Volume 5, Issue 17
March 9, 2007
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The Child Protection eNewsletter Couey guilt of Jessica Lunsford murder… The sex offender convicted of kidnapping, raping and then killing 9-year-old Jessica Lunsford by burying her alive behind his trailer could now face the death penalty. Read More Here Jurors deliberated for about four hours before finding John Evander Couey guilty. They'll return Tuesday to consider whether he should face life in prison or death. "With capital cases, I'm all for the death penalty. It's an eye for an eye," the girl's father, Mark Lunsford, said Thursday on the CBS "The Early Show."Jessica was snatched from her central Florida bedroom in February, 2005 about 150 yards from the trailer where Couey, 48, had been living. Her body was found in his yard a month later encased in two black plastic trash bags and buried in a shallow hole. The little girl had been clutching a purple stuffed dolphin when she suffocated but had managed to poke two fingers through the bag. Her disappearance led to a crackdown around the country on people convicted of sex crimes. Couey, a convicted sex offender, hadn't told authorities he was living near the Lunsford home even though he was required to do so. The Texas House has given final approval to a measure that would allow the state to sentence sex offenders who repeatedly prey on children to death. Read More Here The House voted to create a new category of crime — continual sexual abuse of a young child or children — that carries a minimum of 25 years to life in prison and possibly the death penalty for a second offense. The final proposal was a compromise after some lawmakers bristled at a broader death penalty provision over concerns that it might lead some molesters to kill their victims. The House voted 119-25 in favor of the measure. The bill is named Jessica's Law after Jessica Lunsford. More than a dozen states have passed versions of Jessica's Law to crack down on sex offenders and Texas Governor Rick Perry has deemed passage of a child sex offender bill a legislative emergency. Fox News’ Bill O’Reilly, who has become the nation’s leading advocate of Jessica’s Law, reported, “At this point, 24 states have a full version of Jessica's Law — 15 years and up for predators. Read More Here No parole, no nonsense. — Those states are in purple, Jessica's favorite color. The green states have partial punishment, but not nearly enough. And the gray states are working on the full Jessica's Law. The 11 states you see in yellow, well, they refuse to pass anything in this vein. Specifically, O’Reilly blames:
The state's probe into sexual abuse allegations in the Texas youth prison system has resulted in the firing of a correctional officer who is a convicted sex offender. Read More Here David Andrew Lewis, 23, was fired Wednesday from the Texas Youth Commission's Coke County Juvenile Justice Center, an all-male facility, several newspapers reported. State leaders have dispatched law enforcement officials to all 22 youth facilities and the commission's headquarters to investigate claims of sexual abuse of inmates by employees. Lewis was 15 when he was convicted in 1999 of indecency by exposure with a 5-year-old girl, according to a Texas Department of Public Safety Web site listing sex offenders. He is required to register annually as a sex offender. Late last month, Texas lawmakers questioned agency staff about an investigation in 2005 that had found evidence that high-ranking officials at the West Texas State School in Pyote had repeated sexual contact with some of the 250 boys and young men housed there. An internal investigation found prison staff members had complained about the abuse to their supervisors but that no one took action for more than a year. Read More Here For at least two years, investigators say, boys at a juvenile prison in the West Texas desert were summoned from their dorms late at night and taken to darkened conference rooms, offices and ball fields for sex with two of the institution's top administrators. Read More Here The boys told their parents, their teachers, any staff member who would listen. A few diligent staff members took their complaints to their supervisors. But the allegations were largely covered up until last month, when they exploded in the biggest scandal ever to engulf the Texas juvenile prison system. The top two officials at the Texas Youth Commission have lost their jobs over their handling of the allegations. Prosecutors are looking into criminal charges and lawmakers are infuriated. In other news… Chelsea, Michigan area native Ken Gourlay cast a web of deceit, manipulation and wanton sexual gratification that lured teenagers into an underworld of cyber porn, prosecutors said at the start of his long-awaited trial on child sex abuse and assault charges. Read More Here The state’s key witness is Justin Berry who gained national notoriety by addressing the U.S. Congress on the topic and by appearing on national television to discuss his ordeal last spring. vol4_iss1 and vol4_iss16 Meanwhile, The New York Times acknowledged that a reporter who wrote an acclaimed 2005 article about a teenage Internet pornographer helped gain the boy's trust by sending him a $2,000 check. Read More Here Former Times staff writer Kurt Eichenwald made the payment in June 2005 to Justin Berry, who at the time was an 18-year-old star in a seedy network of child-porn sites. Authorities arrested the man they believe abducted a 13-year-old boy from a bus stop last month and left him tied up in the woods until he escaped safely, officials said today. Read More Here Authorities were able to negotiate the voluntary return of Vicente Ignacio Beltran-Moreno from his native Mexico to the U.S. to face charges in the kidnapping of Clay Moore, Manatee County Sheriff Charlie Wells said. A Connecticut man arrested for allegedly stabbing his wife several times is reported to have told police that he then gave the knife to his two-year-old son and told him to "stab Mommy." Read More Here An attorney for Michael Devlin, the former pizzeria manager charged with abducting two Missouri boys, rejected a plea deal that was expected to include several life sentences, saying his client could do better before a jury. Read More Here Devlin faces six federal and 75 county-filed counts involving kidnapping, sexual assault and producing child pornography. DeAnza College has suspended eight of its baseball players under investigation for the alleged sexual assault of a high school girl at a party over the weekend. Read More Here The girl, who has not been identified because she is a minor, told police she was assaulted at a house party in San Jose, California. A self-admitted pedophile has removed from his Web site a family photo of Democratic Senator Barack Obama, his wife and two daughters after receiving a cease and desist order from the presidential candidate's attorney. Read More Here Proud pedophile Lindsay Ashford, who runs Puellula Web site based in Panama, said despite the request from Obama attorney Robert F. Bauer, he is keeping up a link to the senator's presidential campaign site, in part because he considers it a tribute. Two Georgia high school teachers have been charged with having sex with the same 17-year-old student. Read More Here Clarence Hicks, 28, and Eubie Lewis, 29, are accused of having sex with the female student in February at a home in Stone Mountain, police said *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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