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Archives > Volume 8 Issue 15 - February 26, 2010 Bradley indictment alleges 103 child victims...This week saw new developments in the case of Earl Bradley, and the pain that has been felt in the community in the wake of allegations of child sexual abuse by the Lewes pediatrician has only become more far-reaching. Coastal Point story here 
Earlier this week, Delaware Attorney General Joseph R. "Beau" Biden III announced from the headquarters of the Delaware Child Predator Task Force that the Sussex County Grand Jury had indicted Bradley for the rape and sexual assault of more than 100 child victims over the span of nearly a decade.
"I know that today's indictment will reopen painful wounds and open new ones for a Lewes and Sussex County community that has been deeply traumatized," said Biden on Monday, February 22. "As I have said before, we will prosecute this case to the fullest extent of the law. As a prosecutor, I am bound by certain rules that limit what I can say in the midst of an active investigation....I am determined to see that this defendant will never, ever be in a position again to hurt another child." The indictment alleges that 103 children were victimized by Bradley between 1998 and 2009. The indictment contains 471 counts on charges including Rape 1st Degree, Rape 2nd Degree, Sexual Exploitation of a Child, Unlawful Sexual Contact 1st Degree, Unlawful Sexual Contact 2nd Degree and Reckless Endangering 1st Degree, among others. If convicted as charged, the 56-year-old Bradley faces a mandatory sentence of life in prison without the possibility of parole. The indictment was based on video evidence seized by law enforcement during the execution of search warrants at the defendant's home and office back in December. See vol8_iss3 and vol8_iss14 for more on this story. Brandy Little worked for seven years as a nurse for Dr. Bradley. He treated two of her children, and his kids sometimes baby-sat hers. AP News story here Little, like thousands of other parents, was asked to provide family photos of her children to see if they match any of the images on 13 hours of videos in which prosecutors claim Bradley documented sexual assaults dating to 1998. Little isn't sure she wants to submit the photos, though. Other parents also have decided they would be better off not knowing if their child was a victim, even though ignoring the alleged abuse could lead to problems in the future. The wrenching dilemma has pitted some spouses against each other, parents against grandparents. Guilt over leaving children alone with Bradley lurks in the background for some. Over the last decade alone, in states across the country, nearly 20 pediatricians have been charged with abusing children. Those are the criminal cases, but most complaints never get past state medical boards. CBS News story here Haiti judge: No release of remaining US Baptists this week... A Haitian judge says American missionaries Laura Silsby and Charisa Coulter will remain in jail over the weekend as he awaits more testimony. Washington Post story here 
Judge Bernard Saint-Vil says he has asked two real estate agents and a pastor from the Dominican Republic to testify in Port-au-Prince about property the missionaries rented to set up an orphanage.
Silsby and Coulter were among 10 Americans detained in Haiti while trying to take 33 kids to the Dominican Republic after the Jan. 12 earthquake. The others have been released and returned home. For more on that story, see vol8_iss9, vol8_iss10, vol8_iss11, vol8_iss12, and vol8_iss14. Meanwhile, six Haitian orphans completed a whirlwind journey when they landed in Miami and were united with their new parents, four days after Haitian police seized them and sent them to a tent city because of fears they were being kidnapped. MSNBC story here The orphans were headed to the Port-Au-Prince airport Saturday when a group of 20 men blocked four women accompanying the children, shouting: "You can't take our children!" Police briefly detained the women, and the orphans - ages 1-5 - spent three nights sleeping on the ground in a tent city. The U.S. Embassy official carrying the documents needed to take them through immigration had been running late. The children were with their adoptive parents and being bathed and fed a typical Haitian meal of brown beans, chicken, rice and plantains, said Sosa, of His House Children's Home. In a case involving an orphan rescue organized by Pennsylvania Governor Edward Rendell, the federal government has asked the American Red Cross to trace the family ties of 12 children among 53 flown to Pittsburgh on January 18. University of Pittsburgh Medical Center consultant Leslie McCombs said the children all had documents signed by at least one parent and Haitian court officials surrendering custody. But she said they didn't have American families waiting for them, which was part of federal guidelines established the day those children left Haiti. In other news... 
