The Child Protection eNewsletter

19,000 computers with hard core child porn await Virginia law enforcement investigation…

One simply reads: "GOOD! 3yo gets raped during bathtime. she cries!" Another: "Lolita Rape Torture." Read More Law enforcement officials have identified more than 19,000 individual computers with such hard-core child pornography files on them in Virginia, but said they simply do not have the resources to investigate all of the suspected sexual predators.

In 2002, an internet sex predator lured 13-year-old Alicia Kozakiewicz from her Pennsylvania home to northern Virginia where she was chained in a basement and tortured. Read More

“He hurt me so badly ... mind body and soul,” says Alicia. After four days, investigators found her, a needle in a haystack. She came back to Virginia, reluctantly, to argue for more protection for children from online predators

Members from Virginia's two Internet Crimes Against Children task forces were in Richmond to push "Alicia's Law," named after the Pennsylvania teen. Read More

Virginia ranks eighth per capita nationwide in the number of transactions of child pornography over the Internet, according to software that tracks peer-to-peer file transactions. Since 2005, the ICAC task forces have identified more than 215,000 folders containing child pornography that Virginians have shared on Web sites commonly used to share music and other files. Each transaction is a felony in Virginia.

"We're not talking about girls that are 13, 14, 15 years old, although they can still get that. We're talking about infants and toddlers," said Lieutenant Michael Harmony, commander of the Southern Virginia ICAC Task Force.

A 2005 Department of Justice study suggested that 55 percent of those convicted of possessing child pornography admitted to illegal contact with children. The ICAC task forces have found that local children are the victims in about 30 percent of the discovered files.

"These are not just people who are looking at photographs. These are people that are looking at photographs and getting ideas from the photographs and then acting out those impulses on children," said Camille Cooper, with the National Association to Protect Children.

Teen’s bullying death recorded on cell phone…

Four classmates witnessed a beating that left a 16-year-old boy dead, and one of them recorded the incident on his cell phone, authorities in Johnson County, Kansas said. Read More Investigators confiscated the cell phone as evidence, police said.

Dakota DeRemus, a sophomore at Gardner Edgerton High School, suffered from a heart condition and died after he was involved in a fight with another 16-year-old boy.

Juvenile authorities charged that 16-year-old with involuntary manslaughter in connection with DeRemus' death. He appeared in juvenile court in Johnson County.

DeRemus' father yelled out in court that the boy had bullied his son for two years, and officers in the courtroom slammed the father against a courtroom wall -- damaging it -- and cuffed him.

DeRemus' grandmother, Rosella Davis, read from a written statement. "If this rumor is true that they decided to videotape my grandson's death, then that is a sick thing to happen," said Rosella Davis, DeRemus' grandmother.

Police said they had identified the four witnesses and were discussing the matter with the Johnson County district attorney's office, and additional charges could be filed in the case.

The process wasn't working quickly enough for DeRemus' father. "You're no more than a murderer yourself when you're a witness to something like that and you let somebody die because you're afraid you'll get in a little bit of trouble and get grounded. I think it's sick. I will miss Dakota for the rest of my life. I hurt for my boy. I hurt for my family. We were very, very close, and I now I have an empty spot in my life that will never be filled," said Scott DeRemus.

DeRemus' school was reviewing its harassment policy. For more information on bullying see vol1_iss5

In other news…

A couple was held in jail on charges of kidnapping their granddaughter from her Georgia home after authorities discovered the 5-year-old in their Lynchburg house. Read More A U.S. Marshals Service spokesman said authorities had been searching for Joy Angelique Madden since she was abducted from her father's home in Atlanta when she was a year old. "She was shocked when I told her I was her father," Carlton Madden told WSB-TV Channel 2 reporter Eric Philips as they were reunited. "She gave me a big hug." A news release said federal officers and Lynchburg police went to the home of David and Sharon Duncan, where they found the girl and six other children under age 12. The Duncans were members of the House of Prayer in Atlanta who were convicted of cruelty to children in 2002 along with two other church members and the church pastor, the Reverend Arthur Allen. David Duncan, 50, and Sharon Duncan, 46, were at Blue Ridge Regional Jail pending extradition proceedings on Georgia charges of kidnapping and custodial interference. Deputy U.S. Marshal Ron Donelson said the children all appeared to be in good health, but Lynchburg police were investigating whether additional charges would be filed.

A 2-year-old boy was pronounced dead after he was found beneath his passed-out mother -- who investigators say admitted she'd been drinking -- in an Indianapolis motel room, according to police. Read More Latasha McMorris' boyfriend found the two on the floor of an EconoLodge motel room on North Shadeland Avenue and, noticing that the boy wasn't breathing, called 911, police said. The boy, Sheldon Bartley Jr., was taken to Community East Hospital, where he was pronounced dead, police said. McMorris (pictured), who last year was convicted of child neglect and temporarily lost custody of the boy, was arrested on a felony charge of neglect. Police said the boy may have suffocated, and that McMorris, 24, may have been under the influence of alcohol and/or drugs when she passed out.

A top official in Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick's administration is accused of sexually assaulting a boy in the steam room of a Florida resort and has been placed on unpaid leave. Read More Carl Stanley McGee, the assistant secretary for policy and planning, was arrested December 28 after the suspected assault at the Gasparilla Inn and Club in Boca Grande, according to the Lee County Sheriff's Office. McGee, 38, met the boy, who police said is between 12 and 16 years old, in a bathroom at the resort a day earlier where they engaged in small talk, according to the police report. The boy told police he ran into McGee again the next day in the resort's steam room. McGee sat next to him, removed his towel, rubbed the boy's back and shoulders and performed oral sex on him, according to the police report.

Authorities offered no further insight into the motive of a teenager accused in the shooting deaths of his father, mother and two brothers, but experts say such crimes are not unprecedented - and they often come without any obvious warning signs. Read More Nicholas W. Browning remained jailed without bond after confessing early Sunday that he killed his father, John Browning, his mother, Tamara, and his younger brothers, Gregory, 14, and Benjamin, 11, according to Baltimore County police. Browning, who turns 16 on Saturday, had no history of violence, mental health problems or drug problems, according to court documents. His father was a highly regarded business attorney, and the family lived in an affluent suburb. Browning played golf and lacrosse, was active in his church and was close to becoming an Eagle Scout. In the United States, about 300 children a year are charged with killing one or both parents, Mones said. Cases where a child kills the entire family, known as "familicide," are less frequent.

A high-ranking Portuguese police official declared that his colleagues have more important things to do than try to find missing British girl Madeleine McCann. Read More The shocking admission, published in the Portuguese newspaper 24 Horas, came as police were reportedly preparing an "exit strategy" from the case, sources told the newspaper. "There are bigger problems in the PJ than the Maddie case," Carlos Anjos, head of the Judicial Police (PJ) Inspectors Union, told the newspaper. Anjos' comments followed a statement by the national director of the PJ, Alipio Ribeiro, in which he admitted that authorities had acted "hastily" in making Madeleine's parents, Gerry and Kate McCann, formal suspects in their daughter's disappearance. See vol6_iss3.

*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"