female in the face for bumping into him, coming out of a corner chicken store.
— Michael A. Wood Jr. (@MichaelAWoodJr) June 24, 2015

Punting a handcuffed, face down, suspect in the face, after a foot chase. My handcuffs, not my boot or suspect
— Michael A. Wood Jr. (@MichaelAWoodJr) June 24, 2015

CCTV cameras turning as soon as a suspect is close to caught.
— Michael A. Wood Jr. (@MichaelAWoodJr) June 24, 2015

Pissing and shitting inside suspects homes during raids, on their beds and clothes.
— Michael A. Wood Jr. (@MichaelAWoodJr) June 24, 2015

Jacking up and illegally searching thousands of people with no legal justification
— Michael A. Wood Jr. (@MichaelAWoodJr) June 24, 2015

Summonsing officers who weren't there so they could collect the overtime.
— Michael A. Wood Jr. (@MichaelAWoodJr) June 24, 2015

Targeting 16-24 year old black males essentially because we arrest them more, perpetrating the circle of arresting them more.
— Michael A. Wood Jr. (@MichaelAWoodJr) June 24, 2015

These things happen(ed), now how do we fix it? We need police. Let's figure out how to do it right. The starting line is marked "Empathy"
— Michael A. Wood Jr. (@MichaelAWoodJr) June 24, 2015

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The springtime sun blazes over East Arrow Highway in Pomona, California, and the glare off the whitish-gray concrete walkways forces everyone to squint. Regina Dotson moves busily in and out of her office on the second floor of a residential structure built in the style of a standard Southern California roadside motel. Dotson is middle-aged and stylish; a cross embellished with a verse from Corinthians—"love is patient, love is kind"—stands on one of her filing cabinets. Prince plays softly on the radio as a series of young children run in from the balcony to ask for a piece of candy and a hug. Dotson reminds them to say "please" and "thank you."

It's hard to believe we're inside a prison.

"I love it here," Dotson says. "You come to work and you love on babies, and you get to be a part of a program that gives women an opportunity to change their lives. My husband says that I'm one of the few people that he knows that really likes their job."

Dotson is the sole correctional counselor assigned to oversee inmates at Prototypes, the only Community Prisoner Mother Program (CPMP) left in California. To get one of the 24 beds here, inmates must pass a comprehensive screening process, which takes into account the nature of their crime, their history of violence or lack thereof, and their mental, physical, and dental health. Hopeful applicants have been known to have all of their teeth pulled in an effort to meet dental health requirements—that's how badly prisoners covet these spots, which give them one of the rarest opportunities in the American incarceration system: the chance to be with their young children while they serve their time.

In much of the US, the notion that incarcerated mothers can be with their kids full-time sounds radical, but in other countries it's a given. A 2014 report from the Library of Congress surveyed 97 countries that allow young children to remain with their mothers, even if it means postponing the mother's sentence, including Kazakhstan, Colombia, and Iraq. Germany has granted female prisoners work-release assignments for "mothering," which lets women leave prison in the morning, tend to their children all day, and return to the prison at night. Germany, along with Mexico, Greece, and several other countries, make provisions for children to stay with their mothers on the inside well past the newborn nursery stage. Some states do too, whether through programs like California's CPMP, prison nursery programs in ten states, or alternative custody programs, which allow mothers to live with their children in a low-security residential setting. The US is one of four countries to allow the separation of newborn babies from their incarcerated mothers, usually within 24 or 48 hours of birth. The others are the Bahamas, Liberia, and Suriname.

In the past few decades, issues involving motherhood behind bars have become increasingly urgent: The number of women in prison rose 646 percent between 1980 and 2010, and seven out of ten of those women are mothers. According to a 2010 Pew survey, there were 120,000 mothers behind bars nationwide, and 2.7 million children with an incarcerated parent.

The toll on these children is obvious; it's also quantifiable. The University of California-Irvine's Kristin Turney published findings in 2014 that children with an incarcerated parent experienced depression at rates more than three times higher than children without an incarcerated parent, as well as significantly higher rates of anxiety, attention deficit disorder, behavior problems, speech problems, asthma, obesity, epilepsy, and other conditions. For babies, psychic wounds may be even deeper: A 1996 Corrections Today article stated that "empirical evidence strongly suggests that the ability to feel concern or sympathy for others is impaired severely when the newborn infant is deprived of the love and nurturing of its mother."

"The state is paying for not only the mother in prison, but the child in foster care, and the destruction that causes among families."
–State Senator Carol Liu

"Hopefully some relative is taking care of" children with an incarcerated mother, says California State Senator Carol Liu, the author of recent legislation designed to help incarcerated mothers stay with their children. "But more likely they are winding up in our foster care system. Which means the state is paying for not only the mother in prison, but the child in foster care, and the destruction that causes among families."