A judge has set bail at $1 million in cash for a man accused of walking through a Littleton, Colorado middle school parking lot taking shots at students with a hunting rifle, wounding two students before a teacher tackled him. Fox News story here Thirty-two-year-old Bruco Strong Eagle Eastwood said nothing during the brief hearing Wednesday. He faces two counts of attempted first-degree murder. He appeared by video hookup from the jail, wearing an orange inmate jumpsuit with his dark, shoulder-length hair hanging loose. Investigators say Eastwood began firing at students with a hunting rifle outside Deer Trail Middle School in Littleton as teenagers were leaving on Wednesday. David Benke, a math teacher, tackled him and pinned him to the ground with the help of another teacher. The man accused of wounding two middle school students in a community still haunted by the Columbine massacre often talked to himself and imaginary friends - and that talk recently turned to yelling, his father said. MSNBC News story here Bruco Strong Eagle Eastwood, 32, would unplug the refrigerator and not eat macaroni and cheese because they were too loud, War Eagle Eastwood said. Among items seized from Eastwood's room were photos of youths who appear to be in their teens, prompting the accused's father to speculate that his son may have had online contact with students there prior to the attack. AP News story here Jefferson County sheriff's investigators were puzzling over why Bruco Strong Eagle Eastwood, 32, may have targeted Deer Creek Middle School. They declined to say whether Eastwood had contact with students at the school, which is just miles from Columbine High, but they were interviewing students and parents. "It's very well a possibility, but it remains under investigation," said sheriff's spokesman Mark Techmeyer.
A statewide increase in child abuse and neglect-related deaths resulted in 280 fatalities last fiscal year, a 31 percent increase compared to the previous fiscal year and the highest since the Texas Department of Family and Protective Services began keeping records in 1998. Express-News story here The largest increase was seen in Harris County, where child deaths from abuse or neglect rose 90 percent compared to 2008, according to the department's annual Data Book that was released recently. Harris County's 67 deaths accounted for nearly a quarter of the state's deaths in the 2009 fiscal year, which was from September 1, 2008, through August 31, 2009. "Certainly in Harris County we have the largest child population with over a million children, but we don't know why the number of child fatalities due to abuse and neglect has almost doubled in one year," said Estella Olguin, a Harris County Child Protective Services spokeswoman. Of the state's 10 largest counties, all but Tarrant County experienced increases last year, according to the report. The report also showed 12 more Texas counties reported a child death from abuse or neglect in 2009 than in 2008. In Bexar County, 13 children died of abuse or neglect-related fatalities. The Bexar County deaths included an 11-month old girl who sustained head trauma, a 22-month-old girl who suffered blunt force trauma, and a 12-year-old boy injured while wrestling a teenager.
A New Jersey man was charged Wednesday with murder for allegedly throwing his 3-month-old daughter off a highway bridge into an icy river last week. AP News story here Shamsid-Din Abdur-Raheem, of Galloway Township, assaulted the child's maternal grandmother at her East Orange apartment and ripped the child from her arms on February 16, the same day the girl's mother sought a restraining order against him, police said. Attorney General Paula Dow said the search for the baby was ongoing. Despite the lack of a body, Dow said there was enough evidence to file a first-degree murder charge. "While our ongoing exhaustive search has not located the victim, we are moving forward with our investigation and our pursuit of justice in this tragic case of domestic violence," Dow said in a statement.
Authorities in New Jersey charged a man Thursday with kidnapping in the case of a 20-month-old child found abandoned at a gas station in Delaware over the weekend. AP News story here Dwayne Jackson of Edison also was charged with endangering the welfare of a child by the Middlesex County Prosecutor's Office. He was being held in lieu of $750,000 bail. Jackson also faces a separate reckless endangerment charge in Delaware. The child was found Sunday afternoon in the bathroom of a Shell service station in Newark, Delaware by a stranger who heard her crying. A photograph of the toddler was distributed, and she was identified as Jackson's daughter. The child had been living with her mother, who has not been identified, in North Brunswick, the prosecutor's office said. The child was placed in the custody of Delaware's Division of Family Services and was in good health. The prosecutor's office also is investigating the death of a young woman whose burning body was found in a park in Monsey, New York, about 25 miles northwest of New York City. Jim O'Neill, a prosecutor's office spokesman, did not say whether the woman is believed to be the baby's mother.
A provocative anti-smoking ad campaign featuring teens in a subservient sexual position has sparked a storm of controversy in France, with the country's family minister calling Wednesday for the advertisements to be banned. Los Angeles Times news story here The ad, sponsored by the Association for Nonsmokers' Rights, features a teenage boy who could be construed to be performing oral sex on a man in a suit, except the teen has a cigarette in his mouth. A caption reads, "Smoking means being a slave to tobacco." There are two other ads in the same vein, one featuring an adolescent girl. The leader of the organization behind the campaign acknowledged the ads were meant to shock and said such provocative campaigns were the only way to reach young people. "Traditional advertisements targeting teens don't affect them. Talking about issues of health, illness or even death, they don't get it," the group's director, Remi Parola, told The Associated Press in an interview. "However, when we talk about submission and dependence, they listen." Parola insisted the ads - developed pro bono by the BDDP & Fils advertising agency - were not really about sex at all. *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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