The 10-year-old was last seen walking to school Friday morning.

SUPERIOR, Colorado — Colorado police searching for a missing 10-year-old girl said Sunday they found her backpack in a subdivision more than six miles away from her home, their first break in the case. Police would not say what items were in the bag belonging to Jessica Ridgeway, who has been missing since Friday, except that some of the items had her name on them. READ MORE HERE

A national study found that serious injuries from child abuse appear to have risen modestly over the past decade or so, and suggested that downward trends in other studies of abuse may reflect reporting changes rather than real improvement. Hospitalization for abuse-related injury rose 4.9 percent overall among children 18 and under over the 12-year span from 1997 through 2009, wrote Dr. John Leventhal and Julie Gaither, both of Yale University in New Haven, Conn. Children were increasingly likely to die from these injuries before discharge as well, they reported in the November issue of Pediatrics. Read this story on www.medpagetoday.com.  READ MORE HERE

ANAHEIM  — A 50-year-old Spanish teacher has been sentenced to four years in prison after pleading guilty to charges of having illegal sex with an underage student. Scott Adrian Peterson, of Anaheim, was a teacher at Orange High School when he reportedly began a relationship with the victim in April 2010. READ MORE HERE

6-year-old Meika Dawn Jordan died on November 14th 2011 at the home of her biological father and stepmother in Temple Drive, Calgary.  Police were told that the child was killed after falling down stairs, but autopsy results have since shown the victim suffered blunt force trauma to the head and abdomen as well as a third degree burn on her hand.  READ MORE HERE

A defenseless 3-week-old baby girl was mauled to death by a pit-bull in west Detroit this past Thursday. The mother of the child was visiting a friend and set the baby down in a car seat after being fed her formula upon which the family friend’s dog slipped into the house from the yard and began to maul the face of the helpless infant.  READ MORE HERE

State prosecutor and wife ‘abused adopted Ethiopian children found near death with skull fractures and bruises’

A deputy Pennsylvania attorney and his wife have been arrested after their two adopted Ethiopian children were found starved and beaten to near death according to police. Deputy Attorney General Douglas Barbour and his wife, Kristen were arraigned today after their 6-year-old boy was found malnourished with skin lesions and the 18-month-old girl having multiple skull fractures and being possibly permanently blind. READ MORE HERE

Girl found bound in bathroom of suburban school

SANTA ANA — A 425-pound man was arrested Thursday for allegedly trying to abduct a 10-year old boy on his way to soccer practice. Police received a call around 7:30 p.m. Thursday night when about a man trying to kidnap a young boy in the 500 block of E. Central. The caller said the boy’s soccer coach was trying to detain the man, but he had escaped.  READ MORE HERE

Eddie Johnson, 37, Mortimah Kesselly, 41 and Alfred Kulah, 35 have been accused of snatching a 15-year-old from the side of the road and engaging in three days of vicious rape and sodomy. The girl, from southwest Pennsylvania, was walking to her father’s house when she was taken by the three men. She tried to escape, but they threw her into a car and held her down so she was unable to see where she was being taken.  READ MORE HERE

A 20-year-old from Jacksonville is in jail for child abuse after a doctor’s check-up revealed his baby was recovering from several broken ribs. The Onslow County Sheriff’s Office says Salvador Nunez was arrested, accused of squeezing his daughter when she was just 2-3 months old because she wouldn’t stop crying.  READ MORE HERE

Syracuse — According to DeWitt Police, it’s very possible that the child found living in deplorable conditions at a home on James Street Thursday could have been rescued long before, if only people had picked up the phone and called authorities. Child welfare agencies estimate that close to 700,000 children were abused or neglected last year, but studies have repeatedly found that even more abuse goes unreported. From what police described, it’s hard to imagine the life that little boy lived. Some of the boys’ neighbors say they had no idea.  READ MORE HERE

LEARN MORE ABOUT REPORTING CHILD ABUSE HERE

Fury after father, 19, who killed his baby daughter is given just 90 days in jail

Child activists are furious with a Colorado judge for giving a child-killer a slap on the wrists. Dylan Kuhn, 19, plead guilty to manslaughter for slamming his daughter Sailor Serenity Raine Kuhn on November 1, 2011, after partying with friends the night before on Halloween. But District Court Judge Douglas Walker decided on 90 days in prison, four years probation and a parenting class in lieu of a harsher penalty because he did not wish time behind bars to harden the guilty teen. READ MORE HERE

Judge was suspended after video of him beating his cerebral palsy daughter

The judge who was suspended from his job after a video showing him beating his cerebral palsy daughter was posted online is asking the Supreme Court to reinstate him. The 2004 video posted by the daughter of Judge William Adams, from Texas, sparked outrage across the nation last year due to the viscous verbal and physical abuse he administered on Hillary Adams when she was just 16. His former wife Hallie has asked that he does not return to the bench. She filed a grievance with the the state’s Commission on Judicial Conduct in August and in a letter on Tuesday, she asked that the suspension not be lifted until her complaint has been fully investigated.  READ MORE HERE

An 18-year-old who was confined to a room in his home with little food for years was so malnourished he still had his baby teeth and looked like a pre-teen, a detective testified Thursday. ‘I thought he was a 12-year-old boy,’ said Georgia Detective Kevin Morgan at the bond hearing of Paul and Sheila Comer, who were arrested last month on charges of cruelty to children and false imprisonment. Mitch Comer was just 5′ 1″ and weighed only 87 pounds when he was found wandering around downtown Los Angeles. READ MORE HERE