The Child Protection eNewsletter

Newly released files detail sighting of Maddy lookalike… 

A little girl seen in a shop in Amsterdam just days after the disappearance of British girl Madeleine McCann called herself Maddy and said "they took me from my holiday", according to documents released by Portuguese police.  The Age.com story here

Details of the sighting were contained among almost 30,000 pages of evidence from the investigation into Madeleine's disappearance, which were made public for the first time.  The 17 volumes of material contain photographs and artist impressions of suspicious men seen in Praia da Luz, the resort town where Madeleine was holidaying with her parents when she disappeared.

It also contains CCTV images, including one showing a girl resembling Madeleine holding the hand of a woman at a service station in Lagos, about eight kilometers from Praia da Luz, British newspapers reported.  That footage was taken 13 hours after Madeleine went missing.  Madeleine's parents Kate and Gerry McCann said the girl was not their daughter.

Madeleine vanished on May 3, 2007, a few days before her fourth birthday, from a hotel room during a family holiday in Praia da Luz, a coastal Algarve town.

The Amsterdam sighting, in early May, was reported by Dutch party shop worker Anna Stam who said she spoke to the girl, aged about three or four, who said her name was "Maddy" and added:  "They took me from my holiday," the Independent reported.

Stam told police the girl was in her shop with two other children, and a man and a woman who told her they owned a small circus in France.  She said she was at the back of the shop when the young girl approached her and asked in English without an accent:  "Do you know where my mummy is?"

Stam replied that her mother was a little further back in the store but the child said:  "She is not my mummy.  She is a stranger, she took me from my mummy."  When Stam asked the girl where she last saw her mother, she replied:  "They took me from my holiday."

Last month, Portugal's attorney general ordered police to halt their 14-month investigation because detectives had uncovered no evidence of a crime. Fox News story here  The case will remain closed unless new evidence emerges.

Portuguese lawyers acting for Madeleine's parents, Kate and Gerry, gained official access to the files last week.  The McCanns have said they hoped to find leads that private investigators could follow up on.  For background in this case see  vol5_iss34,  vol5_iss53,  vol6_iss3, and  vol6_iss11.

Formal state criminal charges filed in Caylee case, DNA tests complete… 

The Florida State's Attorney office filed formal criminal charges Tuesday against the mother of missing Orlando toddler Caylee Anthony.  Read Fox News story here

Casey Marie Anthony, 22, was charged with one felony and one misdemeanor offense, in addition to the child neglect charge she already faced.  She will be arraigned on the criminal charges.

Also Tuesday, test results from DNA samples taken from a car driven by Anthony came in and were turned over to investigators.

The evidence was gathered from the trunk of a vehicle that Anthony was using when her 2-year-old daughter Caylee Marie Anthony vanished in mid-June.

Other DNA samples were taken from the backyard of Anthony's parents' house, where she lived with her little daughter until about the time the girl disappeared.  It took Casey Anthony more than a month to report the child missing, which she did on July 15.  Caylee was last seen on or around June 15.

Detectives reported smelling a strong odor of human decomposition in the car trunk after cadaver dogs led them there.  They said they also found hair samples similar to those of Caylee Marie Anthony.

Police find remains of 5 children in Jersey… 

Police have uncovered the mutilated remains of at least five children on the Channel Island of Jersey, but authorities investigating child abuse there believe they don't have enough evidence to launch a murder inquiry, a senior officer said.  Washington Post story here

Deputy Chief Officer Lenny Harper told the British Broadcasting Corp. that the burned and scarred remains of children aged between 4 and 11 had been found in a building that once housed the Haut de la Garenne children's home.  But he acknowledged that problems in precisely dating bones and teeth mean a murder prosecution is now unlikely.

"There may not be the evidence there to mount a homicide inquiry and an attempt to bring anybody to justice for whatever crimes took place there," Harper said.

Police on the island state of Jersey, off the coasts of England and France, have investigated claims that more than 100 boys and girls were sexually abused decades ago.

Officers have excavated four underground chambers at the building, referred to as punishment rooms by some victims, and found shackles, a large blood stained bath and 26 children's teeth.

Harper said there is evidence that children died at the home and that attempts were made to conceal the bodies in the late 1960s and early 1970s.  But he said that if carbon dating techniques fail to offer specific dates for the murders, he won't be able to open a murder investigation.

"We were pinning our hopes on the process of carbon dating," Harper said.  "The latest information we're getting is that for the period we're looking at, it's not going to be possible to give us an exact time of death."

Haut de la Garenne opened in 1867 as an industrial school where juvenile delinquents were housed.  It later served as a children's home.  After it was closed in 1986, the building was extensively renovated and reopened in 2004 as a youth hostel catering to budget travelers.  For more see  vol6_iss16  and  vol6_iss18.

