The Child Protection eNewsletter

Naked sex offender dies when dad catches him outside of daughter's room at 3:20 a.m....

A jobless sex offender has died after a struggle with a northside Indianapolis resident who found him in his teenage daughter's room wearing nothing but a mask and latex gloves, police say. Indianapolis Star story here

About 3:20 a.m., Indianapolis metropolitan police were dispatched to a residence to check a reported home invasion. When they arrived, police said they found Robert McNally, 64, resident of the home, on the floor with his arms wrapped around the neck of an unresponsive David T. Meyers, 52.

Meyers, who police confirmed with family had a history of heart problems, was pronounced dead on the scene. They said a pending autopsy would determine if Meyers died of a possible heart attack or as a result of the choke hold.

Police said McNally will most likely not be arrested or charged in the incident.

"If a person breaks into your home, you are justified in using deadly force in defending your family," said Sergeant Matthew Mount, a spokesman for the Indianapolis Metropolitan Police Department. "In this situation, I don't think he was trying to kill him, he was trying to hold him down."

McNally held Meyers down after answering his 17-year-old daughter's scream for help. Police say Meyers gained access to the girl's bedroom after sneaking in through a window near her room.

Police said Meyers also had rope, condoms and a knife with him, and that he had knowledge of the home's layout because his uncle owned the property.

Meyers was a registered sex offender in Marion County and had been convicted in 1999 of criminal deviate conduct. He had been living with his mother for the last couple of years, the release said, and recently had lost his job.

Meyers also had served 10 years of a 20-year sentence for criminal confinement and sexual deviate conduct out of Hamilton County and was wanted in Boone County for failure to register as a sex offender, according to an IMPD release.

Nixzmary's mother describes girl's last moments to jurors...
At times crying and at times calmly matter-of-fact, Nixzaliz Santiago described on a videotape shown yesterday to jurors in Brooklyn how her 7-year-old daughter sunk into a stupor and died after she was beaten by Santiago's husband. Newsday story here

The tape of Santiago speaking to police and prosecutors just hours after they discovered little Nixzmary Brown's bruised and battered body was played yesterday at her murder trial. On the tape, Santiago said she feared Nixzmary might die as she moaned and lay unconscious.

"Si," a teary Santiago said in Spanish when prosecutor Linda Weinman asked her through a translator if she thought Nixzmary could die.

But moments later and speaking through Detective Georgina Valentin, who served as the translator, Santiago said she decided not to call for help because Nixzmary showed signs of reviving.

Santiago, 30, on trial in State Supreme Court for depraved indifference murder, said she was distracted from watching Nixzmary because she had to tend to her five other children.

Santiago's husband, Cesar Rodriguez, was convicted earlier this year of manslaughter in Nixzmary's January 11, 2006, death. Trial testimony showed that he beat his stepdaughter after she took some yogurt and fouled up his computer printer. In three separate statements to police, Santiago related the yogurt and printer incidents, which she said led to her husband beating the child and then sticking her head under a bathtub spigot.

When shown photos of the dead girl's bruised body lying on the floor, Santiago choked up, sobbed and put her hand to her face.

For more on this case see vol6_iss26, vol6_iss12, vol6_iss5 and vol4_iss4.

In other news...

Kidnapped and held for four and a half years by Michael Devlin, Shawn Hornbeck now tells his story of survival to CBS correspondent Troy Roberts. Text and a link to the video interview are at CBS News story. Also included are interviews with Shawn's family and Ben Ownby, the boy whose kidnapping by Devlin in January, 2007 led to Shawn's discovery and rescue. See more on this story at vol5_iss68, vol5_iss67, and vol5_iss3.

Police in two Maryland counties are trying to figure out how a woman allegedly has been able to live with the frozen corpses of her children for at least a year without anyone knowing. ABC News story here The children's remains, which police believe to be the two young daughters of Renee Bowman of Lusby, Maryland, were found last week stuffed in a freezer in the family's home. Police made the discovery after raiding the home in search of evidence relating to child abuse charges involving a third daughter, Calvert County Sheriff's Office Lieutenant Bobby Jones told ABCNews.com. While the medical examiner's office has not formally identified the girls, Jones said they are believed to be Bowman's adopted daughters, born in 1997 and 1999. Police are still piecing together a timeline for the family, but believe the two girls were killed in Montgomery County one to two years ago. Their frozen bodies may have been transported in a freezer when Bowman and her now 7-year-old daughter, also adopted, moved more than an hour away to Lusby in February.

