By Kevin Kearon
Society has little tolerance for any form of sexual abuse of children, especially in a school setting. All the more reason to remember that the only thing worse than the sexual abuse of an innocent child is a false accusation of the sexual abuse of an innocent child.
Read full entry »A culture of secrecy in many states is hindering efforts to reduce child abuse deaths and serious injuries, says a report by a national child advocacy...
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By Natasha O’Dell Archer
The Jerry Sandusky sex abuse scandal focused national media attention on a dark fact of American life: the nationwide epidemic of child abuse, neglect and endangerment. Tragically, that case was just the tip of the iceberg.
Read full entry »A report by an advocacy group finds that a "culture of secrecy" continues to hamper efforts to stem the tide of child abuse-related fatalities and near-fatalities across the United States. Public disclosure that could help prevent future tragedies is hampered by many states’ restrictive disclosure laws, according to a new state-by-state study by the Children’s Advocacy Institute at the University of San Diego School of Law and First Star, a national organization working to improve the lives of America’s abused and neglected children.
Child abuse is “a red flag that something has gone terribly wrong with the child welfare system responsible for that child,” said Robert C. Fellmeth, executive director of the Children's Advocacy Institute. “Yet, too often these cases are shrouded in secrecy and, as a result, literally fatal flaws in state systems go undetected and opportunities to fix them are missed.” The “State Secrecy and Child Deaths in the U.S.” report assigns letter grades to states based on disclosure laws and policies. The report gave mediocre to poor grades (C+ or lower) to 20 states, including some of the country’s most populous, including California, Texas, New York and New Jersey. Colorado, Delaware, and New Mexico received grades in the D range, while Montana received the country’s lone F.
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By Susan Tebben
Kentucky is facing up to one of its biggest drug problems.
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The National Coalition to Prevent Child Sexual Exploitation, a group of 30 major agencies and experts, has come together to create a plan preventing the exploitation and abuse of children.
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By Mai Fernandez
After years of headlines about child sex abuse by clergymen, these cases raised yet another alarm about the failure of institutions to protect children from predators. What do these cases tell us, and how should we respond?
Read full entry »Poor case management and improperly conducted interviews are too common in a Phoenix Police Department unit that investigates crimes against children including abuse and sexual assault, says an internal audit reported by the Arizona Republic. Investigators re-examined 969 cases assigned to the Family Investigations Bureau during a one-year period. It determined that case-management policies were not followed in more than 400 of the cases.
Detectives did not properly document or follow up on interviews with victims, suspects, and witnesses in 279 cases, including some in which investigators relied on state Child Protective Services employees to conduct the interviews. Evidence was not properly handled in 98. In those, detectives failed to collect, process or follow up on evidence adequately, including information collected in medical exams. Acting Phoenix Police Chief Joe Yahner said dealing with the problems "has been and continues to be the Number 1 issue of the Phoenix Police Department."
Read full entry »Last June, Virginia veterinarian Karen Murphy mistakenly left her infant son, 2, in a hot car to die. Last week, Murphy 41, was permitted to plead guilty to misdemeanor child neglect, says the Washington Post. She faces 400 hours of community service, six years of probation, and a lifetime of grief and shame. There are 15 to 30 cases like this around the U.S. each year. The parent usually is an ordinary, responsible person who was under unusual stress — stress that neuroscientists have found can trigger a hiccup in the memory system of the brain.
Should these cases, with no intent to harm and no additional contributory negligence such as substance abuse, where the event was triggered entirely by a lapse of memory, be treated as crimes? Nationally, there is no consensus. Kids and Cars, a child-safety advocacy group, in roughly 40 percent of these cases, the death is declared accidental and no charges are filed. The other 60 percent — with nearly identical facts, and under nearly identical state laws — are aggressively prosecuted on charges ranging from child neglect to murder.
Jury selection is to start next week in the case of Monsignor William Lynn, formerly the Archdiocese of Philadelphia's point person for allegations of clerical abuse, NPR reports. "He willingly oversaw numerous reports of child sex abuse," says Cardozo law Prof. Marci Hamilton. "And he willingly put these men in positions where they had second, third, fourth opportunities to abuse children in new settings." In most cases, the statute of limitations barred criminal charges. two cases have not expired, and prosecutors say Lynn criminally endangered two young men, allegedly raped when they were 10 and 14, by looking the other way.
Although other senior Catholic officials have been criminally charged for allegedly covering up sex abuse claims, Lynn is the first to go to trial. "Church people are watching this around the country very, very closely," says Nicholas Cafardi, dean emeritus and law professor at Duquesne Law School in Pittsburgh.
Read full entry »A Washington dispatcher is facing criticism in Josh Powell's decision to kill his young sons and himself in a gasoline-fed inferno after taking a hatchet to the boys, reports the Los Angeles Times. Pierce County Sheriff's Det. Ed Troyer said Wednesday that he's displeased at how a 911 dispatcher handled the frantic phone calls from a social worker just before Sunday's explosion. The worker had taken Charlie, 7, and his brother, Braden, 5, to Powell's front door; the door was then shut in her face.
The social worker can be heard pleading for help, while the dispatcher at points seems unable to grasp the urgency of the situation. Troyer told the Associated Press that he, like the media, is awaiting an official "call-and-dispatch" log of the incident. But he said the dispatcher's etiquette during the phone call, which spanned at least six minutes, does not appear to have interfered with response time. The dispatcher alerted emergency responders early in the conversation, Troyer said.
Read full entry »New York City's public advocate issued a report on dozens of children who have died in the last few years in families with a history of neglect or abuse, says the New York Times. In more than half the cases, the families had been the subject of at least three complaints, and in some instances, there had been more than 10. “That says we are missing an opportunity to intervene as early as possible,” says public advocate Bill deBlasio.
In one case, a medically fragile 3-year-old was entrusted to her grandmother, who had been reported 13 times for complaints. In another, a 5-year-old boy whose family had been reported five times was beaten to death by his mother. The public advocate's analysis presents a sobering view of the city’s performance in protecting abused, neglected and at-risk children. In 2011, the child welfare agency investigated complaints involving 88,191 children. Almost 4,000 were removed from their homes. DeBlasio's report commemorated the sixth anniversary of the death of Nixzmary Brown, a 7-year-old girl whose brutal beating by her stepfather, which came after city workers missed several warning signs of abuse, prompted the city to overhaul the child welfare system.
Attorneys for a Philadelphia monsignor accused of enabling priests to molest altar boys has asked the Pennsylvania Supreme Court to review the charges, an unusual legal maneuver that could scuttle or delay the trial, reports the Philadelphia Inquirer. Attorneys for Msgr. William J. Lynn urged the court to step in before Lynn and other priests begin their trial in March.
The lawyers contend that prosecutors misapplied the law when they charged Lynn with endangering children. They also say the outcome of his case will be far-reaching, because Lynn, 61, was the first church official nationwide to be charged with covering up clergy sex abuse. "The continuation of this criminal prosecution will have grave and immediate public implications," wrote the attorneys, who are being paid by the archdiocese. "It is impossible to predict how many practicing Catholics and members of the Catholic clergy will be affected by this trial." The lawyers are being paid by the archdiocese.
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By Ryan Rios
A tragic case in Texas illustrates the dilemma faced by courts, police and child protective services in rescuing ‘medically fragile’ children before it’s too late
Read full entry »After the Penn State sex abuse charges, several states want to expand the list of who's a mandated reporter — especially in places where coaches...
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