In theory, CPMPs and alternative custody programs could mitigate some of that damage. But alternative custody is barely utilized, and CPMPs have been troubled since the first ones in the state launched in 1980. There were never more than ten of these facilities, and today Prototypes is the only one not shut down by the state. That's not to say that the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation didn't try to close it. They did.

But then something unexpected happened: The inmates themselves fought to keep their mother-infant program open, and they won.

Illustrations by Tyler Boss

Veronica Sánchez arrived at Prototypes in 2010. It hadn't been an easy route. Her charge was grand theft, and as a nonviolent offender she had been granted a bed; her six-month-old son Andres could live with her until her release. Then prison bureaucrats lost her medical file, without which she couldn't be transferred to the CPMP. For weeks she was shuffled between cells and facilities while administrators considered how to proceed, at one point telling her she would need to remain at the Central California Women's Facility in Chowchilla for six months to rebuild her file from scratch. Meanwhile, Andres was hitting seven months old. Then eight months old.

Finally, when Andres was 15 months old, the transfer came through. "So I made it," Veronica says, still sounding amazed five years later. "And then from there, I'm there."

On VICE News: Fearing a "Catastrophic Incident," 400 Federal Officers Descended on the Baltimore Protests

As we talk, Veronica's 16-year-old son, Ezequiel, stands in the kitchen of the three-bedroom house near Oxnard he shares with his mother and five siblings. He is wearing only the pants of his baseball uniform, listening to jazz through a tinny speaker, and cooking a feast of pancakes and eggs for Veronica and Andres, who is now five. The rest of the children are at their father's for the weekend, but Ezequiel prefers his mother's house. "You want some pancakes with that syrup?" he asks his little brother, who says frankly that he does not.

"We started to hear rumors. It gives me the chills to think about it now... They started to tell us our program might get closed too." –Veronica Sánchez

Ezequiel and his siblings were all over six years old at the time of Veronica's incarceration, which meant they were too old to join her in the CPMP. Veronica, pregnant with her seventh child—a girl this time—is drinking a cup of instant coffee at her dining room table on her one day off this week, remembering her stint at Prototypes, and the moment the inmates realized the program was under the axe. "We started to hear rumors. It gives me the chills to think about it now," she says. "They started to tell us our program might get closed too."

A year and a half after Veronica and Andres arrived at Prototypes, the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR) started closing its mother-infant prison programs one by one. Mothers and children from the closing programs got funneled to Pomona to finish out their sentences at Prototypes, and the doors shut behind them, for good. It was the first days of the implementation of the Public Safety Realignment Act (AB 109), usually called simply "realignment." The act was the state's response to a 2011 US Supreme Court decision that atrocious conditions in California prisons amounted to a violation of the Eighth Amendment, which prohibits cruel and unusual punishment. AB 109 was designed to reduce prison overcrowding by reshuffling low-level, nonviolent offenders out of state prisons and into county jails, and to ease prisoners' re-entry into the world outside of lockup upon release by incarcerating them in their home counties when possible, closer to friends and family.

According to Regina Dotson and the Prototypes website, that meant there weren't enough eligible women in state prisons to populate the CPMPs. Those few who would have qualified—whose crimes were non-serious, nonviolent, and non-sexual—were now being sentenced to county facilities, which have no relationship with CPMPs or any other type of co-residence program. Los Angeles County's primary jail for women, the Century Regional Detention Facility (CRDF), allows women who give birth in custody just two days in an off-site hospital with their babies, or three days if they have a Caesarian section. There is a precedent for jail co-residence, however, in the nursery at Rikers Island in New York City, where newborns can stay with their mothers for up to a year. Asked whether such a program could be established in Los Angeles County, a spokesperson said, "While the Sheriff's Department is open to considering alternative programs, there are currently no programs of this type. Further information and research would be necessary to determine if such a program would fit with the unique demands of CRDF."

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At the time of realignment, Veronica was the president of the Inmate Advisory Committee at Pomona, which is allowed to meet privately and discuss concerns without the presence of a corrections officer. As they learned of CPMPs closing across the state, women at the meetings were increasingly frightened that the Prototypes CPMP would be closed too, and that they would have to be separated from their children once again. Staff had told them no plans to shut down were on the horizon, but the women were not convinced.

