IA – Mason City committee approves sex offender ordinance

Article
by Jesse Gavin, KRIB, Mason City

Prosecutors say Iowa’s tough law limiting where convicted sex offenders can live is a headache to enforce, but that hasn’t stopped one northern Iowa city from passing its own rule that may be even stricter.

Mason City’s sex offender review committee has approved what could end up being one of the toughest city-based sex offender ordinances in the state if it wins the approval of the city council. The proposed ordinance would prevent registered sex offenders from entering what are called “exclusionary zones.”

Those zones include: all city parks and playgrounds, skate parks, tennis courts, foot and bike trails, the aquatic center, school bus stops, school playgrounds, the MacNider campgrounds, and city-owned property at Lime Creek Nature Center. The proposal must be reviewed by City Attorney Tom Meyer before being submitted to the City Council for their approval.

MA – Mayor vetoes sex offender ordinance

Article
By Crystal Bozek
Thursday, November 30, 2006 – Updated: 06:10 PM EST

MARLBOROUGH- Mayor Nancy Stevens vetoed an ordinance that bans many sex offenders from living in the city, despite saying two days ago she planned to sign it.

    ”I am concerned about the constitutionality about it,” Stevens said at a press conference. “I believe this particular piece of legislation will give people a false sense of security.”

    

IL – Paroled child sex offender arrested Man allegedly solicited the 13-year-old online

Article
BY MALINDA OSBORNE
SVN REPORTER
mosborne@svnmail.com

A Mendota sex offender out on parole was arrested Monday on three counts of indecent solicitation of a child after allegedly having sexual conversations online with a 13-year-old Lee County girl.

Nicholas R. Bauer, 23, 4125 N. State Highway 251, allegedly conversed with the girl for two weeks in a chat room before she told her mother that the conversations had become inappropriate, Lee County Sheriff’s Sgt. David Glessner said. The woman notified the Mendota Police Department, which notified the sheriff’s department.

They, Dixon police, the Lee County State’s Attorney’s Office and the Department of Corrections Parole Department set up an investigation in which five conversations between the two were monitored. Bauer made inappropriate comments all five times, Glessner said.

DE – Book club sets up sex-offender law review group; Dover committee inspired by ‘Lovely Bones’

Article
By J.L. MILLER, The News Journal
Posted Thursday, November 30, 2006

Among the ordinances that will come under scrutiny are zoning codes that restrict where sex offenders can live, some of which are so strict that they virtually exclude offenders from living within the city limits.Bridgeville currently has such an ordinance and a similar one is under consideration in Smyrna.

Slavin, though, said the committee must avoid recommending ordinances that would be overturned in court.

“We really cannot and should not take any action that we know to be unconstitutional,” Slavin said, adding that the zoning ordinances are having “an unintended effect, a negative effect, on law enforcement.”

Africa – The relentless scourge of child sexual abuse take an endless toll on girls in sub-Saharan Africa

Article

By Sharon LaFraniere / The New York Times

Fifty kilometers outside this down-at-the-heels seaside town, Justin Betombo tends his vanilla plants and cheers the local soccer team as if he had not a care in the world. And in fact, what was once his greatest worry has been almost magically lifted from his shoulders. In the prosecutor’s office, a file filled with accusations that he had sodomized his nine-year-old niece has vanished.

Betombo was arrested in 2003 after the girl, Kenia, said he had savagely assaulted her. The police obtained his confession, which he later recanted, and a doctor’s certificate that Kenia had been sexually violated, rendering her incontinent and anorexic. Twice they sent the case file to the local prosecutor.

There matters ended. Betombo attended one hearing in the prosecutor’s office, of which Kenia’s parents, who have been so frustrated by the handling of the case that they wanted her name and photograph to be published, said they knew nothing. The records are nowhere to be found.

And Betombo walked away a free man.

