Flickr photo by BlatantNews.com

Oklahoma is one of the thirty-five states that use the death penalty. There are various crimes in that state that can carry a punishment of death, but rape of a child is not currently one of them. Lawmakers hope to change that. Last week, the Senate Appropriations Committee approved a measure that would allow the death penalty for convicted felons who rape a child age six and under.

Yet, just two years ago, in a 5-4 decision, the United States Supreme Court ruled that the death penalty is unconstitutional as a punishment for child rape, and overturned death penalty laws in Louisiana and five other states.

Justice Kennedy, writing for the majority, said there was “a distinction between intentional first-degree murder on the one hand and non-homicide crimes against individual persons,” even such “devastating” crimes as the rape of a child on the other.

Senator Anthony Sykes, the author of the Oklahoma Bill, says there are some key differences between the Oklahoma bill and those struck down by the Supreme Court, which he thinks will get the bill over the constitutionality hurdle. He plans to amend his bill to require a previous conviction for child rape and include the requirement that the rapist have the intent to kill the child.

The death penalty for child rape bill is controversial in Oklahoma so it remains to be seen if will even pass, never mind put to the Supreme Court test.

What do you think?

Should child rapists get the death penalty?

SOURCE:

http://thestir.cafemom.com/in_the_news/100716/child_rapists_should_they_get

Norman – The vehicle involved in an Amber Alert more than two months ago has been discovered in Norman and the bodies of two people have been found, officials say.

Norman police were called to a rural area east of Norman at about 2:45 p.m. Monday by a citizen who located the car near Highway 9 and 108th Avenue Southeast.

The white Toyota Paseo driven by Lester Hobbs, suspected in the January 24th beating death of his estranged wife, Tonya Hobbs, has been sought for more than two months. Hobbs is also suspected of having abducted Tonya Hobbs’ daughter, seven-year-old Aja Johnson.
KFOR-TV reports the body of one person was found inside the vehicle while another body was found outside the car. The identities of the bodies discovered have not been released.

It’s unclear how long the vehicle has been there.

SOURCE:

http://www.ktul.com/news/stories/0310/720553.html

Several other adults abused her trust by not acting to protect her or to act on the allegations when she confided in them during her time on the TV show.

And as our current laws stand, by staying silent about alleged abuse, these adults did nothing wrong.

To put it in perspective, think of it this way. Do 64km/h in a 60km/h zone and they’ll fine you. But if you stay silent when a child says he or she is being molested, chances are there’s little to suggest you could face any strife.

Monahan courageously told various members of her on-screen family she was being abused by her on-screen dad, Robert Hughes.

But did they report these allegations – which have been denied by Hughes – to NSW’s Sex Crimes Squad? No.

They say they did what they could to protect her, but they failed to take the only real action that would have put an end to the abuse – go to the police.

These actors, including Simone Buchanan and Ben Oxenbould, are now rightly copping criticism as they unite in a show of support for their young co-star.

To make matters worse, some of the Hey Dad! stars are reportedly being paid to show their concern on the pages of Woman’s Day and on our screens during A Current Affair.

But where the hell was all this public outrage 20 years ago?

What isn’t well known is that adults’ silence back then was totally legal.

And 20 years later in Victoria – and NSW, where the show was filmed – it seems that nothing has changed.

Unless you are a police officer, teacher, nurse or doctor, you are not legally required to report allegations of child abuse to authorities.

You can’t be held accountable. You can’t be charged. You can’t even be fined.

Well, guess what? That is outrageous.

All child abuse is serious, and must be reported and investigated immediately for the sake of the current and future victims.

READ MORE:

http://www.heraldsun.com.au/opinion/abuse-must-be-reported/story-e6frfhqf-1225847160321

AP

Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., speaks at a rally on Capitol Hill in Washington on Feb. 24, 2010.

Senator Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., is pushing for a national registry of child abusers. “Track child beaters like we do sex offenders,” blares one headline. It sounds like a righteous idea, at first glance. But although it may look like a huge step, and is certainly being announced as such, ultimately it will only make it easier for people to find out what other people already know. And it’s what we don’t know, in cases of child abuse, that tends to do the most harm.

