The Child Protection eNewsletter

Tripling of number of sex offenders in prison causes 47% drop in sex crimes against children…  
Predators on the Internet, priests molesting children, Duke lacrosse players accused of rape - judging from the news or TV crime dramas, sexual assault appears to be an endless national epidemic.  So powerful is this impression that when evidence emerges to suggest otherwise, Americans may have trouble believing their eyes.  But the truth about the incidence of rape and other sex crimes is no mirage:  It has declined drastically and is still dropping.  http://www.baltimoresun.com  Sexual abuse of children, a plague in the 1980s, has also gotten much less common, with a decline of 47 percent since 1990.  What's going on?  In the last 15 years, the nation's prison population has doubled, taking many sex offenders out of circulation.  The number of people imprisoned for sexually abusing children tripled from 1986 to 1997.  In other words, the best way to keep children safe is to put and keep the molesters in prison.  Duh!

In other news...  
Social networking giant MySpace.com has become the most visited website in the United States, accounting for 4.46% of all US Internet visits.  http://www.foxnews.com  MySpace.com has been under fire from child advocates and others for failing to adequately protect teens on its site from sexual predators.  vol4_iss27,  vol4_iss22  and  vol4_iss17

A witness in the Andrea Yates retrial  vol4_iss28  and  vol3_iss2  testified that Yates had asked her “if Satan could read her mind,” and that Yates twice attempted suicide before taking the lives of her five children.  http://www.foxnews.com

Jury selection has begun in the trial of another infamous case, the Jessica Lunsford murder.  http://hosted.ap.org

The rape of an 11-year-old girl may have involved as many as 10 men, most of whom are football players at local community colleges, police said.  http://www.latimes.com

A new study by the Duke University Medical Center published in Archives of Pediatrics & Adolescent Medicine claims that teen binge drinking can cause lasting brain damage.  http://www.sfgate.com

All 50 states are now participating in the National Sex Offender Public Registry (NSOPR) Web site.  A link to the site is available on our home page at http://www.childprotectionprogram.org/

A Georgia group has formed to block the sale of the Atlanta Braves to a man they claim is one the country’s largest pornographers.  http://www.family.org

The American Bar Association is offering a free, online continuing education credit program on interviewing and counseling a child client.  It is available at http://www.abanet.org.


*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"