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Archives > Volume 7 Issue 41 - July 15, 2009 Tony Alamo trial opens...Evangelist Tony Alamo preyed on his loyal followers' young daughters, once taking a girl as young as 8 as his bride and repeatedly sexually assaulting her, a federal prosecutor said Tuesday. AP News story here 
Assistant U.S. Attorney Clay Fowlkes said that girl's story and others unwound an "elaborate facade" Alamo wove around himself. Lawyers for the 74-year-old Alamo, who is charged with taking underage girls across state lines for sex, argued that the alleged victims traveled across the country to further the outreach and business interests of a "bona fide religious group" that the government targeted out of its own prejudices.
U.S. District Judge Harry F. Barnes swore in a jury of nine men and three women on Tuesday. They include a jobless personnel employee, a worker for a local construction company and an airport finance director who lives in Fouke, the location of Alamo's 15-acre complex that authorities raided September 20, 2008. Fowlkes told jurors that a 15-year-old girl who left the Alamo ministries in 2006 told the FBI that Alamo married her at age 8. The girl told agents Alamo exchanged wedding vows and rings with her and first sexually assaulted her before she turned 10, Fowlkes said. Alamo summoned another 15-year-old girl to his home in 1994 by telephone, authorities said, then telling her parents that God instructed him to marry her. Fowlkes said the parents consented and Alamo repeatedly sexually assaulted the girl, taking her on trips to West Virginia and Tennessee as he prepared for a trial on federal tax-evasion charges. Another similar call came in 1998, when Alamo married a 14-year-old girl, Fowlkes said. In 2002, Alamo summoned three underage girls into his bedroom and shut the door, telling them God wanted him to marry two of them, Fowlkes said. Alamo later sexually assaulted two of those girls he married, one 11, the other 14, the prosecutor said. Those girls also traveled on Alamo's orders to other states, Fowlkes said. Prosecutors won't be able to mention polygamy at the trial, Judge Barnes ruled Monday. AP News story here Barnes granted defense requests to stop prosecutors from discussing Alamo's belief that the Bible allows women to be married as soon as they reach puberty. Alamo previously has said he believes "consent is puberty." The judge also granted a request to stop prosecutors from talking about Alamo's sexual relationship with women over the age of consent. For more on this story, see vol6_iss59, and vol6_iss78. Race to find Lindsey Baum before dad heads to Iraq... A desperate search for a Washington girl missing for more than two weeks is all the more urgent because her father is due to deploy to Iraq soon. CBS News story here 
Police say Lindsey Baum, 11, of the small town of McCleary, with a population of fewer than 2,000 people, vanished the night of June 26 while walking home from a friend's house just four blocks away.
More than 100 searchers have used dogs, horses and helicopters seeking any trace of Lindsey, but investigators say they have little to go on, and they're appealing to the public for help. Lindsey's father, Scott Baum, made an emotional appeal to anyone knowing her whereabouts, saying, "Please bring me my daughter home before I have to leave" for Iraq. With their daughter missing, Lindsey's parents, who are divorced, marked her 11th birthday on July 7 with a plea for her safe return. On "The Early Show", Scott told co-anchor Julie Chen, "My heart's really heavy...I'm torn between sense of family and duty." He added that his commanders in the military have given him as much time as he needs to see his personal ordeal through. Asked by Chen what she would say if Lindsey could hear her, Lindsey's mother, Melissa Baum, responded, "I want Lindsey to know that I love her more than anything in the world and that I'm not giving up on her. I will never stop looking for her. I will look for her until I have her in my arms again." For more on this story, see vol7_iss39. Caylee Anthony story one year later... One year ago, a sheriff's dispatcher in Orange County, near Orlando, Florida, received a strange 911 call. A small child was missing - and had been for a month. CNN News story here So began the Caylee Anthony case, a mystery that became a nightly fixture on cable television and captivated true-crime buffs across the country. 
Today, the child's 23-year-old mother, Casey Anthony, is in jail, charged with first-degree murder, and faces the death penalty if convicted. She denies harming her daughter or having anything to do with her disappearance. Her attorney, Jose Baez, has said that once all the facts are known, it will become clear that his client is innocent.
The story began at about 9:40 p.m. on the evening of July 15, 2008, with Cindy Anthony's call to 911. The call capped a day in which she and her husband, George, a retired police officer from Ohio, received an impound notice and tracked down their daughter's abandoned white 1998 Pontiac Sunbird - and then their daughter, Caylee's mother, who was staying with a boyfriend. "I found out my granddaughter has been taken," Cindy Anthony told the 911 dispatcher. "She has been missing for a month. Her mother finally admitted that she's been missing...We're talking about a 3-year-old little girl!" "I need to find her," Cindy Anthony continued. "I told you my daughter was missing for a month. I just found her today, but I can't find my granddaughter. She just admitted to me that she's been trying to find her herself. There's something wrong. I found my daughter's car today, and it smells like there's been a dead body in the damn car." Caylee's body was found December 11, six months after she disappeared and just a few blocks from her grandparents' house. The remains were bagged and partially buried in a swampy, vacant lot. Duct tape covered the child's mouth. But the cause of Caylee's death is just one of many questions that remain unanswered a year later. And the answers are not likely to come soon, if at all. Casey Anthony's trial, originally scheduled to begin October 12, has been pushed back until some time next year. For more on this story see vol6_iss78. In other news... 
