The Child Protection eNewsletter

Looking for lessons from tragedy…

After the Columbine massacre eight years ago, Marisa Randazzo, then a research psychologist with the Secret Service, joined in a groundbreaking investigation into the cause of the rising number of school shootings in the United States. Read More Here “There’s usually some precipitating event,” she said in an interview with CBS correspondent Maureen Maher. “It might be a loss of status, like a public humiliation that comes from bullying. But the important thing for the shooter, it feels like a major loss. Something they can’t overcome.”

Randazzo says all of the 41 shooters they studied had suicidal thoughts before carrying out their attacks. “As we see it, there’s really just a fine line between suicide and homicide. They actually feel 'Okay, I’m desperate. But who’s to blame for this? Why am I feeling such despair?'” Randazzo explains. “And they may realize, 'Okay it’s because of that teacher, that student, because I was bullied, and I’m going to take some people out before I kill myself.’”

Not only are many of these school shootings planned well in advance, the killers often confess their plans before committing the crime. “These are people who usually tell other kids what they’re planning to do,” Randazzo says. Even though adults may not hear of the murder plans in advance, Randazzo says many are witnessing the danger signs. Her study found that in the vast majority of these shootings, at least three adults had witnessed suspicious behavior by the students, but did nothing about it.

Virginia Tech gunman Cho Seung-hui was a moody loner who took antidepressants and wrote gory fiction, news reports say. But nobody could have predicted from this that he would commit violent acts, experts tell WebMD. Read More Here “When a tragedy like this happens, we want to know how to defend ourselves and our families. We are very eager to see this as a gross aberration that might have identifiable warning signs,” according to Jeff Victoroff, M.D., an associate professor at the University of Southern California and an expert on human aggression and the neurobiology of violence. “It is true that people like Mr. Cho and the Columbine shooters exhibited some aberrant behaviors that, with 20-20 hindsight, might have tipped off sensitive observers,” Victoroff says. “But we don't usually attend to those warning signs because they are so common among adolescents....We will never be altogether safe from such people.”

“The greatest predictor of acts of violence is prior acts of violence. Lacking that, we cannot say who will be violent and who will not," says Robert Irvin, M.D., medical director of a long-term residential treatment program that is part of the Bipolar and Psychotic Disorders Program at Harvard's McLean Hospital in Belmont, Massachusetts. "There is no reliable predictor of who or who not to avoid. Because that quiet, lonely person who is not so verbal may be very fearful himself and the least harmful person in the world.”

Study: Most teens partially protect their online profiles…

Teens generally don't think twice about including their first names and photos on their personal online profiles, but most refrain from using full names or making their profiles fully public, a new survey finds. Read More Here The Pew Internet and American Life Project reported Wednesday that two-thirds of teens with profiles on blogs or social-networking sites have restricted access to their profiles in some fashion, such as by requiring passwords or making them available only to friends on an approved list. The study comes amid growing concerns about online predators and other dangers on popular online hangouts like News Corp.'s MySpace and Facebook, which encourage their youth-oriented visitors to expand their circles of friends through messaging tools and personal profile pages. Social-networking sites have responded by offering users more controls over how much they make public and warning them about revealing too much.

According to Pew, fewer than a third of teens with profiles use their last names, and a similar number include their e-mail addresses. Only 2 percent list their cell phone numbers. But 79 percent have included photos of themselves, with girls more likely to do so. Eighty-two percent use their first names, and half identify their schools. "Teens are manifesting the tension between wanting to keep themselves safe online and wanting to share themselves with their friends and potentially make new ones," said Amanda Lenhart, a senior research specialist at Pew. "Teens, particularly girls and younger teens, have gotten the message about protecting themselves on social networks, but the fun of these networks is the ability to share yourself with others on them."

