The Child Protection eNewsletter

Jury finds Jeffs guilty of accomplice to rape of 14 year old… 

A jury found polygamous sect leader Warren Jeffs guilty of forcing a 14-year-old to marry and have sex with her 19-year-old cousin against her will. Read More Jeffs, 51, was convicted of two counts of rape as an accomplice for his role in the arranged marriage of Elissa Wall and Allen Steed in 2001.  He faces five years to life in prison on each count when he is sentenced November 20.  CourtTV’s video coverage of the trial and verdict is available online at http://www.courttv.com/

Jurors rejected a defense attorney's argument that the prosecution of the polygamous sect leader was religious persecution. Read More The victim in the case didn't accept it either, telling reporters the case was about child abuse.  "This trial has not been about religion or a vendetta.  It was simply about child abuse and preventing abuse," the woman, now 21, said in prepared remarks after the verdict.

Warren Jeffs, head of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, could get life in prison after a trial that threw a spotlight on an insular community along the Arizona-Utah line where followers practice polygamy and revere him as a prophet with dominion over their salvation.

Jeffs stood and wore a stoic look as the verdict was read.

Prosecutors said Jeffs, who performed the ceremony, forced the girl into marriage and sex despite her objections.  Jurors said they agreed that Jeffs rejected the girl's pleas and later refused to release her from the marriage when she complained about relations with her husband.

"He was pretty much her only ticket out of the relationship," said juror Jerry Munk, 36.  "She was 14.  She didn't have to say anything for a rape to occur."

Meanwhile, a day after Jeffs was convicted of rape as an accomplice for forcing the 14-year-old girl to marry her older cousin and have sex with him, the woman's ex-husband has been charged with rape. Read More Allen Steed, 26, was charged with one count of rape in Washington County, Utah, for having sex with Elissa Wall after their arranged wedding in 2001.

Wall testified last week during Jeffs' trial that Steed forced himself on her in the weeks following their April 23, 2001, wedding, although she had begged him to wait.

Full coverage of the Jeffs trial, including daily summaries of testimony is available online at http://www.courttv.com/.

In other news… 

A young girl photographed in Morocco is not the missing British toddler Madeleine McCann, according to British media reports. http://www.cnn.com/ The Evening Standard newspaper featured a new photo of the child, said to be the daughter of a local olive farmer, under the headline "It's not her."  Reporters descended on the remote hillside village of Zinat in the north of the country after the image of the young girl being carried on a Moroccan woman's back was flashed around the world as a possible sighting of four-year-old Madeleine.  But it quickly emerged that the girl in the photograph was believed by villagers to be 5-year-old Bushra Binhisa, the daughter of an olive farmer.

Meanwhile, the husband of a convicted murderer has accused the Portuguese investigator spearheading the case of Madeleine McCann of beating a confession out of his wife. http://abcnews.go.com/ Leonor Cipriano, 36, was convicted of the murder of her eight-year-old daughter Joana, who disappeared in the Algarve region in September 2004 under similar circumstances to the McCann disappearance.

A Cook County jury awarded a 9-year-old boy $19 million for the permanent brain injuries he suffered in a October 2003 accident in which a 27-inch television smashed him on the head, WMAQ-TV in Chicago reported. http://www.wgal.com/ The verdict against the Archdiocese of Chicago, which operates St. Genevieve Catholic School, where the accident happened, was reached after 90 minutes of deliberation from a two-week trial.  Meanwhile, an Independence, Missouri man who claims he was sexually abused by a Roman Catholic priest in the 1970s has agreed to end his lawsuit for $227,000 in what his attorneys said Wednesday could be the first in a string of such settlements. Read More Frank Scheuring, the Catholic Diocese of Kansas City-St. Joseph and former priest Francis E. McGlynn reached the agreement less than a week before the case was to go to trial.  It follows a Missouri Supreme Court ruling last year that changed the state deadline for victims to file lawsuits.  Scheuring was 11-years-old when he confided during confessional that a neighbor was sexually abusing him.  Instead of intervening, the suit alleged that McGlynn began his own three-year affair with the boy.  Meanwhile, the neighbor continued to abuse Scheuring, his attorneys said.

A federal judge says a lawsuit can proceed on allegations that negligence by school officials led to the sexual assaults on four boys at a Pennsylvania elementary school. Read More The $15 million suit, on behalf of three of the first-grade boys and their parents, alleges that Allentown School District employees failed to investigate or remove the 12-year-old boy who committed the assaults over four months beginning in December 2003.  The 12-year-old, a special education student, was found guilty in juvenile court of rape and was sent to a detention center until he turns 18.

A former Toronto police officer is facing more child sexual abuse allegations after two new victims came forward. Read More The number of young girls claiming to have been abused has reached 10.  Donald MacCallum, 51, of Port Credit was a serving police sergeant in Toronto's west end when he was first arrested in May.  Since that time investigators with Peel Regional Police have tracked down more young girls making allegations of sexual assault and exploitation.

A West Palm Beach, Florida man told police that he used a butcher knife to kill his 1-year-old nephew because he believed the boy was possessed, investigators said. http://www.wpbf.com/ Eric Sawyer, 38, was arrested after police found his 1-year-old nephew Brandon Cole wrapped in bloody sheets in the laundry room of a home West Palm Beach.  Sheriff's spokesman Paul Miller said the killing was "premeditated," and that Sawyer told police that he had been thinking about killing the boy for days, WPBF News 25 reported.

Nevada authorities have identified the second girl found on a videotape that shows sex acts by a man on a girl around 4 or 5 years old. http://www.cbsnews.com/"We've ensured that she is safe and that she is well.  We've ensured that she did not suffer as a victim at the hands of that perpetrator, as did that little girl," Nye County sheriff's detective David Boruchowitz said on CBS News' The Early Show.  The younger girl still has not been found. Read More The second girl is estimated to between 10 and 12 years old.

A woman who admitted strangling her four young children in an Indiana basement was sentenced Monday to life in prison without parole for each child's death. Read More Angelica Alvarez, 27, told Elkhart Circuit Judge Terry Shewmaker she had repented for what she had done and accepted responsibility for the November 14 murders of Jennifer Lopez, 8, Gonzalo Lopez, 6, Daniel Valdez, 4, and Jessica Valdez, 2.  She pleaded guilty to four counts of murder on September 4 in return for Prosecutor Curtis Hill Jr. agreeing to not seek the death penalty.

In an 18-year study on attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder, Mayo Clinic researchers found that treatment with prescription stimulants is associated with improved long-term academic success of children with the condition. http://www.foxnews.com/ A related Mayo Clinic study finds that compared to children without ADHD, children with the disorder are at risk for poor long-term school outcomes such as low achievement in reading, absenteeism, repeating a grade and dropping out of school.  Both studies appear in the current edition of the Journal of Development & Behavioral Pediatrics.

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