9 Feature Stories You Can't Miss This Week: Secrets, Siblings, And Silence

This week for BuzzFeed News, Sandra Allen tells the story of Teresa Sheehan and America's failing mental health care system. Read that and these other great stories from BuzzFeed and around the web.

1. The Trials of Teresa Sheehan — BuzzFeed News

Photograph courtesy of the Sheehan family

In 2008, San Francisco police were called to transport a woman with mental illness to a hospital. Instead, they shot her seven times. This is the story of how police became our nation’s mental health care workers, and how Teresa Sheehan’s family fought for her before the shooting — and since. Read it at BuzzFeed News.

2. The Big Lie That Helped Justify America's War in Afghanistan — BuzzFeed News

Photograph by Azmat Khan for BuzzFeed News

The United States trumpets education as one of its shining successes of the war in Afghanistan. But an investigation by Azmat Khan reveals U.S. claims were often outright lies, as the government peddled numbers it knew to be false and touted schools that have never seen a single student. Read it at BuzzFeed News.

3. The Mixed-Up Brothers of Bogotá — The New York Times Magazine

Photograph by Stefan Ruiz for The New York Times

Susan Dominus tells the unlikely tale of two pairs of Colombian identical twins who were accidentally switched at birth and raised as fraternal ones instead. Sound bizarre? You don't even know the half of it. Read it at The New York Times Magazine.

4. How Disaster and Tragedy Spawned a Radical Music Movement in Haiti — BuzzFeed News

Photograph by Marie Arago for BuzzFeed News

Notorious for blending the political and profane, denounced for its roots in Vodou, rabòday music is the defiant — and wildly popular — sound of a new, disaffected generation of Haitians. As the country prepares for long-awaited elections starting in August, Susana Ferreira learns how the genre’s populist stars have become unusually influential by turning public anxieties into dance-friendly anthems. Read it at BuzzFeed News.

5. Letter to My Son — The Atlantic

Eduardo Munoz / Reuters

Ta-Nehisi Coates pens a heavy and heartbreaking note to his teenage son on race, and on learning how to live in a country that sends the message that you don't belong in it. "Here is what I would like for you to know: In America, it is traditional to destroy the black body—it is heritage." Read it at The Atlantic.

6. The Lost Girls — Highline

Photograph courtesy of Jackie Fuchs for Highline

Jackie Fuchs was only 15 when she became the bassist of The Runaways, propelling her to the spotlight in what would become an iconic female rock band. Yet, as Jason Cherkis explains, Fuchs' time in the band was marred by misogyny and violence at the hands of the very person who discovered her. Read it at Highline.

7. The Silent Monkey Victims of the War on Terror — BuzzFeed News

Photo Illustration by Lauren Heffron for BuzzFeed News / Getty Images

Since 9/11, thousands of animals have been exposed to deadly pathogens, chemicals, and radiation so that scientists can develop medicines to protect Americans from weapons of mass destruction. Peter Aldhous asks: Was all this suffering really necessary? Read it at BuzzFeed News.

8. I Spent Two Weeks Tracking a Secret Teen White Supremacist Messaging Group — BuzzFeed News

John Paczkowski/BuzzFeed

Joseph Bernstein dives deep into White Pride World Wide, the lightning-fast, wildly absurd, and occasionally terrifying messaging app for teen white supremacists. "This is white supremacism that looks like today’s social internet — comprising many forms of media and users from around the world, weirdly irreverent, continuous." Read it at BuzzFeed News.

9. No, Queer Women Aren't "Just Going Through a Phase" — BuzzFeed News

Michael Buckner / Getty Images

Patrick Demarchelier / VOGUE

Demi Lovata / Instagram

Shannon Keating dissects the myriad ways in which female queerness continues to be qualified, belittled, and disbelieved. "It’s only when women are sexual with one another without regard for male pleasure that their sexuality becomes a problem. Fluidity is innocent, temporal. But queerness is a threat." Read it at BuzzFeed News.

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