The Child Protection eNewsletter

SNAP to sue Green Bay Diocese for fraud… 

A group that supports victims of clergy sexual abuse says it will file a fraud lawsuit against the Catholic Diocese of Green Bay.  Read More

The lawsuit is tied to the case of former priest John Patrick Feeney.  Feeney is serving a 15-year prison sentence for sexually assaulting two brothers in Freedom in 1978.

The Midwest director of SNAP--the Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests--Peter Isely, says there are documents showing the diocese secretly transferred Feeney numerous times in 30 years, instead of exposing him as a child molester.

The group also plans to deliver letters to the diocese office in Green Bay and the archdiocese in Milwaukee.  Milwaukee Archbishop Timothy Dolan is currently serving as bishop of the Green Bay diocese.  The letters will ask the church to defend itself based on the merits of the case and not on legal technicalities.

SNAP is online at http://www.snapnetwork.org/.

Australia announces mandatory internet filters to protect children… 

Australia’s Telecommunications Minister Stephen Conroy says new measures are being put in place to provide greater protection to children from online pornography and violent websites.  Read More

Senator Conroy says it will be mandatory for all internet service providers to provide clean feeds, or ISP filtering, to houses and schools that are free of pornography and inappropriate material.

Online civil libertarians have warned the freedom of the internet is at stake, but Senator Conroy says that is nonsense.  He says the scheme will better protect children from pornography and violent websites.

"Labor makes no apologies to those that argue that any regulation of the internet is like going down the Chinese road," he said.  "If people equate freedom of speech with watching child pornography, then the Rudd-Labor Government is going to disagree."

Senator Conroy says anyone wanting uncensored access to the internet will have to opt out of the service.  He says the Government will work with the industry to ensure the filters do not affect the speed of the internet.

Meanwhile, the "clean feed" filtering system Conroy hopes will halt internet porn has already been defeated by British researchers.  Read More  Richard Clayton, of the University of Cambridge's Computer Laboratory, said the innovative blocking system CleanFeed, devised by British internet service provider BT, could be circumvented in a number of ways.

"At first sight, it's an effective and precise method of blocking unacceptable content," Mr Clayton said. "But there are a number of issues to address as soon as one assumes that content providers or consumers might make serious attempts to get around it."

In other news…  

Toddlers rescued from orphanages and placed in good foster homes score dramatically higher on IQ tests years later than children who were left behind, concludes a one-of-a-kind project in Romania that has profound implications for child welfare around the globe.  Read More  The boost meant the difference between borderline retardation and average intelligence for some youngsters.  Most important, children removed from orphanages before age 2 had the biggest improvement -- key new evidence of a sensitive period for brain development, according to the U.S. team that conducted the research.  "What we're really talking about is the importance of getting kids out of bad environments and put into good environments," said Dr. Charles Nelson III of Harvard Medical School, who led the study being published in the journal Science.  The younger that happens, "the less likely the child is to have major problems," he added.

A 20-year-old man from New York was jailed in Spokane, Washington during the weekend after being accused of stalking a 15-year-old girl he says he met while playing the video game Halo.  Read More  Police arrested the Saratoga Springs, New York man after he apparently drove to Spokane, went past the girl's house, and threatened her in a text message.  The girl's parents were outside when the man passed and honked.  They got his license plate number and called police.

Irving, Texas police continued searching for a man suspected of shooting his two teenage daughters, including one who called 911 about an hour before officers found them dead in his taxi, police said.  Read More  Yaser Abdel Said, 50, of the Dallas suburb of Lewisville, is accused of shooting Sarah Yaser Said, 17, and Amina Yaser Said, 18, in his taxi and abandoning it in a parking lot, leaving them to die.  One of the teens called 911 on a cell phone and said she was shot, but she couldn't tell police where she was, Irving police said.  Officers were dispatched to the area, which turned out to be about half a mile from the taxi, but didn't find anyone, The Dallas Morning News reported in its online edition.  Police found the taxi with the bodies inside an hour later after a witness called and reported a suspicious vehicle in a hotel parking lot, said David Tull, an Irving police spokesman.

Convicted sex offenders who used the Internet to help them commit their crimes will be banned from using the Internet under a measure signed into law in New Jersey.  Read More  The bill applies to people who, for example, lured a potential victim through e-mail or other electronic messages.  It also affects paroled sex offenders under lifetime supervision, but exempts computer work done as part of a job or search for employment.  "We live in scary times," said Acting Governor Richard J. Codey, who signed the bill because Governor Jon S. Corzine is vacationing in the Caribbean.  Under the law, sex offenders will have to let the state Parole Board know about their access to computers.  Those caught using the Internet would face 18 months in jail and a $10,000 fine.

A Memphis mother whose two sons died in a fire while she was out celebrating New Year's has been charged with criminally negligent homicide, police said.  Read More  Romello Winters, 4 and Christian Griffen, 7, appeared to have been alone in their apartment for several hours before firefighters responded to a call early New Year's Day at the two-story wood frame building.  The blaze was brought under control in about a half-hour, and the boys died later at a hospital.  The cause of the fire had not been determined.  Aundria Jones, 29, told police she left the boys alone so she could go out to celebrate the New Year, police said in a statement.  The children lived with their grandmother in Kosciusko, Mississippi, about 150 miles south of Memphis, and were visiting their mother for the holiday.

Word of another sexual assault on a teenage girl in Camden, New Jersey has parents on edge.  Read More  For the 9th time in three months, police say a young girl was targeted.  This time, the 14-year-old victim was discovered naked running down Garden Avenue near Highland after she escaped her attacker.  Beginning in mid-October, police began tracking a suspect or suspects they believe responsible for at least nine incidents involving young girls between the ages of 11 and 16.  All of the attacks were after dark, some of the victims were attacked near schools, some in other locations.  "There's some similarities with some of them, but no overall pattern that makes us think they're all linked together," said Acting Camden County Prosecutor Joshua Ottenberg.

A Missouri father pleaded guilty to killing his two children, whose remains were found hidden in a wooded area three years after they disappeared.  Read More  He was sentenced to life in prison.  Daniel Porter, 44, pleaded guilty to two counts of first-degree murder in the deaths of 7-year-old Sam and 8-year-old Lindsey.  The children disappeared in summer 2004, after their father picked them up for a weekend visit.  The children's remains were found in September in a wooded area in the Kansas City suburb of Sugar Creek.  When he was charged with their deaths in November, Daniel Porter already was serving a 38-year prison sentence for kidnapping the children.  After his arrest on the kidnapping charges, Porter told authorities several stories about what he had done with his children, including that he cut them up and strangled them.  According to court documents, the children's remains were found after Porter met with FBI agents and Missouri Department of Corrections officials on September 7, 2007 and confessed that he killed his children the day he picked them up for the visit.

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