The Child Protection eNewsletter

Aunt walks niece, nephew into interstate traffic in murder/suicide…

A woman with a history of mental illness purposely walked her young niece and nephew into oncoming interstate traffic to commit a double-murder suicide, a prosecutor said. Read More

Marcelle Thibault, 39, was driving south on Interstate 495 in Lowell, Massachusetts last week when she turned the car sharply, drove across the median and northbound lanes and began driving against traffic in the breakdown lane, authorities said.

She then stopped the car, removed her clothes and undressed the children, took both of them into her arms and walked onto the highway. She and the children were struck by two cars and killed.

"There are not many other scenarios I can think of that are as tragic as this one," District Attorney Gerry Leone said. "It is beyond belief, it is unimaginable, it is unspeakable, and it was a horrible tragedy."

The young victims were Kaleigh Lambert, 5, and Shane Lambert, 4, of Brentwood, New Hampshire, who were the children of Thibault's twin sister.

Thibault, of Bellingham, was a stay-at-home mom who was active with her church and loved to be with her own two teenage children. She was one of eight daughters and loved organizing family gatherings.

Leone said Thibault had picked up the youngsters January 11 for a "pirate and princess weekend." Young said the woman, who had two teenage children, often took her sister's kids for special weekends.

Maddie’s parents release sketch of “suspect”…

Madeleine McCann's parents released a new sketch of a man they say could have been involved in their daughter's disappearance last year during a family vacation in Portugal. Read More

The illustrations are based on descriptions a British vacationer gave of a man acting suspiciously at the holiday resort where the girl went missing in Praia da Luz.

Madeleine disappeared in May, days before her 4th birthday. Her parents say they believe she was abducted from their holiday apartment as they had dinner with friends at a nearby restaurant. (See Volume 5, Issue 34 Volume 5, Issue 35 and Volume 6, Issue 3)

Family spokesman Clarence Mitchell told a London news conference the image released is similar to a previous description of a man seen carrying a child on the night of the girl's disappearance.

"We believe this man could be linked to Madeleine's disappearance," Mitchell said. "If he is innocent we want him to come forward for his own sake so he can be ruled out."

MySpace bug leaks 'private' teen photos to voyeurs…

A backdoor in MySpace's architecture allows anyone who's interested to see the photographs of some users with private profiles -- including those under 16 -- despite assurances from MySpace that those pictures can only be seen by people on a user's friends list. Read More

Information about the backdoor has been circulating on message boards for months.

Since the glitch emerged last fall, it has spawned a cottage industry of ad-supported websites that make it easy to access the photographs, spurring self-described pedophiles and run-of-the-mill voyeurs to post photos pilfered from private MySpace accounts.

The bug, and its long-term survival, raises new questions about privacy on the News Corp.-owned site, even as it touts a deal with the attorneys general of 49 states meant to polish its online-safety image.

"If kids are doing what they think they need to do, and are still having their photos picked up by slimebags on the internet ... then these are serious issues," said Parry Aftab, executive director of WiredSafety.org, a children's-online-safety group. "It's a matter of trust and it's a matter of safety."

Meanwhile, in the hunt for 'authenticity,' some companies are using photos from social networking sites in ad campaigns. Read More You and your family are the "real thing." And maybe that's why so many companies (particularly big corporations) are so eager to get their hands on these photos that they seem to be using them without permission.

Case in point: A 15-year-old girl from Dallas discovered that a photo of her at a youth car wash posted on Flickr was later used in an advertising campaign by Virgin Mobile in Australia. The photo was not displayed in a flattering way. She was portrayed as the dorky pen pal that Virgin wanted you to dump in favor of its text-messaging service. She only discovered she has been "photonapped" when a friend sent her a copy of the ad.

As if that’s not bad enough, a California newspaper is reporting that several gay adult Web sites have posted photographs of teenage water polo players from high schools in Southern California. Read More

An Orange County Register investigation has found that some of the pictures, of boys as young as 14, were displayed next to photos of nude young men and graphic sexual content.

An international water polo official and a spokeswoman for a group of Orange County water polo parents says it's "just horrible" for someone to "take what these kids are doing and take it out of context and exploit these images."

In other news…

Because the adoption process in Guatemala is generally fast, the country has been called an adoption paradise. Read More Dateline NBC reports that some children offered for international adoption are exploited, even kidnapped -- forcing families into a desperate battle to save them. Until recently, the system was run not by the government, but by private enterprise, for profit. And that, critics say, created a paradise for fraud. Manuel Manrique heads the Guatemala office of UNICEF -- the United Nations Children’s Fund. He says while not all Guatemalan adoptions are corrupt, baby snatching, extortion and pay-offs have turned the country into a virtual baby farm.

Thirty years after director Roman Polanski fled the United States and a conviction for unlawful sex with a minor, a U.S. filmmaker has reopened the sensational case in a documentary that is shaking up the Sundance Film Festival. Read More “Roman Polanski: Wanted and Desired” debuted this weekend at Sundance, the top U.S. event for independent movies, and already director Marina Zenovich’s nonfiction film has secured a worldwide distribution deal from the powerful Weinstein Co. Show business newspaper Daily Variety reported on Sunday that the documentary division of U.S. cable television channel HBO acquired North American rights, and the film is seen as a top contender in the Sundance documentary competition.

A nationwide search has ended safely for a 15-year-old boy and his 13-year-old girlfriend, who turned up in Louisiana nine days after fleeing their Michigan homes in the boy's family minivan. Read More Hannah McConnell and Gage Petherbridge were found in Cameron Parish, Louisiana, according to Genesee County, Michigan Sheriff Robert Pickell. The boyfriend and girlfriend were playing with seagulls on a Gulf of Mexico beach, just east of the Texas state line, authorities say. An ambulance driver recognized the teens in Holly Beach and called police. The Cameron Parish sheriff's department got a tip that the teens had been spotted in the area.

Dallas Cowboys and Georgia Bulldogs football legend Herschel Walker is expected to reveal in an upcoming book that he has multiple personalities -- a revelation that surprises the man who coached the 1982 Heisman Trophy winner. Read More "That's all news to me," former Georgia coach Vince Dooley said. "All I know is whatever personality he had when he had the football was the one I liked." "Breaking Free" will chronicle Walker's life with multiple personality disorder (Dissociative Identity Disorder), according to Shida Carr, the book's publicist. Carr said the book will be published in August.

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