Registries for child abuse already exist, on the state level, though federal law doesn’t mandate that states keep them. A key factor in the national registry — which was authorized in 2006, but which has not yet been put into place (an extensive feasibility report was published in May 2009) — is that it would centralize the information and allow child protective services easier access to it when abusers cross state lines.

Schumer compared the national registry for child abusers to registries for sex offenders. But that begins to make clear some of the potential shortfalls of the system: For one, tracking sex offenders is only one of the ways we work to prevent repeat crimes, and it doesn’t always work. And, just as in the case of the sex offender registry, this system would only work to track abusers who have been reported — which seems like a point so obvious it’s not worth bringing up, until you think about how underreported child abuse actually is. A report by the National Center on Child Abuse Prevention Research, the “Child Maltreatment Fact Sheet 2006,” gives a sense of it: In cases of fatalities caused by child abuse, only 16 percent of the families were known to child protective services.

READ MORE:

http://www.salon.com/life/broadsheet/2010/03/29/schumer_tracking_child_abusers/

Pope Benedict XVI has been accused of failing to act on complaints from two archbishops in the US about a priest who allegedly abused 200 deaf boys.

The Vatican newspaper said the move was an “ignoble attempt” to smear the Pope.

As a cardinal heading the Vatican office that dealt with sex abuse cases, the future pontiff allegedly failed to respond to letters about the case.

A church trial of the priest was halted after he wrote to the then Cardinal Ratzinger pleading ill health.

The Holy See has recently been plagued by abuse cover-up claims in Europe, echoing a similar scandal that hit the Church in the US eight years ago.

READ MORE:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/8587082.stm

As part of their effort to slow (or even stop) passage of the bill that would make changes to the health care legislation signed into law by President Obama Tuesday, Senate Republicans have vowed to introduce hundreds of amendments.

One part of that strategy is to offer amendments on which Democrats would be hard-pressed to cast a “no” vote. If the Senate makes any amendments to the legislation, it has to go back to the House — a possibility that Democrats are hoping to avoid.

GOP Sen. Tom Coburn of Oklahoma (pictured) today released a list of the nine amendments he has filed, and right at the top is a clear illustration of the strategy — an amendment entitled “No Erectile Dysfunction Drugs To Sex Offenders.” Here’s how it’s described:

“This amendment would enact recommendations from the Government Accountability Office to stop fraudulent payments for prescription drugs prescribed by dead providers or, to dead patients. This amendment also prohibits coverage of Viagra and other ED medications to convicted child molesters, rapists, and sex offenders, and prohibits coverage of abortion drugs.”

READ MORE:

http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-503544_162-20001033-503544.html

NEWARK, N.J. — On an August night 32 years ago, authorities say, three men who believed five teenage boys had stolen their drugs herded them into an abandoned house at gunpoint, tied them up and set the building on fire, burning them alive and leaving no trace.

Those details on one of the coldest and most baffling missing-persons cases New Jersey has ever seen became known Tuesday as prosecutors announced that two of the men had been arrested on a recent tip from a witness. A third suspect died in 2008.

The teens, ages 16 and 17, had not been seen since they disappeared, and the five bodies were never found in the rubble of the destroyed house. The suspects believed the boys had stolen a pound of marijuana from one of them, the Essex County prosecutor’s office said.

One of the suspects, 56-year-old Lee Evans, routinely hired teenagers to help with odd jobs, officials said. He was interviewed in the months after the disappearances but was cleared as a suspect.

Evans, of nearby Irvington, and Philander Hampton, 53, of Jersey City, were charged with murder and arson and are being held on $5 million bail each, prosecutor’s office said.

The boys, Melvin Pittman and Ernest Taylor, both 17, and Alvin Turner, Randy Johnson and Michael McDowell, all 16, were last seen on a busy street near a park where they had played basketball on Aug. 20, 1978.

READ MORE:

http://www.ktla.com/news/landing/ktla-nj-cold-case,0,2099543.story

Many times I have written about childhood sexual abuse in the Huffington Post. Those blogs don’t get a lot of reader comments and it is not surprising. It is not a subject that people want to read about, think about, much less formulate comments about. And I totally understand that. So I write about other things as well even though most of them have at least an underlying theme related to the impact of sex in our modern culture.

