The Child Protection eNewsletter

Justin Berry case finally yields arrests…
Nearly a year after Justin Berry began talking to a New York Times reporter about his involvement in online pornography vol4_iss1 and several months after giving the feds 1500 leads on his child pornography contacts, vol4_iss16 an arrest was finally made last week by Michigan officers. www.cbsnews.com Edward Mulak was charged with felony possession of child pornography. Police say they seized – as evidence – some 48,000 photos on Mulak's computer hard drive, some allegedly of underage boys. The main target of their investigation is Mulak's roommate, Ken Gourlay, who watched Mulak's arrest last Tuesday from behind their door. On Monday, Ken Gourlay was arrested at his Detroit home and charged with 10 felony counts related to child sexual abuse. hosted.ap.org Berry mentioned his name during testimony before a U.S. House panel investigating sexual exploitation of children over the Internet. Gourlay claimed his 5 th Amendment rights before the same investigating panel.

Pennsylvania Congressman targets MySpace.com, others…
MySpace and other social-networking sites like LiveJournal.com and Facebook are the potential targets for a proposed federal law that would effectively require most schools and libraries to render those Web sites inaccessible to minors, an age group that includes some of the category's most ardent users. news.com.com "When children leave the home and go to school or the public library and have access to social-networking sites, we have reason to be concerned," Rep. Michael Fitzpatrick, a Pennsylvania Republican, told CNET News.com in an interview. A copy of the bill is available online at www.politechbot.com

In other news...
An appeals court on Tuesday upheld a lower court order that a teenage sex offender warn the parents of anyone he dates about his conviction until he turns 18 as a condition of his probation. hosted.ap.org He had pleaded guilty in 2004 to committing a sex act against his 6-year-old half-sister when he was 14.

According to Child Trends' most recent DataBank indicator on trends in children and youth, the percentage of teens who do not date at all has risen steadily since the 1990s, but reached new highs in 2004. The shift in behavior is most pronounced for twelfth grade students, where the percentage of those who do not date rose from 14 percent in 1991 to 27 percent in 2004. www.childtrends.org Among 10th graders, the proportion rose from 28 percent in 1991 to 37 percent in 2004.

Finding people who want child pornography "is like shooting fish in a barrel," said Stacey Bradley, an FBI supervisory agent in the Innocent Images unit. public.findlaw.com The FBI's growing effort to fight child pornography has yielded increases of more than 2000 percent in arrests and 350 percent in federal prosecutions over 10 years. One out of every five children ages 10 to 17 receives sexual solicitations online.

A pastor was charged with spanking a 12-year-old girl with a piece of wood because he thought she was lying when she said she was sexually abused by a relative. hosted.ap.org Police said the Rev. Daryl Bujak struck the girl, now 13, hard enough to cause bruises and welts after she was brought to him for counseling because her mother doubted the claims. Officials said they believe the girl's allegations of sexual abuse, and this week authorities in McHenry County charged a 33-year-old man with abusing her from September 2003 until March 2005.

A Tennessee couple has been charged with raping their 1-day-old girl before she was taken home from the hospital. www.jacksonsun.com Hospital officials notified police of the possible rape after noticing injuries to the child's rear during a routine examination given before newborns are released from the hospital.


*for access to member only sites like the New York Times, use the ID "JohnDoeID" and the password "whatever". On sites asking for an email address, feel free to use "info@childprotectionprogram.org"