SACRAMENTO, Calif. — A 35-year-old is accused of burning her stepdaughter with an iron and using a stapler on her ear, according to a spokesman for the Sacramento County Sheriff’s Department, who said deputies were informed of the alleged abuse when the 12-year-old victim told a stranger at a DMV office.

Child sexual abuse has been reported up to 80,000 times a year, but the number of unreported instances is far greater, because the children are afraid to tell anyone what has happened, and the legal procedure for validating an episode is difficult. The problem should be identified, the abuse stopped, and the child should receive professional help. The long-term emotional and psychological damage of sexual abuse can be devastating to the child.

Updated March 2011–American Family of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry
Click here to download and print a PDF version of this document.

READ MORE HERE:

http://aacap.org/page.ww?name=Child+Sexual+Abuse&section=Facts+for+Families

The sexual victimization of children involves varied and diverse dynamics. It can range from one-on-one intro-familial abuse to multi-offender/multi-victim extra-familial sex rings and from non-family abduction of toddlers to prostitution of teenagers. Sexual victimization of children can run the gamut of “normal” sexual acts from fondling to intercourse. The victimization can also include deviant sexual behavior involving more unusual conduct (e.g., urination, defecation, playing dead) that often goes unrecognized, including by statutes, as possibly being sexual in nature. There are, therefore, no step-by-step, rigid investigative standards that are applicable to every case or circumstance. Investigative approaches and procedures have to be adjusted based on the dynamics of the case. Larger law-enforcement agencies tend to have more specialized investigative units that investigate the different types of cases. One unit might investigate intra-familial, child-abuse cases; another might investigate missing-, abducted-, or murdered-children cases; and another might investigate extra-familial, sexual-exploitation cases. Offenders, however, sometimes cross these investigative categories. For example a father might produce and distribute child pornography images of his own child or might molest other children in addition to his own. Investigators have to be trained and prepared to address these diverse realities.

READ MORE HERE:

http://www.missingkids.com/en_US/publications/NC70.pdf

HUNTINGTON BEACH, CA — An Orange County pastor is facing sex charges after allegedly molesting an 8-year-old girl. Christopher Raymond Olague, 39, is accused of picking up the girl for a play date with one of his children. But instead, Olague allegedly took the girl to a park in Huntington Beach where he molested her in his car.

READ MORE HERE:

http://www.ktla.com/news/landing/ktla-pastor-child-molestation,0,1093936.story

Father charged with attempted murder of daughter, 2

LAWRENCE, N.Y. — Khemchan Sulaiman, 45, of Jamaica, New York, has been charged with attempted murder in the poisoning of his little girl. They were both found unconscious in a car on Long Island on Tuesday. Police say the toddler’s bottle contained ammonium chloride, and a pesticide was found in the toddler’s car seat. Both the father and daughter are in critical condition.

READ MORE HERE:

http://abclocal.go.com/wabc/story?section=news/local/long_island&id=8379921

• Video: Burglars Find Child Porn, Turn Man In

LOS ANGELES– A 19-year-old Oxnard girl has been reunited with her family 4 years after she was allegedly kidnapped and taken to Mexico by a convicted rapist. Chioma Gray arrived in Los Angeles Wednesday night from Mexico City and was greeted by emotional family members.

READ MORE HERE:

http://www.ktla.com/news/landing/ktla-chioma-gray-reunited-with-family,0,6582850.story

OCOEE, Florida — The estranged daughter of Oscar-winning actor Billy Bob Thornton was sentenced in Florida on Thursday to 20 years in prison for killing a child in her care. Amanda Brumfield, 32, was convicted in Orlando in May of aggravated manslaughter of a child in the death of Olivia Madison Garcia, the 1-year-old daughter of one of Brumfield’s close friends.

READ MORE HERE:

http://www.ktla.com/news/landing/ktla-billy-bob-thornton-daughter-sentenced,0,236264.story

The Cinderella effect is a term used by psychologists to describe the high incidence of stepchildren being physically abused, emotionally abused, sexually abused, neglected, murdered, or otherwise mistreated at the hands of their stepparents at significantly higher rates than at the hands of their genetic parents. It takes its name from the fairy tale character Cinderella, who in the story was cruelly mistreated by her stepmother and stepsisters.

READ ARTICLE HERE:

http://www.psych.ucsb.edu/research/cep/buller/cinderella%20effect%20facts.pdf

At least 75% of Children in Foster Care will Be Sexually Abused

As many as 75 percent of all children in foster care, upon leaving the system, will have experienced sexual abuse. One study by Johns Hopkins University found that the rate of sexual abuse within the foster-care system is more than four times as high as in the general population; in group homes, the rate of sexual abuse is more than 28 times that of the general population. These statistics do not speak to the situation these children are coming from, but it does show the very large problem of child-on-child sexual abuse within the system.

READ MORE HERE:

http://protectingourchildrenfrombeingsold.wordpress.com/2010/04/26/at-least-75-of-children-in-foster-care-will-be-sexually-abused-in-the-system/

Over the last few weeks, grand juries in Clay and Jackson counties in Missouri have convened to investigate how the Diocese of Kansas City-St. Joseph has dealt with the problem of priests who sexually abuse minor parishioners. The investigations center on the arrest of Reverend Shawn Ratigan, who was arrested on federal child pornography charges earlier this year. The grand jury is marching right up the diocese hierarchy, even taking testimony from Bishop Robert Finn. The Missouri investigation comes on the heels of the Philadelphia grand jury, which issued its report earlier this year, the effects of which are still reverberating through the City of Brotherly Love.  As a clergy abuse lawyer, I am encouraged  by these developments.

READ MORE HERE:

http://www.paulmones.com/2011/10/04/clergy-abuse-lawyer-grand-jury-investigations-effective-justice-for-victims/

Healing-Your-Inner-Child. Is this something that you have done? Did you know you have a inner child? I didn’t either, at first, then I began to think about all of the decisions I had made in my life and how I had gotten to the place I was at that time in my life. It started to make sense that someone else might be influencing my decisions other than the adult part of me. Why? because many of my decisions were spur of the moment, like a child’s and had gotten me into trouble!

READ MORE HERE:

http://www.soul-expressions-abuse-recovery.com/Healing-Your-Inner-Child.html

Child abuse and neglect, or, more generically, child maltreatment, is a pervasive problem facing children and families throughout the world. In the United States, approximately 905,000 children were found to have been maltreated in 2006, most of whom (66.3%) were neglected. Sixteen percent were physically abused, 8.8% were sexually abused, and 6.6% were psychologically or emotionally abused.  These various forms of child maltreatment can result in many long-term physical and emotional consequences, including posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD).

READ MORE HERE:

http://emedicine.medscape.com/article/916007-overview