The Child Protection eNewsletter

Children at higher risk in nontraditional homes…

Six-year-old Oscar Jimenez Jr. was beaten to death in California, then buried under fertilizer and cement. Two-year-old Devon Shackleford was drowned in an Arizona swimming pool. Jayden Cangro, also 2, died after being thrown across a room in Utah. Read More In each case, as in many others every year, the alleged or convicted perpetrator had been the boyfriend of the child's mother -- men thrust into father-like roles which they tragically failed to embrace.

Every family is different. Some single mothers bring men into their lives who lovingly help raise children when the biological father is gone for good. Nonetheless, many scholars and social workers who monitor America's families see the abusive-boyfriend syndrome as part of a broader, deeply worrisome trend. They note an ever-increasing share of America's children grow up in homes without both biological parents, and say the risk of child abuse is markedly higher in the nontraditional family structures.

“This is the dark underbelly of cohabitation,” said Brad Wilcox, a University of Virginia sociologist. “Cohabitation has become quite common, and most people think, 'What's the harm?' The harm is we're increasing a pattern of relationships that's not good for children.''

Existing U.S. data on child abuse is patchwork, making it hard to track national trends with precision. The latest federal survey on child maltreatment tallies nearly 900,000 abuse incidents reported to state agencies in 2005, but doesn't delve into how abuse rates correlate with parents' marital status or the makeup of a child's household.

Similarly, data on the roughly 1,500 child-abuse fatalities that occur annually in America leaves unanswered questions. Many of those deaths result from parental neglect, rather than overt physical abuse. Of the 500 or so deaths caused by physical abuse, the federal statistics don't specify how many were caused by a stepparent or unmarried partner of the parent.

However, there are many other studies that reinforce the concerns. Among the findings:

• Children living in households with unrelated adults are nearly 50 times as likely to die of inflicted injuries as children living with two biological parents, according to a study of Missouri data published in the journal of the American Academy of Pediatrics in 2005.

• Children living in stepfamilies or with single parents are at higher risk of physical or sexual assault than children living with two biological or adoptive parents, according to several studies co-authored by David Finkelhor, director of the University of New Hampshire's Crimes Against Children Research Center.

• Girls whose parents divorce face significantly higher risk of sexual assault, whether they live with their mother or father, according to research by Robin Wilson, a family law professor at Washington and Lee University.

“All the emphasis on family autonomy and privacy shields the families from investigators, so we don't respond until it's too late,” Wilson said.

There are, of course, initiatives aimed at reducing the percentage of children raised by single parents. That's among the goals of the Bush administration's Healthy Marriage Initiative.

“The risk (of abuse) to children outside a two-parent household is greater,'' said Susan Orr, a child-welfare specialist in the Department of Health and Human Services. “Does that mean all single parents abuse their children? Of course not. But the risk is certainly there, and it's useful to know that.''

Associated Press has a related story on recent slayings of children by mothers’ boyfriends online at Read More

Two nine-year-olds and an eight-year-old charged with rape…

Three boys, ages 8 and 9, were being held in a detention center on charges of kidnapping and raping an 11-year-old girl near a suburban apartment complex, officials said. Read More The alleged attack happened Thursday and the girl's mother reported it to authorities Sunday, Acworth Police Captain Wayne Dennard said.

"The victim said they were playing outdoors and the girl was forced into a wooded area where she was sexually assaulted, where one of the boys raped her," Dennard told The Associated Press.

The three boys -- an 8-year-old and two 9-year-olds -- appeared in juvenile court Monday afternoon, dwarfed by the courtroom chairs and wearing navy blue jump suits and shackles. Their names were withheld because of their age.

Cobb County District Attorney Pat Head said the boys could not be charged with felony crimes because of their age but could be tried for alleged delinquent acts that could place them in a juvenile facility for up to five years.

The next step will be for the court to schedule a hearing to determine how to proceed in the case, Head said. Juvenile Court Judge A. Gregory Poole issued a gag order preventing the lawyers from commenting further.

Acworth Police Chief Mike Wilkie said one of the boys was accused of threatening to hit the girl with a rock before the alleged assault. Wilkie also said the investigation is "far from over," and investigators are looking into claims that after the alleged attack, the girl talked about it with her friends at a slumber party.

