The Child Protection eNewsletter

U.S. sets record in sexual diseases…

More than 1 million cases of chlamydia were reported in the United States last year -- the most ever reported for a sexually transmitted disease, federal health officials said. Read More Officials at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said they think better and more intensive screening accounts for much of the increase, but added that chlamydia was not the only sexually transmitted disease on the rise.

Gonorrhea rates are jumping again after hitting a record low, and an increasing number of cases are caused by a "superbug" version resistant to common antibiotics.

Syphilis is rising, too. The rate of congenital syphilis -- which can deform or kill babies -- rose for the first time in 15 years.

"Hopefully we will not see this turn into a trend," said Dr. Khalil Ghanem, an infectious diseases specialist at Johns Hopkins University's School of medicine.

The CDC releases a report each year on chlamydia, gonorrhea and syphilis, three diseases caused by sexually transmitted bacteria.

Chlamydia is the most common. Nearly 1,031,000 cases were reported last year, up from 976,000 the year before. The count broke the single-year record for reported cases of a sexually transmitted disease, which was 1,013,436 cases of gonorrhea, set in 1978.

Putting those numbers into rates, there were about 348 cases of chlamydia per 100,000 people in 2006, up 5.6 percent from the 329 per 100,000 rate in 2005.

The cases are part of an estimated 19 million new sexually transmitted infections that occur each year, almost half of which are contracted by people younger than 24, and which have direct medical costs of about $15 billion a year. Read More

"STDs pose a serious and ongoing health threat to millions of Americans," said Dr. John Munroe Douglas Jr., director of the CDC's Division of STD Prevention.

Most of the reported increases are occurring in young women, men who have sex with men, and ethnic- or racial-minority populations, Dr. Douglas said. He and other CDC officials yesterday called for more attention to STDs in public discourse and among health care providers.

OMG! Teens use IM 2 avoid confrontation…

Sure, instant messaging is fast and efficient. For many teenagers, it’s also a great way to avoid those OMG moments -- that’s “omigod” -- of mortifying face-to-face confrontations. Read More

More than four in 10 teens, or 43 percent, who instant message use it for things they wouldn’t say in person, according to an Associated Press-AOL poll released Thursday. Twenty-two percent use IMs to ask people out on dates or accept them, and 13 percent use them to break up.

“If they freak out or something, you don’t see it,” said Cassy Hobert, 17, a high school senior from Frenchburg, Kentucky, and avid IMer who has used it to arrange dates. “And if I freak out, they don’t have to see it.”

Overall, nearly half of teens age 13 to 18 said they use instant messaging, those staccato, Internet-borne strings of real-time chatter often coupled with enough frenzied multitasking to fry the typical adult brain. Only about one in five adults said they use IMs — though usually with less technological aplomb or hormone-driven social drama. Instant messaging’s lack of physical proximity is exactly the point for those determined to avoid cringe-inducing episodes.

Take Lewis Grove, 19, a college sophomore from Heath, Ohio, who said he has used instant messages for both ends of the dating cycle. “Fear of rejection -- if you’re face to face, you can’t close out the window and disappear if you’ve been rejected” like you could if you were instant messaging, he said. Grove said the IM breakup has its advantages, too. “I’ve had some crazy ex-girlfriends. Saying that in person would probably not be the best idea for my physical safety,” he said.

Among teenagers, about half of girls and more than a third of boys said they have used instant messages for things they wouldn’t say in person.

Teens do not have sole rights to using instant messages for their personal lives. About eight in 10 adults who IM use it to send personal messages from work. About half of adult IMers say they log on to IM at least daily -- slightly below the percentage of teens who do so that often.

In other news…

An increase in reported incidents of sexual abuse of children by Catholic priests in recent decades mirrors a jump in such incidents in society as a whole, according to preliminary findings by researchers hired by the Catholic Church to find answers to the abuse crisis. Read More

The findings, released at the Fall Assembly of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops in Baltimore, worried advocates for abuse victims, who said they hoped that sexual abuse by priests would not be played down just because other members of society did the same. Meanwhile, Chicago Cardinal Francis George, a defender of Catholic orthodoxy with extensive experience in Rome, was elected Tuesday as president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops. Read More The lay reform group Voice of the Faithful and the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests have criticized his record on the molestation crisis. The archdiocese waited months to remove an accused parish priest in Chicago, the Reverend Daniel McCormack, who was criminally charged last year and pleaded guilty to sexually abusing five boys ages 8 to 12. George has acknowledged that he failed to act soon enough in McCormack's case.