Among sub-Saharan Africa’s children, this is a distressingly common story. Even as this region races to adopt many of the developed world’s norms for children, from universal education to limits on child labor, one taboo – child sexual abuse – remains stubbornly resistant to change.

Scotland – Pupils to get sex abuse warnings

Article
GARETH ROSE grose@edinburghnews.com)

CHILDREN as young as nine are to be taught how to protect themselves against sexual abuse and domestic violence.

Hard-hitting cartoons are to be used in Lothian classrooms as part of a new strategy which will also include lessons on how to avoid predatory paedophiles lurking in internet chatrooms.
West Lothian Council commissioned Edinburgh-based software firm Learning Curve to design computer software for the lessons, and Edinburgh and Midlothian councils are to use it as well.

It is backed by Lothian and Borders Police which, with Lothian local authorities, is reviewing child protection policies.

One cartoon shows a stranger indecently touching an 11-year-old girl on a bus. Another features a boy of the same age who has to fend off the advances of his swimming instructor.

IL – E.M. man charged with kidnapping sexual abuse in Iowa court

Article
By Rita Pearson, rpearson@qconline.com

An East Moline man made his first appearance on kidnapping and sexual abuse charges Wednesday in Scott County Court as Illinois officials filed charges in connection with the case.

Jesse E. Brown, who listed his address as 4108 4th St., East Moline, was appointed a public defender. He said he was a laborer without a job or an income in a court affidavit.

Bond was set at $500,000.

The defendant was arrested Tuesday morning at The Traveler Motel by Bettendorf police and accused of kidnapping his estranged wife, Michelle Brown, 28, and her six children, aged 10 months to 10 years, from her grandmother’s home in Silvis.

India – Ghaziabad ashram: Swami accused of sexual abuse

Article
Thursday, November 30, 2006 (Ghaziabad):

During NDTV’s special investigation, our correspondent Aanchal Vohra spent 10 days undercover at an ashram in Ghaziabad.

As the young girls staying at the ashram, many of them orphans claim, they have been sexually abused by the in-house swami.

Among the swami’s alleged victims are young, mentally challenged orphans.

“He beat me up when I was a kid and did not give me any treatment. He beats us with sticks and slippers and also abuses us,” said Shikha.

Allegations of abuse pour from these children who live in this ashram in Ghaziabad, 19km East of Delhi.

UN – Fears over Haiti child ‘abuse’

Article

A BBC investigation commissioned as part of Generation Next – a week of programmes focusing on people under 18 – has uncovered fresh allegations of the sexual abuse of children by United Nations peacekeepers. Mike Williams reports from Port au Prince, Haiti.

The heavily armoured United Nations patrol rolls through the dusty streets of Cite Soleil – the most dangerous and deprived part of a very dangerous and deprived country.

UN peacekeepers crouch low in the turrets of the armoured cars, their rifles tracking the rooftops and alleyways. They come under fire every day in this part of the capital, Port au Prince.

The week before I arrived, two of the peacekeepers were killed there.

AL – State lawman charged with sexual abuse

Article
Thursday, November 30, 2006
By MIKE PERRY
Staff Reporter

An investigator for the Alabama Bureau of Investigation faces misdemeanor harassment and sexual abuse charges involving a juvenile, Baldwin County authorities said Wednesday.

David Lawrence Fagan, 47, of Daphne, turned himself in to the Baldwin County Corrections Center in Bay Minette on Tuesday night, Daphne Police Lt. Danny Bell said.

A jail official said Fagan was released on $10,000 bond about 9 a.m. Wednesday.

Bell said his department contacted Fagan to inform him that warrants had been issued for his arrest based on grand jury indictments. Bell, however, declined to provide any details about the alleged incident.

Ireland – Five men on abuse charges against 13 year-old Ballyshannon girl

Article
Nov 30, 3:16 pm

Five men from South Donegal are due in court in January to face charges relating to the sexual abuse of a 13-year-old girl.

They were served with summons earlier this week.

