The Child Protection eNewsletter

Texas Youth Commission boss ignored warnings…  

A Texas Youth Commission administrator charged with sexually abusing teenage inmates got continuing support from a supervisor despite recurring allegations against him, a newspaper investigation has found.  Read More Here  Ray Brookins is the former assistant superintendent of the West Texas State School in Pyote, where a sex scandal erupted in February.  He pleaded not guilty this month to charges of sexually abusing young inmates.  The scandal has led to the resignations of several top youth commission officials, including the executive director and board.  (See vol5_iss30,  vol5_iss29,  vol5_iss27,  vol5_iss26,  vol5_iss25,  vol5_iss24  and  vol5_iss23)

Lydia Barnard, a former high-ranking director at the commission, chose not to fire or demote Brookins on at least five occasions over five years amid multiple abuse warnings and even though he was caught browsing pornographic Web sites at work, according to agency records obtained by The Dallas Morning News.  Barnard, 46, now serves as a midlevel supervisor after being demoted in January in a dispute with senior officials.  She was formerly a director of juvenile prisons, responsible for several facilities.

Italy rocked by “satanic” kindergarten rituals… 

Six persons were arrested in Rome accused of sexually abusing 15 children from the age of three to the age of six at the nursery school “Olga Rovere” of Rignano Flaminio, in the vicinities of Rome.  Read More Here  They are expected to be subjected to intense interrogations on Friday.  The accused persons were arrested and passed their first night in isolation in a jail in Rebibbia, close to Rome.  All six were accused of a number of offences which included the abduction of minors, sexual violence within a group, sexual violence on minors under the age of 10 and obscene actions in public places.

Two of the six were teachers, both grandmothers, who were reported to have been in service at the school for decades and one was close to retirement.  Italian Police also arrested a female caretaker at the school, a young Sri Lankan male and the husband of one of the teachers, who formerly worked as a cameraman at Italy's state broadcaster RAI.

Police said the children were taken to an apartment near the school owned by one of the teachers where they were allegedly made to perform sexual acts with the Sri Lankan suspect, while the cameraman filmed the ordeal.  Children who protested or resisted were given sleeping pills, tranquilizers or other types of drugs.

“They told us that they were only playing, they made punctures on our cheeks,” said one of the children involved.  Some victims spoke of esoteric and satanic rituals, where adults forced them to drink human blood, exited from wounds that the same persons caused.

The pupils described the intimate parts of the body of the arrested persons and mentioned also piercing and tattoos, which a child at such a tender age wouldn’t know, if he or she has not seen them before.  The little victims described the dreadful scenes saying: “In the villa where they took us, a man cut his arm and coerced us to drink his own blood which he poured in a glass, with other substances.  Then they made us do a series of strange games, sort of performances with masked adults and massages to female teachers with oil.

In other news… 

A former regional Boy Scout official has been charged with sexually assaulting a 16-year-old Scout at least four times since July.  Read More Here  Charles Bickerstaff, 56, of Dixon, Illinois was charged with four counts of aggravated criminal sexual abuse and four counts of criminal sexual assault, Lee County Correctional Officer Larry Schremp said.  Bail was set at $2.5 million at a hearing Friday, and Bickerstaff remained in custody Sunday.  Bickerstaff retired last year as district executive for the Blackhawk Area Council, covering northern Illinois and southern Wisconsin, of the Boy Scouts of America.  He recruited and trained volunteers and helped organize fundraisers.

A 2-year-old and 4-year-old who were shown on videotape being taught how to smoke marijuana by two teens will remain in foster care, a judge ruled. Read More Here  Juvenile Court Judge Kim Brown issued the temporary order during a brief hearing.  She said no appropriate relatives could be found to care for the youngsters but that officials would keep searching.

A noted child psychiatrist pleaded not guilty to charges he molested seven boys in his care, and his lawyer said the accusers had mistaken routine physical examinations for sexual abuse.  Read More Here  William Ayres, 75, appeared briefly in San Mateo County Superior Court with his wife and lawyer at his side as a prosecutor added three additional counts involving two new alleged victims to the indictment.  Ayers once headed the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry.

A new child online tracking software, BeNetSafe, tracks your kids' online social networks like MySpace.com.  Read More Here  To initiate your BeNetSafe account, you define profiles for up to three children, giving detailed personal information, including home address, phone numbers, school name and date of birth.  There are also slots to fill in the child's instant-messaging screen names and e-mail addresses, if you happen to know them.  BeNetSafe uses this profile information to track down matching pages on MySpace, Xanga, and Friendster.

A further litany of alleged twisted parenting was heard in an Edmonton, Alberta courtroom in a shocking case involving accusations of child abuse and torture.  Read More Here  The trial of the mother and stepfather of a four-year-old girl has already heard eyewitness accounts describing the child being handcuffed to a box and made to stand on it, being punched and slapped, and being deprived of water.  A second eyewitness sobbed as she recounted seeing the little girl thirstily drinking her own urine, being forced to sit with her stepfather on the couch while he watched porn, and dancing “like a stripper.”

A father who raped his teenage daughter over several years and ordered her to throw two newborns he had fathered with her down an air shaft was sentenced to 35 years in prison.  Read More Here  The 45-year-old West New York man pleaded guilty to aggravated manslaughter, aggravated assault and two counts of aggravated sexual assault.  The Associated Press is not identifying him to protect the identity of his daughter, the victim of a sex crime.  One of the babies survived and is in foster care.  The other one died after being thrown down the shaft.

A man who told police he was disciplining his girlfriend's sons over chores when the situation escalated pleaded not guilty Friday to fatally stabbing the boys and sexually assaulting their 13-year-old sister.  Read More Here  The bodies of the boys, ages 12 and 14, were found at their home, around the time their mother was arriving home from her job at O'Hare International Airport.  They had been stabbed repeatedly with a steak knife.  Brian Gilbert, 36, a convicted sex offender, is charged with first-degree murder, attempted murder and sexual assault.

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