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High School Football Players Charged in Hazing; Ebola Protocol Breach; Ferguson Protests Demanding Changes; Retirement Savings: Women Doing the Right Things

Aired October 13, 2014 - 09:30   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.


ANA CABRERA, CNN ANCHOR: Hello again. Thanks for staying with me. I'm Ana Cabrera, in for Carol Costello. Glad to have you with us.

Now, the season is over for a New Jersey high school football team and the future of this program is in jeopardy after some very serious, very disturbing allegations including sexual assault. Seven players now face charges. The prosecutors allege these incidents happened in the locker room as part of a hazing ritual. This is a team that's gone far, gone to the state championships in the past.

Now CNN's Andy Scholes is following this story. Andy?

ANDY SCHOLES, CNN SPORTS: Hey, Ana. Yes, these allegations have rocked the entire community. Now this team, as you said, they've won state championships three of past four years but their season is now cancelled after allegations of hazing in the locker room.

Now, this is what happened. Older players allegedly turned off the lights and filled the room and jeers (ph) and they accosted and sexually harassed four freshman players in four separate incidents. Now according to Middlesex County Prosecutor Andrew Carey, the older players held the victims against their will while other juvenile defendants improperly touched the juvenile victims in a sexual manner.

Now, the seven players who have been arrested were charged with aggravated sexual assault, aggravated assault and criminal restraint. And over the weekend, the town held a vigil outside the school to show their support for the victims.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I hope this lets the victims know that we're here to support them and that we feel this is not acceptable and we're here because of them.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Where was the coaching staff? Where were the grown- ups who were supposed to be supervising these students? We need to understand what their responsibility is and where their accountability lies.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Number one concern is a child will grow despondent over this, will not know how to handle it and do something rash, which children and teenagers have a tendency to do. This is about preventing that.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

SCHOLES: The seven players arrested range from 15 to 17 years old. The big question now, Ana, is whether or not they're going to be tried as juveniles or adults. If they're tried as adults, and convicted of sexual assault, they could face up to 20 years in prison.

CABRERA: Very serious consequences. Andy Scholes, thank you.

Still to come, a new case of Ebola adding to fears and even confusion about how this deadly virus is spread. And after the CDC says protocol was breached, a national nurse's union says caregivers aren't receiving the right training. I'll speak to a former CDC disease detective to get some perspective when we come back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

CABRERA: A breach in protocol, that is what the CDC says is to blame for the latest case of Ebola here in the U.S. And while the agency isn't providing specifics, we do know there are CDC guidelines for those who enter an Ebola patient's room. It includes wearing at a very minimum gloves, fluid resistant or impermeable gowns, goggles, face shields to protect the eyes and a face mask. But now a largest union of registered nurses here in the U.S. is pushing back on the CDC's claims saying the agency is blaming hospital workers when those workers aren't receiving the proper training.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

KATY ROEMER, NATIONAL NURSES UNITED: We're seeing that caregivers who are not being adequately trained are being blamed and saying -- we're hearing that they have not followed proper protocol when we have been asking our hospitals throughout the country to provide us with training that allows us to ask questions, with training about how to put on the proper and optimal level of personnel protection equipment.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CABRERA: Joining me now, Dr. Seema Yasmin. She is a "Dallas Morning News" staff writer, former disease detective for the CDC.

Dr. Yasmin, great to have you with us.

An official with knowledge of this situation says there were inconsistencies in the type of gear worn and in how it was put on and taken off. We were talking about that nurse who has Ebola in Dallas. So would this support that - would this support the nurses' union claim that they really aren't being properly trained perhaps?

DR. SEEMA YASMIN, FORMER CDC DISEASE DETECTIVE: Well, Ana, I heard this actually just when I did a walkthrough in a local hospital a few days ago, nurses coming off the night shift said to me, we're really scared about Ebola and we don't feel prepared. However, the way that this hospital responded, the hospital that I visited a few days ago, was to say, let's train again. You've had the training, let's refresh (ph) ourselves and then let's retrain again and again and make sure everybody does feel prepared. And, of course, as you mentioned, CDC has issued guidelines but it's not enough to have just read those or to have stuck those on the wall in the emergency room. You have to practice over and over again to make sure that you get those protocols right.

CABRERA: And we don't know the details of this so called protocol breach, but what would you suspect?

