CHICAGO — Chicago police say they are investigating the alleged kidnapping attempt of an 11-year-old girl who reportedly says a man tried to force her into his van in Englewood Monday. The victim, who managed to escape, told police she saw another young girl inside the alleged suspect’s van with her hands and feet duct-taped. The child allegedly told police the other girl was screaming for help.

According to experts, the goal is to teach children basic safety skills without instilling unnecessary fears. “The last thing you want is for your child to live in constant fear, and be untrusting of most everyone,” explains Julia Cook, author of Smarter Than the Scoopers, a book written for children to provide them with the skills and confidence needed to make right choices in their daily social interactions. Child Watch of North America, a non-profit organization dedicated to the prevention and recovery of missing, abused and exploited children, offers these important tips for children and their parents:

A Los Angeles-area woman and her boyfriend have pleaded not guilty to capital murder charges related to the 2013 death of her 8-year-old son, Gabriel Fernandez, who was routinely “abused, beaten, and tortured more severely than many prisoner of war,” according to a deputy district attorney who spoke to the Los Angeles Times. Pearl Sinthia Fernandez, 30, and her boyfriend, Isauro Aguierre, 37, of Palmdale, Calif., are accused of torturing the child for eight months, calling him gay, beating him when he played with dolls, striking him with belts and baseball bats, forcing him to eat cat feces and his own vomit, dousing him in pepper spray, and locking him inside a cabinet with a sock stuffed in his mouth and refusing to let him out to use the bathroom, according to court records and testimony from the child’s older siblings, the Times reports.

The unidentified Moroccan beauty queen has reportedly been accused of funding a fake association that exploits homeless children in the production of child pornography, as well as using them as human shields in several political demonstrations and conflicts with the police. According to Egypt’s Yaoum7, the fake association that goes by the name “Biladi” or my country was co-founded by an American woman and her husband. The American couple are said to have stripped over 20 children and videotaped them naked in a minor pornographic production.

Mayor de Blasio pledged a “full investigation” Monday into the death of a toddler who died while in the apartment of a licensed child care giver in the Bronx over the weekend. Athena Skeeter, a 40-year-old child care professional licensed by the state, was charged with manslaughter and endangering the welfare of a child in the Saturday death of Cardel Williamson, who suffered blunt force trauma to the head and torso, authorities said.

OKLAHOMA CITY – A 25-year-old mother is being charged with child abuse after she allegedly slammed her child’s head against the wall. On Aug. 22, authorities were called to the Willow Cliff Apartments after a security guard was called to an apartment on a disturbance. When the security guard arrived, he says he noticed swelling on the child’s head.

Caleb Ruh, a 29-year-old Flagler County man accused two years ago of molesting a 7-year-old girl in his care, was found guilty of lewd and lascivious molestation in a jury trial that ended late this afternoon. Ruh faces life in prison and will be designated a sexual predator. He will be sentenced on Sept. 29 by Flagler County Circuit Judge J. David Walsh. Ruh was represented by public defender Regina Nunnally, who argued at trial that Ruh suffered from “sexsomnia” and committed the acts while asleep.

Four undergraduate students at North Carolina State University are attempting to produce a nail polish that will reveal the presence of “date rape drugs” such as Rohypnol and GHB by changing color in their presence. “With our nail polish, any woman will be empowered to discreetly ensure her safety by simply stirring her drink with her finger,” the Undercover Colors Facebook page says. “Through this nail polish and similar technologies, we hope to make potential perpetrators afraid to spike a woman’s drink because there’s now a risk that they can get caught,” the page continues. “In effect, we want to shift the fear from the victims to the perpetrators. We are Undercover Colors and we are the first fashion company empowering women to prevent sexual assault.”

AUSTRALIA — A man accused of sexually assaulting and murdering a 10-month-old baby boy burst into a roadhouse in Western Australia’s north with the baby, who was not moving, in his arms, a Perth court hears. Mervyn Kenneth Douglas Bell is on trial in the Supreme Court over the assault and murder of the infant, who the court has been told had injuries “literally from his head to his feet”. The court has been told Bell had driven the boy almost 1,000 kilometres from Broome to the Fortescue Roadhouse near Karratha in Western Australia’s north, where he sought help for the lifeless child, but the baby died a short time later.

CAUTION: Armed & Dangerous Henry Enriquez is wanted for rape and gross sexual imposition in Cleveland, Ohio. These charges are based on Enriquez’s alleged sexual assault of a female victim who was under the age of 13 when the crimes occurred. The incidents took place in Lakewood, Ohio, from January 3, 1992 through May 31, […]

The Connecticut medical examiner has ruled the death of a 15-month-old boy who was left in his father’s car in July a homicide. The cause of Benjamin Seitz’s death was hyperthermia because of environmental exposure, the state medical examiner said on Wednesday. On July 7, Kyle Seitz was supposed to drop his son off at day care in Ridgefield, Connecticut, but the drop-off never occurred, his wife, Lindsey Rogers-Seitz told CNN last month.

Renuka Shinde was a poor teenage mother when she tried to steal a purse during a crowded festival at a temple in India. Caught in the act, Shinde feigned outrage and showed her accusers her young son. Would a thief take their child along, she asked. The crowd at the temple in Pune, 150 kilometres south-east of Mumbai, let her go. The experience spawned an idea in Shinde that would lead her and her sister to become India’s most notorious serial killers.

Police charged a Marshalltown man with murder in connection to a child abuse case that resulted in the death of a 3-year-old girl, authorities said. Brandon Michael Collins, 28, was charged with child endangerment (a Class-C felony), possession of a scheduled I substance, possession of drug paraphernalia, first-degree murder and child endangerment (a Class-B felony). Authorities responded to a report of an unresponsive child in the 900 block of South 11th Avenue in Marshalltown at about 2 p.m. Wednesday.

Filing criminal charges against a mother for reportedly ignoring claims her daughter was sexually abused is a rare move and will require prosecutors to show exactly what warnings the mother was given, experts say. The Iowa Department of Human Services began investigating the Newton, Iowa woman after a doctor’s appointment revealed her 12-year-old daughter was pregnant, a police report shows. During the doctor visit, the girl told her mother, “I tried to tell you several times” about the abuse, the report said.