The Child Protection eNewsletter

Maryland legislator and Big Brothers Big Sisters Executive Director resigns amid child porn scandal… 

Robert A. McKee, a long-serving Republican delegate from Western Maryland, announced his resignation after authorities, who say they are conducting a child pornography investigation, seized two computers, videotapes and printed materials from his Hagerstown home. READ MORE

First elected to the House of Delegates in 1994, McKee was chairman of the Western Maryland delegation and sponsored legislation to protect minors from sexual predators.  McKee, 58, also resigned from his post as executive director of Big Brothers Big Sisters of Washington County, a child mentorship program where he has worked for 29 years.  Maryland has a part time legislature.

"For me, this is deeply embarrassing," McKee said in a statement.  "It reflects poorly on my service to the community."

The FBI's cyber-crimes unit and the county sheriff's office are reviewing the materials seized from McKee's home January 31, federal and local authorities said.

"In the meantime, I have entered treatment," McKee said, without providing specifics.  "My primary focus is to get well and stay well.  I know this can only happen with the support and prayers of my family and friends and the help of professionals."

McKee, who is considered a political moderate, has sponsored bills this year dealing with minors, including the Child Protection From Predators Act and a proposal to collect DNA samples from sexual predators.  McKee has sponsored several other sexual offender and child abduction bills in previous years.

For decades, McKee has been involved in youth athletics and children's groups, according to his General Assembly biography.  He has served in officer positions in two Little League groups and as secretary of a parent and child center advisory committee.

During the 1970s, McKee was a reservist in the U.S. Navy.  He is a former chaplain for the Hagerstown Jaycees and is a trustee and community services chairman at First Christian Church.

"In the long run, I hope and pray that my work in the local community for the last three decades will speak louder than the challenges I now face," McKee said.

Florida to track child welfare cases electronically… 

Florida's much-maligned child welfare workers will soon begin carrying handheld devices, like the ones delivery companies use to track packages, that show whether they really are checking in on the children under their supervision.  READ MORE

The touch-screen units, about the size of a book, will record the amount of time caseworkers spend with each family, take photos of children in state care and allow the workers to update case information on the spot, Governor Charlie Crist and Children & Families Secretary Bob Butterworth said at a news conference in front of a UPS truck.

The first-of-its-kind move follows a series of headline-grabbing cases in which workers lied about such visits and it turned out the children were missing or dead.

In 2002, the department discovered that Rilya Wilson, a 4-year-old Miami foster child, had been missing for more than year, but her caseworker had lied about visiting the home.  The girl was never found and her caregiver has been charged with murder.  The caseworker was fired and pleaded guilty to official misconduct, getting probation.

Last year, a 2-year-old foster girl was missing from a central Florida home for four months before police began searching for her.  She was found at a Wisconsin home, where she had apparently been taken by her mother in violation of a court order rescinding her custody.  The mother and others have been charged with murdering another woman whose body was buried in the yard. vol5_iss40

A child protection task force Butterworth created after that case recommended better coordination and communication between law enforcement and child welfare agencies.  The panel also suggested changing laws to simplify reporting and finding missing children.

Marichelle Nelson, a Department of Children & Families investigator in Miami-Dade County, estimated that more than half her time was spent on filling out forms.  "This device will keep welfare workers in the field, not in the office doing paperwork," Butterworth said.

Officials said the handheld devices also will automatically trigger alerts about problems.  For example, an alert would be sent to supervisors if no home visit was recorded for a child within 31 days, Butterworth said.  Supervisors also would be able to send alerts to caseworkers traveling to home visits.

Each device will include GPS technology and a camera.  At a home visit with a Miami Shores foster mother to demonstrate how the device works, Butterworth said future generations of the technology will include voice-activated recorders and telephones.

Workers will test the devices, but Crist already has recommended $10 million in the next fiscal year's budget to provide them statewide.

In other news… 

A convicted sex offender remained jailed after the 25-year-old man, posing as a teenager, was caught taking a 14-year-old girl to a dance at her Alabama middle school, Athens authorities said.  READ MORE  Athens Middle School faculty members stopped Gregory Ray Brooks at the gym door because he appeared to be much older than his date at the dance, Athens Superintendent Orman Bridges Jr. said.  "He didn't look like the 17-year-old he said he was," Bridges said. "The faculty did an excellent job of monitoring who was coming in and catching this guy. They kept him from other students and maybe helped this young lady out of a bad situation."

