The Child Protection eNewsletter

Another campus shooting… 

Florida authorities and a university source identified the suspect in the Northern Illinois University slayings as 27-year-old former student Steven Kazmierczak.  Read More  Officials earlier said the shooter had no record of police contact or an arrest record while attending Northern Illinois, about 65 miles west of Chicago.

Also, another victim of the attack at a lecture hall died, raising the toll to seven, including the gunman, who had graduated from the school and had been considered a good student.

The motive of the shooter, who graduated from NIU in 2006, was not known, officials said.  Kazmierczak also wounded 15 people and sent panicked students fleeing for the exits before killing himself.

"There is no note or threat that I know of," NIU President John Peters said on Friday ABC’s "Good Morning America."  "By all accounts that we can tell right now (he) was a very good student that the professors thought well of. "  Peters described Thursday's attack as a "very brief, rapid-fire assault."

All of the victims were students, including the shooter and the instructor, a graduate teaching assistant, who survived, Peters said.  At least one of the wounded was hospitalized in critical condition.  The gunman was a former graduate student at NIU but had since enrolled at another college, Peters said.

University Police Chief Donald Grady said police knew of no motive for the shooting, which occurred about 3 p.m. CT in an introductory geology class in an auditorium inside Cole Hall.  The campus is in DeKalb, a city of 40,000 in a rural area about 65 miles west of downtown Chicago. Its enrollment is more than 25,000.

Paul Sundstrom of Rockford, Ill., one of 150 to 200 students in the class when the shooting took place, told NBC affiliate WMAQ that the gunman was a thin white man wearing a black "beanie" and a black trench coat.

The man entered the room from behind the instructor and, without saying a word, began shooting from the stage, Sundstrom and other witnesses said.  Firing in the general direction of the students, he emptied a clip of ammunition and calmly reloaded before resuming firing.

"He just walked in and just started shooting at people randomly," Sundstrom said.  "I crawled out to the main aisle, then just got up and ran and turned around and saw him shooting."  Sundstrom added:  "I just don’t know why anybody would want to do anything like this."

The campus was eerily quiet Thursday night.  All the lights were on in the library — about 200 yards from the crime-scene tape that surrounded Cole Hall — but the seats inside sat empty.  Read More

Fliers offering counseling services were posted around campus residence halls, where puffy-eyed students pulled luggage for trips home and kept their cell phones close at hand.

Mike MacQueen's phone brought no comfort.  "I just got a text message that a friend of mine passed away," the 20-year-old from Elmhurst said.  "He was a good person, he didn't deserve to die."

"It's surreal, this happening so close to home," he said.

Priest defrocked after years of abuse complaints… 

The Vatican has defrocked a Philadelphia priest with a long and sordid history of sexually molesting altar boys after plying them with alcohol and forcing them to sleep in his bed, archdiocese officials announced.  Read More  But the decision to cast David C. Sicoli out of the priesthood came three decades after archdiocese officials first received complaints about him and almost four years after they launched an investigation into allegations that he molested at least 11 boys.

Victims' groups expressed outrage yesterday -- saying the Vatican's move was too little, too late and failed to heal the wounds of those he allegedly abused.  "He's been a priest for at least 30 years, and church officials were warned numerous times he was a molester," said David Clohessy, national director of the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, or SNAP. "This is a belated and begrudging move taken only after children have been abused unnecessarily."

Sicoli's defrocking means he can no longer work as a priest anywhere and he will no longer receive financial support from the archdiocese. Until recently, Sicoli was receiving church money for food, clothing and shelter, Philadelphia archdiocese spokeswoman Donna M. Farrell said.

Sicoli's exploits with boys were detailed in a 2005 grand jury report on sexual abuse in the Philadelphia Archdiocese. Sicoli was one of 63 Philadelphia-area priests who sexually abused hundreds of children, the grand jury concluded.  But Sicoli was never convicted or charged with any crime because the statute of limitations expired years before the grand jury report came out.  That means that Sicoli -- who could not be reached for comment -- does not have to register as a sex offender under Megan's Law.

Clohessy of SNAP said he believes church officials have a moral obligation to watch over Sicoli and help protect other potential victims.  "Church officials helped foster and create him," Clohessy said.  "They can't simply cut him loose and say, 'We have no more obligation here.' "

Farrell said archdiocese officials have alerted church officials and law enforcement authorities in the area where Sicoli currently resides of his history and exact address.  "We're not trying to hide anything - his photograph is on our Web site," Farrell said.

Farrell said Sicoli chose not to enter an archdiocese program, run out of Villa Saint Joseph in Darby Borough, that supervises and houses priests who have had allegations of sexual abuse substantiated against them. The program offers priests "a supervised life of prayer and penance."  Twenty accused priests are currently in the program, Farrell said.

Meanwhile, the Catholic Diocese of Fairbanks plans to file for bankruptcy after negotiations to settle sexual abuse claims failed.  Read More  Bishop Donald J. Kettler said he anticipates filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection within five weeks.  "I am legally and morally bound to both fulfill our mission and to pursue healing for those injured," he said in a prepared statement.