"So I go to Ms. Dotson and I tell her, this is a concern of the population and honestly, we need some answers," says Veronica. Dotson arranged a meeting with the women and Ronald Babcock, then Captain of CDCR's Women and Children's Service Unit. Babcock "just tells us not to worry, and worst case scenario that [Prototypes] will just not take any more inmates and just wait 'til everybody there is done with their time [before closing]. Like, really hopeful stuff. They're just not taking anybody more in. But at least we're safe, you know? He reassured us like 10,000 times."

At the next Inmate Advisory Committee meeting, Veronica took the pulse of the room. She asked if they bought Babcock's reassurances, and they responded that they were skeptical. "And sure enough," Veronica says, soon after that the women were summoned to a mandatory meeting in the TV room. They weren't told what the meeting was about, but were told not to bring their children with them. "We knew it," she says. "A couple of the women started crying."

"So you pull this child from the system, bring them back to their mom, all hopeful, all happy, and then you put them back in the system?"
–Veronica Sánchez

While she waited for the meeting to begin, Veronica recalls, she started getting mad. Just tell us, she thought. A corrections officer looked at the women and said, "I want everybody to take a deep breath."

"Fuck you," said one of the inmates. "Spit it out."

So he gave them the news, straight-up. The CPMP at Prototypes would be closing, and the women would have two options: They could go back to prison, or to an alternative program in Bakersfield. In either case, the women would not be able to keep their children with them. Veronica remembers one woman sliding from her chair down to the floor, having an anxiety attack. Staff debated whether to call an ambulance.

"Some of [the children] were going to be picked up by child protective services," she says. "They were going to go to foster homes. These women fought the system to get their kids out! So you pull this child from the system, bring them back to their mom, all hopeful, all happy, and then you put them back in the system?"

After the meeting, the women were put on lockdown and programming was cancelled, with the rationale that emotions were running high and an inmate might do something desperate, like take her child and bolt (Ms. Dotson disputes that the inmates were put on lockdown). Some of the women lost heart, figuring that CDCR was a behemoth not worth taking on. Others decided they wouldn't go down without a fight.

Like the rest of the American incarceration system in general and California prisons in particular, CPMPs have had their share of problems. In 2007, there were two horrific incidents of medical neglect at the San Diego mother-infant prison program which nearly resulted in the deaths of two children, These events prompted representatives from a Bay Area group called Legal Services for Prisoners with Children (LSPC) to visit the six mother-infant prison programs then active in California. They were not impressed. LSPC observers expressed concern for the children's physical and emotional safety, noting that only the Bakersfield facility showed any evidence that children lived there. The rest appeared like a "clinic or some sort of treatment facility for adults, not for children."

If Prototypes once looked barren, its appearance has changed in the last five years. Strollers, tricycles, scooters, and plastic sea creature–shaped vehicles are everywhere. A playground with a soft, padded floor stands in the center of the buildings. Rainbow and shamrock murals adorn the walls of the infants' nursery, and the Head Start classroom doors are hung with signs asking passersby to keep their voices down.

It's not an ideal place to live; it's still a prison. Inmates have complaints about the food, the medical care, the amount of required programming, the other women. "I don't ever want to do this again," says Whitney, a current Prototypes inmate with a one-year-old son. This is her third stint in prison. "I did it before, but I didn't have a husband before. I didn't have a kid. This has been the hardest term by far."

Some studies indicate that doing time with her child may help Whitney get out and stay out of the system. In one often-cited example, Nebraska mothers who were allowed to keep their children with them in that state's prison nursery program, the recidivism rate was 9 percent within five years. For mothers who gave birth while in custody and had to part from their baby right after delivery, the recidivism rate was 33.3 percent.

Although a host of practical and ethical limitations have prevented anyone from doing a comprehensive study on mother-infant co-residence programs like Prototypes, there is some evidence of positive outcomes for them as well. A team headed by Columbia University professor Mary Byrne looked at preschoolers, some of whom had spent up to the first 18 months of life in prison and some who had been separated from their incarcerated mothers. Their study, published in 2014, found a much-reduced risk of anxiety and depression for children able to stay with their mothers in prison, and concluded that "co-residence should be promoted as a best practice for incarcerated childbearing women."

The Prototypes prisoners had a more ground-level view of these programs—and they didn't want to give their children up. After that meeting where the coming closure was announced, a core group of nine women, out of the 24 inmates then at Prototypes, emerged as the leaders of the struggle. Veronica and her friend Denise, whose children often played together, were the most active. Using legal mail—a way for inmates to correspond with lawyers and counselors in confidence—Denise waged a relentless campaign. "It was a lot of letter-writing and it was a lot of praying. Every step of the way, I was writing every single senator," says Denise. Her correspondents included State Senator Loni Hancock, who works with State Senator Carol Liu on issues affecting incarcerated women, and Karen Shain, then the Policy Director at LSPC. (Shain was one of the investigators who had visited Prototypes in 2009.)

