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Baby Grace's mom gets life...

A Texas jury took less than two hours Monday to convict Kimberly Dawn Trenor of capital murder in the slaying of her 2-year-old daughter, known as Baby Grace until her body was identified. Houston Chronicle story here

The seven-woman, five-man jury took about one hour and 45 minutes to convict Trenor after hearing five days of testimony. Trenor will receive an automatic life sentence without parole because prosecutors did not seek the death penalty.

Trenor, 20, showed no emotion as the verdict was read convicting her of killing Riley Ann Sawyers during an all day disciplinary session July 25, 2007. The acts included whipping the girl with a belt, holding her head under bath water, pushing her face into a pillow and hurling her repeatedly onto a tile floor.

"She will die in prison with this verdict," said Trenor's attorney, Tommy Stickler Jr. of Alvin. She long ago may have resigned herself to a guilty verdict, Stickler said.

Riley's paternal grandmother, Sheryl Sawyers of Mentor, Ohio, whose phone call to sheriff's investigators ultimately led to Trenor's arrest, left the trial hurriedly.

Sawyers testified last week that Trenor and Riley lived at her house for two years before disappearing and that she finally discovered they had moved to Texas and moved in with Royce Clyde Zeigler II, 25, of Spring. Her attorney, Laura DePledge, said, "She looked at Kim as a daughter, and she found it absolutely incomprehensible that Kimberly could be responsible for something like this."

Jury foreman Randal Rothschild said it didn't take the panel long to reach a verdict "because we had all the evidence. Apparently the jury felt it was pretty cut and dried." As his eyes teared up, Rothschild added: "It was a very emotional trial."

Galveston County District Attorney Kurt Sistrunk said, "Justice has been rendered today, and we look forward to presenting the next case."

Zeigler, Trenor's husband and Riley's stepfather, will be tried separately on capital murder charges in Riley's death. No trial date is set.

Trenor told investigators that she and Zeigler packed Riley's body in a plastic box and placed it in a storage room for up to two months before tossing it off the railroad bridge next to the Galveston Causeway.

A fisherman discovered the then-unidentified body October 29, 2007, on an island in West Galveston Bay, launching a nationwide search for the identity of the child investigators dubbed Baby Grace. See more on this story at vol5_iss72, vol5_iss77, vol5_iss78, and vol7_iss7.

During closing arguments, Stickler tried to convince the jury that Trenor was guilty of one of two lesser crimes: manslaughter or criminally negligent homicide.

Sistrunk told jurors that Trenor was a self-centered mother who knew that the daylong punishment session would lead to Riley's death.

Trenor bent her head and sobbed as Sistrunk showed her a blown-up photograph of her daughter and accused her of the "sordid, sadistic torture" that ended in Riley's death. Sistrunk walked over to the defense table and held the color photo of the blond-haired, blue-eyed girl in front of a shaken Trenor, who hung her head.

Speaking for Riley, Sistrunk shouted, "Why didn't you listen to me when I was screaming all day?"

80 men claim to be abused at Florida reform school...

Don Stratton attended a Florida reform school as a teenager in the early 1960s. Nearly half a century later, he's telling a chilling tale of alleged beatings, sexual abuse and violent death at the hands of reform school workers. CNN News story here

He said he believes the bodies of slain boys are buried in unnamed graves on the grounds of the former reform school in Marianna, Florida.

Stratton is among a group of men, now in their 60s, who are suing state agencies in Florida as well as two former reform school workers over alleged abuse they received as teenagers.

"At 2 or 3 o'clock in the morning, you'd hear a boy crying," Stratton told CNN. "And then the door would open and you'd see these guys come in and come up to somebody they liked, and they'd just tell you, 'Come on with me, you're mine for tonight. You're my boy for tonight.' And they would take you and do what they wanted to do with you."

"They would take a leather strap, six inches wide and three feet long," he added, swinging his arm in a downward motion. "It's like a shotgun going off. And they beat you until you're bloody."

Stratton's attorneys said they've interviewed 80 former students who say they were abused. Stratton and the other alleged abuse victims who spoke with CNN all said the beatings took place in a small white cement building they called "the white house." See more of their stories at vol6_iss76 and vol6_iss77.