In other news… 

Seven Philadelphia social service administrators were suspended Monday, exactly two years after the emaciated, maggot-infested body of a 14-year-old girl with cerebral palsy was found in the squalid home of her mother, who has been charged with murder.  Read CBS News story here  The suspensions came after a grand jury report said the administrators failed to supervise derelict employees and, in some cases, falsified paperwork to cover up the neglect that led to the death of Danieal Kelly.  Just days ago, two other department workers were among nine people charged in the death of the disabled teen, who died of starvation and infection in 2006 while under the Department of Human Services' supervision.  In announcing the discipline at a news conference Monday, Mayor Michael Nutter choked up while noting his own daughter is just a year younger than Danieal was when she died.  For days before Danieal Kelly died in a fetid, airless room–made stifling hot by a midsummer heat wave–the bedridden teenager begged for something to drink until she could muster only one word:  water.  MSNBC News story here

A Roman Catholic pastor who helped organize Pope Benedict XVI's visit to New York and gave the invocation at Governor David Paterson's inauguration has been forced to leave his position because of allegations of sexual abuse.  MSNBC story here  The Rev. Monsignor Wallace Harris has denied the allegations that he abused a minor 20 years ago, the Archdiocese of New York said in a statement.  The matter was referred to the Manhattan district attorney's office, which said that the statute of limitations had expired.  The archdiocese said Harris will not be allowed to practice as a priest pending an investigation by its Advisory Review Board.

The Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department confirmed Tuesday it was sending two homicide detectives to Boston to interview a mysterious father accused of kidnapping his 7-year-old daughter during a visit in Boston.  CBS News story here  The man known as Clark Rockefeller–and by several other aliases–was arraigned in Boston Municipal Court on Tuesday on charges related to the July 27 disappearance of his daughter, Reigh Boss.  Authorities say they have been stymied in their efforts to figure out exactly who Rockefeller is.  Suffolk District Attorney Dan Conley said they have no record of him before 1993, and said Rockefeller has claimed he doesn't remember details ranging from where he is from, where his parents are and even whether he is from the United States.  Rockefeller's attorney Stephen Hrones denied his client had any link to the California case, and said Clark Rockefeller was his legal name.  Police have said Rockefeller, 48, snatched his daughter from a Boston street on July 27 in an elaborately planned kidnapping in which he hired two people to drive them to New York.  He was caught Saturday in Baltimore, where he had bought a home and boat.  Hrones said Rockefeller did not "kidnap" his daughter.  "How could you kidnap your own daughter?" Hrones asked.  "He loves his daughter.  Kidnapping doesn't apply, it was his own kid."  But Conley noted Massachusetts has a law against parental kidnapping.  "Just because he's Reigh's natural father, it doesn't absolve him," he said.  Reigh, known to family and friends as "Snooks," was found in good condition in Baltimore and has been reunited with her mother, Sandra Boss.  The two live together in London, where Boss is a senior partner in the London office of the management consulting firm McKinsey & Co.

Some of the nation's worst sex offenders will no longer be eligible to receive generous educational financial aid packages while they are confined in treatment centers under a bill approved by Congress.  Fox News story here  A little-noticed provision of a broader higher education bill makes such offenders ineligible for Pell Grants, the nation's premier financial aid program for low-income students, starting July 1, 2009.  Both the Senate and the House approved the bill late last week and President Bush is expected to sign it into law.  The Associated Press reported in March that dozens of rapists and child molesters have taken higher education classes at taxpayer expense while confined to treatment centers.  See  vol6_iss22. "Today, the most insane wasteful spending program in America comes to an end," Representative Ric Keller, R-Fla., said on the House floor Thursday before his plan won approval.  Keller cited the AP report that some offenders were using the financial aid to buy clothes, DVD players and music CDs–sometimes after they dropped their classes.

A controversial computer game which let members of the social-networking site Facebook "virtually knife" one another has been removed from the Web site.  Fox News here Shank could be added by any Facebook member and appeared in the user's profile as a small knife with a black blade.  Once installed as part of the Superpoke! application–which is typically used to send virtual greetings such as hugs and kisses–it allowed users to "shank" their friends.  British anti-knife crime campaigners condemned the application, details of which emerged barely a week after the British Crime Survey found that more than 350 knife-crime offenses were being committed in the country every day.  In London, 21 teenagers have been killed this year–the majority the victims of stabbings.  "The stupidity of having this on their site is unbelievable," said John Knox, whose nephew, the "Harry Potter" actor Rob Knox, was killed in a knife attack after intervening in a dispute about a mobile phone.  "And they deliberately use the street term 'shanked', which is even worse.  They are targeting the kids who are on street corners carrying knives."

Newsweek takes a look at the story of Rozita Swinton, the Colorado Springs women who allegedly set off the investigation of the Yearning for Zion Ranch, the Texas FLDS compound from which 400+ children were taken into custody, after she posed as a child bride trapped in the polygamous compound.   Newsweek story here

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