"The women were amazing," Regina Dotson recalls.

With the help of a determined and savvy Prototypes staffer (who declined to be interviewed for this article), the inmates arranged a meeting for March 23, 2012, with CDCR representatives, senators Hancock and Liu, and Shain, who Denise describes as "full-blown going to bat for us. She said, 'If I have to strap my body to the [Pacific Gas and Electric] pole out there, it's not gonna happen. They're not shutting you down.'" The journalist Lisa Ling would be there too, bearing witness.

The nine inmates sat around a table, each with photographs of their children propped up in front of them, facing the CDCR reps and the senators. The idea was to transform their children's fates from an abstract idea to a concrete image in the minds of attendees, to put a face to the children who might soon be swept away from their mothers by the pitiless tides of bureaucracy.

"It's outrageous to me that they smile and they're very pleasant, and they say, 'Oh, we're taking the best care [of these women]... But no, they're not." –Carol Liu

"That meeting got a little intense," Veronica laughs. She remembers one of the senators' aides grilling a CDCR rep about his nonresponsiveness via email, and the senators' growing impatience. They wanted to understand the CDCR's plans for the children about to be relocated, and they felt they weren't getting answers. "They were like, 'What are you going to do with these women? They need to know,'" Veronica says. "'And what's going to happen to the kids that are going back into the system? Are you going to help their mothers get them back later?' And all this stuff that put the Department of Corrections in this big old hot seat."

"You know, speaking to these people is like a shell game," says Senator Carol Liu, recalling her efforts to get answers from the CDCR at the meeting. "It's outrageous to me that they smile and they're very pleasant, and they say, 'Oh, we're taking the best care [of these women]... But no, they're not."

Ling told the CDCR reps that if the CPMP closed and separated the mothers from their children once again, she would take the story to NBC's Dateline. Then the meeting wrapped, and the women resigned themselves to waiting for a decision to be handed down from CDCR.

Afterward, Senator Liu was baffled. She doesn't buy the claim that realignment is responsible for the closure of California's CPMPs. "We still have close to 4,000 women in our state prison system, and I would think that at least 50 percent of them would benefit from a program like this," she says.

In 2010, Liu's frustration with the number of mothers incarcerated in California prisons led her to successfully co-sponsor California Senate Bill 1266, which established the Alternative Custody Program. ACP is designed to allow women who were their children's primary caregivers before their incarceration (a category that included approximately 6,500 women as of 2010) to live with their children in a low-security residential setting. The Alternative Custody Program was implemented in 2011—before realignment began—but has been so underutilized that this February, Liu authored a bill clarifying the criteria for eligibility. The bill insists upon a clear timeline for admission or rejection to the program (under the current system, applications can languish for months), and "clarifies that existing medical and psychiatric conditions are not a basis for excluding an inmate from the Alternative Custody Program." Of 7,200 applications that CDCR has received since 2011, only 460 women have been admitted to the program. (The bill's chances of making its way through the state legislature are uncertain.)

The maddening thing about that low number is that the program works, says Liu, pointing out that 90 percent of women who participate are able to finish the program without violating its rules and being ejected from it. Now they're out "living their lives," she says. She isn't sure why the CDCR is resistant to mother-infant co-residence programs, except that the current approach to corrections is "not a stick and a carrot, as far as I'm concerned. It's a stick and a club."

Phil Ladew is an attorney at the California CASA Association, a group that advocates for children caught up in the criminal justice system. He has a theory about why mother-infant prison programs are so unpopular. "One of the things we battle a lot, policy-wise, is this impression that prison is a punishment. And it is. We don't do a good job of rehabilitation even when we say that we're trying to do that," he says. "It just strikes people the wrong way, that we're making a prison into a palace, and that [inmates] care for their kids on the taxpayers' dime. It's really, in my mind, backwards thinking. It's a dime today, but a dollar tomorrow. Or more, if you don't spend the time."

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In Veronica's dining room, the afternoon is winding down; the house is quiet. Ezequiel is at baseball practice. Andres is curled up on an easy chair playing a video game. Veronica is eating a cookie, looking through the scrapbook she kept while she was at Prototypes, which is full of photographs and letters from her children and her niece.

She smiles, thinking of the day when the women were summoned for a second time to the TV room for a mandatory meeting. "This time, the note they posted on the office had a little smiley face," she says. "We tried to get the news out of the counselors, because we had to wait like 30 minutes before the meeting!"

