The Child Protection eNewsletter

Cho’s rantings included references to Deb Lafave and John Mark Karr… 

The disturbing rants of the Virginia Tech campus killer included a reference to Debra Lafave, the former Florida middle school teacher who admitted having sex with a 14-year-old student.  Read More Here  The page with the Lafave reference, part of a manifesto sent to NBC by Seung-Hui Cho — who carried out the deadliest shooting in U.S. history — also appeared to contain a reference to John Mark Karr, who falsely confessed to killing child beauty pageant contestant JonBenet Ramsey in Colorado.  According to an excerpt of the writings posted on the MSNBC Web site, the diatribe included a typed statement saying, “You wanna rape us John Mark Karrs?  You wanna rape us Debra LaFaves?  [Profanity deleted] you.”

Lafave’s attorney, John Fitzgibbons, who was reached in Washington, said he talked to his client about the posting.  “Debbie’s response was basically no response,” he said.  “She has seen the NBC report, and it’s really hard to have any reaction.  This killer was obviously deranged and trying to interpret what he meant by his references to Debbie is obviously impossible.”  Fitzgibbons also declined to try to figure out the meaning of the statement.  “Better psychiatric minds than mine obviously will undoubtedly try to interpret this and other ramblings by the killer,” he said.

Meanwhile, college counseling centers across America are strained by rising numbers of mentally ill students and surging demand for mental health services — a challenging trend as campus officials try to identify potential threats like the unstable Virginia Tech gunman.  Read More Here  Even when serious emotional problems are detected, university officials often feel constrained in how they respond due to an array of laws and policies that protect students' rights and privacy.  "The number of people coming to colleges who've had psychiatric treatment has increased tremendously," said Dr. Gerald Kay, a psychiatry professor at Wright State University and chair of the American Psychiatric Association committee on college mental health.

When it comes to issues of mental health on campus, lawyers, psychologists and university administrators all agree on one thing:  Striking an appropriate balance between protecting an individual's privacy and the community's security is not easy.  Read More Here  In federal law and in most states, privacy concerns generally trump security, but in practice, universities say situations are handled on a case-by-case basis and sometimes result in a school contacting a student's parents or the police for help.

Since the deadly shootings at Virginia Tech, many have wondered why the school did not take more proactive steps to treat or remove from campus gunman Seung-Hui Cho, despite his known history of mental illness.  Both professors and students told university officials they believed Cho was unstable.  In an English class, he wrote explicit and violent plays, which ultimately led to his removal from the class for private tutoring.  Two female students reported him for stalking and local law enforcement authorities had him sent for psychological evaluation.

Sex offender acquitted of dungeon rapes… 

A jury has acquitted a convicted sex offender of charges he raped two teen girls in an underground bunker.  Read More Here  The jury found Kenneth Glenn Hinson, 48, not guilty of kidnapping, sex crimes and assault with intent to kill.  Hinson wiped his eyes and mouth and appeared to cry after the jury read its verdict, which followed about four hours of deliberations over two days.

Authorities had charged that Hinson snatched the 17-year-old girls from their bedroom last year and dragged them one at a time to the underground room hidden beneath a tool shed, where he raped and bound them with duct tape.  Prosecutors said Hinson expected the girls to die because the room had no air supply.

However, Hinson testified during the six-day trial that the girls had consensual sex with him.  He said they made up the story so they would be able to take drugs from the underground room, which he used to store marijuana.  The two young women were not in the courtroom when Hinson was acquitted.  Their mothers and other relatives wept.  They declined to comment after the verdict.

If convicted, Hinson had faced a mandatory life sentence without parole under the state's two-strikes law because he was convicted of raping a 12-year-old girl in 1991.

The age of consent in South Carolina is 16, the lowest in the nation.

Texas Youth Commission administrators plead not guilty…  

Two former youth prison administrators pleaded not guilty to charges they sexually abused inmates at the juvenile detention facility they managed.  Read More Here  The charges are the most serious to emerge from the scandal that erupted after news accounts revealed that Texas Rangers had found rampant sexual abuse at the remote prison in 2005, but prosecutors and the Texas Youth Commission had taken no action.

The Rangers' report accused Ray E. Brookins, assistant superintendent at the West Texas State School in Pyote, and John Paul Hernandez, principal at the jail, of sexually abusing inmates ages 16 to 19.  Both were allowed to quietly quit their jobs in early 2005.  The indictments were issued more than two years after the Rangers' report was handed to a local prosecutor who has since recused himself.  Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott has taken over the case.

Hernandez, 41, remains jailed on $650,000 bond.  He was charged with one count of sexual assault, nine counts of improper sexual activity with a person in custody, and nine counts of improper relationship between a student and educator.  Brookins, also 41, who is free on $100,000 bond, faces two counts each of improper relationship with a student and improper sexual activity with a person in custody.

In other news… 

Children in Darfur, according to a new U.N. report, are enduring "unspeakable acts of violence and abuse" from killing and rape to abduction, torture and recruitment as fighters in the escalating four-year conflict in Sudan's vast western region.  Read More Here  The latest report by Watchlist on Children and Armed Conflict accused the Sudanese government of "apparent deliberate efforts ... to suppress information and prevent agencies from collecting and disseminating details on attacks against children and their protection needs, particularly in Darfur" and eastern Sudan.  Last week, former U.S. Ambassador John Miller accused the United Nations itself of failing to halt sexual abuse by U.N. peacekeepers.

Last fall, a former Lancaster (PA) Bible College security guard was placed on 20 years' probation for sexually assaulting a teenage girl in a chapel restroom.  Read More Here  This week, police said, the same man, Joseph Simon Holt, was charged with grabbing and trying to handcuff a woman in a York County parking lot, allegedly telling police later that he wanted to kidnap and sexually assault her.

A teenager accused of gunning down his principal told detectives in a videotaped interview that he didn't mean to kill him but "freaked out" when the principal tackled him in a school hallway.  Read More Here  Eric Hainstock, 16, told investigators in the same interview, hours after Principal John Klang was fatally shot that he'd been in anger management classes for years but found them useless.  "He's like, 'Your choices are based on your beliefs,'" Hainstock said, referring to his instructor.  "Like, 'duh.'  It gets annoying."

A Kentucky man pleaded guilty to conspiracy with a man in the United Arab Emirates in a scheme to use information taken from a teenager's computer to blackmail the teen to give him nude images of herself, the U.S. attorney's office said.  Read More Here  A Michigan teen told law enforcement authorities there that credit card and bank account information, personal photographs and other personal information were taken from her computer and that a person used the information to blackmail her, U.S. Attorney David L. Huber said in a statement.  The girl said she was blackmailed to take nude photographs of herself and send them to the person or pose nude in front of a Web cam for the person to view and/or record, Huber said.

A 14-year-old Georgia girl was raped by a 58-year-old man she met on Quest Personals, a phone chat service, after seeing it advertised on television.  Read More Here  The site requires users to be over 18, but it has absolutely no security measure or age verification to ensure that those who say there are over 18 really are.  The girl easily created a voice chat profile and began using Quest.  No one from the service ever attempted to confirm her true age.  The girl’s mother is suing Quest.

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