A former Illinois grade school teacher admitted he sexually molested eight female students while he was a teacher at Urbana's Thomas Paine Elementary School in 2005 and 2006.  READ MORE  Jon White, 27, of Villa Grove, formerly of Normal, faces a maximum of 56 years in prison on the eight counts of aggravated criminal sexual abuse to which he pleaded guilty in Champaign County Circuit Court.  State's Attorney Julia Rietz said White, who was to have been tried by a jury in Decatur next week, was expected to plead guilty in McLean County to two counts of aggravated criminal sexual abuse.  There, he is accused of molesting two girls between October 2004 and April 2005 when he was a teacher at Colene Hoose Elementary School in Normal.  The Urbana victims were about 7 and 8 years old when molested by White, who was a second-grade teacher at Thomas Paine.  White, who is married and has a daughter, has not taught since his arrest at the school on January 31, 2007.  He was fired by the Urbana school district last March as part of an annual reduction in force.  For more on educator abuse, visit vol1_iss7

A baby whose mother allegedly threw him in a Houston hospital trashcan after giving birth to him in a hospital restroom has died, KPRC Local 2 reported.  READ MORE  Doctors at Children's Memorial Hermann Hospital took Baby Granados off of life support on Wednesday.  Officials said Genny Granados, 29, went to Memorial Hermann Southwest Hospital on February 9 complaining of stomach pains. Investigators said she went into a restroom, gave birth to her son, wrapped him in paper towels and tossed him into a trashcan.

Meanwhile, an Oregon mother abandoned her newborn baby girl in a toilet at a St. Helens nursing facility, police said. READ MORE  When medics arrived at the Meadow Park Care facility, they found nurses trying to resuscitate the nearly full-term newborn child.  The baby was taken to legacy Emanuel Hospital, where she was stabilized and is expected to survive.  Police said their investigation showed the 21-year-old mother, who works at the nursing facility, tried to kill the baby and cover up her existence.  A co-worker found the baby in a toilet around noon on Valentine’s Day.  Police said a well-trained nursing staff played a key role in the baby’s survival.

Teenagers in foster care seem to have a brighter future when there is an adult in their life they look up to, a study suggests.  READ MORE  The findings, taken from a national survey of U.S. teens, suggest that "natural mentors" -- teachers, coaches and other adults who are part of foster children's lives -- can make a difference in their future.  In fact, they may be more important than mentors who are connected to children through formal programs, researchers report in the journal Pediatrics.  This is because, unlike the typically temporary nature of formal mentorships, adults who are naturally part of foster children's lives may be around for the long haul.  For the study, Dr. Kym R. Ahrens and colleagues at the University of Chicago used data from a national health survey that included 310 teenagers in foster care. Of these teens, 160 said they had an adult in their life, other than a parent, who had made an "important positive difference" in their life.  These "natural mentors" included grandparents, teachers, coaches, friends' parents and other adults the teens said they'd known for at least two years.

An Oregon Health and Science University report, based on data collected in 2003 by the CDC, found that about 5.3 percent of high school-age girls admitted to using steroids. By 2005, that number dropped to 3.2 percent, according to the CDC.  READ MORE  Dionne Passacantando desperately wanted to be thin.  In 2003, Passacantando was a petite and popular high school student in Allen, Texas.  But the 17-year-old cheerleader and senior class vice president said she felt pressured to slim down, to have that "Shape magazine, six-pack" look.  Unlike most men, who tend to take steroids to improve their physical performance, Passacantando chose to use the drugs as a "vanity kind of thing," driven by her desire to slim down to a size zero.  She'd skipped meals or forced herself to throw up, in the past, and had heard that steroids, which increase muscle mass and decrease body fat, would help tone her body.  But within five weeks, she'd gained around 8 pounds, and her voice deepened. She felt "out of control," mired in depression, with thoughts of suicide.  Former Senator George Mitchell, in his report on steroid use in Major League Baseball, warned that hundreds of thousands of high schoolers are illegally using performance-enhancing drugs.  "Every American, not just baseball fans, ought to be shocked into action by that disturbing truth," the report said.

A former Army paratrooper who served two tours of duty in Iraq has been ordered tried on charges of raping and critically injuring a 3-month-old girl.  READ MORE  Kirk Coleman is charged with first-degree criminal sexual conduct and first-degree child abuse, charges that carry up to life in prison.  Michigan authorities say the then-27-year-old Coleman attacked the baby September 14 in Jackson County's Blackman Township, about 65 miles west of Detroit.  The girl sustained brain damage and 17 broken bones and is undergoing therapy.  District Judge R. Darryl Mazur ruled there's enough evidence to warrant a trial.  Coleman allegedly told investigators he blacked out after drinking heavily and taking painkillers and awoke to find the injured baby in her crib, The Jackson Citizen Patriot reported.

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