The Child Protection eNewsletter

Catholic Diocese of Sacramento sues abuse victim…

In a move critics call bizarre and unprecedented, the Catholic Church in Sacramento is turning the tables. http://cbs13.com/ The church is suing a man who says he was sexually abused by a priest when he was a child. The Sacramento Roman Catholic Diocese, headed by Bishop William Wiegand, is suing Hector Rubio. Rubio says when he was a child he was sexually abused by Father Gerardo Beltran who was once a priest in the Sacramento diocese. Advocates for those abused by priests are outraged. “It's wrong for the bishop to play legal hardball. It's especially wrong for a bishop to sue a child sex abuse victim,” says Nancy Sloan with S.N.A.P., Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests.

Rubio, who now lives in Texas, says Beltran sexually abused him more than twenty years ago, when both of them lived in California. In recent months, Rubio has filed and then withdrawn civil lawsuits against the Sacramento diocese.

Bishop Wiegand and the diocese say Rubio has no right to sue them and that he has missed his opportunity. On Monday a diocese attorney, Andrea Miller told CBS13, "we believe this is barred by the statute of limitations."

The perpetrator in the case is Gerardo Beltran, a priest who fled Sacramento in the early 1990's after a warrant was issued for his arrest for molesting children. Less than a year ago CBS13 went to Iqualita, Mexico, a small village where Beltran has been hiding from U.S. authorities and saying mass for years. For nearly 15 years, Sacramento County prosecutors and federal authorities have not been able to bring Beltran back to Sacramento to face justice.

Meanwhile, S.N.A.P. announced that newly released documents support its claim that Mexico's most prominent cardinal knew a Mexican priest was suspected of molesting children but transferred him to the United States anyway. http://www.cbsnews.com/ S.N.A.P. made public written correspondence between Mexico City Cardinal Norberto Rivera and Los Angeles Cardinal Roger Mahony. It also released a 1986 Mexican police report in which witnesses alleged the suspect, the Reverend Nicolas Aguilar, spent the night with young boys while working as a priest in the central state of Puebla.

The documents were filed as part of Rivera's defense in a lawsuit against him in Los Angeles Superior Court that alleges he and Mahony conspired to protect Aguilar. It wasn't immediately known why the documents were filed by the defense, but it could be because they suggest Rivera warned Mahony. S.N.A.P. represents the alleged victim named in the lawsuit, Joaquin Aguilar Mendez, who is no relation to the accused priest.

The Santa Rosa Roman Catholic Diocese has agreed to pay more than $5 million to settle a sexual-abuse lawsuit involving a fugitive priest, Reverend Francisco Ochoa-Perez, and $20,000 will be paid by Bishop Daniel Walsh personally, a diocesan attorney said Wednesday. Read More The diocese will pay the settlement to 10 people, with the help of its insurance carrier and proceeds from a real-estate sale. The settlement was reached August 27 after mediation talks. Over the past 10 years, the Santa Rosa Diocese has paid nearly $20 million to settle sex-abuse lawsuits.

Portuguese police think Madeleine was killed by overdose of sleeping pills…

Madeleine McCann died from an overdose of sleeping pills, it was claimed yesterday. Read More French investigative reporter Guilhem Battut said a report outlining how the four-year-old met her death was already with Portuguese prosecutors.

The newspaper France Soir said it contains scientific analysis of the bodily fluids found in the boot of the car hired by Kate and Gerry McCann which "prove that the little girl had ingested medicines, without doubt sleeping pills, in large quantities".

British forensic experts expressed severe doubts about the claim. They said the fluid was only a partial match to Madeleine's DNA and the sample was not strong enough to determine the presence of drugs. Even so, the report will come as a grave blow to the McCanns. It supports theories published in Portugal that Mrs McCann was involved in Madeleine's death and her husband helped her dispose of their daughter's body.

Meanwhile Gerry McCann hit out today at "ludicrous accusations" that he and his wife were involved in their daughter's death. Mr. McCann said he and his wife Kate knew they were innocent but were frightened and had been "backed into a corner".

He told a friend, quoted in The Sun: "There are large craters in every one of these theories, in these just ludicrous accusations. "As far as Kate and I are concerned, there is no evidence to suggest that Madeleine is dead. "We are 100% together on this, not one grain of suspicion about each other."

