Child abuse reports increase amid Penn State scandal

Penn State administrators and faculty may have remained silent about their suspicions that former coach Jerry Sandusky was molesting children, but in the wake of the scandal authorities in several states say they’ve seen an increase in the number of calls to their abuse hotlines.  In Pennsylvania, the State Department of Public Welfare received more than double the average number of reports of child abuse in the week after the scandal broke. According to spokesperson Anne Bale, in an average five-day period the department receives about 2300 abuse reports to its hotline; the week of November 7-11, they got 4,832 calls.

READ MORE HERE:

http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-504083_162-57330375-504083/rise-in-child-abuse-reports-in-pa-n.y-n.j-amid-penn-state-scandal/

Publications and resources related to State and Federal civil laws on child abuse and neglect, child welfare, and adoption. Federal laws provide standards and guidelines; however, these issues are primarily governed by State laws and regulations in the United States.

State statutes index and search
Access the Child Welfare Information Gateway State Statutes Series by title, or search statutes by individual States on issues related to child abuse and neglect, child welfare, and adoption.

State laws on child abuse and neglect
Laws addressing reporting and responding to child abuse and neglect, maintaining child abuse and neglect records, protecting children from domestic violence, and related issues.

State laws on child welfare
Laws addressing State agency responsibility when a child is placed in out-of-home care, including case planning, reasonable efforts to reunify families, and related issues.

READ MORE HERE:

http://www.childwelfare.gov/systemwide/laws_policies/

Pedophile & Child Molester Statistics

“The serial killer has the same personality characteristics as the sex offender against children.” (Dr. Mace Knapp, Nevada State Prison Psychologist). “There are 400,000 registered sex offenders in the United States, and an estimated 80 to 100,000 of them are missing. They’re supposed to be registered, but we don’t know where they are and we don’t know where they’re living.

READ MORE HERE:

http://www.yellodyno.com/html/child_molester_stats.html

PHOENIX, AZ — It’s a new record for Arizona and no one is happy about it. Seventy children died in 2010 from severe abuse. But experts have a plan to fight the disturbing trend.  They are the littlest ones among us, too small to stand up for themselves and last year dozens were silenced by the very people who were supposed to protect them.

READ MORE HERE:

http://www.azfamily.com/news/Deadly-Child-Abuse-Reaches-New-Record-in-Arizona–133899508.html

Each year, statistics from the Children’s Bureau’s National Child Abuse and Neglect Data System (NCANDS) are compiled and reported. The most recent report, Child Maltreatment 2009, refers to data from Federal fiscal year (FFY) 2009 and includes national and State-by-State data on child maltreatment, including fatalities due to abuse and neglect. Using data from Child Maltreatment, this factsheet summarizes the information on child fatalities for FFY 2009 and includes some additional research and information on prevention.

READ MORE HERE:

http://www.childwelfare.gov/pubs/factsheets/fatality.cfm

Child sexual abuse has been at the center of unprecedented public attention during the last decade. All fifty states and the District of Columbia have enacted statutes identifying child sexual abuse as criminal behavior (Whitcomb, 1986). This crime encompasses different types of sexual activity, including voyeurism, sexual dialogue, fondling, touching of the genitals, vaginal, anal, or oral rape and forcing children to participate in pornography or prostitution.

READ MORE HERE:

http://www.ncvc.org/ncvc/main.aspx?dbName=DocumentViewer&DocumentID=32315

Laws & Policies

U.S. Dept of Health & Family Services: Child Welfare Policy Manual

The Child Welfare Policy Manual conveys mandatory policies that have their basis in Federal law and/or program regulations. It also provides interpretations of Federal statutes and program regulations initiated by inquiries from State Child Welfare agencies or ACF Regional Offices.

READ MORE HERE:

http://www.acf.hhs.gov/programs/cb/laws_policies/

A high court judge rules that the Catholic church is legally responsible for priests charged with child abuse, in a landmark case.