Moroccan authorities have ordered the closure of dozens of schools and a Web site run by a Muslim religious leader who argued that girls as young as 9 could marry, local media reported. Findlaw.com story here Sheik Mohammed Ben Abderahman al-Maghraoui had issued a fatwa, or religious ruling, on his Web site saying it was lawful for a Muslim man to marry a 9-year-old girl because Islam's Prophet Mohammed had done so. Moroccan law, however, sets 18 as the minimum age for women to marry, and the Council of the Oulemas–the country's highest religious authority–denounced al-Maghraoui as an "agitator." "What the Prophet can do is not open to ordinary Muslims," said lawyer Mourad El Bekkouri, who filed a legal complaint this month asking "the king's prosecutor to sue al-Maghraoui for promoting pedophilia and rape." Government officials said at least three dozen Quranic schools would be shut, according to local media.

A former teacher who fled to Mexico with a 13-year-old student so she could have sex with him was sentenced to six years in federal prison. Kelsey Peterson, 26, had pleaded guilty in July to a charge of transporting a minor across state lines to have sex and avoided a similar charge that would have carried a mandatory 10-year minimum sentence. AP News story here She will be credited for nearly one year she has already served and could get another year off for good behavior, said U.S. Attorney Joe Stecher. The guilty plea doesn't mean Peterson is off the hook on state charges, which include kidnapping and first-degree sexual assault. She started having sex with the boy when he was 12 years old and a student at the middle school where she taught in the south-central Nebraska town of Lexington.

Congress is sending President Bush several bills that would tighten laws on child pornographers' use of the Internet. Findlaw.com story here The House on Friday passed by 418-0 a measure clarifying that images obtained over the Internet were subject to federal interstate commerce laws. The bill was in response to a federal court ruling that prosecutors must show that images kept on a computer had crossed state lines. The same legislation contained another bill sponsored by Representative Christopher Carney, D-Pa., that would allow prosecutors to include money laundering as a tool in child pornography cases. That would fix another loophole that has allowed Internet users to evade child pornography laws by not downloading or saving the images. The House was also scheduled to take up legislation, passed by the Senate on Thursday, that would require more electronic service providers to report online child pornography and make failure to report known child pornography a federal crime.

A German who calls himself Clark Rockefeller pleaded not guilty Monday to kidnapping charges for the alleged snatching of his 7-year-old daughter from a Boston street during a supervised visit in July. CNN News story here Investigators say Rockefeller is really Christian Karl Gerhartsreiter and has been living under aliases since coming to the United States in 1978. Gerhartsreiter was arraigned on charges of parental kidnapping, assault and battery, assault and battery with a dangerous weapon–a motor vehicle–and giving a false name to police. He was arrested last month in Baltimore, where authorities said he fled with his daughter, hoping to start a new life after losing custody to his ex-wife. The girl was unharmed. See vol6_iss50. Authorities have since identified Gerhartsreiter as a "person of interest" in the 1985 disappearance of a California couple. See vol6_iss52 and vol6_iss51.

The UK law on suicide is to be clarified as part of an attempt to curb so called "suicide websites," but the government was unable to say how it would be enforced. Times online news story here The move is an attempt to reassure the public that the existing law applies to the internet following alarm at websites which carry details of how youngsters have killed themselves. It is illegal under the Suicide Act of 1961 to promote suicide, but no website operator has been prosecuted under the Act. Maria Eagle, a junior justice department minister, said the British Government intended to amend the law to make it clear that it applied online as well as offline. Under the 1961 Suicide Act, it is an offence to "aid, abet, counsel or procure" a suicide or attempted suicide attempt. The Law Commission recommended two years ago the Act would be more easily understood if it used the words "assists or encourages" suicide, or attempted suicide. For more information on preventing teen suicide see eGuide/vol1_iss23.

California is making it tougher for teachers who commit sex crimes to remain in the state's public schools. KMPH News story here Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger has signed two bills that close loopholes in the state's teacher licensing system. The loopholes allowed some teachers accused or convicted of serious crimes to remain in the classroom. The bills were prompted by an Associated Press investigation last year into sexual misconduct by teachers. One bill revokes teachers' licenses if a prior criminal conviction limited their contact with children. Teachers' credentials also would be suspended automatically if their licenses had been revoked for misconduct in another state. The other measure authorizes the state to revoke teachers' licenses if they plead no contest to certain sex or drug offenses.

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