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Archives > Volume 7 Issue 56 - October 6, 2009 Baby sale allegations surface in Tennessee kidnapping case...Baby Yair Antonio Carrillo and his three siblings remain in foster care as the family fights allegations that someone was trying to sell the baby for $25,000 before he was kidnapped. The Tennessean news story here 
A preliminary hearing is scheduled for today in Davidson County Juvenile Court, where the family will attempt to get the children back after a week that saw the baby kidnapped, mother Maria Gurrola stabbed nine times, and the child found - only to go straight to foster care.
The state has filed an emergency petition in support of temporarily removing the children from the home. Police say Tammy Renee Silas, 39, posed as an immigration agent September 29 to get into Gurrola's South Nashville home and stabbed the mother before leaving with then-4-day-old Yair. Silas is facing federal kidnapping charges after she was arrested Friday night at her home in Ardmore, Alabama, with the baby. Juvenile Court documents obtained by The Tennessean show that the Tennessee Department of Children's Services received information about possible family involvement just an hour after Silas was arrested. The documents don't say who made the accusation, but that person told authorities that both Gurrola and the child's father, Jose Antonio Carrillo, knew about the money exchange. The children were not safe with the parents or family members "based on the age of the other three children (3, 9, and 11), the severity of the crime involved, and statements by law enforcement that the parents and family members could not be ruled out as being involved with the exchange of money for the infant," according to the petition for emergency removal filed by Children's Services. US "asleep at the wheel" on child porn... Child pornography has exploded as Internet use has become commonplace. Experts say the images increasingly seem to feature younger children - infants and toddlers - being molested for the cameras in more violent and egregious ways. Most are abused and photographed by a parent, relative or someone else in a position of trust. MSNBC News story here 
In this era of lean budgets, many law enforcement agencies don't have the time, resources or inclination to aggressively pursue such crimes, experts say.
"Once you get the training and the resources, it's very easy to pick these guys off, but law enforcement already has such problematic crimes competing for police resources," said Keith Durkin, an Ohio Northern University sociology professor and frequent witness for the federal Internet Crimes Against Children task force. Harold Copus, a former FBI agent who has extensively investigated child pornography cases, took a harder line on law enforcement efforts. "It is spotty and totally inconsistent," Copus said. "And it comes down to commitment and, quite frankly, laziness. There's no pressure" from the public. "We have looked at the enemy, and he is us," said Ernie Allen, president and CEO of the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children. Computer analysts at the center investigate about 2,000 reports a week of suspected child pornography that come in from the public and online service providers. Tips to the center rose from 3,160 in 1998 to 101,748 in 2008, mirroring the spread of everyday Internet use, and analysts there have documented millions of images online. Child pornography arrests by the 59 federally funded Internet Crimes Against Children task forces topped 3,000 last year for the first time, nearly double the number reported just four years ago. Authorities ultimately will have to do more than slap handcuffs on people who make and view child pornography, said Andrew Oosterbaan, chief of the Child Exploitation and Obscenity Section at the U.S. Department of Justice. Polanski to remain in Swiss jail while extradition proceeds... Roman Polanski lost his first bid to win his freedom Tuesday as the Swiss Justice Ministry rejected an appeal by the 76-year-old to be immediately released from prison, an official said. CBS News story here 
"We continue to be of the opinion that there is a high risk of flight," said ministry spokesman Folco Galli, explaining the decision.
Galli told The Associated Press that the risk was too great for the government to accept bail or other security measures in exchange for the release of the filmmaker who is wanted by U.S. authorities for having sex in 1977 with a 13-year-old girl. Polanski was apprehended September 26 as he arrived in Zurich to receive an award from a film festival. Authorities in Los Angeles consider him a convicted felon and a fugitive, and Switzerland says there has been an international warrant out on him since 2005. His legal representatives are also asking Switzerland's highest criminal court to free Polanski. Galli said the Justice Ministry has submitted a letter to the tribunal explaining why it opposes release even on bail. Also, according to court papers released Friday, Polanski in 1993 agreed to pay his sexual assault victim $500,000 to settle a damage claim she filed against the fugitive film director. CNN News story here Polanski still owed the money - plus another $100,000 in interest - three years after the settlement, according to the documents. It's not clear if Polanski ever completed paying the claim, which was filed 12 years after the crime. The court papers document efforts by the victim's lawyers to garnish residuals and other payments owed to Polanski by the Screen Actors Guild, movie studios and other Hollywood businesses. The suit was complicated by the fact that Polanski refused to return to the United States to defend himself. Ultimately, an appeals court ruled that he did not have to be present to fight the suit. Polanski pleaded guilty in August 1977 to having unlawful sex with Samantha Geimer, then 13, five months earlier. Other charges were dropped by prosecutors in exchange for his guilty plea. He fled the country before he was sentenced after learning that the Los Angeles judge might not go along with the short jail term he expected to get from plea agreement. See more on this story at vol7_iss54 and vol7_iss55. Among those who are following the Polanski story somewhat or very closely, 78% say he should go to prison and just eight percent (8%) disagree. Rasmussen Report here In other news... 