Governor Charlie Crist has ordered an investigation into the alleged abuse. He has asked the Florida Department of Law Enforcement to uncover records, interview students and find former administrators. The agency also was asked to determine who, if anyone, is buried beneath the 31 rusting white crosses on the school grounds.

"There are challenges due to the length of time that has passed," said Florida Department of Law Enforcement spokeswoman Heather Smith. "We are confident that we can conduct a thorough and methodical investigation and establish, as much as we can, what happened here and what lies beneath in those grave sites."

In other news...

The number of offenders sexually exploiting children, particularly through pornography, has skyrocketed with use of the Internet, law enforcement professionals say. Baltimore Sun news story here That has led to a more than 20-fold increase in cases investigated since the late 1980s and an even bigger jump in those prosecuted at the federal level, which ramped up efforts through the Project Safe Childhood initiative in 2006.

Since then, sex offender registry laws have been tightened, millions of dollars in new national grants disbursed, databases built, state initiatives launched in Maryland and elsewhere, and federal and local partnerships created. But the concentrated attack has a tiny impact on a large and burgeoning problem. The Maryland State Police has just four full-time investigators focusing on such child exploitation; they work roughly 30 active cases at any given time. If they had the resources, they "could have 180" cases, said Lieutenant John Wilhelm, commander of the state police's computer crimes division. Child sexual abusers once had to find their prey in the schoolyard or neighborhood and risk receiving pornography in the mail. But the Internet gives them easy access to kids through social networking sites, pornography through peer-to-peer sharing sites, and a community of like-minded people through online chat rooms. The Internet has simply made it easier to be a predator, and some–including Maryland U.S. Attorney Rod J. Rosenstein–say that has made for more predators. At any given time, according to federal data, about 50,000 pedophiles are seeking victims online. As the number of offenders mushrooms, authorities say they can't keep up. Meanwhile, The Houston Chronicle reports that child predators may be getting more careful online. Houston Chronicle story here In order to be sure the "voice" on the other end of the line was not that of an undercover cop, police say a predator had asked the boy to pose in a specific, non-sexual manner and send him the digital photo immediately. It's an increasingly common technique for online predators, and one that makes snagging abusers lurking in chat or game rooms that much harder.

A teacher from MacArthur Middle School in Prospect Heights, Illinois, arrested and charged last Friday (January 30) with allegedly sexually molesting a student, was found dead in his garage in Buffalo Grove early this morning (Monday), according to Buffalo Grove police. Journal & Topics news story here According to police, Ronald Vos, 53, of 502 Longwood Dr., died of an apparent suicide. Police found Vos at approximately 5:45 a.m. Police said Vos' wife called police after she initially discovered him. Through the investigation that was conducted by Prospect Heights police, with help from the Sex Crimes Unit of the Cook County States Attorney's Office, police said a juvenile victim reported that on one occasion, Vos allegedly sexually assaulted the boy while at school and on three more occasions outside of school between September 2005 and February or March 2007. During that time, the boy was 13-15 years old.

A homeless man found dead in the cold earlier this week in Michigan had been denied a place to stay in local homeless shelters because he was a sex offender, social workers said. ABC News story here The body of Thomas Pauli, 52, was found in the snow in an auto body salvage shop in Grand Rapids. The results of an autopsy were not yet available. Homeless service staffers who have worked with Pauli said he has been denied a spot at local shelters because of a state law that bars sex offenders from staying within 1,000 feet of a school. It was not immediately clear whether Pauli had tried to stay in a shelter the night he died; shelter directors said they don't keep records of people who are denied beds. State Senator Nancy Cassis, a supporter of Michigan's sex offender law, said the sex offender residency laws were sound but that it appeared the social safety net failed to protect Pauli. "What other options did they give him?" she asked. "Were police contacted? How about the Salvation Army? Or soup kitchens, there's plenty of them. What about synagogue and churches? I view them all as part of the safety net. Children should be protected from sexual predators, but you can't just slam the door on another human being," she said, adding that she questioned whether Pauli should have been released from prison.