More than 35,000 fugitives across the United States were arrested in June as part of an annual sweep that teams the U.S. Marshals Service with local law enforcement in a summer push to clean up the streets, U.S. Marshals said. CNN story here Among the 35,190 fugitives apprehended during Operation FALCON (Federal and Local Cops Operating Nationally) were 2,356 fugitive sex offenders, the service said. "This might be considered the cream of the crop for the most violent felons that are out there. For example, we arrested 433 murder suspects," said U.S. Marshals director John F. Clark at a Chicago, Illinois, news conference. Unregistered sex offenders were a major target, Clark said. "We highlighted one [case] here in the Chicago area. It involved an individual who was alleged to have molested a 9-year-old girl. He had violated his parole, and after an investigation he was located," he said. "There's evidence of further crimes that happened since he didn't register as a sex offender. This is typical of the type of individual who is out there, somewhere on the streets of America, and is often harming children or others."
For years, a Vermont man regularly confined his adolescent stepson to a bedroom rigged with an alarm, molested him several times a week and often denied him food, water and access to a bathroom, authorities said. AP News story here The 17-year-old boy, who lived with his stepfather for nearly six years, told police Robert J. Pratt would smash his head into a wall when he resisted his advances and sent him to school in long-sleeved shirts and pants so no one would see his bruises and scars. Pratt was being held without bail on sex assault charges, accusations that surprised acquaintances who know him as a quiet, helpful neighbor. The boy came forward after Pratt, 37, of Bennington, kicked him out of the apartment they shared and he moved in with his mother, who lived in the same apartment complex. Once there, he told her and a counselor about his life with Pratt. He had moved in with him when he was 10 or 11, when Pratt and the mother split up. He said the abuse started about a year later and he never told anyone of it because Pratt threatened him, sometimes with a loaded gun.
Butler County, Ohio Sheriff Deputies have arrested six men in an undercover internet child sex sting. Deputies say the men came to Butler County from as far away as Michigan, to meet what they thought were juveniles for sex. Cincinnati local 12 News story here Detectives began posing as juveniles on the internet in March. They say these are the first arrests to come out of that work. The Sheriff's Department says they currently have 130 open investigations as part of this child sex sting work and are looking for two additional suspects in Ohio with active felony warrants.
Young children whose mothers abuse drugs may face a higher risk of abuse and placement in foster care, a new study finds. Reuters News story here Australian researchers found that infants whose mothers abused amphetamines or opiates such as heroin were 13 times more likely to become victims of neglect or abuse than other children their age. Their odds of being placed in foster care were similarly elevated, according to findings published in the journal Pediatrics. Using data from child-protection services, Andrea McGlade of the Royal Children's Hospital in Brisbane and her colleagues found that half of the children born to drug-abusing mothers became victims of neglect or physical, emotional or sexual abuse. Experts have long recognized the heightened risk of harm to children of substance-abusing mothers. However, the few studies on the issue have been poor quality, and the extent of the risk has been unclear, noted McGlade. McGlade added that this is also the first study to show that children fare far better when their mothers are on methadone - a narcotic used to treat opiate addiction - than when mothers are abusing illegal drugs. Compared with children whose mothers were compliant with methadone treatment, those whose mothers were on opiates or amphetamines had nearly three times the risk of neglect, abuse or foster-care placement. The finding suggests that getting mothers effective treatment for their drug addiction will also help protect their children from harm, McGlade said.
He's only 15, but London teenager Matthew Robson already has the financial world buzzing about his insights. ABC News story here A report he wrote for investment bank Morgan Stanley on teens' media consumption has made the summer intern something of an overnight sensation. (To read the whole report, click here.) At the behest of the bank's research team in London, Robson described how he and his friends interact with all kinds of media, from television and movies to Twitter and Internet radio. Robson wrote that teens devour all kinds of media but are reluctant to pay for it. They listen to music, but prefer online sites, such as last.fm over the radio. They watch TV, but only when their favorite programs are in season. And they view ads on Web sites as "extremely annoying and pointless." The Internet and social networking sites are popular among teenagers, he said, but proceeded to give the micro-blogging service Twitter the thumbs down. See information on navigating this world safely with kids at eGuide/online safety, eGuide/MySpace and Facebook, and eGuide/cell phones.
A judge has denied a defense request to delay the trial of a Washington woman accused of killing her four daughters and living with their decomposing bodies for months. Fox news story here D.C. Superior Court Judge Frederick Weisberg says the trial of Banita Jacks is "long overdue." The bodies were discovered in January 2008 when marshals arrived at Jacks' southeast D.C. home to carry out an eviction. Jacks told police in an interview that the girls were possessed by demons and that she got rid of most of the family's possessions to contain the evil spirits. AP News story here Judge Weisberg spent a second day Tuesday reviewing a recording of a police interrogation of Banita Jacks. Judge Weisberg was to decide whether to admit the interview as evidence in her trial. Jacks' attorneys want it excluded. They say police were trying to get a confession from her before they had evidence that she was responsible. Weisberg will decide the case without a jury at Jacks' request. Jacks' lawyers have urged Jacks to use an insanity defense, but she has refused. Weisberg has found her competent to stand trial. In the videotaped interview, Jacks said the girls stopped being her daughters and took on the identities of the demons. "They got so bad," she said. For more on this story see vol6_iss3.
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