The Child Protection eNewsletter

New Jersey death penalty ban spares Megan’s Law killer…

The man who raped and killed 7-year-old Megan Kanka -- the 1994 crime that inspired "Megan's Law" -- is one of eight men whose sentences were commuted to life in prison this week as part of New Jersey's new ban on execution. Read More The Garden State became the first state in more than three decades to abolish the death penalty after a commission ruled the punishment is "inconsistent with evolving standards of decency."

Governor Jon Corzine the day before commuted the sentences of eight men sitting on the state's death row. They will now serve life in prison without parole, according to the governor's office.

Among the eight is Jesse Timmendequas, 46, who was sentenced to death in June 1997 for Megan's murder. Prosecutors said Timmendequas lured Megan to his home by saying he wanted to show her a puppy. He then raped her, beat her and strangled her with a belt. A day later, he led police to her body.

"Megan's Law," introduced after her death, requires that authorities notify neighbors when a sex offender moves into an area. Timmendequas had twice been convicted of sex crimes -- on 5- and 7-year-olds -- before he murdered Megan.

In signing Monday's bill, Corzine called it a "momentous day" and made New Jersey the first state to ban capital punishment since the U.S. Supreme Court reinstated it in 1976.

Boy suspended for warning students of sex offender on campus…

A Pierce County, Washington high school student is back in school after a three-day suspension for warning classmates about a sex offender on campus. Read More

Last week, Raydon Gilmore found a 16-year-old fellow student at Gig Harbor High School at the Washington State Sex Offender Information Center, a Web site that lists the state's level 2 and level 3 sex offenders. "Then it hit me that I was in P.E. freshman year, and this kid was there for a while and he was my neighbor at my locker," Gilmore told KIRO 7 Eyewitness News. See video here

The 16-year-old was convicted of indecent liberties and using force.

Gilmore made copies of the announcement and started handing them out to classmates "to let them know that we're going to school with dangerous people and to be more aware." Three other students helped create and distribute fliers. He said minutes later, the school's principal caught up with him.

Gilmore was suspended for three days. School officials said the fliers amounted to harassment and he was interfering with other students' education, according to school documents.

"I'm frustrated that my son does something right and good and something I'm proud of, and he's being punished for it," said Meloney Garthe, Gilmore's mother. Gilmore said he believes he did the right thing, and would do it again.

The school's principal told the News Tribune of Tacoma that the students should have brought their concerns to a teacher or an administrator. He said the students misused school property and they violated a rule that state officials must approve any materials that students post on campus walls.

In other news…

Roman Catholic dioceses nationwide have taught more than 6 million children to protect themselves from sexual predators and have conducted 1.6 million background checks on workers in response to the clergy sex abuse crisis, according to a new report. Read More Auditors hired by America's bishops found that nearly all of the 195 U.S. dioceses have policies for reviewing molestation claims and reporting allegations to the authorities, the National Review Board, a lay watchdog group, said in the report. The Diocese of Lincoln, Nebraska, and four Eastern Rite districts called eparchies have not participated in the audits. Despite improvements, church leaders must do more, including measuring the effectiveness of the safeguards they've put in place and deepening the church's understanding of what victims suffer, the panel said. "Discussions with victims provide evidence of serious needs that still must be addressed in order for the victims and their families to find the healing that they need," the board said. The report is a review of the board's work on the fifth anniversary of its founding. The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops created the lay panel to monitor diocesan reforms enacted in 2002 at the height of the abuse crisis. The full report can be found on the Web at Read More

Nearly 10 months after reports of inmate abuse first surfaced, not everyone agrees with claims of progress in reforming the agency that oversees the Texas juvenile prison system. Read More State lawmakers ordered the Texas Youth Commission to revamp its programs and change its managers after the scandal broke. But since then, inmate abuse allegations have risen, staffing shortages persist and controversy remains over the continued use of pepper spray on juveniles. Jon Halt, a member of a watchdog group and whose teenage son was sexually assaulted by another inmate in a juvenile prison, said the changes have been minute. "They still treat kids like dirt," he told The Dallas Morning News for a story in Sunday's editions.

