The Child Protection eNewsletter

Rabbi youth leader caught in Dateline sting sentenced… 
A Maryland rabbi ensnared in a nationally televised sex sting was sentenced to 6 1/2 years in prison Friday for attempting to have sex with someone posing as a 13-year-old boy.  hosted.ap.org  David A. Kaye, 56, of Rockville, Md., was convicted in September on federal charges of enticement and traveling across state lines to engage in illegal sexual conduct.

Most of the evidence came from a sting on "Dateline NBC" that was conducted in conjunction with an Internet watchdog group called Perverted Justice.  A Perverted Justice member posing as a 13-year-old boy met Kaye in an online chat room in 2005, and Kaye solicited sex acts.  When Kaye drove to what he thought was the boy's home in Virginia, he was instead confronted by a TV reporter and camera crew and admitted he was there for "not something good."

At his sentencing, prosecutors said Kaye's crime was not an isolated incident, and submitted affidavits from others who claimed Kaye engaged in improper conduct, including one incident at a youth camp as far back as 1974.  Kaye denied any improper conduct in those instances.  Kaye was a rabbi at a congregation in Potomac, Md., for 16 years, and at the time of the sting was vice president of a Jewish youth organization called PANIM: the Institute for Jewish Leaders and Values.

Former nun part of massive L.A. Archdiocese settlement… 

A former nun who says she's haunted by her memory of being molested by a pedophile priest as a young girl hopes a landmark settlement by the Archdiocese of Los Angeles  vol4_iss41  will help her heal.  hosted.ap.org  Mary Dispenza, 67, no longer calls herself a Catholic, no longer attends church and doubts she will be able to reconcile the abuse with her faith.  "Everything that I knew, all my identity, was wrapped up in the church in one way or another.  I was just lost," said Dispenza, who lives in Bellevue, Wash.  "I felt we both lost: the church lost me and I lost the church.  And we both had invested a lot in each other for all those years."

Meanwhile, a nun who served as a principal at a Milwaukee school has been charged with sexually assaulting children as many as 200 times.  www.themilwaukeechannel.com Sexual abuse by Roman Catholic priests has cost the U.S. church more than $1.5 billion since 1950.  A list of the largest known settlements is available online at hosted.ap.org.

Meanwhile, Roman Catholic Bishop Kevin Vann, the head of the Fort Worth diocese, issued an apology after a judge released almost 700 pages of documents relating to six priests accused of sexually abusing minors.  public.findlaw.com  "I want to reiterate today that I am embarrassed, disheartened, appalled, and angered by the behavior described in these files," Vann said the day after a judge released the files.

In other news... 
Immigration agents on Wednesday arrested 45 foreign-born New Yorkers from 19 countries who face deportation because they committed sex offenses against children.  public.findlaw.com  The roundup was the latest in a series that began when New York's Department of Probation began sharing information with federal agents about sex offenders who were out of jail and eligible for deportation.

A new wave of 10- to 12-year-olds addicted to heroin is washing up at Dallas drug rehab centers and emergency rooms.  blogs.abcnews.com  The preteens are mixing the powerful opiate with crushed Tylenol PM, a concoction they call "cheese," according to Michelle Hemm, Director of the Dallas Phoenix House drug treatment facility.

United Nations peacekeepers in several countries are facing new allegations of the sexual abuse of children.  www.abc.net.au  Officials say an investigation has uncovered wide-ranging accounts, including allegations of child prostitution and rape, involving two of the UN's largest peacekeeping operations in Haiti and Liberia.  Also, a BBC investigation commissioned as part of Generation Next - a week of programs focusing on people under 18 - has uncovered fresh allegations of the sexual abuse of children by United Nations peacekeepers.  news.bbc.co.uk

A 25-year employee of the King County (Seattle), Washington’s prosecutor’s office has been caught in an internet sex sting soliciting what he thought was a 13-year-old girl.  www.komotv.com Until last year, Larry Corrigan was the Director of Operations and Budget.  Now he has been arrested for attempted child rape and communicating with a minor for sex.

A man who lived next door to the parents accused of abusing some of their adopted children by making them sleep in cages testified Tuesday that the father said he planned to leave his job because he made enough money adopting youngsters.  www.foxnews.com  Tom Hall said that years ago Michael Gravelle told him, "The children that he had paid pretty good, that he was probably going to quit his job and build an orphanage and get all the children he could."

The popular online hangout MySpace said Tuesday it will develop technologies to help block convicted sex offenders, the site’s latest attempt to address complaints about sexual predators and other dangers to teens.  www.msnbc.msn.com  Parents, school administrators and law-enforcement authorities have grown increasingly worried that teens are at risk on MySpace and other social-networking sites, which provide tools for messaging, sharing photos and creating personal pages.  Meanwhile, a 25-year-old man is facing Federal charges for threatening a teenage Ohio girl and coercing her into using a Web camera to take explicit images of herself that he later posted on MySpace.  hosted.ap.org

At least 21 people were killed at school during the 2004-05 academic year, a slight increase from the year before, the government reported Sunday.  hosted.ap.org  The study by the Bureau of Justice Statistics does not include data from fatal shootings this fall in Wisconsin, Colorado and Pennsylvania.  The study is available online at  nces.ed.gov.


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