The Child Protection eNewsletter

Foley report finds “willful ignorance”… 
The House ethics committee concluded yesterday that House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.) and his top staff probably knew for months, if not years, of then-Representative Mark Foley's inappropriate contact with former House pages but did nothing to protect the teenagers.  washingtonpost.com  Top GOP House leaders also "failed to exercise appropriate diligence" in the matter, the committee's report found, and tried "to remain willfully ignorant of the potential consequences of Foley's conduct."  The ensuing scandal contributed to the Republicans' losses in the midterm elections.  The report speculated that some officials were reluctant to act too aggressively for fear of exposing Foley's homosexuality or for political reasons.  But the ethics panel, officially known as the Committee on Standards of Official Conduct, decided against taking any action against the leaders, aides or House officials involved in the saga, declining even to describe their actions as bringing ill repute on the House.

Calling the report a "whitewash," Melanie Sloan, the executive director of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, said that the "House ethics committee has proven itself yet again to be entirely incapable of investigating wrongdoing by Members of Congress."  blogs.abcnews.com  The full report is available online at abcnews.go.com.

Virginia AG proposes online identity sex offender registry… 
Virginia Attorney General Bob McDonnell announced that he will seek legislation requiring convicted sex offenders to register their online identities with the state to help MySpace and other online hangouts more easily block access.  msnbc.msn.com  If such a law is enacted, Virginia would be the first state to require registration of e-mail addresses and instant-messaging identities on the state's sex offender registry, McDonnell's office reported.

"We require all sex offenders to register their physical and mailing addresses in Virginia, but in the 21st century it is just as critical that they register any e-mail addresses or IM screen names," McDonnell said in a news release.

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 known as profiles.

MySpace officials like the registration idea, saying the Internet "is a community as real as any other neighborhood and is in need of similar safeguards."  wgal.com

In other news... 
Several California Supreme Court justices suggested that an investigator who lies to obtain information about another person might be liable for invasion of privacy.  latimes.com  During arguments in Los Angeles, members of the state high court expressed consternation over allegations that Elizabeth Loftus misidentified herself to obtain information she used to dispute conclusions of a case study about repressed memory.  For more on leading pedophile apologist Elizabeth Loftus, see vol1_iss5,  vol3_iss7,  vol3_iss8  and  vol4_iss45.

About 150 people who claimed they were molested by priests have agreed to settle their lawsuits against the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Portland for an undisclosed amount.  cbsnews.com  The judge said the archdiocese has more than $50 million from settling litigation with insurance companies, plus sufficient real estate and other assets of its own to cover the claims.

The New York Times profiles Perverted-Justice.com which is responsible for 114 convictions of internet pedophiles.  nytimes.com  What started as one man’s quest to rid his regional Yahoo chat room of lewd adults has grown into a nationwide force of cyberspace vigilantes, financed by a network television program hungry for ratings.

A teenager was arrested in the death of a 6-year-old foster girl he allegedly threw to the ground at least four times.  Now, the state of Texas is investigating all foster homes managed by the private agency that placed the girl in the teen's home.  hosted.ap.org  The home was until recently overseen by Mesa Family Services, an agency already under scrutiny for the deaths of two young children in its homes since August 2005.

A prominent Broadway actor, known for playing the beast in Disney's family-friendly "Beauty and the Beast," pleaded not guilty to charges that he had sexual contact several times with a 15-year-old girl -- including once in his dressing room.  cnn.com

School administrators gave a 4-year-old student an in-school suspension for inappropriately touching a teacher's aide after the pre-kindergartner hugged the woman.  hosted.ap.org  A letter from La Vega school district administrators to the student's parents said that the boy was involved in "inappropriate physical behavior interpreted as sexual contact and/or sexual harassment," and he "rubbed his face in the chest of (the) female employee," after he hugged the woman on November 10.

Two parents have filed a lawsuit alleging school officials failed to protect their daughters from sexual assault by another girl in their kindergarten class.  hosted.ap.org  The lawsuit claims both girls were subjected to repeated sexual abuse by the third girl during nap periods and on a playground in the fall of 2005.  It says the assaults took place even though the abusive girl's mother had warned a school official that her daughter had been a victim of sexual abuse and might be a threat to other children.


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