The ruling, which has far-reaching consequences, now means that victims of abuse can sue the church itself, rather than being forced to pursue the individual priests. The Catholic church has always argued that it is not “vicariously liable” for the actions of priests. In a three-day hearing in July before Mr Justice Alastair MacDuff, the church argued that priests are not employees.

READ MORE HERE:

http://www.channel4.com/news/catholic-church-liable-for-priests-charged-with-abuse

Judge orders Kentucky to release records on child–abuse deaths

KENTUCKY–The Beshear administration should quit wasting resources fighting to keep state records in child abuse deaths secret. For one thing, the administration will ultimately lose. That should be obvious to everyone after Franklin Circuit Judge Philip Shepherd’s latest ruling in a suit brought by the Lexington Herald-Leader and The Courier-Journal of Louisville.

READ MORE HERE:

http://www.kentucky.com/2011/11/04/1946472/culture-of-secrecy-about-child.html

Michigan Senate passes ‘license to bully’ legislation

Advocates for a law to prohibit bullying and provide school districts with the tools to address the problem were dealt a stinging rebuke Wednesday morning in the Republican-controlled Michigan Senate. The GOP pushed through an amended bill, SB 137, which does nothing advocates have pushed for — including reporting requirements and enumeration, or listing, of protected classes. In addition, the legislation provides an exception which allows bullying based on “moral convictions.”

READ MORE HERE:

http://michiganmessenger.com/53702/senate-passes-license-to-bully-legislation

VIEW CHILD/TEEN BULLYING SUICIDES STATISTICS HERE:

http://www.bullyingstatistics.org/content/bullying-and-suicide.html

GREENEVILLE, TN–Courts across the Tri-Cities region are hearing more cases involving alleged child abuse and neglect.  That increase is causing more judges to request the help of court appointed special advocates and those volunteers are spread thin. In 2008, cCasa of Northeast Tennessee helped 242 families.  That increased to 306 in 2010, and because of a recent expansion into circuit courts, Casa expects to be a voice for nearly 400 children this year.

READ MORE HERE:

http://www2.tricities.com/news/2011/nov/02/cases-involving-child-abuse-neglect-rise-tri-citie-ar-1430331/

ORLANDO — They’re fighting to protect children who all too often fall victim to abuse by the hands of their own parents. Child abuse investigators with Department of Children and Families are the first on the scene, and often the only ones to follow a child’s story from start to finish. News 13 took a closer look at their day-to-day work and explains their heartbreak of investigating an innocent child’s death.

READ MORE HERE:

http://www.cfnews13.com/article/news/2011/november/336379/DCF-says-child-deaths-are-rising

5,000 child molesters: The US scout movement’s guilty secret

They call them the “perversion files”, and more than 5,000 alleged child molesters aren’t the only ones hoping to prevent their hitherto-secret contents ever seeing the light of day. Boy Scouts of America is at the centre of a growing legal crisis as it attempts to block publication of documents that name and shame the extraordinary number of adults expelled from the organisation amid accusations of sexual misconduct.

READ MORE HERE:

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/5000-child-molesters-the-us-scout-movements-guilty-secret-6255037.html

Priests accused of child abuse appear beyond the reach of law

Editor’s note: Gary Tuchman reports on allegedly abusive Catholic priests who are living, unsuspected, in communities across the country on CNN Presents, Sunday at 8 p.m. ET on CNN.

Los Angeles (CNN) – Former LAPD Detective Federico Sicard still remembers the Monday he arrived at a school to interview children who said a priest had molested them, even though the visit took place 23 years ago. Sicard found four children at the school, Our Lady of Guadalupe in East L.A., who said they’d been abused by Nicolas Aguilar Rivera, a priest who’d recently arrived from Mexico. But police never had a chance to interview Aguilar.

READ MORE HERE:

http://religion.blogs.cnn.com/2011/10/28/on-the-trail-of-an-abusive-l-a-priest-who-vanished-to-mexico/