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Arkansas official accuses Alamo compound of hiding kids...

Parents or followers of a jailed evangelist have been hiding children sought by state welfare officials, the state director of human resources said. AP News story here

John Selig said the Tony Alamo Christian Ministries routinely ferries members across the nation to churches in California and elsewhere. The practice and the ministry's secrecy have stymied officials trying to find as many as 100 children named in court orders allowing the state to take them into protective custody, he said.

"They may have gotten some word that we were about to come in, whether they knew about the court order or not," Selig told The Associated Press. "They may have just said, 'Let's take them somewhere else.'"

Protective orders filed in Arkansas courts carry no weight outside the state, further complicating the effort. Selig said his agency has talked with other states about locating the children. So far, 36 children from the ministry have been taken into custody, six of them from outside Arkansas.

Initially, Arkansas officials took six girls into custody when state police and the FBI raided the ministry's compound in Fouke on September 20. Another 18 children from passenger vans traveling in Arkansas near the line with Texas were seized November 18. Family members said the ministry wanted to take the children to a park. A total of six other children were taken elsewhere in the state that same day or on December 12. See more at vol6_iss78.

Miller County Circuit Judge Joe Griffin, who is presiding over a hearing in Texarkana to decide the fate of 23 of the children, ordered the father of one of them jailed Tuesday after the man refused to say where two of his other children were. The judge found the man in contempt of court.

The father attended a court hearing Wednesday, but later returned to the Miller County jail, sheriff's deputies said.

Alamo is said to have ministries and business operations in a number of states, including Colorado, New Jersey, Oklahoma and Tennessee. Child welfare officials in California previously visited an Alamo compound north of Los Angeles to search for children, but none were taken into custody.

Federal prosecutors said Wednesday that FBI agents have found a missing sex offender from Nevada living inside a warehouse in Fort Smith owned by the ministries. Jonathon Patrick Curry, 49, appeared in federal court on a charge of failing to register as a sex offender.

In other news...

A man looking to rob a young mother's Dayton, Ohio home tied her up in the basement, had sexual contact with her 4-year-old son and fatally shot the woman after she broke free and stabbed him, a prosecutor said Thursday as he announced he was seeking the death penalty against the suspect. AP News story here Charlie Myers, 22, kicked in the door to the woman's home January 2 as she was making dinner, Montgomery County Prosecutor Mathias Heck Jr. said in his first public comments about the case. Myers took the woman and the boy to the basement, tied the woman to a chair, then took the boy upstairs and had sexual contact with him, Heck said. The 29-year-old mother broke free, grabbed a kitchen knife and stabbed Myers once in the side. He then shot her twice with a shotgun, Heck said. Myers, of Columbus, left the boy at a highway rest stop with no coat or shoes, Heck said. Travelers found the boy wandering around and called police. A grand jury indicted Myers on numerous charges, including aggravated murder, aggravated robbery and gross sexual imposition involving a child under 13.

Washington state law does not bar teachers from having consensual sex with 18-year-old students, an appeals court ruled Tuesday in dismissing a case against a former high school choir teacher. MSNBC News story here The teacher, Matthew Hirschfelder, was charged with first-degree sexual misconduct with a minor for allegedly having sex with a Hoquiam High School senior in 2006. He challenged a judge's refusal to dismiss his case, arguing the student wasn't a minor because she was 18. Hirschfelder, who was 33 at the time, also denies any sexual relationship occurred. A three-judge panel of the Washington Court of Appeals unanimously agreed that the case should be dismissed. While the law was written vaguely, a review of legislative history shows that lawmakers only intended to criminalize contact between teachers and 16- or 17-year-old students–not those over 18, the court said. "The name of the statute is 'sexual misconduct with a minor,'" said Hirschfelder's attorney, Rob Hill, stressing that the state recognizes that an 18-year-old is no longer a minor. The state's code of professional conduct for teachers still prohibits any sexual advance toward or contact with pupils, whatever their age, and teachers can be fired for it. Sexual contact with students younger than 16 is considered child rape or molestation; the age of consent in Washington is 16.

A United Nations probe collected 217 allegations of abuse of girls and women by peacekeepers in eastern Congo, from sex with teenagers in the back room of a liquor store to threats of "hacking" victims for cooperating with investigators. AP News story here The 2006 investigation found many allegations credible and said evidence suggests "frequent and ongoing" sexual exploitation in the region. But it could only establish proof against one of 75 peacekeepers accused of wrongdoing. Details of alleged incidents dating back to 2004 are summarized in a "strictly confidential" 17-page document. It is dated January 30, 2007, and was published Wednesday by whistleblower Web site Wikileaks.org. The report has previously been referred to by human rights organizations and the U.N. itself, but not made public. U.N. officials confirmed its authenticity. Allegations of sex abuse and other crimes have dogged U.N. peacekeeping missions almost since their inception in 1948; the global body has in recent years adopted a "zero tolerance" approach.