The couple's supporters have dismissed claims that Madeleine died of a sleeping pill overdose as "rumor-mongering" fuelled by sources in the floundering police investigation.

Meanwhile ABC News takes a look at how grieving parents have become suspects from the Ramseys and the Smarts all the way to the McCann’s. http://abcnews.go.com/

In other news… 

Texas authorities named the live-in boyfriend of the mother of a 6-year-old girl found hanged and sexually assaulted as the primary suspect. http://www.foxnews.com/ Kevin Wayne Anders was arrested on charges of unlawful possession of child pornography after an analysis of computer files revealed pornography, said Chief Deputy Mike Cox of the Navarro County Sheriff's Office. Anders is being held on a $100,000 bond. Hanna Mack was discovered Monday by her mother, Dana, hanging in the garage with a rope around her neck in Navarro Mills Lake, about 65 miles south of Dallas, and there were signs that she had been sexually abused, police said.

A federal judge sentenced a Maryland man with AIDS to 30 years in prison for child sexual abuse, agreeing with prosecutors that he had inflicted heinous and degrading abuse on an 11-year-old whose family was living with him. Read More U.S. District Judge Catherine Blake also ordered Roderick Parks, 42, to register as a sex offender and undergo treatment. Parks pleaded guilty in June to sexual exploitation of a minor to produce child pornography. "The child's pictures and words that were submitted to me spoke more powerfully than I could," Blake said before sentencing Parks Wednesday.

The kiddie porn flick “Nothing is Private” (Read More) was bought by a division of Time Warner. http://www.foxnews.com/ According to Fox News columnist Roger Friedman, “Warner Independent Pictures, a division of Time Warner, liked the idea of Aaron Eckhart molesting a 13-year-old (character, the actress is just of age) so much, they shelled out $1.3 million with partner Netflix.”

A new tool designed to thwart Internet predators was unveiled in Pennsylvania before a group of people most likely to be victims of such crimes -- middle school students -- in a format most of them will find appealing: a computer game. http://local.lancasteronline.com/4/209278 Officials from the U.S. Attorney's Office, Lancaster County District Attorney's Office and software companies were at Wheatland Middle School to demonstrate "Missing," a game that teaches children how to detect predators and safeguard their personal information online. Developed for children ages 11 to 14 by Web Wise Kids, "Missing" involves finding "Zack," a boy who has disappeared after spending hours in Internet chat rooms.

A former South Carolina high school math teacher and cross-country coach pleaded guilty to two counts of a lewd act on a child the day his trial was scheduled to begin. http://www.foxnews.com/ Jay Bradley McJunkin, 36, committed sexual acts in Pickens and Anderson counties with a 12-year-old boy he was tutoring, according to arrest warrants. After the guilty plea Monday, the judge deferred sentencing until McJunkin can have a psychological evaluation. He faces up to 30 years in prison. McJunkin was a teacher and coach at Palmetto High School when he was arrested. He has since been fired.

The adopted daughter of St. Petersburg City Council Chairman John Bryan, who committed suicide last Friday, denies that sex was consensual with Bryan, according to her attorney. Read More She was first hired as a babysitter and then adopted 20 years ago by Bryan. At a family court hearing Friday morning relating to allegations of child abuse, Bryan said he had a consensual sexual relationship with the adopted daughter while she was an adult. Bryan resigned from the city council and committed suicide hours after his court appearance.

The body of a 6-year-old who died after being severely beaten in his San Jose, California, home February 18 has been discovered buried under layers of fertilizer, soil and 10 bags of concrete in back of a Phoenix apartment unit, police investigators said. http://www.kpho.com/ San Jose police on Monday named a mother and her former boyfriend as suspects in the boy's death. Police said after Oscar Jimenez Jr. died, the boy's mother and her ex-boyfriend took the body to Phoenix and buried it at the apartment complex.

The mother of a young girl known as "Precious Doe" pleaded guilty to second-degree murder in the death of her 3-year-old daughter. Read More Michelle Johnson, 32, of Muskogee, Oklahoma, also pleaded guilty to child endangerment, abandoning a corpse and tampering with evidence. As part of the plea agreement, Johnson will testify against her husband, Harrell Johnson, in his February trial for first-degree murder. Prosecutors plan to seek the death penalty against him. Erica's body was discovered in a Kansas City park in 2001, and her head was found several days later. The child was dubbed "Precious Doe" and activists kept attention on her case.

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