The women went in and sat down. Everyone was smiling, staff and inmates alike. First, Dotson told them, the lockdown had been lifted. Second: The program was staying open, and the CDCR has signed a two-year contract with Prototypes, so it's certain that they'll be here for at least that long. That was enough time for all the women inside to finish their sentences in the company of their children.

"I jumped up I don't know how many feet, and [Ms. Dotson] started laughing," says Veronica. It was a small victory in a much larger war, but a victory.

Lauren Lee White is a freelance writer and a fellow at the USC Center on Public Diplomacy. She lives with her husband and son in Los Angeles. Follow her on Twitter.

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Photo by Flickr user Jules & Jenny

Reverend Lawrence T. Richardson knew as early as age nine that he was called to ministry. He grew up in a Southern Baptist congregation and went on to attend Liberty Baptist Seminary. Now, he leads a United Church of Christ congregation in Minneapolis, and says he's felt God's love in his life increase tenfold.

Richardson's story is much like that of other pastors—hearing God speak, having great love for the church, and having his calling confirmed by the church, when he became a pastor. But unlike the many other pastors in the United States, Richardson is transgender.

The dialogue about religion and trans issues almost always pitted churchgoers against the LGBT community. To be sure, there are many Christian congregations that shun trans individuals, preaching that they are living in sin, that they are broken and in need of restoration through a very specific God. But in other instances, the church and the trans community are overlapping circles, with members of both caught in the middle, negotiating both their gender identity and their religious convictions.

While experience as a trans man in the church hasn't been easy, Richardson feels that God has blessed Christians with love and compassion that must be extended to all people.

"Just because a human being assigns a label to what God has made doesn't make it definitively whatever the label defines them to be," Richardson says. "We must remember that the United States is in its infancy and is a nation that was founded on slavery, genocide, and the oppression of anyone who fits outside of white, heteronormative, patriarchal systems. Anything or anyone who falls outside of those norms risks being called sinful by those who wish to maintain these oppressive systems."

Similarly, Father Shannon Kearns, a transgender man who is an ordained priest in the Old Catholic Church, believes that the opposition of religion and trans lives is a false dichotomy. "There are so many things to learn about the world, the church, and theology from transgender Christians, if only people would listen."

Part of the problem, Kearns says, is that hostility toward transgender people and issues that face gender minorities is still a very sticky subject, even in supposedly liberal or progressive churches. He and his fellow transgender clergy have trouble finding jobs. After he came out as transgender, he says, "I've had to fight twice as hard to get the most basic—and low paying—jobs in the church. This highlights the intense prejudice against transgender people even in liberal and progressive churches. There are many transgender clergy that I know and very few of them are serving in churches mostly because no one will hire them."

This conflict creates a self-perpetuating problem. Churches in almost all denominations refuse to understand or hire transgender people, allowing them to create a narrative uncontested by the presence of trans people, which enables them to say that trans people are not within the church or good to hire.

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Kearns says this is an issue unique to transgender people. Prior to coming out as trans, Kearns was out as gay, and says it wasn't nearly as hard for him to get hired. The recent and growing acceptance of gay, bisexual, and lesbian people in the church has not extended to trans people. It seems the church can accept differentiations in sexual attraction, but isn't quite ready for differentiations in gender identity.

Transgender people also risk excommunication for being unrepentant about their identities. Most famously, Leelah Alcorn, a young trans woman, committed suicide after her evangelical parents insisted she attend Christian reparative therapy sessions. As a result, many transgender people who come out and have previously been active in the church find themselves having to choose between their church life and their new life as their gender identity.

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Kearns says there are upsides, too. "My faith was deepened by my experience of transitioning. I learned so much about myself, and that informed my faith. That unexpected deepening has been such a gift."

Kearns wears many hats as the co-founder of QueerTheology.com, a site dedicated to exploring and understanding Christian queer theology beyond just elementary debates and texts. According to him, exploring queer theology is one of the best ways for cisgender people of faith to support transgender people: "The 101 education is important, but it's not the only thing. Transgender people often have insights into scripture and theology that are rich and enlightening for all people. Give them the opportunity to share those insights."

These insights include explorations into theological areas rejected by the mainstream church, including liberation theologies developed by marginalized people in the Americas. Author and theologian James Cone is a pioneer of black liberation theology in the United States, which explores the idea of Jesus Christ as an exemplar for identifying with the suffering and the marginalized of society. In that vein, queer people within the church have developed their own understandings of scripture that has fostered a sense of queer liberation.

