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Police say 5-year-old Haleigh Cummings was abducted from her bed...

A missing 5-year-old Florida girl was most likely abducted from her home in rural Florida, police said. CNN News story here

Haleigh Cummings has been missing since 3 a.m. Tuesday, when her father's girlfriend called 911 to say the child had vanished from her Putnam County home.

"There's no longer any reason to believe that the child simply wandered outside," said Putnam County Sheriff's Office Major Gary Bowling.

The police must "assume abduction," he said. "All the answers to why you'd want to take a 5-year-old are ugly," Bowling said. Police have no official suspects, but are treating everyone they interview as one. "All the world's a suspect" now, Bowling said.

A nationwide Amber Alert says the girl was last seen wearing a pink shirt and underwear. Police plan to use infrared aviation technology after dark in their search.

"She's a 5-year-old child, and she's afraid of the dark," Bowling said.

On Monday night, 17-year-old Misty Croslin, the girlfriend of Haleigh's father, Ronald Cummings, 25, was watching Haleigh and her 4-year-old brother, police said. Croslin put Haleigh to bed at 8 p.m. and then went to bed herself at 10 p.m., they said.

Croslin told police she woke up at 3 a.m. and discovered Haleigh missing. Croslin then called 911 and told a dispatcher she found a brick on the floor of the family's double-wide trailer, according to CNN affiliate WJXT-TV.

Investigators are looking into various angles of the case, including finding out the location of 44 registered sexual offenders who live within a five-mile radius of the Cummings home, Greenwood said.

Croslin has taken a lie detector test, a local sheriff said. Fox News story here He wouldn't reveal the results of the test, but the father, Ronald Cummings, and his girlfriend, Misty Croslin, said Thursday night during an interview with FOX News' Greta Van Susteren that they both submitted to polygraphs and both "passed."

Pennsylvania judges jailed kids for cash...

For years, the juvenile court system in Wilkes-Barre operated like a conveyor belt: Youngsters were brought before judges without a lawyer, given hearings that lasted only a minute or two, and then sent off to juvenile prison for months for minor offenses. http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/29142654

The explanation, prosecutors say, was corruption on the bench.

In one of the most shocking cases of courtroom graft on record, two Pennsylvania judges have been charged with taking millions of dollars in kickbacks to send teenagers to two privately run youth detention centers.

"I've never encountered, and I don't think that we will in our lifetimes, a case where literally thousands of kids' lives were just tossed aside in order for a couple of judges to make some money," said Marsha Levick, an attorney with the Philadelphia-based Juvenile Law Center, which is representing hundreds of youths sentenced in Wilkes-Barre.

Prosecutors say Luzerne County Judges Mark Ciavarella and Michael Conahan took $2.6 million in payoffs to put juvenile offenders in lockups run by PA Child Care LLC and a sister company, Western PA Child Care LLC. The judges were charged on January 26 and removed from the bench by the Pennsylvania Supreme Court shortly afterward.

The judges pleaded guilty in federal court in Scranton on Thursday to honest services fraud and tax fraud. CBS News story here Their plea agreements call for sentences of more than seven years in prison. They were permitted to remain free pending sentencing.

No company officials have been charged, but the investigation is still going on.

The high court, meanwhile, is looking into whether hundreds or even thousands of sentences should be overturned and the juveniles' records expunged.

Among the offenders were teenagers who were locked up for months for stealing loose change from cars, writing a prank note and possessing drug paraphernalia. Many had never been in trouble before. Some were imprisoned even after probation officers recommended against it.

Many appeared without lawyers, despite the U.S. Supreme Court's landmark 1967 ruling that children have a constitutional right to counsel.

In other news...

Pregnant from a one-night stand with a man whose name she doesn't know, Ciara Craig sought an abortion, then considered adoption, before casting her newborn daughter into Lake Pontchartrain, Louisiana police said Wednesday. The Times-Picayune news story here Officers filed paperwork to book the 21-year-old Metairie woman with first-degree murder, even as she remains hospitalized under police guard. Kenner Police Chief Steve Caraway said first-degree murder is an appropriate charge because Craig told police that she detected the infant's breathing and heartbeat after giving birth at home alone. Caraway said he didn't know whether Craig was aware of Louisiana's safe haven law, which lets parents anonymously surrender a newborn to certain public safety or medical representatives without being arrested. But he said, "She knew her options." Alarmed by the case, state government officials vowed to launch an advertising campaign to educate the public about the law. Social Services Secretary Kristy Nichols said the effort will involve a Web site, billboards, brochures, and radio and television spots.

