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Archives > Volume 8 Issue 11 - February 9, 2010 Baptist group in Haiti had previously tried to "kidnap" 40 other children...The group of American missionaries in Haiti facing kidnapping charges for trying to take 33 children out of the country last week made an earlier, unsuccessful attempt at taking dozens of other children, a Haitian police officer said Monday. CNN News story here 
The officer did not want to be identified for fear of reprisals. He told CNN that he had stopped the 10 Baptist missionaries, including group leader Laura Silsby, on January 26 as they tried to transport 40 children on a bus from Haiti to the Dominican Republic.
The officer said he discovered Silsby and the nine other Americans on a bus in the Port-au-Prince neighborhood of Petionville in the early afternoon of January 26 after receiving a tip from a concerned citizen. He stopped the group and ordered the children to get off the bus. He then directed Silsby to the Dominican embassy. "I said what happened, and she (Silsby) told me, 'I have the paperwork to cross the Haitian Dominican border with 100 children,'" the officer said. A former attorney for the group, Edwin Coq, said the officer has testified of his account. The officer was questioned by prosecutors last week in the case against the missionaries. Prosecutors no longer suspect him of any wrongdoing, and he is now a witness, according Coq, who is familiar with the prosecution's case file. The 10 missionaries were charged Thursday with kidnapping children and criminal association for trying to take 33 children out of Haiti last week. See more on this story at vol8_iss9 and vol8_iss10. Courts weigh criminal restitution for victims in child porn cases... It's been more than a decade since "Amy," as she's known in court papers, was first sexually abused by her uncle. The abuse ended long ago and he's in prison, but the pictures he made when she was 8 or 9 are among the most widely circulated child pornography images online. Fox News story here 
Now the 20-year-old woman is taking aim at anyone who would view those images and asking for restitution in hundreds of criminal cases around the country.
Her requests and those filed by other victims of child pornography are forcing federal judges nationwide to grapple with tough legal questions: Is someone who possesses an abusive image responsible for the harm suffered by a particular child? And how much should that person have to pay? "It is hard to describe what it feels like to know that at any moment, anywhere, someone is looking at pictures of me as a little girl being abused by my uncle and is getting some kind of sick enjoyment from it. It's like I am being abused over and over again," Amy wrote in court papers. "I want it all erased. I want it all stopped. But I am powerless to stop it just like I was powerless to stop my uncle," she wrote. The issue of criminal restitution in child pornography possession cases emerged last February in Connecticut when a federal judge said he would order a man convicted of possessing and distributing child pornography to pay about $200,000 to Amy. The judge said it was the first criminal case in which someone convicted of possessing illegal images - but not creating them - would be required to pay restitution. (The case settled for $130,000 before the judge issued his final order.) Since then, requests for restitution have picked up as more victims are identified - and as a couple of victims, including Amy, have hired attorneys, said Meg Garvin, executive director of the National Crime Victim Law Institute in Portland, Oregon Hundreds of requests have been filed nationwide, most of them by Amy's attorney, James Marsh of New York. Marsh said that as recently as five years ago, restitution would have been impossible because victims wouldn't have known when someone was caught with an image of them. The Crime Victims Rights Act of 2004 set up a system for notifying the victims. Now, Marsh gets several notices a day on behalf of Amy. Marsh, who declined to make Amy available for an interview, is seeking restitution for Amy in 350 cases nationwide. Each request is about $3.4 million. She won't get that amount in every case. But any sum collected would go toward that total to cover Amy's counseling, medical costs, future lost earnings and lawyer fees. Courts have been divided on how to handle the requests. At least two courts in Florida ordered restitution of more than $3.2 million, but some others ordered nominal amounts. Several others denied it. "Everyone is really grappling with this in good faith," said Marsh. "It's all over the place." In other news... 
Pope Benedict, who meets Irish bishops next week over a pedophilia scandal involving priests, said the Roman Catholic Church must keep its guard up against those who violate the rights of children. Montreal Gazette story here Addressing participants of a Vatican conference on protecting childhood, Benedict acknowledged that "unfortunately, in a number of cases, some of its (the Church) members acted in contrast to this commitment". Benedict will meet bishops from Irish dioceses to discuss the Murphy Commission Report, a damning indictment of child sex abuse by priests in Ireland which has already led to the resignation of two Irish bishops. Released in late November, the government report said Church leaders in overwhelmingly Catholic Ireland had covered up widespread abuse of children by priests for 30 years. In his address on Monday, Benedict said Jesus' harsh words in the Bible about those who harm children "should commit everyone to never lowering the level of respect and love". SNAP, a U.S.-based group of people molested by priests as children, said in a statement the pope's words were "self-serving" because he should speak out more forcefully about the complicity of bishops. The Murphy Report said bishops had "obsessively" hidden child abuse in the Dublin archdiocese from 1975 to 2004, and operated a policy of "don't ask, don't tell". After the release of the report the Vatican and the Irish Church came under intense criticism for not responding earlier to its findings. The Vatican later summoned several leaders of the Irish Catholic Church to meetings in Rome, where he expressed "outrage, betrayal and shame" over the abuse. For more on this story, see vol7_iss77, vol8_iss1, and vol8_iss8.