One interpretation focuses on the relationship of the Trinity—God, Jesus, and the Holy Spirit—as polyamorous relationship, uniquely giving and receiving love in a triune group. Other interpretations incorporate body studies and body theology in discussions of what it means to be made in God's image (referencing the creation narratives in Genesis). These expansive interpretations, grounded in both scripture and the life experiences of queer people, create new opportunities for worship.

"There are as many ways of being transgender as there are of being Christian." - Austen Hartke

Sarah Moon is a non-binary individual (does not identify as either man nor woman) who will attend a United Methodist seminary in the fall, with the goal of becoming a pastor in the Methodist tradition. But attending a Methodist seminary doesn't restrict her faith to a traditional Protestant view. Moon's faith is more syncretistic: "I have been focusing on studying gnostic Christianity and different types of neo-paganism lately. Though I don't think I'd ever consider myself gnostic, I like the fact that they tell new stories about familiar Christian figures. I believe that is something I can do in my own faith."

Like Kearns and Richardson, Moon views her gender identity as something that draws her closer to God, not apart. "[Gender non-conforming people] can bring unique symbols to the table for understanding the God of the Bible, who at some points has both breasts and a uterus and a penis, who is a mother and a father, who both has no gender, and made men and women (and everyone else) in hir image."

Transgender Christians, as diverse as the denominations of their religion, bring themselves to the discussion of what it means to be created by God, to exist as a "new creation," as the Bible says. Austen Hartke, a trans man who recently graduated from Luther Seminary in the Minneapolis-St. Paul area, put it this way: "There are as many ways of being transgender as there are of being Christian. Of the percentage of the world population that identifies as transgender, there are people who identify within the gender binary, and outside of that binary, and people who never disclose their trans status, and others for whom it's a defining characteristic. The one thing they have in common is that they don't identify wholly with the gender they were assigned at birth."

The acceptance of transgender people within Christianity is still hard to come by, but one thing is consistent: transgender Christians are determined to live their faith, no matter how that task works out in their own relationship to their churches.

As Hartke says, "Transgender people bring stories of a God who pursues us relentlessly. A God who wants to know us—the real us—so badly that nothing can get in the way. Trans people's stories are inherently about grace and gospel. I think that cis-normative, hetero-normative churches who don't invite and respond to those stories lose out on a great gift."

Follow Dianna E. Anderson on Twitter.

You've probably heard a version of what's sometimes called "Only Child Syndrome": Supposedly, people without siblings get so much attention from their parents when they're kids that they turn into obnoxious, entitled adults. According to this well-worn stereotype, Angelica, the spoiled, sibling-less three-year-old from Rugrats grew up to be some kind of attention-seeking megalomaniac, like former chairman of the Federal Reserve—and only child—Alan Greenspan.

Another version of this theory comes from China, where, if you were born the "one-child policy," you're ostensibly part of a generation of self-centered only children called " Little Emperors."

On one hand, reducing people's entire psychological profile to one factor like that seems reductive. Still, something as seemingly insignificant as the number of words you hear before you're three years old can have scientifically documented effect on what kind of person you grow up to be—surely being an only child does something to you, right?

To separate fact from fiction, we found some experts on what happens to children without siblings. Dr. Toni Falbo of the University of Texas is one the world's leading researchers on only-child-itis. Dr. Carl Pickhardt is a therapist who spent years in the trenches with families, including ones with only children, and then wrote a couple books about what he learned.

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VICE: Let's start at the source: Are parents of only children somehow different?
Carl Pickhardt: This only child is the first and last child that these parents are going to have, and it's the only chance at parenting they get, so they really want to do it well and right. This is a family where they're making a really hard effort to do their best by their child, who conversely—because of the attachment of the parents—really wants to do well by the parents, and do right by them, so it's not, generally speaking, a laid-back family situation.

Toni Falbo: In a lot of one-child families, the parents aren't really interested in the kid and they might have had the kid just because it was maybe sort of an accident. Or in some cultures you have to have a kid, that's how you know that you're really married. So they send the kid off to boarding school or, you know, they're not really invested in the kid at all. Those kids suffer from other issues, potentially, but that's not real common in the United States.

Are the inattentive parents of only children different from other inattentive parents?
Falbo: There's only so much one can attend to at one time. So some kids probably do get away with a whole bunch of stuff because the parents just don't know about it.

But only children do usually get a larger share of the parents' attention than they would otherwise, right?
Pickhardt: The only child gets all the social, emotional, and material parenting—and focus—that the parents have to give. What that means is that they don't have to share that with anybody on the one hand, but they also have to absorb everything that the parents have to give.