Kids with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder lag three years behind their peers when it comes to brain development, a new study suggests. Read More The study is the first to quantify the differences in brain development between children with ADHD and their non-ADHD counterparts. "This is a breakthrough study," said Dr. James McGough, professor of clinical psychiatry and director of the ADHD program at the University of California at Los Angeles. "It confirms what pediatricians have been saying for years. It is clear now that there is a delay in brain development."

A Pennsylvania man who once performed at children's birthday parties as a clown and also worked as a police officer in the Susquehanna Valley is accused of confronting a teenage girl at knifepoint and dragging her into the woods. Read More Michael Fernsler, 34, is charged with attempted rape, indecent assault and kidnapping. The Lebanon County District Attorney Dave Arnold said Fernsler attacked a 14-year-old at knifepoint and tried to rape her. Fernsler has been convicted in previous sex crimes. He was due to be sentenced the next day in Dauphin County Court for sexually assaulting two girls more than year ago. He was out on bond at the time of the alleged attack. His bond has since been revoked. His sentencing in that case has been delayed until January. "The fact that (Fernsler) was supposed to be sentenced today for very similar actions just makes this an unbelievable crime that he committed," said Arnold.

A 12-year-old Arizona girl was beaten with an electrical cord, and her parents left her dead body on the floor of her bedroom for days before they called 911, according to court documents. Read More Police arrested the girl's father, 34-year-old Jeffrey Duchane Jr., and stepmother, 25-year-old Reiko Troupe, after officers were called to the house. Troupe was jailed on suspicion of first-degree murder and child abuse. Duchane was jailed on suspicion of child abuse.

Sheriff's deputies in Genesee County, Michigan say they've never seen anything sicker. Read More Read More They say this man, Kevin Traver Odette, has committed so many sexual crimes against children that they don't even know where to start. "Our investigation revealed Kevin Odette first molested two boys he was babysitting for when he was 10 years old," says Genesee County Sheriff Robert Pickell. What Odette faces now, however, is life in prison after being charged with sexually abusing five nieces and nephews, as young as 7 years old, and exploiting them in homemade child pornography. Sheriff Pickell says the amount of child porn in Odette's Vienna Township home was repulsive. "We recovered 75 VHS tapes, over 200 DVDs, two computers, several digital cameras, a sexually explicit diary dating back to 1996," he lists, citing all were full of porn, much of it depicting him in sex acts with young children. "My investigators, who are seasoned investigators, told me the videos are the most graphic they've ever seen," Pickell says. Odette may be charged with molesting those five children, but authorities believe he's exploited and abused dozens more. "Based on our preliminary investigation, it's possible Kevin Odette may have abused up to 70 juveniles," he says.

A court in Saudi Arabia is punishing a teenage female victim of gang rape with 200 lashes and six months in jail, a newspaper reported. Read More The 19-year-old woman -- whose six armed attackers have been sentenced to jail terms -- was initially ordered to undergo 90 lashes for "being in the car of an unrelated male at the time of the rape," the Arab News reported. But in a new verdict issued after Saudi Arabia's Higher Judicial Council ordered a retrial, the court in the eastern town of Al-Qatif more than doubled the number of lashes to 200.

A Missouri judge sentenced to 60 years in prison a teenager who had pleaded guilty of kidnapping, beating and sexually assaulting a neighbor in Spanish Lake in 2005, when he was 13 and she was 6. Read More St. Louis County Circuit Judge Melvyn W. Wiesman imposed the sentence on Sherman Burnett Jr., now 15 and the youngest inmate ever housed in the county jail. In imposing the lengthy sentence -- Burnett will be ineligible for parole until at least the year 2056, when he is 64 -- Wiesman rejected confining Burnett in a juvenile offender program in Montgomery City, Missouri, where Burnett could have gotten a chance at probation as early as age 17.

A Rochester, New York teen is charged with sexually abusing two kids at a Riga daycare. Read More Monroe County sheriff's deputies charged 19-year-old Sean Humby with sexual abuse and endangering the welfare of a child. Humby is accused with inappropriately touching a ten-year-old boy at the Love and Laughter Daycare two years ago. Since the arrest, a second victim came forward. Humby is charged with sexual conduct against a child and endangering the welfare of a child. Those charges stem from alleged sexual contact Humby had with a seven-year-old boy 14 times between the summer of 2006 and this past August.

*for access to member only sites like the New York Times, use the ID "JohnDoeID" and the password "whatever". On sites asking for an email address, feel free to use "info@childprotectionprogram.org"