Advocates for missing children want Texas' Department of Public Safety to reconsider its policy for issuing Amber Alerts after the agency refused to send one out for a missing 11-year-old girl believed to have run off with a convicted felon. AP News story here Police in Tyler, about 100 miles east of Dallas, requested the alert after the girl's mother reported her missing. She was last seen January 24. The girl's mother, Maira Macias, was at police headquarters late Friday when her daughter called her and told her she was in Mexico, police said. They believe the girl is with 23-year-old Enrique Vasquez, who was convicted of burglary in 2006. "Investigators and the family are happy to learn that she is still alive," police said in a statement. They told Tyler television station KLTV they are working with the U.S. State Department and Mexican authorities to reunite the girl with relatives in Mexico. Police issued an arrest warrant for Vasquez on charges of kidnapping and violating probation. The criteria in Texas to issue an Amber Alert are similar to those recommended by the Justice Department, but add a provision requiring that the child be "unwillingly taken from their environment without permission" of a parent or guardian. Child advocates say the policy is too narrow. "People who prey on children more often use seduction rather than ropes," said Texas State Representative Garnett Coleman, a Houston legislator who has focused on children's issues.

The sister of a girl who was allegedly molested and impregnated four times by their father said she waited until she turned 18 to come forward because she was afraid of being placed in state custody. http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/28918956/ "My dad was doing all this crazy stuff," the 18-year-old told The Associated Press in an interview. "I got fed up with it until I finally ran my mouth....I couldn't see my sister suffer anymore. That's why I wanted her out." She said her sister, now 19, was 13 when their father started molesting her. The 18-year-old said her sibling confided in her about the abuse after becoming pregnant the first time. See more on this story at vol7_iss6.

NPR News reports on a growing scandal involving the sexual abuse of minors in New York City's cloistered Hasidic Jewish community, where an increasing number of alleged victims are challenging the insular culture by coming forward. Dallas Morning News story here Reporting from Brooklyn, NPR religion correspondent Barbara Bradley Hagerty finds that community leaders stringently downplay abuse claims, despite a growing number of sexual abuse cases before Brooklyn's district attorney. The complete report is on NPR News' All Things Considered; a web story and photographs are available now at: NPR news story here. After years of silence, two alleged victims– both men in their twenties who were raised as Hasidic Jews in Brooklyn–tell NPR's Hagerty about the sexual abuse they endured as minors, and their decisions to finally come forward. Brooklyn District Attorney Charles Hynes, who says he has ten active sexual abuse cases involving the Hasidic Jewish community, tells NPR that Hasidic schools are private and therefore aren't required to report accusations of abuse. Instead, rabbis try to handle cases internally. "You have no business taking these cases to religious tribunals," says Hynes. "They are either civil or criminal in nature. Or both. Your obligation is to bring these allegations to us and let us conduct the investigation."

Bryan Rutberg was the victim of a new, targeted version of a very old scam–the "Nigerian," or "419," ploy. MSNBC News story here The first reports of such scams emerged back in November, part of a new trend in the computer underground–rather than sending out millions of spam messages in the hopes of trapping a tiny fractions of recipients, Web criminals are getting much more personal in their attacks, using social networking sites and other databases to make their story lines much more believable. In Rutberg's case, criminals managed to steal his Facebook login password, steal his Facebook identity, and change his page to make it appear he was in trouble. Next, the criminals sent e-mails to dozens of friends, begging them for help. Within minutes, his cell phone was ringing non-stop, with concerned friends calling to offer help. Many had received an e-mail with the story that Rutberg had been robbed at gunpoint while traveling in the United Kingdom, and needed money to get home. One even sent $1,200 to a Western Union branch in London. The Seattle resident and Microsoft employee then spent the next 24 hours in a frantic search for a way to contact Facebook and stop the hackers. But he was locked out of his own account and locked into a Catch-22; criminals had changed his login credentials so he couldn't access his own Facebook page. That meant he couldn't remove the dire status message. Read the whole story to see how the page was finally disabled and what Facebook recommends to protect its users. For more internet safety information see eGuide.org/vol2_iss1 and eGuide/vol2_iss2.

*for access to member only sites like the New York Times, use the ID "JohnDoeID" and the password "whatever". On sites asking for an email address, feel free to use "info@childprotectionprogram.org"


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