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And your research has shown that that's actually good in measurable ways, right? They have higher self-esteem?
Falbo: Not to say they have very high self-esteem, but, on average they score a little higher in a statistically significant way, but that might be one point out of 20; so it's not a huge difference. It's enough to be statistically significant. And, of course there's going to be a lot of variety: There are going to be some people with low self-esteem and some people who have very high self-esteem. So we're just looking at the average score across a group of people.

But does that mean they're full of themselves?
Pickhardt: They tend to be very often self-confident because they peer with adults. What happens is they tend to be comfortable dealing with adult authorities, and speaking up to adult authorities, because to some degree they put themselves on the same standing with adult authorities.

How do we know they're comfortable around adults?
Falbo: There's some strong anecdotal information about this. Teachers who have only children in their classrooms say that the only children really feel very comfortable interacting with the teacher. Whereas if you come from a larger family or you're a later-born, you may not have to spend so much time focusing on what the teacher says.

Since they talk to adults, do only children learn curse words sooner?
Falbo: I don't know [laughs]. I haven't done that research study. You ought to put that out there as a question and see what people think on the web. Report to me with your findings!

This all sounds great, but is there a downside?
Pickhardt: The downside of that is that they can be pretty hard on themselves— because when they say to themselves, I am in this family. I can have an equal say to my parents, and equal standing, what they sometimes do is they apply equal standards and say, I should be able to do as well as my parents, and they get exaggerated standards of performance. So they push themselves pretty hard. If you have an only child, generally speaking, you don't have to do much pushing, because they're over-pushing themselves.

How can that hurt them?
Pickhardt: They can be pretty critical when they don't do as well as they like. They're pretty strongly self-directed. They're usually self-willed because they're used to looking out for their own self-interests. Very often they can be quite possessive in terms of possessions, and privacy, and time to themselves. They're pretty sure of the values that they hold, and they can sense that they know very often what is right. Often in adult relationships, they're not very comfortable in conflict, because they just haven't had much experience with it.

People say they're materialistic because their parents can buy them more stuff. Is there anything to that?
Pickhardt: Very valued possessions can become particularly important, because sometimes they have an attachment to things. They haven't got siblings to attach to, so things become more important then they otherwise might.

Falbo: I can see that this might be an issue for some people like in a psychotherapy session. But it wouldn't be necessarily characteristic of all folks who have no siblings. You know, some people have no siblings, but since they pretty much always had what they wanted—or what their parents thought they needed—they don't really have to feel threatened that someone is going to take it away. So they may be more relaxed about possessions.

What about the stereotype that they always want their way?
Pickhardt: Put these kids in groups in school, and very often what you find is that the leader of the group is the only child. The reason for that is that the kid does not want to be bound—doesn't want their performance determined by what other people do. They'd rather try to govern the group so they can gain a level of performance that works for them.

But again, according to your research they're measurably better a school than kids with siblings, right?
Falbo: The achievement difference becomes more obvious as they get older. I think that's probably because, if you only have one kid then you can pay to send them to college, pay to get them into a master's program, and so on. Whereas if you have six or seven kids, you just don't have that much money, so it just leads to them not getting as much education. It doesn't necessarily mean that they get no education; they just don't get as high of a level on average.

Does that show up when they move on to careers?
Pickhardt: Issues of sharing, issues of cooperation, issues of compromise, issues of making concessions, may be, at least until I get used to it, may be a little harder for me to make [if I'm an only child]. I'm used to calling my own shots and I'm used to controlling my own performance and when I have to change, when my performance depends on my teamwork with other people, then I have to start developing a set of skills I may not have developed before, but I can develop.

But they're at an advantage, right? Since statistically they do better in school?
Falbo: Once you start being successful then that tends to get you into the higher achievement groups, just because you're more cooperative and attentive and follow instructions and do that sort of thing.

Has anyone studied their ability to make friends?
Pickhardt: They tend not to be social butterflies. They don't hang around very often just with large groups of other kids. What they're interested in is a few select, very close, good friends. And part of that is wanting to have the quality of intimacy the they had with their parents. But they're also trying to create something kind of like sibling attachment with their friends so they can have that kind of closeness.

Do the numbers back up this idea that they're not out searching for friends, but they do have them?
Falbo: In the 50s, they had theorists who had "needs" for everything: They had "need for achievement," "need for hostility," and then "need for affiliation," which means feeling like you've got to get out there and talk to people. Their "need for affiliation" [score] was a little bit lower but they would report not being lonely.

Did that survey ask the only children how many friends they had?
Falbo: Only children came up with numbers that were comparable to what other people had. So it appears that only children don't feel the need to be with people that much, and they don't feel lonely when they are on their own.

