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The Child Protection eNewsletter

Johnson gets life for Precious Doe murder...

Kansas City jurors convicted Harrell Johnson of first-degree murder for killing Erica Green, a case that drew international attention to a 3-year-old girl known for years only as Precious Doe. Kansas City Star story here

The verdict culminated more than seven years of community vigils, neighborhood watches and police investigation that began in April 2001 with the discovery of a young girl's headless body in woods near 59th Street and Kensington Avenue.

The Jackson County Circuit Court jury sentenced Johnson, 29, to spend the rest of his life in prison without the possibility of parole. He was also convicted of endangering the welfare of a child and abuse of a child resulting in death, bringing sentences of four years and 25 years.

As the murder verdict was announced, Sergeant David Bernard, the homicide detective who supervised the case, shook hands with Detective Danny Phillips, who obtained Johnson's confession during a 2005 interrogation.

Bernard said the verdicts brought the case to a fitting close.

"I'm ecstatic," he said. "There were times we ran down so many leads that we never thought we'd have it solved. When we got the tip, it was sunshine through the clouds. This is icing on the cake."

Bernard and his detectives worked for four years to identify the girl, commissioning artists to produce sketches and lifelike sculptured renderings of Precious Doe.

Prosecutors charged Harrell and Michelle Johnson in May 2005 after a tip from a family member in Oklahoma.

Nebraska fears more child abandonments...

More than a dozen children have been abandoned under Nebraska's unique safe-haven law, which allows children as old as 18 to be abandoned without fear of prosecution. But the case of a 14-year-old girl from Iowa has stoked fears of an influx of unwanted out-of-state children. http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/27082225/

The law, which took effect in July, permits caregivers to leave children at hospitals. Like similar laws in other states, it was intended to protect infants. But the Nebraska law was written to include the word "child," without setting an age limit.

Some have taken the word "child" in the law to mean "minor," which in Nebraska includes anyone under the age of 19. Others have taken the common law definition, which includes those under age 14.

And the law doesn't preclude people from out of state from leaving their children in Nebraska, which leaves some uncertainty about its current reach.

"It really concerns me that (people from) other states are possibly going to be leaving their children here," said state Senator Arnie Stuthman, who introduced the bill that was the basis for the safe-haven law.

Thus far, 17 children have been abandoned under the safe-haven law, including nine from a single family. A 14-year-old girl from Council Bluffs, Iowa, was left at a hospital across the Missouri River in Omaha late Tuesday.

Nebraska lawmakers aren't scheduled to convene again until January, but they already are re-examining the law they passed in the spring.

Governor Dave Heineman has not ruled out calling a rare special session of the Legislature to fix the law, but he has been reluctant to do so.

"The governor remains hopeful that a special session won't be needed, but this issue must be addressed immediately at the beginning of the next session," Heineman's spokeswoman Jen Rae Hein said. NBC video story here

In other news...

A police camera has been installed at the home where the mother of missing child Caylee Anthony is living on house arrest. Fox News story here The Orange County Sheriff's Office told neighbors Tuesday that police put up the surveillance camera on a lamp post on Hopespring Drive to monitor any future clashes between the Anthony family and protesters. On Wednesday, deputies released more pages of discovery in the case against Caylee's mother, Casey Anthony. The latest documents involve check fraud charges filed against her that are unrelated to the missing toddler case, MyFOXOrlando.com reported. Anthony, 22, will appear in court on those charges October 14. To watch The Today Show interview with Casey Anthony's attorney visit Today Show interview here.

Police in Newark, Ohio, have arrested a 15-year-old girl on juvenile child pornography charges for allegedly sending nude cell phone photos of herself to classmates. AP News story here The girl was arrested Friday and held over the weekend. Her defense filed denials in court Monday. Police did not identify the girl by name and prosecutors promised a statement with details later Wednesday. Authorities were also considering charges for students who received the photos.

The Canadian pedophile caught by a global police appeal and groundbreaking computer wizardry appeared in a Thai court today on fresh child sex charges, officials said. News.com.au story here Christopher Paul Neil, 33, a teacher, was convicted of sexually abusing a 13-year-old boy after international police agency Interpol reconstructed a series of digitally "swirled" Internet images of a man abusing boys. Witnesses are scheduled to testify in the Thai Criminal Court this week as Neil is tried for sexually abusing the 9-year-old brother of his first victim. He was jailed for over three years in August after confessing to molesting the older brother but has denied the charges in his second case. For more on this story see vol5_iss67, vol5_iss68, and vol5_iss71.

An Illinois woman is accused of badgering her daughter's teenage ex-boyfriend with hundreds of e-mails and text messages and threatening to post nude images of him on the Internet unless he started seeing the girl again, a prosecutor said. CBS News story here According to a Sleepy Hollow police officer's sworn affidavit, investigators began looking into the matter August 21 after the 13-year-old boy's parents reported that he had received hundreds of threatening e-mails and text messages from the woman, the Daily Herald of Arlington Heights reported. The parents told police that the boy and his 13-year-old girlfriend had exchanged nude photos of themselves over their cell phones, and that after the breakup, the girl's 42-year-old mother threatened to post the boy's pictures online unless he reunited with her daughter, the newspaper reported. 

 Investigators on Thursday released the names of the two girls whose remains were found last month in a woman's freezer. http://www.wbaltv.com/news/17670515/detail.html A news release from Montgomery County police said the girls have been tentatively identified as Jasmine Nicole Bowman, who would have been 9 years old, and Minnet Cecila Bowman, who would be 11. Police said the identification came from a friend of the family and is thus considered tentative. Investigators did say, however, that there is "no expectation that the identifications will change after the Medical Examiner's Office completes its testing." Renee Bowman is jailed and suspected of killing and freezing the two adopted daughters and abusing a third. See vol6_iss61.

A convicted child molester who pushed for the Texas law that allowed him to be voluntarily castrated more than a decade ago may go back to prison for allegedly possessing sexually explicit material. AP News story here Authorities held a hearing Wednesday to determine whether to revoke Larry Don McQuay's supervised release. The Texas Board of Pardons and Parole was expected to decide in the next few days, said Michelle Lyons, a spokeswoman for the Texas Department of Criminal Justice. McQuay, 44, who claimed to have molested hundreds of children, could be held in prison until 2016, the end of his original 20-year sentence on three counts of indecency with a child. His request to be castrated led the Texas legislature to make it available in 1997. At least three Texas inmates have undergone the surgery with hopes of curbing sexual desire, though medical professionals are unsure of its effectiveness.

In the wake of the priest-abuse crisis, the Roman Catholic archdiocese of Philadelphia debuted a short film that urges teens to report sexual violence. Fox News story here The film reminds teens that victims are never to blame and that abusers are often trusted adults–including parents, teachers and priests. The clergy-abuse issue is not otherwise discussed. Cardinal Justin Rigali introduced the film to an audience of several hundred people at St. Joseph's University, including selected students. He said afterward that the goal was to give hope to victims, not to dwell on abusers. Within the last decade, many U.S. Catholic dioceses have faced lawsuits from former students and parishioners who say they were abused by priests when they were children. The film, called "The Gift of Innocence," will be shown to students in 10th through 12th grades–roughly between the ages of 15 and 18–at all 21 archdiocese high schools. It stresses the Catholic belief that human sexuality is a gift from God that should not be taken by force or intimidation.

Thursday The Today Show aired a story Today show story here and a video interview with Mark Klaas Today show video interview here to preview an MSNBC special Sunday night on teen sex slaves in the United States.

 

 

 

*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"


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