The Child Protection eNewsletter

MySpace boots 29,000 sex offenders…

Popular Internet social network MySpace said it has detected and deleted 29,000 convicted sex offenders on its service, more than four times the figure it had initially reported. Read More The company, owned by media conglomerate News Corp, said in May it had deleted about 7,000 user profiles that belonged to convicted offenders. MySpace attracts about 60 million unique visitors monthly in the United States.

The new information was first revealed by U.S. state authorities after MySpace turned over information on convicted sex offenders it had removed from the service. "The exploding epidemic of sex offender profiles on MySpace -- 29,000 and counting -- screams for action," Connecticut Attorney General Richard Blumenthal said in a statement. Blumenthal, who led a coalition of state authorities to lobby MySpace for more stringent safeguards for minors, and other state AGs have demanded the service begin verifying a user's age and require parental permission for minors. (see http://www.childprotectionprogram.org/newsletter/vol5_iss5.html and http://www.childprotectionprogram.org/newsletter/vol5_iss19.html)

The minimum age to register on MySpace is 14, but there is no age verification of users.

"We're pleased that we've successfully identified and removed registered sex offenders from our site and hope that other social networking sites follow our lead," MySpace Chief Security Officer Hemanshu Nigam said in a statement.

The service has come under attack over the past year after some of its young members fell prey to adult predators posing as minors. The families of several teenage girls sexually assaulted by MySpace members sued the service in January for failing to safeguard its young members.

Late last year, it struck a partnership with background verification company Sentinel Tech Holdings Corp. to co-develop the first U.S. national database of convicted sex offenders to make it easier to track offenders on the Internet.

Convicted sex offenders are required by law to register their contact information with local authorities. But the information has only been available on regional databases, making nationwide searches difficult. As of May, there were about 600,000 registered sex offenders in the United States.

Additionally, not every sex offender uses a correct name or address when entering a profile on MySpace.

Meanwhile, North Carolina Attorney General Roy Cooper is pushing for a state law that would require children to receive parental permission before creating social networking profiles, and require the Web sites to verify the parents' identity and age. http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2007/ For example, social networking sites would have to compare information provided by a parent with commercial databases. Sites could also force parents to submit credit cards or printed forms.

Cooper is working with law enforcement officials in other states in pressuring MySpace to use age and identity verification methods voluntarily. Based on media reports, Cooper's office found more than 100 criminal incidents this year of adults using MySpace to prey or attempt to prey on children.

UN pledges strong response to sex abuse…

A top U.N. official pledged to bolster measures to prevent U.N. peacekeeping forces from acting inappropriately following allegations that Moroccan peacekeepers sexually abused girls in Ivory Coast. Read More A battalion of more than 700 soldiers has been confined to their barracks at night in the northern city of Bouake while the allegations are investigated. Read More A team of U.N. investigators is expected to arrive in Ivory Coast to begin probing the case.

Few details of the allegations have been released. Margherita Amodeo, a spokeswoman for the U.N. mission in Ivory Coast, said Sunday they concerned girls under the age of 18 and that some of the victims possibly got pregnant or gave birth to children.

Jane Holl Lute, assistant secretary-general and officer in charge of the U.N. Department of Field Support, told reporters in New York that swift action would be taken if the allegations proved true. She also said the U.N. would look at ways to improve its conduct and disciplinary policies in light of the investigation. "We are not turning a blind eye to any activity anywhere," she said. "Everyone who is in a leadership position in peacekeeping ... understands very clearly that zero tolerance means zero complacency. When investigations are conducted and it's demonstrated that the allegations are founded, we will take action." Allegations of abuse have dogged peacekeeping missions since their inception more than 50 years ago. But the issue was thrust into the spotlight after the U.N. found in 2005 that peacekeepers in Congo had sex with Congolese women and girls, usually in exchange for food or small sums of money.

As a result, the U.N. peacekeeping department instituted a new code of conduct for peacekeepers and training for all U.N. personnel, and reinforced "zero tolerance" for sexual abuse.

According to U.N. statistics, 197 U.N. personnel were either repatriated to their home countries, dismissed or had their contracts not renewed for instances of sexual exploitation or abuse worldwide from 2004 to June 30, 2007.

In other news… 

Children's memories of events that occurred long ago may be more accurate than their recollections of events that took place recently. http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/ These findings may have implications for cases of child sexual abuse, when children are often the only witnesses. In the past, it has been assumed that because memory tends to fade with the passage of time, children's reports given a long time after an event are less accurate than reports given soon after the events took place. These findings are from a study that was conducted by researchers at Wilfrid Laurier University in Canada and Deakin University in Australia. They are reported in the July/August 2007 issue of the journal Child Development.

A 26-year-old man was jailed on suspicion of murder and sexual battery after his father found a teenage girl's body in his closet, authorities said. Read More Jason Shenfeld's parents noticed their son seemed nervous and had been locking his bedroom door. His father went into the room and discovered the body, according to a Palm Beach County Sheriff's Office. Investigators found duct tape in the girl’s hair, bruises on her body and evidence of rape, and an autopsy revealed the girl was strangled, beaten and sexually abused, according to the report.

An 11-year-old boy forced two preschool-aged girls to have sex with him, infected them with sexually transmitted diseases, but will not be prosecuted by Western Australian authorities, according to a report on News.com.au. http://www.foxnews.com/story/ Police confirmed that criminal charges would not be brought against the boy from Balgo, a troubled indigenous community in the northeastern reaches of the Great Sandy Desert about 62 miles from the Northern Territory border. The boy is above the age of criminal responsibility under state law.

Manhattan's famed district attorney's office — the model for "Law & Order" — is fighting to keep a "dangerously mentally ill" psychiatrist locked up, after he admitted to attacking a 2-year-old boy and then choking his terrified mother unconscious, according to a spokeswoman for the district attorney. http://abcnews.go.com/TheLaw/ The attack was caught by a surveillance camera and prosecutors this week used a PowerPoint presentation of images from the assault to bolster their case. http://abcnews.go.com/TheLaw/

More states are bucking the national crackdown on sex offenders by paring back punishment for teens who have consensual sex with underage partners. http://abcnews.go.com/TheLaw/ Governors in seven states have signed bills in the past two months that mean no prosecution for some teens or no requirement to register as a sex offender.

The mother and adoptive father of a minor girl, all now living out of state, have brought suit in federal court in Fort Smith, Arkansas claiming Sebastian County prosecutors violated the girl’s civil rights by dropping a rape charge against her biological father, according to court records. Read More The suit names Circuit Judge Stephen Tabor, who was the 12th Judicial District prosecuting attorney at the time of the rape charge; Daniel Shue, chief deputy prosecuting attorney; Sebastian County; and the girl’s father, a 38-year-old Arkansas resident. They claim Tabor and Shue as prosecutors and individuals had a policy against prosecuting sexual assault cases that involve incest, and that the county dictated and oversaw that policy.

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