The Child Protection eNewsletter

'Baby Grace' sketch unleashes wave of tips… 

Hundreds of tips from around the country have poured in after authorities asked for help in identifying the remains of a young girl discovered inside a storage box that washed ashore on Galveston Bay.  Read More

Sketches of the child, who police call "Baby Grace," were released Friday.  Read More "We're sorting through a lot of leads," said Major Ray Tuttoilmondo with the Galveston County Sheriff's Office.  "Nothing has hit a home run yet."

Forensic dental examination has narrowed the girl's age to between 2 and 3 years.  She is described as white, 32 to 35 inches tall and 25 to 30 pounds.  She had waist-long, wavy blond or light brown hair.  She was wearing a Target-brand pink, flowing skirt, a pink or red shirt and white light-up tennis shoes with purple flowers on them.

Several callers believe that the child's body may be that of Madeleine McCann, a 4-year-old British girl whose disappearance from a resort hotel in Portugal in May has made international headlines, Tuttoilmondo said.  "Based on the totality of the circumstances, we do not believe it's her (Madeleine)," Tuttoilmondo said and added that his office is working with the FBI to completely rule out the possibility.

Local authorities and the FBI are going through missing person reports from across country in an effort to identify the girl.

"It's a slow process," Tuttoilmondo said.  "We have to call the original investigating agency and see if anything matches up."

See a CNN interview with Major Tuttoilmondo  Read More

100 arrests hit world pedophile ring… 

More than 100 people in 19 countries have been arrested in an operation to dismantle a major international pedophile network, police said.  Read More  The arrests follow an investigation into an Italian-based website that produced "tailor-made" child abuse images for 2,500 customers, according to the European police agency Europol.

In the past five months 46 people in the UK have been arrested in the operation, codenamed Koala, according to the Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre (Ceop).  There have also been 21 arrests in France, 11 in Spain and eight in Sweden.

"We have identified 2,500 customers from around the world.  School teachers, swimming instructors, lawyers, IT executives," said Europol investigator Menno Hagemeijer.  Some customers even traveled to the studio to watch and record the abuse and make their own videos.

"These [videos] were tailor-made orders.  We want this girl in this pose in this lingerie," said Belgian prosecutor Michele Coninsx.

MySpace expands program for targeted ads… 

The popular online hangout MySpace is expanding its program for letting advertisers target their pitches using personal details on users' profile pages.  Read More

Since July, MySpace has allowed more than 50 leading advertisers, including Procter & Gamble Co., Ford Motor Co. and Yum Brands Inc.'s Taco Bell chain, to target any of 10 interest groups, such as movies, travel and auto.

In the program's second phase, MySpace is adding an 11th category, television, along with hundreds of subcategories, such as horror movies.  Even that is subdivided into "teen screams," "satanic stories," "vampires" and others.

Like other social-networking sites, MySpace offers a mix of messaging tools to encourage its visitors to expand their circles of friends.  Central to it are personal profile pages where users can post photos and video clips, blast messages to friends and have visitors leave comments.  Targeting ads well can be lucrative.

In other news… 

A Nebraska middle school teacher accused of running away to Mexico with a 13-year-old to have sex with him appeared in court to face criminal charges.  Read More Kelsey Peterson said nothing as charges that she crossed the border to have sex with a minor were read by U.S. Magistrate Judge Peter Lewis.  The judge scheduled a hearing for Wednesday to ask whether Peterson would waive extradition to Nebraska.  Peterson's court-appointed attorney, Diane Regan, declined to comment after the court appearance.  Peterson, 25, was a sixth-grade math teacher and basketball coach at Lexington Middle School, and the boy was once her student.  The boy was turned over to relatives in Mexico.  He was an illegal immigrant while residing in the United States and might not be able to return to the rural Nebraska town where he was an eighth-grader.  See vol5_iss71

A pilot from Washington state was arrested in Atlanta on charges he sexually assaulted at least 20 boys at his home over a six-year period and videotaped much of the abuse.  Read More  Police and FBI agents arrested Weldon Marc Gilbert, 47, in Atlanta and charged him with nine sex crimes, including child rape, child molestation and sexual exploitation of a minor.  The Lake Tapps, Washington resident and pilot for the United Parcel Service was in jail in Atlanta awaiting extradition to Washington.  Pierce County, Washington sheriff's spokesman Ed Troyer said more charges are likely.  Police are reviewing more than 100 videotapes and DVDs found at Gilbert's home, many of which contain "very disturbing graphic images," Troyer said.

U.S. talk show host and media magnate Oprah Winfrey said on Monday she was "cleaning house" at her exclusive all-girl academy in South Africa after a dormitory matron was charged with abusing students.  Read More  "It has shaken me to my core," said Winfrey, who has herself told of suffering sexual abuse as a child and offered advice to other victims.

The FBI has joined in the search for a 9-year-old girl who disappeared from her southwest Missouri home late Friday or early Saturday.  Read More  Rowan Ford, of Stella, was getting ready for bed around 8:30 p.m. Friday when her mother, Colleen Spears, left for work at a nearby Wal-Mart, authorities said.  The girl's stepfather, David Spears, told investigators that she was asleep when he looked in on her before going out with friends around 10:45 p.m., said Newton County Sheriff Ken Copeland.

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