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Archives > Volume 7 Issue 38 - June 24, 2009 Missing Ohio 3-year-old found with mom and sex offender boyfriend...
A tip from an isolated communal farm in rural San Diego County, California, may have led police to solve the well-publicized case of a missing 4-year-old Ohio girl. CNN News story here
Authorities stormed the ranch in a dramatic Tuesday afternoon raid to find young Haylee Donathan; her mother, Candace Watson; and Robbie Potter, Watson's boyfriend and a registered sex offender who had escaped from a half-way house. Haylee had been missing for 27 days, and the search for her had been spotlighted on national television current affairs shows. Despite exhaustive media coverage and hundreds of law enforcement agencies on the case, Haylee and the two adults had spent more than a week on the ranch without raising suspicions, said Kevin Carlin, a member of the ranch in the neighborhood of Valley Center. Ranch members became suspicious when a former guest saw billboards urging help in finding Haylee and the two adults while traveling in Las Vegas, Nevada, Carlin said during a phone interview. The ranch contacted police, who coordinated the secret rescue mission pulled off Tuesday. Police say the two disappeared with Haylee from Watson's Crestline, Ohio, home May 31, days after Watson, her brother, Haylee's biological father and his girlfriend allegedly helped Potter leave the halfway house he'd been staying at since being released from prison three days earlier. ABC News story here Cyle Watson, along with James Donathan and his girlfriend Nicole Kirkpatrick have all been arrested and charged with complicity to escape, the same charge Watson will face. But authorities are most concerned with apprehending Potter and getting Haylee home safe to her grandmother who has been awarded emergency custody in the little girl's absence. Losing a child to a sex offender is a mother's nightmare. But what if that mother is the one who brought the sex offender into her home? In the cases of at least three Midwestern children reported missing this year, police have discovered that their mothers had relationships with known sex offenders. One little boy was found safe in a motel. One little girl was found buried in a riverside grave. And the third - 3-year-old Haylee Donathan - was found Tuesday in San Diego. In last month's murder of 5-year-old Nevaeh Buchanan, her mother had relationships with two sexual offenders who have since been jailed because their parole conditions prohibited associations with women who have children. Though no arrests have been made since Nevaeh's body was found in a cement-covered grave along the River Raisin in Michigan June 4, Monroe County Sheriff Tilman Crutchfield has called George Kennedy, 39, and Roy Lee Smith, 48, persons of interest. Some locals have begun turning against Nevaeh's mother, Jennifer Buchanan, for giving sex offenders access to her only child. For more on this story see vol7_iss35 and vol7_iss36. In the kidnapping of a little Wisconsin boy earlier this year, the 3-year-old's mother was arrested and charged with child neglect after her babysitter, Joseph Rivera, took off with her son. Rivera, who had been convicted of second-degree sexual assault in 2003, was found in a motel room with the unharmed boy and marijuana and THC. The boy's mother told police that Rivera had sent her text messages threatening to take her son. But Rivera told police he only took the boy because he was upset with the child's mother for leaving him home alone for several hours, according to the police report. Ken Lanning, a consultant and former FBI agent who spent two decades studying the sexual victimization of children, said that, in general, the first hurdle for pedophiles on the prowl is access to children. One of the most common ways to get that, outside of abusing a family member, is to latch on to a woman with children, often in a romantic relationship. And while mothers of the abused children run the gamut from being knowingly involved with the abuse to being completely fooled, Lanning said, most fall into the category that is hardest for police to deal with - "mom should have known." Lanning said that while some would consider a mother's attention to a sex offender crime enough, some women don't just turn a blind eye to abuse. They participate. Lanning added he's heard of some women who actually consent to the predator having sex with their children, with the stipulation that the predator has sex with them first. Those are the cases that are easy to prosecute, he said. Most of the others fall into a grey area with authorities unable to prove how much about the sex offender the mother knew and whether or not she knowingly put her children at risk. Strip club sues seventh-grade stripper... 
A young woman walked into a Texas strip club with 6-inch stiletto heels and a miniskirt, and was immediately hired as an exotic dancer. But the club manager who hired her says he had no idea she was only in the seventh grade. CBS News story here
The girl allegedly exposed her breasts while working at the Cheetah Club in Corpus Christi, a violation of state law. Police arrested club manager Jeffery Shawn Martinez, on charges of employment harmful to a minor and sexual performance of a child. He was released on bail. Martinez's attorney, Fred Jimenez, said his client is not guilty. "The minor walked in there with a fake ID and presented herself to be 22 years old," Jimenez said. "She looks very mature." Texas Alcoholic Beverage Commission Sergeant John Mann scoffed at that characterization. "I've seen this young lady's picture, and I assure you she is a 14-year-old seventh-grader," Mann said. "I personally think any reasonable and prudent person could tell you that is an underage girl." Mann told the San Antonio Express-News he expects his agency to take legal action against the club. "It's against state law for a person under 18 years old to expose her breasts," he said. "The club may be culpable in allowing this young lady to get onstage and dance." The sequence of events that led to the 14-year-old working at the club is in dispute. Authorities say the girl was kidnapped in San Antonio in March by Leslie Campbell, 48, who took her to Corpus Christi and sexually assaulted her over the course of a week. Campbell then allegedly gave her a false identification and forced her to strip at the club. Authorities say the girl eventually escaped from Campbell and has been reunited with her parents in San Antonio. Campbell is in a Nueces County jail on charges of aggravated sexual assault and aggravated kidnapping. It was not immediately clear Saturday if he had an attorney. In other news... 