Do they have a tougher time getting into romantic relationships?
Pickhardt: They do what any child does: They have to take how they were formatively influenced, and they have to see how that formative influence fits in with the demands of a relationship, and usually what happens is that the person in some ways finds out, "Well this may have worked when I was coming up, but it doesn't seem to work very well now," and they make changes, and they learn how to conduct themselves differently.

But my question is, are they bad at dating? After all, there are so many articles about dating an only child versus dating someone with siblings.
Falbo: Sometimes people use being an only child as an excuse, so if they're really nervous about something or maybe they're called out about bad behavior, they say, "Oh well I'm an only child. What can you expect?" So I think it just becomes a way of them explaining themselves so they can get away with it. You know, "I'm just defective permanently, blah blah blah."

And when someone does bust out that excuse as an adult, what then?
Falbo: I've met a lot of people who have been in marriages where they had a husband who said, "Oh well I can't do that. I'm an only child." I say, "Well, don't let them get away with that anymore! Just say no. You're not a child anymore. You don't even live with your parents anymore, so forget about it."

Follow Mike Pearl on Twitter.

Image via Flickr user David Joyce

Queenstown is the adventure sport capital of New Zealand. But as the tourist numbers swell during the ski season, so do the stag parties, boy's weekends, corporate retreats, and international business meetings. As a result, the city has developed a largely hidden yet hugely profitable sex industry.

For the sex workers who migrate south for the season, Queenstown is unique. Prostitution is legal throughout New Zealand but as Jasmine*, one of southern New Zealand's most popular escorts, told VICE, "It's more international here."

Jasmine tours New Zealand's South Island throughout the year, but spends most of her time in the mountain town. Currently at the end of a 44-day stint, she is one of the longest-staying sex workers in Queenstown. "Most of the girls book a room for about five days," explained Alice, a receptionist at a bustling motel in town. "Jasmine stays for longer because she's so busy."

Most of Jasmine's clients are between 26 and 50 years old, and almost all are international tourists. Business is so steady and reliable that she organizes rooms months ahead of time, booking them out for several weeks before even speaking to a client.

But people in town are often looking for more comprehensive attendance. The craving for companionship on holiday has led to another hugely popular service in Queenstown, the girlfriend experience (GFE). VICE spoke to Antonia, the owner of Indulge Me NZ, which offers GFE as well as everything from topless waitressing to lesbian shows. She started Indulge Me NZ two years ago after noticing a spike in this market over winter, and it's grown steadily since.

"Our girls get paid to hang out with the guys," says Antonia. "You're basically eye candy on their arm." Far from their families and partners, the men are keen to hang out with young women for a day, but unlike the common GFE, in Queenstown it's relatively chaste. "You get dressed up and have drinks or a meal together. It doesn't include kissing, although one of our girls was paid $300 to kiss a guy on a GFE," says Antonia.

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Girls are also often asked to cook or clean while undressed. "Tomorrow I have some girls making bacon and eggs for a group of guys topless," Antonia says. "Sometimes they'll go to the shooting range and shoot guns with them while they're naked. Whether it's a stag party or guys' weekend, they just want to see naked girls."

Antonia and Jasmine say they both choose to work in Queenstown because the clients are nicer than in the rest of the country. "Ninety-five percent of people are good" says Jasmine, but adds that making friends with local police has helped her when clients have tried to skip out without paying.

Antonia notes she's only ever had to cancel two show bookings because the men were too drunk or rowdy. "I make sure the girls collect money before they start so they can leave if it gets unsafe," she adds.

Like any skiing or biking town, busy seasons in Queenstown revolve around sports, making July to October and December to March the busiest periods. The seasons on either side are so dead that girls working in strip clubs can make as little as $50 a night, and escorts and show-oriented businesses like Antonia's often make nothing at all. During this time, Jasmine drives to towns like Nelson, where she began working in the sex trade, and has regular customers who guarantee her income. Antonia makes ends meet by bartending in Queenstown, although the bars are quiet too. The women say the quiet months are worth it though, as they more than make up for it during the busy ski season.

Antonia reflects that the main difference about working in the industry in Queenstown is the motivation behind the women involved. Queenstown's sex industry is driven by money and entertainment. "A lot of girls that strip and do my XXX shows are backpackers looking for extra cash, not women looking to escape," says Antonia. "I choose to do it and I enjoy it."

These women and the rest of Queenstown's sex industry are now gearing up for July, when Australian tourists consume the town. As usual in the cold weather, business is booming.

Names have been changed.

Follow Caitlin on Twitter.

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