Volume 5, Issue 12
February 16, 2007
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The Child Protection eNewsletter Couple Gets 2 Years in “Caged Kids” Case… A couple who forced some of their 11 adopted special-needs children to sleep in wire-and-wood cages were sentenced to two years in prison, after the parents insisted they were only trying to keep the kids safe. Read More Here Two of the children, however, said in statements read in court that they were treated harshly while they lived with Sharen and Michael Gravelle. One wrote that they should be imprisoned "for as long as my siblings had to be in cages." Sharen Gravelle told the court the children were never confined as punishment but rather to protect them, including a child who wanted to jump out a second-floor window. "Would you prefer that we let them jump? Either way, we'd be here. The difference is they're still alive," she said in a tearful, 26-minute statement. Gravelle blamed social services officials for not helping her and her husband, Michael, control the destructive behavior of some of the youngsters.The children, who suffered from problems such as fetal alcohol syndrome and a disorder that involves eating nonfood items, ranged in age from 1 to 14 when authorities removed them in September 2005 from the Gravelles' home in Wakeman, about 60 miles west of Cleveland. They were placed in foster care in September, 2005 and the couple lost custody in March, 2006. vol3_iss54, vol3_iss53 and vol3_iss52 Italian Police Bust International Web-Based Child Porn Ring… An Italian-led probe of a suspected international child pornography ring led to the arrest of an Italian man and to raids on 40 houses in Italy, Romania, Slovenia and Switzerland on Thursday, officials said. Read More Here Forty people were being investigated, including 25 in Italy, said Capt. Luigi Mancuso of the paramilitary Carabinieri police in Rome. He said the Italian, a 60-year-old resident of Rome, was arrested because he distributed pornographic material as well as downloaded it. Europol, which assists in coordinating international police operations, said in a statement that the probe involved an "Internet (message) board whose members possessed and distributed child sexual abuse material." The network allegedly operated by posting illegal images to the free board in encrypted formats for short periods of time, it said. Europol Director Max-Peter Ratzel said in the statement that the operation "stopped yet another circle of criminals perpetrating one of the most devastating and appalling types of crimes." In other news… A University of Oregon study has found that young men who have never been traumatized are the least likely population to believe a person’s recounting of child sexual abuse. Read More Here The study – published in the March issue of the journal Psychology of Women Quarterly – also finds that males with high sexism beliefs also tend to believe that such incidents, if they happened at all, were not harmful to the victim. A judge on Tuesday refused to suppress jailhouse statements from a man who allegedly expressed remorse for raping and murdering 9-year-old Jessica Lunsford in 2005. Read More Here Circuit Court Judge Richard Howard halted jury selection Tuesday in John Couey's capital murder trial to hold a hearing on whether to suppress the statements that the convicted sex offender allegedly made in 2006. A former middle-school teacher in Jefferson County, Colorado was found guilty Wednesday morning on all counts related to a scheme to offer good grades and other gifts for nude pictures of students. Read More Here Marshall Walker, 33, was convicted on 30 counts of sexual exploitation of a child, two counts of enticement of a child and three counts of unlawful sexual contact. Julie Amero was convicted last month of exposing seventh-grade students to pornography on her classroom computer. Read More Here She contended the images were inadvertently thrust onto the screen by pornographers' unseen spyware and adware programs. Prosecutors dispute that, but her argument has made her a cause celebre among some technology experts, who say what happened to her could happen to anyone. The organization in charge of approving Internet domains has reintroduced a controversial proposal to create a domain registry specifically for pornographic content. Read More Here The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) in June 2005 approved the creation of the ".xxx" domain. But in May 2006, the organization voted against a contract with domain distributor ICM Registry, in part because of outcry from conservative family groups. Georgia prosecutors will pursue child cruelty charges against a man who admitted tampering with his children's soup to get money from the Campbell Soup Company. Read More Here William Allen Cunningham, 41, pleaded guilty to communicating false claims last week in federal court. Local officials said those charges do not address the harm done to his children. Clayton County District Attorney Jewel Scott said the state case will be reopened and prosecutors will seek to indict Cunningham on five counts of child cruelty. An 84-year-old woman who confessed to having sex with an 11-year-old boy in her foster care reached a deal with prosecutors and pleaded guilty Thursday to attempted sex abuse, officials said. Read More Here Georgie Audean Buoy will serve 36 months in prison, said Leslie Wolf, chief deputy district attorney for Wasco County. She was originally charged with six counts, including attempted rape, for which she faced eight years in prison, Wolf said. A 16-year-old high school junior has been charged with making bombs in a plan to target classmates in his school, a plot uncovered after a video was discovered on the Internet, police said. Read More Here The plot was foiled when a teen who knows the suspect sent a link to an Internet video on YouTube.com to a person who did not know the teen. The video showed area high school students firing weapons and igniting explosives, but it is still unclear who had made the video. The teenager who received the link shared the information with a parent, who contacted police. A father bounded into a youth wrestling match, picked up his son's winning opponent and launched him out of the ring, an episode caught on a home video. Read More Here After tossing the 11-year-old boy into the air Sunday, the angry father headed toward the cameraman, the father of the airborne boy. *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" Unsubscribe |
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