The 4-year-old Oklahoma girl who told her family and investigators she was sexually assaulted by David Harold Earls said he gave her ice cream and excused her from taking naps afterward. NewsOK.com story But the girl's statements and evidence that she and her brother had injuries consistent with child sexual abuse wasn't enough to take to trial, attorneys said. Earls, 64, pleaded no contest on May 13 to charges of rape and forcible sodomy of the girl, an agreement reached by prosecutors and his defense attorney. He was sentenced to a year in prison with 19 years suspended. Because the judge took into consideration time already served, Earls is scheduled to be released September 24 from the Pittsburg County jail. The sentence spurred a national uproar when Fox network's "The O'Reilly Factor broadcast segments criticizing everyone involved in the case, in particular District Judge Thomas Bartheld and Pittsburg County District Attorney J.B. Miller, whose assistant district attorneys tried the case. The children's mother said Friday that she doesn't blame the judge or the attorneys in the case for its outcome. She said she doesn't think Bartheld deserves to be reprimanded. She said it became apparent her children were not capable of testifying. Each time they were questioned about the abuse, the children had behavioral problems. "For my children this was the best deal, the mother said. For more on this story see vol7_iss37.
When Jerry Damman first got news his son may have been found after vanishing from Long Island more than 50 years ago, he said it "was almost too good to believe." AP news story here It turned out he was right. His new hope was dashed when DNA tests last week revealed that John Barnes, the man who claimed he was the missing boy, actually wasn't - an outcome that didn't surprise law enforcement officials and experts. They say a storybook ending was a long shot from the start. Past cases show that it's rare for someone purporting to be a long-lost child to suddenly come forward, and rarer still that he or she ultimately proves to be the person who vanished. "That would be extraordinary," said Joseph A. Pollini, a former New York Police Department cold-case investigator now teaching at John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York. At least 15 people have approached the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children in the last decade with beliefs like Barnes', but none turned out to be the missing children they sincerely thought they were, said Jerry Nance, who oversees long-term missing child investigations for the organization. See more at vol7_iss37.
A 27-year-old Illinois man was charged Saturday with sexual assault and abuse of an infant child. Beacon News story here Joe P. Harvey Jr. was charged with one count of predatory criminal sexual assault of a child, one count of aggravated criminal sexual abuse and one count of criminal sexual assault, all related to a Thursday incident involving an infant child. The infant was brought into Rush-Copley Medical Center about noon Thursday by the 20-year-old mother, of Aurora, who told hospital officials she discovered injuries to the child. She said the injuries could have been related to an incident that occurred earlier that day in unincorporated Montgomery. Because the injuries could have been signs of child abuse or neglect, hospital staff reported the injuries to the Kendall County Sheriff's Department and the Illinois Department of Children and Family Services. Sheriff's deputies and investigators spoke with the mother and gathered information about the incident. It was through the investigation that officials decided to charge Harvey, who is a former boyfriend of the mother. As of Saturday night, Harvey was in the Kendall County jail on a $250,000 bond pending arraignment Monday.
Five weeks after an Irish commission released a devastating report about abuse at Catholic children's institutions there, a Waltham, Massachusetts-based organization is starting an effort to compile evidence about what it believes was a similar pattern of abuse at Catholic institutions in the United States. Boston Globe story here BishopAccountability.org, an organization that maintains an Internet-based archive about clergy sexual abuse, published on its website yesterday a list of twelve Catholic institutions whose faculty or staff have faced allegations of child sexual abuse. Organizers are hoping to rapidly expand that list, including schools in and around Boston. Many of the schools where the abuse allegedly took place were run by religious orders, not dioceses, and are no longer open. Many such allegations are already public through lawsuits or media coverage, but organizers of the new archive expect more accusers to emerge as a result of the effort. "This was inspired by the Ireland report," said Anne Barrett Doyle, codirector of BishopAccountability.org. "We realized that there has been no accounting here of the abuse of kids in minor seminaries, boarding schools, reform schools, and orphanages run by the church." A spokeswoman for the US Conference of Catholic Bishops, Sister Mary Ann Walsh, said, "Anyone abused in any US diocese, be it in a church or church institution, has been urged to come forward." For more information on these problems see eGuide/educator abuse and eGuide/clergy abuse.
A horrifying case of suspected incest involving up to seven youngsters and both their parents is being investigated by Irish police. The Sun news story here The children claim they were raped and brutally assaulted by their father and mother in their west of Ireland home. In a case reminiscent of the infamous Josef Fritzl incest horror in Austria (For more on that story see vol6_iss78 and vol7_iss20), they detail how they endured years of vile abuse behind closed doors. They told investigators how they were forced to have sex with their parents and each other. There are serious concerns that the mother gave birth to a child fathered by one of her sons. The terrified kids - aged between one and 13 when the alleged abuse came to light - detailed how they were raped by their father while their mother looked on. They described a catalogue of unimaginable horror including watching their baby sister, then two, being raped by their father. A source said: "What they describe is beyond horror - way above anything that this country has ever previously heard."
Former major league outfielder Mel Hall was sentenced to 45 years in prison Wednesday after being convicted of raping a 12-year-old girl he coached on an elite basketball team. Fox News story here Hall was convicted on three counts of aggravated sexual assault and two counts of indecency with a child. Among his accusers during sentencing were others who said he carried on inappropriate relationships with them. Hall, 48, looked skyward and swayed back and forth as the verdict was read. One of his two daughters who testified on his behalf during the punishment phase sobbed. Jurors reached the verdict on the punishment after about an hour of deliberating. They took about 90 minutes Tuesday to convict Hall. He must serve about 22 1/2 years in prison before becoming eligible for parole. After the verdict was announced, prosecutor Kim D'Avignon read a brief statement on behalf of the 12-year-old victim and other accusers. "We believe that the verdict does on some level show that the jury understood," D'Avignon said after the trial. "They looked in these girls' eyes and said this is worth 40 years, and we agree with them."
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