More than 150 claims were filed against the Roman Catholic Church, alleging abuse by clergy or church workers between the 1950s and 1980s.  The plaintiffs' lawyer Ken Roosa said 135 of those cases are still pending.

Also, Cardinal Desmond Connell, former archbishop of Dublin, has withdrawn his attempt to prevent a government sexual abuse inquiry from examining documents provided by his successor, the Irish Times reports.  Read More  Cardinal Connell’s lawyers had previously secured a temporary order blocking the release of the files. (See  vol6_iss10.)  They claimed the documents were privileged or protected by lawyer-client confidentiality.

Diarmuid Martin, the present Archbishop of Dublin, had provided the documents in obedience to an order from the Commission of Investigation into Sexual Abuse.  The documents dated from 1975 to 2004 and related to claims of child abuse against a representative sample of 46 priests in the archdiocese.  Lawyers for both bishops agreed to seek resolution, avoiding a potentially bitter court fight.

And the Reverend Philip Magaldi, who has been accused by several people of sexual misconduct while he served as a priest, is HIV-positive, the Roman Catholic Diocese of Fort Worth announced.  Read More  Magaldi told the diocese on February 7 about his infection.  Since then, the diocese says, it has contacted three people who have made accusations against Magaldi.

Church officials in Rhode Island, where Magaldi previously worked, said they also plan to contact his accusers to tell them about his infection.  The Reverend Michael Olson, the Fort Worth diocese vicar general, said the diocese was releasing the information because it wanted to go the extra mile for the safety of everyone involved.  Olson and another diocese official have contacted "three individuals who have made allegations of sexual misconduct or expressed concern about Magaldi's behavior."

The Roman Catholic Diocese of Providence, Rhode Island, where Magaldi previously served, received three separate allegations of sexual misconduct against Magaldi, in 1998, 2002 and last year, officials said in a news release.

Fort Worth Bishop Kevin Vann is expected to fly to Rome this month to continue the process he started in 2006 of defrocking Magaldi, 71, Olson said.  The Providence Diocese is supporting the effort.

In other news… 

At least 82 U.S. youths have died since 1995 engaging in "the choking game" in which they try to experience a fleeting "high" by cutting off the oxygen supply to the brain, U.S. health officials said.  Read More  An unknown number of youths, mostly boys, are taking part in the practice in which they strangle themselves with their hands or a noose or have someone else strangle them, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said in a report.  The report, the first effort to track this nationwide, identified the deaths of 82 people ages 6 to 19 from 1995 to 2007 that appear to have been caused by the choking game.  The CDC said the report likely underestimates the toll.  Boys accounted for 87 percent of the deaths in 31 states, the CDC said, with the greatest number of deaths among boys ages 11 to 16.

A Dover Air Force Base sergeant was arrested by federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials on child pornography charges as part of Operation Predator.  Read More  Tech. Sgt. Jonathan Amato, assigned to the base as a leadership instructor, was charged with knowingly receiving and possessing child pornography after custom agents raided his off-base residence last week.  According to court records, Amato used a credit card to purchase access to child porn Web sites on multiple occasions.  During a search of his home, agents seized three laptop computers, a desktop computer and a computer storage device.  A forensic examination revealed about 60 photographs on Amato's thumb drive depicting minors engaged in sex acts -- 20 of the images were of prepubescent minors engaged in sex acts with adults.

A Delaware clinical social worker is being accused of unlawful sexual contact with a teenage boy and possessing child pornography.  Read More  Middletown police say the 14-year-old boy reported the abuse December 31, leading to the investigation of 50-year-old Stephen King.  The boy claimed he was touched inappropriately at King's home.  Police found a picture of a young naked man next to King's computer printer, then seized the computer and found more than 20 videos and pictures of juveniles engaged in sexual acts.

A woman beat her cousin's 4-year-old son to death while two of her own children held him down and a third watched, all because the boy soiled his pants.  Read More Carla Cherisse Poole, 37, is charged with second-degree intentional murder in the death of Demond Keith Reed, whose body was found wrapped in plastic and stuffed in a canvas bag during a police search of her home.  Poole "brutally beat him in front of three of her own children," Hennepin County Attorney Mike Freeman told reporters.  He said she lied to police, telling them the boy had been abducted.  According to the criminal complaint, Poole's 6-year-old son told police Poole had told him and her 4-year-old child to hold Demond down by the arms while she beat him.

A woman from Norwich, NY sold sexual services of a young girl to a landlord in exchange for back rent, as well as to strangers for money at a hotel in Johnson City.  Read More The girl, now 14, told police she faced homelessness and the threat of death from the landlord if she didn't comply.  The alleged rapes took place during 2006 and 2007 when the girl was 12 and 13, court records state.  Linda O'Connor, 46, was arrested by the FBI and is facing a federal charge of selling a child, as well as other child pornography charges.  If convicted of the selling charge alone, she could get up to life in prison, Assistant U.S. Attorney Miroslav Lovric said.  O'Connor's former absentee landlord, Dean Sacco, 49, of Jersey City, N.J., was also charged with buying a child, various child pornography charges, and crossing state lines to have sex with a minor.  Sacco was scheduled to go on trial in Chenango County Court this week on rape and nine other felony charges, but the trial has been postponed, a court official.

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