The gardai began what has been described as “a complex and painstaking,” investigation into this incident after the allegations emerged three years ago.

7th Edition of the Carnival Against Child Abuse

(Note – this will be moved to the top of the blog each night. All new posts will be listed below.) 

December marks my turn to host the Carnival Against Child Abuse, 7th Edition, and boy am I excited. We will, of course, have the original categories: Advocacy and Awareness, Aftermath, Healing & Therapy, In The News, Poetry, and Survivor Stories.

I would like to add a few other categories for this month:

• Do you have any rituals or celebrations that you do/have done to mark a specific moment or turning point in your healing?
• Have you confronted your abuser?
• What inspires you to heal?
• What kind of activities or assignments have you done that have helped you in your healing?
• How do you deal with the holiday season?

I know its the holidays… but please feel free to submit your own articles or nominate articles from some of your other favorite writers!

I am also hoping to get articles from new submitters, so please dont be shy!

Submit articles here: Submissions *
 
* If you don’t have your own blog, but would still like to write an article, I will open up SadlyNormal for this month to Guest Writers. Submit your original article (please be specific with how you want to be credited – name, email address, etc) to franki@sadlynormal.org and I will post them here. (This is for guest writers only, please use the submission link above for articles on your own blog. Thanks)

Deadline for submissions: Midnight, Dec 20th

Carnival will run: Saturday, December 23rd.

Please submit your articles ASAP!!!!

NY – Over 40 Immigrants Arrested In Citywide Child Sex Offender Bust

Article
November 29, 2006

Officials said Wednesday that 45 people have been arrested and detained for allegations of child sex offenses, as part of an Immigration and Customs Enforcement program to crack down of sex offenders in the city. NY1’s Lindley Pless filed the following report.

“Some of these people are convicted of rape, rape in the first, second, and third degree,” said Special Agent Martin Ficke of ICE. “[Some are convicted of] sexual misconduct with a minor. It’s all over the place. These are very serious crimes.”

About half of those detained are illegal aliens, and the other half were legal permanent residents.

“The ultimate goal is to remove these criminal aliens from the United States,” said Ficke. “Clearly if you committed a crime like this you have lost the privilege to live here any more. We intend on deporting you. If you choose to come back illegally, then we will prosecute you for reentering the U.S. after deportation.”

IL – Appeals Court Rules in Pedophile Charges Involving School Dean

http://www.wrex.com/News/index.php?ID=12276

CHICAGO (AP) — A former Champaign middle school student who says he was sexually molested by a dean has a right to sue both his alleged assailant and the school district.

That was the ruling today of a federal appeals court in Chicago.

The appeals court said a federal magistrate judge wrongly barred key evidence that the boy was molested starting when he was in eighth grade at Champaign’s Franklin Middle School.

The court found that the jury’s verdict finding no liability at trial was in part the result of that decision.

The boy is known as John Doe in court papers.

Former dean of students Brady Smith was not charged with any crime involving Doe. But he was convicted in 2001 of soliciting a 14-year-old student for sexual relations after police placed a wiretap on his telephone.

© 2006 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
Updated: November 29, 2006, 9:14 am

AZ – Pedophile not listed on Web; Ariz. law shields former priest’s sex offender status

Article
By Elizabeth Hardin-Burrola
Staff Writer

GALLUP — When Navajo County Superior Court Judge Gloria J. Kindig sentenced James M. Burns, a former Catholic priest with the Diocese of Gallup, to prison for two counts of sexual conduct with a minor, she ordered that he be registered as a sex offender.

Anyone who thinks that means Burns is now listed on the Arizona Department of Public Safety’s sex offender Web site can think again.

He’s not. And he’s not alone in that exemption. Because of Arizona state law, not all convicted sex offenders are listed on the Web site. The state classifies sex offenders with risk assessment scores of Level 1 (Low) to Level 2 (Intermediate) or Level 3 (High), and only sex offenders at the latter two levels require public notification like the Web site listing.

