The Child Protection eNewsletter

Tragedy at Tech…

The shooter in yesterday's Virginia Tech massacre was identified this morning as Cho Seung-Hui, 23, a senior English major South Korean native in U.S. as a resident alien. His residency was in Centreville and he was staying at the Harper residence hall on Tech's campus, according to Tech Police Chief Wendell Flinchum. Read More Here Authorities are still investigating the gunman who killed 32 people on the Virginia Tech campus in the deadliest shooting rampage in U.S. history. A source reported that investigators have not linked him to any terrorist groups. Police believe three bomb threats on the campus last week may have been attempts by the man to test the campus’ security response, the source said. The exits to the buildings where the shootings occurred were reportedly chained by the shooter. Read More Here

The profile of the gun-toting student in a trench coat is just one of the myths about the rare but murderous attacks in the nation’s schools. Read More Here Here are 10 myths about school shootings, compiled by MSNBC.com from a 2002 study by the U.S. Secret Service and the U.S. Department of Education. The researchers studied case files and other primary sources for 37 attacks by current or former students, and also interviewed 10 of the perpetrators.

• Myth No. 1. “He didn’t fit the profile.”
• Myth No. 2. “He just snapped.”
• Myth No. 3. “No one knew.”
• Myth No. 4. “He hadn’t threatened anyone.”
• Myth No. 5. “He was a loner.”
• Myth No. 6. “He was crazy.”
• Myth No. 7. “If only we’d had a SWAT team or metal detectors.”
• Myth No. 8. “He’d never touched a gun.”
• Myth No. 9. “We did everything we could to help him.”
• Myth No. 10. “School violence is rampant.”

The entire Virginia Tech community has a long road to recovery ahead of it. Our thoughts and prayers are with them.

Jury to be picked in dungeon rape trial…

A jury has been selected in the trial of a man accused of kidnapping and raping two teenagers and keeping them bound in an underground room beneath a shed behind his home. Read More Here Kenneth Glenn Hinson, 48, was arrested in March 2006 and is charged with criminal sexual assault, kidnapping and assault and battery with intent to kill. The trial, expected to begin Tuesday morning, will be held in Darlington County, but because of pretrial publicity the jury was selected at the Georgetown County Courthouse, about 70 miles away. A pool of about 250 people reported to the Georgetown County Courthouse, said Cynthia Wragg of the clerk's office.

The case attracted national attention when South Carolina Attorney General Henry McMaster said during a four-day manhunt that Hinson - convicted in 1991 for the rape of a 12-year-old girl - could have been indefinitely committed to a state program for sexually violent predators after serving a nine-year prison sentence. Two review committees had recommended that Hinson be placed in the program, warning he could commit a future sex crime. But Judge Edward Cottingham rejected the plan and set Hinson free. After Hinson's arrest, McMaster argued it was that crucial mistake on Cottingham's part that paved the way for Hinson to assault the teens in the dungeon-like space beneath his home.

The girls were sexually assaulted and were bound inside the underground room, but managed to free themselves and escape, authorities have said. The room was just 4 1/2 feet deep and roughly the length and width of a midsize car. Its floor and walls were lined with two-by-fours. A single 75-watt bulb illuminated the space. vol5_iss10

Online child porn more brutal and graphic than just a few years ago…

Child pornography on the Internet is becoming more brutal and graphic, and the number of images depicting violent abuse has risen fourfold since 2003, according to an Internet watchdog report published Tuesday. Read More Here The British-based Internet Watch Foundation said in its annual review that it received nearly 32,000 reports of potentially illegal content on its hot line last year, marking a 34 percent increase from the previous year.

"Although there is a volume issue, the worrying issue is the severity and the gravity of the images is increasing," said the foundation's chief executive, Peter Robbins. "We're talking about prepubescent children being raped." The foundation identified about 10,700 individual Internet addresses on 3,000 sites containing child pornography content. About 80 percent of the children in the abusive images are female, and 91 percent appear to be children under the age of 12, it said. More than three in five child pornography Web sites were hosted in the U.S., while nearly a third were based in Russia.

The U.S. National Center for Missing and Exploited Children last year completed a pilot program in partnership with financial institutions aimed at cutting off child pornography Web sites' revenues. They identified sites that accepted credit card payments, then contacted individual banks to stop the flow of money to the sites. The center also operates a child sexual abuse hot line.

Texas Youth Commission overhaul faces bureaucratic delays…

The dream team appointed to overhaul the Texas Youth Commission swept in ready for anything: horrific sexual and physical abuse allegations, firings and arrests at remote juvenile prisons, even the political fallout from freeing some inmates. Read More Here But the new leaders weren't prepared for what they would find at TYC headquarters in Austin: a culture clash they say has impeded progress at the agency. Data takes weeks to produce. Straight answers are a rare commodity. So longtime bureaucrats and new agency executives – one side defensive and distrusting, the other confident and confrontational – struggle to communicate and cooperate as they work to rehabilitate the scandal-torn agency. The result is an awkward power struggle. Longtime employees say they want to protect decades of planning and policy, and despite the deep problems within the agency, not everything has to be reinvented. Newly appointed officials see the agency as archaic and feel empowered by state leaders to make complete, radical change – fast.

In other news…

A South Texas shelter for child immigrants has closed, a month after its detainees were moved to other facilities amid allegations of sexual abuse by a staff member. Read More Here The Texas Sheltered Care facility, operated by Away From Home Inc., had a federal contract to hold illegal immigrant children caught traveling alone until they were deported or reunited with relatives in the United States. An internal complaint to authorities led to an FBI probe of the allegations at the Nixon facility, about 65 miles northwest of Victoria. The facility is unrelated to the homes run by the Texas Youth Commission.

A judge overseeing the bankruptcy filing of the Archdiocese of Portland will confirm a proposed $75-million deal for current and future sex abuse claims against priests and other church officials, according to court documents filed Friday. Read More Here The decision from U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Elizabeth Perris leaves intact the compensation proposed in a plan negotiated by the plaintiffs and the archdiocese, the first in the nation ever to declare bankruptcy.

Meanwhile, the nation's sixth-largest Roman Catholic diocese (Long Island) went to trial Monday in a $150 million lawsuit accusing church officials of recklessness for employing a youth minister who raped and sodomized teenagers. Read More Here

A man who pleaded guilty to managing brothels as part of a nationwide ring that forced immigrant women into prostitution was sentenced to six years and eight months in federal prison. Read More Here Juan Balderas-Orosco, a Mexican citizen, will be deported upon his release from prison.

A former U.S. ambassador accused the United Nations of being among the major promoters of human trafficking in the world by failing to halt sexual abuse by U.N. peacekeepers. Read More Here John Miller, a former U.S. ambassador at large on modern-day slavery who is now a professor, urged the world body to enact real reforms in its peacekeeping department. A senior official in the U.N. peacekeeping department, Yewande Odia, called the accusations "completely false" and "actually offensive." She said the U.N. has taken action on many fronts to try to end sexual abuse by peacekeepers.

A Florida woman accused of putting her baby in an oven and turning it on has been sentenced to two years probation in a plea deal. Read More Here Sharlyn Singh also will have to complete a mandatory parenting class and undergo counseling.

Texas would have the largest high school steroids testing program in the country under a bill approved by the state Senate. Read More Here The program would test at least 22,000 public school athletes starting next fall. Students who test positive would have to sit out of competition for 30 days, and repeat positive tests could lead to a permanent ban

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