Tucked within the bulletin at most Catholic parishes in central Illinois was a one-page letter from Bishop Daniel Jenky, the leader of the 240,000 or so Catholics in the 26-county Peoria Diocese. The News-Gazette story here It was no ordinary pastoral letter; instead, it was a blistering attack on adults who have sued the diocese with allegations of sexual abuse, their attorneys, the Illinois court system and the media. It made quite a contrast to the 2005 publication by the U.S. Catholic Conference of Bishops titled, "Charter for the Protection of Children and Young People." In the preamble of the charter, the bishops wrote: "We continue to have a special care for and a commitment to reaching out to victims of sexual abuse and their families. The damage caused by sexual abuse of minors is devastating and long-lasting. We apologize to them for the grave harm that has been inflicted on them, and we offer our help for the future." Then came the bishop's offensive: "Attorneys representing some claimants and some 'victims groups' obviously have a significant financial stake in trying to overturn our Diocesan policies. Recent decisions in the Illinois courts may make our legal situation even more difficult in the future." "It should be noted," Jenky continued, "that the sexual abuse of minors cuts across all socioeconomic lines, ethnicities, ministries and religions. It is important to remember that the State basically exempts its own institutions from civil litigation. Amid all the tensions of the nation's culture wars and in the face of the media's intense hatred for our Catholic Faith, I am increasingly concerned that our Church in effect no longer enjoys equal justice under the law. (italics his)"

Six Massachusetts middle school students could face child porn charges after a boy took a nude photo of his 13-year-old girlfriend and "sexted" it to his pals' cell phones, cops said. Boston Herald news story here The six boys, ages 12 to 14, will be summoned to Falmouth District Court for a hearing to determine whether they should be charged with possessing, exhibiting or distributing child porn in the form of a text message photo, according to The Cape Cod Times. Wendy Murphy, who lectures on sex crimes at the New England School of Law, said "sexting" almost has become an "epidemic." Murphy said, "I know it seems heavy-handed to bring child porn charges. Law enforcement is using the only tool it has for what has become a huge problem nationwide." For more on this problem, see vol7_iss9 and vol7_iss10.

A British study found that teenagers spend an average of 31 hours a week online, and nearly 2 hours of it looking at pornography. The Telegraph news story here They spend some three and a half hours communicating with friends on MSN, and around two hours on YouTube and in chat rooms. Just over an hour is devoted to looking up cosmetic surgery procedures such as how to enlarge breasts and get collagen implants, an hour and a half is spent on family planning and pregnancy websites and one hour 35 minutes is spent investigating diets and weight loss. One in four teenagers of the 1,000 polled said they regularly spoke to strangers online but thought it harmless. One in three admitted trying to hide what they were looking at if a parent entered the room. But children also use the internet to help them with homework, with at least three hours a week spent searching for such information. The research was conducted by www.cybersentinel.co.uk, which provides software solutions allowing parents to block access to certain sites.

DNA testing has determined that a man who died more than five years ago killed and sexually assaulted two young Decatur, Illinois girls on Halloween night in 1984, police said. AP New story here Genetic material taken from 12-year-old Sherry Gordon's pants matched a sample from Melvin Johnson that was held in a national database, Decatur Deputy Police Chief Todd Walker said at a news conference. Johnson died of stomach cancer in Texas in October 2003, he said. The strangling deaths of Sherry and her 9-year-old cousin, Theresa Hall, haunted the community for more than two decades, and police never gave up trying to solve the crime, Walker said. "This community has some closure and the scar that we've had for the last 24 years can now start to heal," he said. Johnson had a history of crimes against children, Walker said. He was convicted in 1978 of taking indecent liberties with a child and sentenced to six years in prison. He was out of prison and living in Decatur when the girls were killed, Walker said.

Time magazine looks at the Czech Republic practice of castrating sex offenders. Time news story here Over the past decade, at least 94 prisoners have undergone the treatment in the Czech Republic, the only country in Europe that continues to surgically castrate sex offenders. The Czech government insists the procedure is a medical issue, one that permanently reduces testosterone levels to lower an offender's sexual urges. And officials say it is performed only at the request of the prisoners themselves. But the Council of Europe-whose Committee for the Prevention of Torture investigated the Czech policy-says it can be described as medical intervention only if the genitalia are diseased or damaged. "Surgical castration is no longer a generally accepted medical intervention in the treatment of sex offenders," the council's report said. The Czech law has a long pedigree. Castration as punishment dates back thousands of years and crosses all world cultures. The methods have evolved from brutal knife swipes that removed entire genitalia to chemical treatments. Drugs that lower the testosterone, dampen the sex drive and inhibit erections are now available in Great Britain, Sweden, Germany, Denmark and many American states, but prisoners must volunteer for the treatment before the drugs are administered. Despite many studies of the effectiveness of castration-both surgical and chemical- the results are inconclusive. Some surveys suggest castration can dramatically reduce recidivism. One 1989 survey in Germany of 104 voluntary castrates showed a 75% drop in sexual interest, libido, erection and ejaculation. But measuring such changes is notoriously difficult and often depends on the subjective self-reports of sex offenders. A 1989 Psychological Bulletin study concluded that "the recidivism rate for treated offenders is not lower than that for untreated offenders; if anything, it tends to be higher." Many other studies emphasize the mental nature of deviant sexual interests, which cannot be cured through surgery.

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