ID – JANKE CHARGED WITH EXTENSIVE SEXUAL ABUSE

Article

An Idaho Falls police officer says he’s in the middle of handling the worst sexual abuse cases he’s ever seen. A man has been arrested for charges that he sexually abused two young children for much of their lives.

Forty-five-year-old Donald Andrew Janke is accused of sexually molesting two girls hundreds of times. Police say the case is disturbing in not only what he did but how long it went on, and that if anyone knew, it wasn’t stopped.

Janke no longer lives in Idaho Falls, but returned after a warrant was issued for his arrest. He’ll be arraigned on the charges next month. He faces up to life in prison.

MA – Former St. Michael priest accused of sexual abuse

Article
By Drake Lucas , Staff writer
Eagle-Tribune

NORTH ANDOVER – The Rev. Steve Poitras was perhaps best remembered in town for faking that he had cancer while he was an assistant priest at St. Michael Church in 1994.

This week, he was also accused of sexual abuse of a minor during the same time. Poitras left St. Michael Church in early 1995.

The Very Rev. John Delaney, vicar of the Lawrence area Catholic churches who came to St. Michael Church in 2000, said the allegation did not come from a parishioner of St. Michael Church and the abuse was not alleged to have happened at a church event. No other information about the victim was available.

VA – Evington man faces child porn charges

Article

A Bedford County man faces child pornography charges after being accused of downloading sexually explicit pictures of children at the Lynchburg hotel where he worked.

Terry Wayne Francis, 40, of Evington was granted bond Tuesday morning in Bedford County Circuit Court.

The case began in late September when Lynchburg police received a report from a guest at the hotel where Francis was working. When the guest logged into the hotel’s wireless system, pop-up advertisements for child pornography sites appeared on the guest’s computer, said Assistant Bedford Commonwealth’s Attorney Wes Nance.

Francis told police that he had used the hotel’s wireless system to download child pornography onto his laptop, Nance said in court. Francis told investigators he’d downloaded about 70,000 images, about half of which were child pornography, Nance said.

Francis is charged in Bedford County with five counts of possession of child pornography and five counts of production of child pornography. The investigation in Lynchburg is ongoing, Nance said.

– Mike Allen

The Face In The Mirror

“Our inability to see beauty doesn’t suggest in the slightest that beauty is not there. Rather, it suggests that we are not looking carefully enough or with broad enough perspective to see the beauty.”

– Rabbi Harold Kushner

Who are you? You can gaze at your reflection in a mirror but you’re
not likely to see your true likeness. You are beautiful, unique,
perfect. Do you see that?

The world needs you to see how whole and complete you are — now. Can
you begin to own your divinity? The world needs you to know who you
really are so you can be the mirror for others.

“The sun shines not on us but in us. The rivers flow not past, but through us, thrilling, tingling, vibrating every fiber and cell of the substaur bodies, making them glide and sing.”

– John Muir

NH – Dover man who molested boys gets minimum of 20 years

 Article
By THOMAS R. KRESSLER
Democrat Staff Writer

DOVER — A 58-year-old local man who accepted responsibility for molesting his two adopted sons over a period of six years in the 1980s will spend at least the next 20 years of his life incarcerated.

James Halldorson, formerly of 56 Summer St., was sentenced to a minimum of 20 and a maximum of 40 years in state prison during a sentencing hearing in Strafford County Superior Court on Tuesday. He had pleaded guilty to three counts of aggravated felonious sexual assault and one count of felonious sexual assault on Sept. 11.

“I can’t disregard in any sense the harm that the criminal acts have caused. The harm that has been caused to these victims is harm which they will live with for the rest of their lives,” said Judge Peter Fauver, before granting the state’s sentencing recommendation. “Let me tell you, that if you did not live an exemplary life and this had been recent, and you put these kids through trial, you’d be looking at the rest of your life (in prison).”