The Child Protection eNewsletter

A CBS reality show draws a claim of possible child abuse…

The ads promoting “Kid Nation,” a new reality show coming to CBS next month, extol the incredible experience of a group of 40 children, ages 8 to 15, who built a sort of idealistic society in a New Mexico ghost town, free of adults. Read More For 40 days the children cooked their own meals, cleaned their own outhouses, formed a government and ran their own businesses, all without adult intervention or participation.

To at least one parent of a participant, who wrote a letter of complaint to New Mexico state officials after the show had completed production, the experience bordered on abuse and neglect. Several children required medical attention after drinking bleach that had been left in an unmarked soda bottle, according to both the parent and CBS. One 11-year-old girl burned her face with splattered grease while cooking.

The children were made to haul wagons loaded with supplies for more than a mile through the New Mexico countryside, and they worked long hours -- “from the crack of dawn when the rooster started crowing” until at least 9:30 p.m., according to Taylor, a 10-year-old from Sylvester, Georgia, who was made available by CBS to respond to questions about conditions on the set.

Taylor and her mother, and another participant and his mother, all spoke enthusiastically about the show and said they believed the conditions on the set were adequate. But Divad, an 11-year-old girl from Fayetteville, Georgia, whose mother wrote the letter of complaint, and who was burned with hot grease while cooking, said she would not repeat the experience. She said there was no adult supervision of the cooking operation when she was hurt, although there often was an adult “chef” present in the kitchen.

A New Mexico official whose department oversees licensing of congregant child-care settings said in an interview that the project almost assuredly violated state laws requiring facilities that house children be reviewed and licensed.

The official, Romaine Serna, public information officer for the New Mexico Children, Youth and Families Department, said Friday that CBS had never contacted the agency. If the department had known of the parent’s allegations when the incidents occurred, she said, “We would have responded and would have assured the children’s safety.”

Arkansas error allows kids of any age to marry…

A law passed this year allows Arkansans of any age - even infants - to marry if their parents agree, and the governor may have to call a special session to fix the mistake, lawmakers said Friday. Read More The legislation was intended to establish 18 as the minimum age to marry but also allow pregnant teenagers to marry with parental consent, bill sponsor Representative Will Bond said. An extraneous "not" in the bill, however, allows anyone who is not pregnant to marry at any age if the parents allow it.

"It's clearly not the intent to allow 10-year-olds or 11-year-olds to get married," Bond said. "The legislation was screwed up."

The bill reads: "In order for a person who is younger than eighteen (18) years of age and who is not pregnant to obtain a marriage license, the person must provide the county clerk with evidence of parental consent to the marriage."

A code revision commission -- which fixes typographical and technical errors in laws -- had tried to correct the mistake, but a group of legislators said Friday the commission went beyond its powers.

"You're either pregnant or you're not pregnant," Senator Dave Bisbee said. "Rarely will that be a typographical error."

In other news… 

French President Nicolas Sarkozy on Monday pledged tougher treatment for sex offenders following a scandal over a convicted pedophile suspected of raping a 5-year-old boy shortly after his release from prison. Read More Police said Francis Evrard, a 61-year-old repeat offender who spent 18 years in prison for raping children before being freed on July 2, snatched the boy from a street in the northern town of Roubaix on Wednesday. The pair was discovered later that day partly clothed in a garage used by Evrard. He said he had been prescribed the anti-impotence drug Viagra while in prison, and officers found a packet of the pills in his pocket.

A convicted sex offender arrested in Florida on a drug charge has been named a suspect in the disappearance of a 19-year-old California college student. Read More John Steven Burgess, 35, made his first court appearance Monday after being extradited from Florida to answer to a charge of failing to register as a sex offender while he was living in Los Angeles. While he has not been charged in the disappearance of Donna Jou, a prosecutor who asked the judge to set $1 million bail for Burgess said he was considered a suspect in the case. Authorities said Jou was last seen on June 23 getting on the back of Burgess' motorcycle. She was believed headed to a party at his rented house in West Los Angeles.

A U.S. sailor pleaded guilty Monday to soliciting an Australian child for sex over the Internet in a police sting operation. http://public.findlaw.com/pnews/news/ David Wayne Budd, 28, was arrested at Sydney's airport in June after he held an online conversation with a police detective posing as a 14-year-old girl. The sailor, who lives with his wife and child in Imperial Beach, San Diego, had flown 1,200 kilometers (750 miles) south from Queensland State, where he was participating in joint U.S.-Australian military exercises, to meet his fictitious victim.

With the 2008 presidential election campaign well underway, a new survey suggests that the biggest issue of them all may well be one that leaders do not seem to be focused upon: the well-being of America’s children. http://www.barna.org/FlexPage.aspx When asked to indicate which of eleven changes were "absolutely necessary" for the U.S. to address within the next ten years, the issues that emerged as the frontrunners were "the overall care and resources devoted to children" and "the quality of a public school education." Each of those challenges was listed as changes that were absolutely necessary within the coming decade by 82% of the adult population.

Data from a global positioning system installed in a man's car by a suspicious wife has led police to file murder charges in the death of the couple's 12-year-old baby sitter. http://www.cbsnews.com/ George Ford Jr., 42, of Piscataway, New Jersey, told police he was taking Shyanne Somers home the night of July 8 but took a detour to show her some horses, then accidentally ran her over as he turned his truck around on a rural road in central New York. Studying GPS data obtained from a system aboard Ford's vehicle which police say contradicts his explanation of his whereabouts, investigators charged him with murder.

A military contractor was sentenced to 45 years in federal prison for enticing his live-in girlfriend to have sex with her 10-year-old son. http://www.foxnews.com/ Casey Carson, 27, was sentenced Monday in U.S. District Court, six months after he pleaded guilty to conspiracy to transport a child in interstate commerce for illegal sexual activity and traveling in interstate commerce to engage in illicit sexual conduct with a child. The government said that Carson, who lists addresses of Fairview Heights, Illinois and Dellroy, Ohio, told the child's mother he was interested in watching her have sex with her son, and that she and her son would have a closer relationship if they were intimate.

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