YASMIN: So there's a few scenarios that could have happened. Sometimes health care workers are understandably in a rush. And it may be that somebody forgot to put on a vital piece of protective equipment. Other times, while you're in the midst of caring for a patient, things can happen like a tear in the gloves that you may not realize. So there's many potential exposures here that could have put this nurse sadly at risk. But sometimes actually when you backtrack and try and find out what happened, you sometimes just can't find an exact answer.

CABRERA: Earlier we were talking with Elizabeth Cohen, as well as Dr. William Shafner (ph), and there was a discussion about some of the medical procedures that were used on Thomas Duncan, the Ebola patient who died, specifically intubation and kidney dialysis.

Now, Dr. Shafner just said on our air, and formally he has heard, that those procedures have in fact saved the lives of other Ebola patients recently. Are you hearing that as well?

YASMIN: Absolutely. And we know that with Ebola patients sometimes they walk into a clinic and they're talking and then very quickly, over a course of a few days, their health can rapidly deteriorate. So you almost preempt that they may need intubation, they may need to go on to a ventilator, they may need dialysis. The worry, though, Ana, is those kinds of procedures are considered high risk for transmitting Ebola to health care workers with intubation. There's lots of saliva and secretions that can spray as you do that to a patient. With dialysis, you're talking about contact with a large volume of blood. So certainly those are really high risk procedures.

CABRERA: It kind of feels to some that the CDC is just throwing out recommendations to see what sticks. And so this is one of those recommendations to reduce the number of procedures that could add to the confusion for people who aren't properly trained or used to dealing with Ebola patients. Could that be a concern?

YASMIN: Well, while CDC, obviously, is basing their guidelines and protocols on evidence, it's based on what they know about Ebola as of now. It's a relatively new virus though, Ana. We're still learning about it.

However, you do want to do two things when caring for an Ebola patient. Number one, you want to minimize the number of staff that come into contact with the patient. You want to keep that number as low as possible. And, secondly, you want to minimize the number of procedures you do as well, including dialysis and putting them on a ventilator. However, when they deteriorate as much as Mr. Duncan did here in Dallas, sometimes you just have to provide those kinds of invasive procedures.

CABRERA: I want to pivot to another U.S. Ebola case that we are follow closely, the NBC freelance photographer who is in the hospital fighting for his life in Nebraska. Now we know that NBC's chief medical correspondent, Nancy Snyderman, is under mandatory quarantine after she was spotted out in New Jersey despite working with that cameraman who had tested positive. So if someone with Snyderman's background won't comply with a voluntary quarantine, how can we expect others to?

YASMIN: It can be very challenging sometimes, Ana. And public health officials do in fact have legal authorities that allow them to put people under quarantine, either in their home or in another facility. However, we do try and use those as rarely as possible because they can be quite intimidating. And so the key thing we try and do is just educate people, inform them of how important it is, now just for their health but also for the health of their community.

CABRERA: All right, Dr. Seema Yasmin, thank you so must.

YASMIN: Thank you.

CABRERA: Still to come, more protests around St. Louis. A day of action follows a weekend of resistance. CNN's Stephanie Elam is in Ferguson, Missouri, this morning.

Stephanie.

STEPHANIE ELAM, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Right, Ana, the weekend may be over, but that doesn't mean that they're done with the protests. Moral Monday is on tap today. We'll tell you what is in store for later on this afternoon.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

CABRERA: Ferguson protesters demanding charges against the police officer who killed Michael Brown. They're still holding a series of actions today.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

CROWD (chanting): (INAUDIBLE) to jail. The whole damn system is guilty as hell.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CABRERA: This morning's events follow a weekend of resistance in the St. Louis area including this overnight demonstration that grew to about 1,000 people. CNN Stephanie Elam is staying on top of developments from Ferguson and joins me now. Stephanie?

ELAM: Ana, last night we did see more people coming out to protest. There was a community meeting of sorts at St. Louis University, where about 2,000 people were in attendance. Some of the protesters wanting to voice their concerns. One woman saying if you are not upset by the body of a dead 18-year-old young man lying in the streets for hours, then you are not human. She was saying that.

There was commentary from people who have been activists for years also coming here to voice concerns. And one of those people was Dr. Cornll West; he's a professor and activist. He comes from Princeton University. But this is what he had to say last night. Take a are listen.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

CORNEL WEST, AUTHOR, ACTIVIST: Everybody knows if you shoot somebody down, you're supposed to be arrested. That's a fundamental bet. That's just fundamental.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

ELAM: And after that moment there that they had together, this community meeting, there were some marches, about 200 who took to the streets. We understand that police officers were out in their riot gear but there was no confrontation. They just, the marchers just marched past the police officers. No arrests. So the intent here was to keep it peaceful, something that has been challenging in some of the other nights.