The father of one of the suspects told WSB-TV Channel 2 Action News his son denies any rape happened. Read More "Word had got back to her parents what she did and she changed her story around and said she was raped," said Brandon LeBlanc. "That's when they took her to the hospital and get rape kit and that's why they interrogating all these boys on these charges."

He said his son is a third grader at a local Baptist school who loves the Atlanta Falcons and is a batboy for his church's softball league.

Prosecutors had not received the case report from police on Monday, nor had they decided whether to try the suspects as adults.

"That decision hasn't been made," said Kathy Watkins, a spokeswoman for the Cobb County District Attorney's office. She had no further comment.

In other news…

The parents of a 13-year-old Missouri girl who hanged herself after a failed MySpace romance -- later uncovered as a hoax -- say they have yet to receive an apology from the family they blame for their daughter’s death. Read More

The Meiers’ daughter, Megan, hanged herself October 16, 2006. The Meiers have not named the people because they do not want to identify their teenage daughter, who had once been a friend of Megan’s. After the two girls had a falling out, the mother invented a 16-year-old boy, “Josh Evans,” created a MySpace account for him, and made Megan believe he was new in town and thought she was cool. Megan, a girl who had battled attention deficit disorder, depression and a weight problem for much of her young life, believed him, despite her mother’s warnings to be cautious. And then the boy turned on Megan, leading a campaign of vilification and online name-calling that ended when Megan took her own life. For a year, the Meiers kept quiet at the request of both the FBI and local law enforcement officials while they investigated the incident. Lieutenant Craig McGuire of the St. Charles County Sheriff's Department said authorities could not find a crime to charge anyone with in Megan's case. "How do you legislate bad behavior?" he asked. Megan's family wants reforms that would make it illegal for adults to misrepresent themselves to children online and make it illegal to harass or bully online. Read More

Pam and Craig Akers made international headlines last year when they were reunited with their 16-year-old son Shawn Hornbeck after he was missing for four years. (See vol5_iss3 vol5_iss8 vol5_iss67) This week, the Akers quietly made it possible for another family to feel that joy. Read More Pam and Craig helped find 15-year-old runaway Emily Graeber and return the girl to her parents in suburban St. Louis. The St. Louis Post-Dispatch reported that Emily's parents sought help to find the girl from the Shawn Hornbeck Foundation, a group the Akers started to find Shawn when he disappeared in 2002 at the age of 11.

A Roman Catholic religious order has agreed to pay $50 million to more than 100 Alaska Natives who allege sexual abuse by Jesuit priests, a lawyer for the accusers said. Read More The settlement with the Oregon Province of the Society of Jesus is the largest one yet against a Catholic religious order, said Anchorage lawyer Ken Roosa, who called it "a great day" for the 110 victims. "These are people who were altar boys and altar servers and altar girls," Roosa said. "These are people who tried to tell their story and in many instances were beaten or told to shut up and told, 'How can you say such things about a man of God?'"

Meanwhile, a judge dismissed a lawsuit that accused Mexico City Cardinal Norberto Rivera of conspiring with Roman Catholic officials in the United States to shelter a suspected pedophile priest. Read More Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Ralph Dau issued his ruling at a brief hearing, said Steve Selsberg, a U.S.-based attorney for Rivera. It marked the second time a Los Angeles judge has dismissed a civil suit filed against the Mexican cardinal by a Mexican citizen. vol5_iss61

A leading private investigator who went undercover for 48 Hours Mystery takes issue with a woman's claim that she saw what may have been little Madeleine McCann being carried off by her kidnapper. Read More He also dismisses the assertion by an investigator hired by the 4-year-old British girl's parents that he knows who took Maddie and how, and where her abductor is now. He went on to say he believes Maddie is dead, and it doesn't appear her parents were involved in the crime. She disappeared at a Portuguese resort almost seven months ago when her parents left her alone in the family's suite while they ate dinner out. 48 Hours Mystery spent months probing the case, going undercover in Portugal, in search of the truth. On the other hand, Portuguese investigators are "100 percent sure" missing toddler Madeleine McCann is alive, Britain's Sunday Mirror reports. Read More Francisco Marco, a private eye hired by the McCann family to track the missing girl told The Mirror he is "sure she was abducted." "We are very, very close to finding the kidnapper," he said.

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