A pregnant teenager found dead in a car in a Florida grocery store parking lot on Friday was slain, according to the Broward County medical examiner. justnews.com story here On Friday afternoon, the body of 17-year-old Stefanie Rabsatt was found inside a car in the parking lot of the Winn-Dixie store in the 6200 block of County Line Road in Miramar. Rabsatt's family said the teen was eight months pregnant with her first child, a boy whom she wanted to name Javon. Family members said they last saw Rabsatt Thursday night when she left a relative's home in Fort Lauderdale after getting a call from her ex-boyfriend, who is the baby's father. Police declined to say how the young mother-to-be died, but a customer at the Winn-Dixie spotted her lifeless body sitting in the car around 5:30 p.m. Friday. According to family members, police questioned her ex-boyfriend, who the family claims had Rabsett's cell phone before police found the body. Relatives said the couple broke up not long after Rabsatt became pregnant, and their relationship since had been rocky.
More than 300 British families were warned last night that they may never know whether their children fell prey to a female nursery worker who sexually abused babies in her care and swapped sickening images of the acts with two other pedophiles she met on Facebook. The Independent news story here As Vanessa George, 39, was led away after pleading guilty to a string of child sex charges yesterday, a judge told the mother of two that the length of her sentence depended on whether she helped police to identify her victims. Judge John Royce urged her to do the "decent thing" and name children she had assaulted at Little Ted's Day Nursery in Plymouth. Speaking to George's lawyer after her guilty plea, Judge Royce said: "Your client must know, it seems to me, who she has abused and who she has not. If I were a parent I would want to know whether my child was abused or not. Would it not be decent for her to indicate who she has abused? It is a factor I have got to take into account." 
Pennsylvania State police have charged eight Perry County teens with possession of child pornography. WGAL News story here The teens were "sexting" - recording sex acts on their cell phones and sending them to others, state police said. Administrators at Susquenita High School in Duncannon recently caught three students with cell phones containing a video and pictures of other area juveniles performing sex acts on each other. Troopers charged five more juveniles with possessing and transmitting child pornography after finding out the teens allegedly sent the materials to others as text messages. Pennsylvania is in the process of becoming compliant with a new federal law that allows juveniles found guilty of child pornography to be labeled sex offenders. That new law could be applied retroactively, meaning it could be applied to cases already tried. The Susquenita superintendent told News 8 that in light of the case, the district plans on holding an assembly for students about the dangers and consequences of sexting. For more on kids and cell phone safety, see eGuide/cell phones.
Two new government studies indicate about 1 in 100 children have autism disorders - higher than a previous U.S. estimate of 1 in 150. MSNBC News story here Greater awareness, broader definitions and spotting autism in younger children may explain some of the increase, federal health officials said. "The concern here is that buried in these numbers is a true increase," said Dr. Thomas Insel, director of the National Institute of Mental Health. "We're going to have to think very hard about what we're going to do for the 1 in 100." The new estimate would mean about 673,000 American children have autism. Previous estimates put the number at about 560,000. One of the studies stems from the 2007 National Survey of Children's Health. The results were released Monday, and published in an October issue of Pediatrics. In that study, based on telephone surveys, parents reported about 1 in 91 children, ages 3 to 17, had autism, including milder forms such as Asperger's syndrome. The other government estimate has not been formally released yet. But because of the new published findings, officials from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention decided to announce Friday during an embargoed press briefing that their preliminary findings also show about 1 percent of U.S. children have the disorders. For more on the study visit pediatrics.aappublications.org/peds.2009-1522v1 The Pediatrics study says the rate among boys could be as high as 1 in 58. For more on autism, visit www.autismspeaks.org.
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