Newsweek takes a look at military chaplains sexually abusing military academy students and children of servicemen. Read More According to court filings and an archive recently published by the group Bishop Accountability, up to 60 military chaplains have been convicted or at least are strongly suspected of committing sexual abuse over the past four decades, sometimes against the kids of military personnel. Their cases are a side act to the broader scandal of sex-abusing priests in the Catholic Church. But there may be a correlation. In a number of the cases reviewed by NEWSWEEK involving Catholic chaplains, complaints of sexual abuse were made to their churches well before they joined the military, but were never brought to the military's attention. "I've seen many instances where men were encouraged or allowed to go into the military and their own bishop did not disclose that they had something suspicious in their past," says Thomas Doyle, a Dominican priest and former Air Force chaplain.

The grandmother of three small children who were found home alone took the children in. Read More The children were taken from their Detroit home after police found them alone. The children, ages 4, 2 and 1, told police they had been by themselves for at least three days. They were discovered when the 4-year-old went to a neighbor's home and said they were hungry. "The (children's) house is just nasty. That's all I can say, nasty," said a female neighbor who asked not to be identified. “I heard the baby crying when I went over there," the neighbor said. "I changed the baby's diaper and fed them something to eat." The neighbor also called police, who arrived a short time later and removed the children from the home.

A Level 3 sex offender who was released from prison in October is being held on $1 million bond after police said he grabbed a little girl from a jungle gym at a downtown Phoenix park and sexually assaulted her, police said. Read More Phoenix police Detective Stacie Derge said the family and passersby came to the 4-year-old girl's aid when they heard her screaming. In a matter of seconds, William Speed, 35, was able to remove his and the girl's clothing, Derge said. "This is a horrible crime, but fortunately the adults were able to intervene and pull the suspect off of the girl before she was physically injured," Derge said.

An Illinois man has pleaded not guilty to 251 counts of sexual abuse or assault against nine teenage boys. Read More Last week, Michael Rebecca, 50 was indicted on 99 counts of predatory criminal sexual assault, criminal sexual assault of a victim between ages 13 and 17, aggravated criminal sexual abuse of a victim between ages 13 and 18 and aggravated criminal sexual abuse of a victim younger than 13. He has now been indicted on an additional 152 counts of those charges. Authorities said Rebecca treated the boys as though they were in a club. At Rebecca's apartment, the boys played games that involved sex acts either with each other or Rebecca; boys were rewarded with iPods, video games, DVDs and cash, prosecutors said. The alleged assaults started when the boys were ages 11 to 13, prosecutors have said. The incidents are believed to have occurred from 2001 to last year.

Add an adult granddaughter to the list of women who say the leader of a suburban Atlanta megachurch sexually abused them or coerced them to have sex. Read More Penielle "Penie" White confirmed to The Associated Press that Archbishop Earl Paulk, co-founder of Cathedral of the Holy Spirit at Chapel Hill Harvester Church, touched her inappropriately when she was about eight years old. She said she made the allegations in a sworn deposition a few months ago as part of a lawsuit against the 80-year-old Paulk, who is accused by a former church member of coercing her into a sexual relationship. Paulk has been hit by multiple lawsuits, but does not face criminal charges.

Cybercrime, the majority of which involves child pornography, is now the FBI's third-highest priority, behind counterterrorism and counterintelligence. Read More The Washington Post reports that in the past 11 months, federal prosecutors in Virginia and Maryland have helped convict or send to prison on child pornography charges the former head of the Virginia American Civil Liberties Union, an Ivy League professor, a sheriff's deputy, a Transportation Security Administration employee, an Army sergeant, a former Navy cryptologist, a contractor working at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq, a National Institutes of Health researcher and a U.S. Capitol Police officer.

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