The Child Protection eNewsletter

Penalty phase in cannibal fantasy murder trial… 

An Oklahoma man convicted of killing a 10-year-old girl as part of a cannibalistic fantasy "gave up on being normal" and was driven by deviant sexual disorders and a downward spiral of depression, a psychiatrist testified.  Read More

Dr. Martin Kafka, a clinical associate at Harvard Medical School, testified for the defense in the penalty phase of the trial of Kevin Underwood, 28, who has been convicted of first-degree murder for killing Jamie Rose Bolin, 10.

A jury will decide whether Underwood should be sentenced to death or life in prison, with or without the possibility of parole. The girl's body was found in a plastic tub in Underwood's apartment with her head nearly cut off.

Kafka said Underwood suffers from a socially isolating personality disorder, a bipolar disorder and several sexual disorders.  The psychiatrist spent several hours with Underwood in jail, reviewed interviews with friends and relatives and read his diaries and online journal.

"What came across in evaluating Kevin Underwood is his lifelong struggle to be normal and his complete inability to do that," Kafka said. "He just gave up on being normal."

Defense attorneys, arguing against the death penalty, say their client is mentally disturbed and out of touch with reality.  Prosecutors have argued for the death penalty, citing the heinous nature of the crime and saying Underwood poses a continuing threat.

One factor that played a large part in Underwood's sexual fantasies was pornography, Kafka said.  Read More  He said Underwood began watching porn on TV and looking at magazines when he was a preteen, then used the Internet to find porn from his early teens on.

“Another enormous factor in this is the Internet,” Kafka said.  “This guy may not have done any of this if he hadn’t had the Internet literally taking over his mind with all these intrusive images.”  For more on the dangers of pornography see  vol1_iss9.

The jury had previously found Underwood guilty of first-degree murder in the killing of 10-year-old Jamie Brolin, reaching its decision within minutes the day after hearing his macabre videotaped confession.  Read More

In the confession, Underwood said he lured the girl, his upstairs neighbor, into his apartment in Purcell, hit her with a cutting board, smothered her with his hands, sexually assaulted the body and nearly cut her head off as part of a fantasy involving cannibalism.

"I wanted to know what it tasted like, and just the thought of eating someone was appealing to me," Underwood said in the confession.

In other news… 

British children as young as five would be taught about the dangers of putting their personal details on the internet under plans drawn up by the Conservative Party to tackle cyber-crime.  Read More  Issues such as privacy, information security, and the risks posed by posting photographs online would all be addressed as part of the compulsory curriculum, the Conservatives said.  David Davis, the Shadow Home Secretary, attacked the Government for not doing enough to raise awareness among children of the dangers posed by cyber-crime, at a time when the threat was growing and criminals were using increasingly sophisticated methods to target their victims.  “From e-mail to file-sharing, social networking to shopping, the internet is part of our lives.  But we’re not the only ones to have migrated to this new communication platform,” Mr. Davis told delegates at an e-crime conference in London.

The investigation into one of Britain's biggest child abuse scandals--the Jersey care home mystery--has uncovered many "graves" dug for a popular television show.  Read More  It has been revealed that a “graveyard” in a field near the Colditz care home was dug for 1980’s BBC detective series Bergerac, UK newspaper the Daily Mail reported.  The newspaper reported that “production crews dug out 6ft deep graves in the field and planted dozens of fiberglass headstones in the soil to create a fake graveyard” for the series.  Fiberglass skeletons were also buried in the field by production crews--although the bones already found by investigators were believed to be from children living in the home.  Meanwhile, the investigation into child abuse at Jersey children's homes is likely to spread to Guernsey after an alleged victim said he was attacked by staff of residential homes on both Channel Islands.  Read More  Carl Denning, 49, claims sexual abuse happened at two children's homes in Guernsey when he was there in the early 1970s.  Police investigating decades of alleged abuse at the Haut de la Garenne former children's home in Jersey said any allegations of child abuse in Guernsey which arise from their inquiries will be passed on to their counterparts on the neighboring island, which has its own entirely separate police force.

Police say a South Los Angeles middle school administrator has been arrested for investigation of kidnapping and sexually assaulting a student.  Read More   Steven Thomas Rooney, assistant principal at Edwin Markham Middle School, was arrested.  Police allege that a 13-year-old student from the school was attacked, but not on campus.  Meanwhile, a middle-school teacher in the Orlando, Florida, area soon will be out on bail despite sending dirty text messages to a 14-year-old female student, MyFOXOrlando reported.  Read More  James Stafford, 25, who teaches seventh grade at Corner Lake Middle School, was charged with lewd conduct and sentenced to $2,500 bail plus home confinement after his arrest a day earlier.  Police said that for an entire night, Stafford sent graphic text messages to a 14-year-old girl's cell phone suggesting that she'd get a better grade in exchange for sex.  The bewildered student at first had no idea where they were coming from.  "She called the number back and realized it was a teacher," Sergeant Rich Mankewich of the Orange County Sheriff’s office told MyFOXOrlando.  "To confirm it the next day, she texts the number in class and he answers the phone and she realizes it's the teacher doing it."  Stafford has been under investigation by the Orange County School District since February 26, the sheriff said.  He has been suspended with pay and won't be released from prison until the home confinement monitor is set up--which could take another two days.  His pregnant wife works at the same school.

YouTube is facing criticism for making it too easy for people to upload violent or sexually explicit content to the Internet after a 25-year-old mother was filmed while being raped.  Read More  A three-minute video showing the mother sexually assaulted by three boys after her drink had been spiked was uploaded soon after the incident, which took place in November.  In the clip, which was filmed with a mobile phone, the mother appears to be unconscious, with her head lolling from side to side, as she is repeatedly raped.  Her 2-year-old daughter and 4-year-old son are heard crying in the background.  The mother, from South London, told The Sun that she had been put through the ordeal after drinking champagne that had been spiked with a date-rape drug.

Last year at his trial we heard how Vinson Filyaw kidnapped and raped a 14-year-old in South Carolina and held her hostage and what he wrote about it for the media before he was sentenced to 421 years in jail.  vol5_iss63   Now Elizabeth Shoaf, the brave high school girl who was held hostage for ten days in an underground bunker and managed her own rescue, speaks out in great detail for the first time to "Dateline's" Keith Morrison in "Into the Woods," a very special two-hour Dateline, airing Friday, March 7, at 9 p.m. on NBC.  “Down in the bunker was hell.  When I first went in, it was very dark and cold.  I couldn’t see anything and everything looked creepy.  After Vinson turned on the lights, it was even creepier.  It looked unreal, almost like I was in a really bad dream,” she writes about the experience at Read More.  See video of her Today show interview with her parents at Read More.

A Mesa, Arizona teenager who confessed to killing his father last month told police he hated his dad for taking away his Internet access, according to a police report.  Read More  Hughstan Schlicker, 15, called 911 on February 6 and told the dispatcher he had just shot his father in the head with a 12-gauge shotgun.  Schlicker said he often spent entire days on MySpace and couldn't cope when his father cut off his access to the site.  Schlicker told police his father had taken away his Internet access after seeing suicide threats the teen had posted on social networking Web site MySpace.

*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"