But as far as Ferguson October goes, this movement that we've seen here in Missouri over this weekend, it continues on today with what they're calling Moral Monday. We're outside of a church in Ferguson where we know people are gathering to continue this today. We know that there's day planned of civil disobedience. What exactly is planned we're still waiting to hear, but we will be here monitoring it on a -- as this continues, all -- all because they want the focus on the death of Mike Brown to not be forgotten. And they want the arrest of Officer Darren Wilson, who shot him back on August 9th.

Ana.

CABRERA: All right, so good to hear, though, that those protests this weekend have remained peaceful. I think that's what everybody is hoping to see. Stephanie Elam, thank you so much.

Still to come, women are making the right choices about retirement savings, but still not saving as much as men. We'll look at the reasons why.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

(MUSIC: "TAKING CARE OF BUSINESS")

CABRERA: Any of that familiar? Well, when it comes to putting money away for retirement, women are actually doing all the right things. We are more likely to enroll in 401(k)s then men, more likely to stock away a bigger percentage of pay in those plans. So why are women lagging behind men in overall savings amounts?

Let's bring in CNN's Christine Romans. Christine, on the surface, something's just not adding up. CHRISTIEN ROMANS, CNN CHIEF BUSINESS CORRESPONDENT: You know, it's so

interesting. Women are better savers. Women are better investors. This is all from Vanguard. But when you look at the size of their 401(k) balance, men have a bigger balance on average. You look at the numbers, it's something like $121,000 that men have compared with women's $78,000.

A few different reasons here, Ana. One of the reasons is even though women put more of their paycheck into their 401(k), men tend to make more money, and so they have more money going in even if they have a smaller percentage. Also, women work about 12 fewer years on average than men. They take time off for having babies, for raising small children. Also, they are still the gender more likely to take care of an aging parent, so they have fewer years out there working.

Now, this is just 401(k). They are losing the retirement savings game if you look at just the 401(k). Some of these women might have other assets or they might be in a marriage or a relationship where the other person has a bigger 401(k) and this is all one big pot of money. But when you just look at the Vanguard results, women are saving, they're investing, but men still have more money.

CABRERA: It's not fair. I think women should ask for more raises.

ROMANS: Oh, yes.

CABRERA: That's another story of the week, right?

ROMANS: Yes, you can ask for a raise and if we do something about the wage gap, that will go to helping eliminate this disparity.

CABRERA: All right, Christine Romans.

ROMANS: Nice to see you.

CABRERA: Thank you. Good to see you too.

And still to come, Oscar Pistorius in court, may be on the verge of going to prison. We'll have the latest as his sentencing hearing gets under way.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

CABRERA: Checking top stories this morning.

In South Africa, a one-time sports hero back in court today to determine whether he will go to prison. Oscar Pistorius awaits sentencing after he was convicted of culpable homicide in the death of his girlfriend Reeva Steenkamp. Now, Pistorius, a double amputee whose prosthetics and his world class speed earned him the nickname Blade Runner, says he mistook her as an intruder.

This morning in Hong Kong, the three week long pro-democracy protests turned rowdy. Dozens of men tried to tear down barricades that protesters had used to block roads around the city's financial district. Now, the men taking those barricades claim to be cab drivers and other small business owners who have been losing money because of these protesters clogging the streets in the city.

And there's a new development in the manhunt for a suspected cop killer, Eric Frein in Pennsylvania. A law enforcement official now tells CNN that searchers have uncovered a second encampment where they believe he has been hiding out since last month's ambush of those two state troopers, killing one of them. Authorities are hoping for new leads as the seasons change; of course trees lose their leaves and a military search plane might be more effective.

A toddler from Michigan who had that respiratory illness known as Enterovirus has died. This is the second case where somebody has died. Hospital officials say Madeline Reid died Friday in Detroit. She had been on life support for nearly a month. Nearly 700 cases of this virus have been reported in 46 states. It has been linked to at least five deaths and health officials believe those numbers could still go up.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DR. MATTHEW DAVIS, CHIEF MEDICA EXECUTIVE, STATE OF MICHIGAN: This particular strain of virus has become easier to spread this year and also there may not be as much protection that children have against this particular strain.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CABRERA: There is no targeted treatment or vaccine for Enterovirus D- 68; it's a very harmful strain of a common virus. Children are most vulnerable.

The next hour of CNN NEWSROOM begins right now.