The Child Protection eNewsletter

Text message saves kidnapped teen… 
A missing 14-year-old South Carolina girl was rescued after using her kidnapper’s cell phone to text her mother to call police.  She had been abducted 10 days earlier from her bus stop by a sex offender already on the run from molestation charges involving another 12 year old girl.  http://www.cbsnews.com

Capt. David Thomley of the Kershaw County Sheriff's Office described the message.  http://abcnews.go.com  "She said 'Hi mom.'  She said, 'I'm in a hole near Charm Hill where the big trucks go in and out.  There's a bomb.  Call the police,'" Thomley said.  Police used cell phone towers to trace the signal and pinpoint the search to a dense area of brush deep in the woods.

The 37-year-old abductor’s mother and his common-law wife were arrested after police learned they had been providing Filyaw with food, water and other supplies.  http://hosted.ap.org

Attorney General Gonzales takes on internet child pornography… 
Attorney General Alberto Gonzales said Tuesday that Congress should require Internet service providers to preserve customer records, asserting that prosecutors need them to fight child pornography.  http://www.msnbc.msn.com  He called the government's lack of access to customer data the biggest obstacle to deterring child porn.  "We have to find a way for Internet service providers to retain information for a period of time so we can go back with a legal process to get them," he said. 

In his prepared statement, the Attorney General said, “Every day, pedophiles troll the Internet to see and sell images of child abuse.  They also look for ways to contact our children over the Internet.  They are hoping to make contact with the very young, the very innocent, to commit unthinkable acts and potentially sell images of those crimes to other pedophiles.”  http://www.usdoj.gov

According to Ernie Allen, the President and CEO of the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children, a recent report, "estimated that today commercial child pornography is a multi-billion dollar industry worldwide fueled by the internet.  Its victims are becoming younger...19% of identified offenders had images of children younger than 3 years old; 39% had images of children younger than 6 years old; 83% had images of children younger than 12 years old."  http://blogs.abcnews.com

In other news...  
Dean Arthur Schwartzmiller, considered the nation’s most prolific pedophile, was found guilty on 10 felony counts of molestation and one felony count of taking obscene photographs of a boy by a California jury.  http://www.mercurynews.com  Schwartzmiller could be sentenced to more than 150 years in prison.  Sentencing is scheduled for Oct. 16.

The trial of a sex offender charged with kidnapping, raping and killing 9-year-old Jessica Lunsford will be held in February in Miami, where officials hope it will be easier to find a fair jury, Citrus County court officials said Tuesday.  http://www.foxnews.com  Jury selection for John Evander Couey's trial in Tavares in Lake County, Fla., was abandoned in July after three days when it became clear that too many prospective jurors had been exposed to media reports or other discussions of the case.  vol4_iss30

A former Department of Homeland Security press aide  vol4_iss16  pleaded no contest Tuesday to charges that he had sexually explicit online conversations with someone he thought was a 14-year-old girl.  http://www.cnn.com  Brian J. Doyle, 56, could face up to five years in prison under the plea agreement accepted Tuesday.  He also faces up to 10 years' probation at sentencing scheduled for November 17, and must register as a sex offender.

The oldest man charged in the case of an 11-year-old Milwaukee girl, who authorities say had sex with as many as 20 people, says she had looked like she was 19 or 20 to him.  http://www.foxnews.com

Newsweek features a story on Parent Alienation Syndrome, the junk science pedophile child custody tool invented by the late discredited psychiatrist Richard Gardner.  msnbc.msn.com  For more on PAS, including the National District Attorneys’ Association assault on its use, please see vol2_iss3.

CBS has a report on parental child abductions to Japan.  cbsnews.com  Japan hasn't signed The Hague Convention, so it doesn't have to honor the child custody rulings of other nations.

The mother of a teenager arrested in a foiled Columbine-style plot to bomb and shoot students at a high school said the boys were victims of bullying and harassment at school.  http://www.cbsnews.com  Investigators said the teens planned to set off bombs near bathrooms, light exits on fire and shoot people who they didn't like at East High School.  

Thirteen people who claim they were sexually abused by priests should not be allowed to use federal anti-racketeering laws to sue the Archdiocese of Philadelphia, church lawyers said Monday.  http://hosted.ap.org  Archdiocese attorney C. Clark Hodgson Jr. asked a federal court to dismiss the lawsuit, which argues that the archdiocese violated federal conspiracy and anti-racketeering laws by attempting to cover up the abuse.

A woman who forced her stepchildren to gorge themselves on food and drink, then eat their own vomit has been sentenced to two to six years in prison.  http://abcnews.go.com  Circuit Judge Alan D. Moats called the abuse one of the worst cases he's seen in 30 years.  "You are like the proverbial wicked stepmother of fairy tales," he said.  "You should never have been a mother; you are the antithesis of everything that is a mother."

Rulers of the United Arab Emirates were accused in a lawsuit of enslaving tens of thousands of boys over three decades and forcing them to work as jockeys in the popular sport of camel racing.  http://hosted.ap.org  The lawsuit claims the boys were taken largely from Bangladesh and Pakistan, were held at desert camps in the UAE and other Persian Gulf nations, and forced to work.  It claims some boys were sexually abused, given limited food and sleep, and injected with hormones to prevent their growth.  The United States State Department in a report on human trafficking (see http://abcnews.go.com) last year cited the practice of using young boys as camel jockeys.  http://blogs.abcnews.com


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