Connecticut has introduced legislation aimed at requiring social networking sites like MySpace to verify the ages of users. vol5_iss19

Catholic Charities closing Chicago foster care agency…

Catholic Charities is closing one of Illinois' largest foster care programs in less than three months, leaving the state and other agencies to quickly absorb its Chicago area caseload of more than 900 children. Read More Here The federal and state money that went to Catholic Charities of the Archdiocese of Chicago will be redistributed to agencies that take over the program's cases. State welfare officials will work to ensure children remain with their current foster parents, said Kendall Marlowe, a spokesman for the Department of Children and Family Services. "While the foster home and the supervision of the case are transferred to a new agency, children can remain in the same homes," he said. "It's just that the home will now be supervised by a new private agency or DCFS directly."

The decision came after a $12 million lawsuit payment prompted Catholic Charities' insurer to review the liability of foster care, spokeswoman April Specht said. The company then refused to insure the program, forcing Catholic Charities to drop it, she said. "It's not a political decision, it's not a fiscal decision. We just can't operate without insurance," Specht said. She noted that Catholic Charities will continue to provide programming and services for 895,000 clients in the Chicago area. "This is permanent. There is no way we can dismantle this infrastructure and then recreate it," said Walter Ousley, the chief operating officer for Catholic Charities. "It's the most painful decision I've had to make in 34 years."

A lawsuit filed against Catholic Charities in 2001 alleged that foster parents it licensed had abused three children who were placed in 1995, according to plaintiffs' attorney Christopher Hurley.

Seven more charges for Devlin…

Seven more charges, including attempted murder, have been filed against a former pizzeria manager accused of kidnapping two boys and holding one of them for four years. Read More Here Michael Devlin was already charged with kidnapping Ben Ownby, 13, in January in Franklin County and with kidnapping Shawn Hornbeck, then 11, in 2002 in Washington County. He also was charged with several counts of forcible sodomy in St. Louis County, where Devlin allegedly kept the boys, and with federal counts of pornography and transporting a boy across state lines.

Washington County prosecutor John Rupp filed the additional charges Monday against Devlin, accusing the 41-year-old of attempted murder, kidnapping, armed criminal action, three counts of forcible sodomy and one count of attempted forcible sodomy. The new charges allege that Devlin tried to suffocate "SH" after kidnapping him. The papers only give the initials, which match Shawn's name.

In other news…

A convicted sex offender told the court he was proud of an underground bunker he built beneath his home, where prosecutors said he bound two teen girls with duct tape, raped them and left them to die. Read More Here Authorities have said the girls managed to escape in March 2006 and tell police about their ordeal in the room that was just 4 1/2 feet deep and roughly the length and width of a midsize car. Defense attorney Rick Hoefer said in opening statements that the girls lied. "These women, they're not the victims in this case. They're perpetrators," Hoefer said. "The issue is going to be, was the sex consensual between these parties?"

A southwest Missouri man acquired whips, handcuffs, dog chains and a girl's tank top with "Princess" printed on it in a plot to kidnap, rape and kill two girls and kill 12 others. Read More Here Investigators searching the apartment of Randy L. Rust found detailed notes on the supplies he needed to abuse and kill the girls, ages 4 and 9, and kill the others, according to court documents.

Surveillance tapes that allegedly show a youth prison guard and a teenage inmate entering a supply closet surfaced nearly two weeks after a grand jury declined to indict him on abuse charges, and authorities are evaluating whether the tapes can make a stronger case. Read More Here District Attorney Michael Murray said he knew the tapes existed, but the Texas Youth Commission didn't give them to investigators until Friday. They were found in the TYC headquarters in Austin after an investigator for the Department of Criminal Justice's inspector general asked to be shown the collected evidence. Why they weren't turned over earlier is being investigated.

Many elementary school students report being bullied by their peers and bullying other children, a new study shows. Read More Here The study included 270 children in grades 3 through 6 at two schools in California and one school in Arizona. Nearly 90 percent of the children reported being bullied and 59 percent said they had bullied other students.

Players of violent video games believe they are just "exhilarating" escapism which does not desensitize them to real-life mayhem, according to a new British survey of one of the entertainment industry's fastest growing sectors. Read More Here However gamers do concede that people "who are already unhinged in some way" may be pushed over the edge if they play violent games obsessively. Some young gamers under the age of 15 said they found some of the violence upsetting. Uncomfortable about the level of gore portrayed in the graphics, they admitted to having nightmares.

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