A California man has been arrested for arranging for his 14-year-old daughter to marry a neighbor in exchange for $16,000, 100 cases of beer and several cases of meat, police said. ABCNews story here Authorities in Greenfield, a farming community on California's central coast, said they learned of the deal after Marcelino de Jesus Martinez, 36, asked them for help getting back his daughter after payment wasn't made. Martinez was arrested Sunday. He's scheduled to be arraigned in Monterey County Superior Court on felony charges of procuring a child under age 16 for lewd and lascivious acts, statutory rape and cruelty to a child by endangering health, according to the prosecutor.

A Florida jury has convicted seven US men for their roles in an international child pornography ring that traded more than 400,000 illegal images and videos, the Justice Department said. The Raw Story.com news story here The defendants, convicted Wednesday, each face 20 years to life in prison for multiple charges including transporting, receiving and advertising child pornography through a highly sophisticated network in a case that has also spawned investigations in Australia, Britain and Germany. "This was a wide-scale, high-volume, international trafficking enterprise that used sophisticated computer encryption technology and file-sharing techniques," Acting Assistant Attorney General Matthew Friedrich said in a statement. The case was part of Project Safe Childhood, a US initiative the Justice Department says was set up to fight the "growing epidemic of child sexual exploitation and abuse."

Sexually spread diseases–for years on the decline–are on the rise, with reported chlamydia cases setting a record, government health officials said. MSNBC News story here The increase in chlamydia, a sometimes symptomless infection that can lead to infertility in women, is likely because of better screening, experts said. In 2007, there were 1.1 million cases, the most ever reported, said officials at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. At least 15,000 women become infertile each year because of untreated chlamydia and gonorrhea infections, said Dr. John M. Douglas Jr., director of the CDC’s Division of STD Prevention.

Three teenage girls who allegedly sent nude or semi-nude cell phone pictures of themselves, and three male classmates in a Greensburg, Pennsylvania high school who received them, are charged with child pornography. WPXI News story here Police said the girls are 14 or 15, and the boys charged with receiving the photos are 16 or 17. None are being identified because most criminal cases in Pennsylvania juvenile courts are not public. "It was a self portrait taken of a juvenile female taking pictures of her body, nude," said Captain George Seranko of the Greensburg Police Department. Police said school officials learned of the photos in October. That's when a student was seen using a cell phone during school hours, which violates school rules. The phone was seized, and the photos were found on it, police said. When police investigated, other phones with more pictures were seized.

Chinese authorities have detained 13 members of a gang suspected of kidnapping and selling children, sometimes swooping by on motorcycles and snatching them in broad daylight, a police official said. ABC News story here Police from Yueyang, a city in the central province of Hunan, led an investigation across seven provinces that resulted in the arrests and the rescue of five children, a spokesman of the city's public security bureau said in a telephone interview. He would give only his surname, Qi, as is common with Chinese officials. China has a thriving black market in girls and women who are sold as brides, as well as babies who are abducted or bought from poor families for sale to childless couples or those who have one child and want more. Meanwhile, USA Today reports that in the eight years since Congress allowed 5,000 special visas annually for human-trafficking victims to remain in the USA, immigration officials have issued fewer than 1,500 total. USA Today Story Here The federal government estimates that 14,500 to 17,500 men, women and children are smuggled into the U.S. each year and forced into illegal labor. Yet victims have sought fewer than 4% of the available special permits, called the T visa, that protect them from deportation. The visa allows them to remain in the U.S. and eventually seek citizenship. Immigration rules establishing the path to citizenship took effect this week, eight years after the law passed.

U.S. Border Patrol agents in southern Arizona said Monday that they have apprehended three convicted sex offenders who entered the country illegally within three days. KNXV ABC 15 News story here Monday morning, agents from the Sonoita Border Patrol Station arrested a 26-year-old Mexican man, convicted of felony lewd and lascivious acts with a child less than 14 years of age. He's being extradited to Redwood City, where he also has a felony warrant out for his arrest. On January 11, agents from the Nogales Border Patrol Station arrested a 26-year-old Mexican man, wanted in Madison, Wisconsin on charges of enticement and sexual contact with a child. Then on January 10th, agents with the Naco Border Patrol Station arrested a 36-year-old man from Mexico who'd been convicted of sexual assault and abuse in Perry, Iowa. U.S. Border Patrol agents use the Integrated Automated Fingerprint Index System (IAFIS), allowing them to identify individuals with a past criminal record in the U.S.

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