In her memoir, "High on Arrival," actress Mackenzie Phillips revealed details of her incestuous relationship with her father, which she called "consensual." CNN News story here Now, she's taking that word back. She told HLN's Joy Behar this week that she would not necessarily call the relationship with musician John Phillips consensual at this time. "As I was writing the book, I thought, this word, it kept sitting wrong with me, but I used it for lack of a better word, and since then I've been schooled by thousands of incest survivors all across the world that there really is no such thing as consensual incest due to the inherent power a parent has over a child," she said. Realizing that incest is not the victim's fault is a difficult process that happens through therapy and can take many years. "They carry this kind of belief that they may have flirted, that they may have worn a bikini, all this stuff makes them feel, 'I'm not really innocent,'" said Joanne Zucchetto, psychotherapist at the Psychiatric Institute of Washington's post-traumatic disorders program. By definition, incest is never consensual, although often the perpetrator will convince the victim otherwise, experts say. The power dynamics of the relationship between a parent and child are such that it's always the parent's responsibility to maintain normal boundaries, even if it's the son or daughter who makes some kind of initial gesture, said Debra Borys, a psychologist in Los Angeles, California. See vol7_iss53 for more on this story.
New York police discovered the body of a 9-year old autistic boy in a luxury Manhattan hotel room, possibly strangled to death by his "socialite" mother who was found nearby suffering the effects of a botched suicide, sources told ABC News. ABC News story here Gigi Jordan, 49, distraught over the recent end of her marriage, checked in to the Peninsula Hotel where she allegedly killed the boy and then tried to kill herself by taking an overdose of drugs, police said. Police say she was taken to Bellevue Hospital in New York City for treatment. Police described Jordan as a "socialite," and a family friend told ABC News.com that Jordan was "a very wealthy woman who threw big parties at the Rainbow Room and was well known at restaurants." Jordan was on her second marriage and was having troubles with her husband, the boy's father, sources said. According to public records, Jordan lives at the tony Trump Tower on the west side of New York's Central Park and at one time operated a pharmaceutical distribution company. Local media reports said police were tipped off to her possible suicide attempt by Jordan's aunt, living in Belgium, who received an e-mail threatening suicide.
New evidence that surfaced in the search for baby Gabriel shows there is a better chance that he may still be alive. It suggests it was Elizabeth Johnson's plan all along to adopt her baby away. KPHO News story here Johnson sits in a Maricopa County Jail on charges of kidnapping and custodial interference in connection with an attempted adoption and her son's disappearance. "We came on this trip [to San Antonio where Gabriel was last seen] looking for any evidence and we're finding a lot of it," said Gabriel's father, Logan McQueary. After talking to an adoption expert who helps the FBI in the world of underground adoptions, the McQueary family learned some startling connections. The Homegate Hotel where Johnson stayed is well known in adoption circles. Agencies put girls up there for meetings with families and to complete paperwork. "It just seems like it is a place that mothers go when they're trying to give up their children," said Lisa Peters, McQueary's cousin. The adoption expert, who didn't want to be identified, also had plenty to say about the San Antonio Six Flags. "Often girls go to Six Flags to meet with the adoptive family. There's a lot of people in and out there, and there's also security there, and it's a safe place for both the mother and the family to meet, often to bring the child, introduce the child to the family," said Lisa Peters. Johnson and Gabriel were spotted on surveillance footage outside the Six Flags on December 26, the same day she took the last known photos of Gabriel in the Homegate hotel room. That was also just two days after she posted two comments on her MySpace page stating, "Where there's a will, there's a way" and "Excited to start my new life." "I think on the 26th, she knew it was the last time she was going to see Gabriel, she took some pictures, she drove to Six Flags, somebody picked him up and she took off for Miami. And we just have to figure out who she met and where they are now," said Lisa Peters. Meanwhile, San Antonio police announced that they are investigating the case as a kidnapping and homicide, allowing them to search for a dead body. AP story here Police Chief William McManus said officers will search a landfill for the body of 8-month-old Gabriel Johnson once weather permits, adding that he still hopes authorities will find the boy alive. See vol8_iss2, vol8_iss3, vol8_iss4, and vol8_iss10 for more on this story.
On Friday, Buffalo police raided a house on 18 Thomas Street and arrested 26-year-old Michael J. Abdallah. Police say Abdallah kept a 13-year-old runaway locked in his house for six months from July 2009 through December 2009. WKBW7 story here According to police Abdallah had sex with her more than a hundred times and forced her to babysit his one-year old son. Neighbors are in shock. "I couldn't believe it, I still don't believe it. Like I said they said she was in there for six months, I find that hard to believe," said George Kimble. Kimble has lived on Thomas Street for 20 years. He says Abdallah moved in to the house about a year ago. He would sometimes see Abdallah working on his house but he didn't notice anything out of the ordinary. "I didn't see anything suspicious. If she was in there she could have yelled or screamed. He wasn't home for a lot of times that I know of and there are neighbors, kids played in the street, so she could have broken a window to get out if she was in there unless he had her shackled, that I don't know. So, I find it hard to believe," Kimble said. Other residents like Joe Kronberg say the adults in the neighborhood always keep an eye out for the kids on their street. "There are a lot of young kids around here and when I walk my dog in the morning during the summer, I watch 'em like a hawk to make sure no stupid idiot in a van is gonna grab 'em or something," said Kronberg. Now many neighbors are furious something like this might have happened right under their noses. Abdallah has been charged with second degree rape, unlawful imprisonment, and custodial interference.
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