In the past week or so, it has been difficult to read the Huffington Post or any other news source without coming across stories about sexual abuse. Just when you thought the Catholic Church had paid off enough people to quiet things down, the scandal gets even closer to the Pope himself. In 2001, then Cardinal Ratzinger, in a confidential letter to Catholic bishops regarding the handling of sexual abuse cases, referred to a requirement of secrecy in such cases. It has also been reported that a priest with a known history of sexual abuse was reassigned under the Cardinal’s watch.

And now the Boy Scouts join in with an Oregon case against a troop leader who is on trial for molesting a scout. He has admitted to molesting 17 of the 30 boys in his troop. The court is allowing access to documentation of sexual abuse within the organization known as “the perversion files.” In it are numerous examples of molestation cases, some with the familiar story of the accused being returned to service in the organization.

And finally, a 1972 Olympic gold medalist on the US swim team has come forward to speak about sexual abuse she suffered at the hands of her coach beginning at age 11 and continuing for four years. Her charge is that there is not adequate screening and background checks for coaches in the US swim program creating an environment that encourages and supports sexual abuse between coaches and athletes, a claim upheld by numerous other cases that have come to light.

READ MORE:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/trish-kinney/boy-scouts-swim-team-and_b_510228.html?just_reloaded=1

The youth, who cannot be named because of his age, was 13 when he attacked his victim in May last year, Lancashire Police said.

Now aged 14, he admitted sexual assault and sexual touching at Blackpool Youth Court on Monday and was sentenced to a 12-month referral order.

He was also placed on the sex offenders register for two-and-a-half years.

Police said the boy, who now lives in Merseyside, is the youngest person in Lancashire to be placed on the register.

The court was told the youth was a sexual abuse victim who was “mimicking” the behaviour of his attacker.

Under the terms of the referral order he will undergo counselling and supervision by a youth offending team.

SOURCE:

http://www.fleetwoodtoday.co.uk/latest/Child-rape-boy-put-on.6174489.jp

Cardinal Sean Brady has been under fire over the investigation into a child abuse

(CNN) — The head of the Irish Catholic Church, Cardinal Sean Brady, admitted Wednesday that the church’s response to abuse had been “hopelessly inadequate.”

“The church must continue to deal with the enormity of the hurt caused by abuse of children by some clergy … and the hopelessly inadequate response to that abuse in the past,” Brady said Wednesday.

Church leaders must “own up to and take responsibility for any mismanagement or cover-up of child abuse,” he said.

The cardinal also apologized for his role in the church’s investigation into an abusive priest in 1975.

“I want to say to anyone who has been hurt by any failure on my part that I apologize to you with all my heart,” he said at St. Patrick’s Cathedral in Armagh, Ireland.

“I also apologize to all those who feel I have let them down. Looking back I am ashamed that I have not always upheld the values that I profess and believe in,” Brady said, according to a copy of the remarks released by Ireland’s Catholic Communications Office.

Has the Catholic Church reached a tipping point?

The deeply Catholic country has been badly shaken by a government-backed report that found the Archdiocese of Dublin and other Catholic Church authorities in Ireland covered up child abuse by priests from 1975 to 2004. Child sexual abuse was widespread then, the report found.

READ MORE:

http://edition.cnn.com/2010/WORLD/europe/03/17/catholic.ireland.abuse/

“Everyone wants to blame Hollywood when they take a fall,” Bridges said in an exclusive interview with BV on Books. “When people read my memoir, they will see I’m not blaming Hollywood. I’m taking full responsibility for my actions. Not a lot of people do that. A lot of people spend their lives blaming somebody else. But I will say this: No child should ever endure what I had to go through.”

Bridges was one of the biggest stars of his time, winning roles on ‘Roots,’ ‘Fish,’ ‘Little House on the Prairie,’ ‘The Waltons’ and others before becoming Willis on ‘Diff’rent Strokes,’ a sitcom about a wealthy white widower who adopts two black sons, Bridges (Willis) and Gary Coleman (Arnold). It ran from 1978 to 1986. Dana Plato, who played older sister Kimberly on the show, died of a prescription drug ovedose in 1999.

READ MORE:

http://www.bvonbooks.com/2010/03/15/todd-bridges-memoir-molestation/