GREENFIELD, Indiana – A Greenfield couple is facing charges after police said they abused their daughter so badly that the 3-month-old went blind. Michael Knott, 26, and Andie Suddarth, 23, were charged with felony neglect last Friday, authorities said. Police said the infant suffered brain bleeding and retinal hemorrhaging after an incident in March. Doctors said she had other injuries that indicated ongoing abuse.

TULSA, Oklahoma – Tulsa police said an 8-year-old girl was taken from a playground area at the Willowbend Apartments on Sunday night. Monserrat Aguirre was playing on a swing set outside about 7:20 p.m., and a white man pulled up in a small, four-door white car, grabbed her, put her in his car and drove away, police said. Witnesses said he was last seen heading west on East 31st Street. Officer Jillian Roberts said the witnesses were mainly other children on the playground, but one adult was nearby and saw part of the abduction.

RICHMOND, Va. — The family of an 8-year-old boy beaten to death as he tried to defend his 12-year-old sister from a brutal rape gathered outside their home Friday, grappling with the details of the vicious attack. They leaned on one another, crying, shaking and struggling to understand the loss of little Martin Cobb. “He was a lovely little boy. He didn’t deserve this,” said Geraldine Pitchford, the children’s aunt, choking back tears in front of the family’s home in Richmond’s working-class Southside. Martin’s mother was too distraught to come outside.

Jose Gustavo Badillo is wanted for allegedly raping and molesting a minor female over the course of several years, beginning approximately in 1998. On September 1, 2005, the District Court of the 20th Judicial District, State of Oklahoma, issued an arrest warrant after Badillo was charged with first degree rape. Badillo was charged federally on September 19, 2005, with transporting a minor in foreign commerce with intent to engage in sexual activity, and tampering with a federal witness/victim. In addition, on February 23, 2006, United States District Court, Eastern District of Oklahoma, issued an arrest warrant for Badillo relating to a charge of possession of child pornography.

An alleged white supremacist is accused of torturing and sexually assaulting his two teenage stepdaughters over five years because he didn’t like that they were Latina. Justin Ladd, 33, faces 21 criminal counts after the girls told police that he slammed their feet with hammers until they were flattened, pulled on their tongues with pliers, beat them with belts and straps and exposed himself to them. The girls, now 14 and 16, said Ladd abused them between September 2008 and February 2013 in their Massachusetts home, and warned a motorcycle gang would rape and kill them if they told their mother. The teens described being called racial slurs by Ladd, who has the words ‘white power’ tattooed across his stomach. The older girl told police she felt Ladd never liked her or her sister because they were part Latina.

A man who allegedly admitted to molesting his cousin when she was 13 is now suing her for defamation and stalking. James Rashawn Johnson is petitioning for a civil injunction to stop his cousin Ashley Foster using his name or photographs when she tells her story of how she was molested. Foster, 23, claims Johnson molested her for six years until she was 19, but he was never prosecuted because when she reported him two years ago, too much time had passed since the alleged offense. Refusing to back down, Foster launched an online campaign to eliminate Florida’s statute of limitations in cases like hers, and used her cousin’s name and pictures. Johnson wants her to stop identifying him because he has never been charged.

Michael M. and John Kirby – both now in their 40s – claim that in the mid-1980s they were lured to the New York apartment of Stephen Brown and repeatedly sexually abused. So frequent was the abuse, the then-prep school students considered it normal, but it has never stopped haunting them. ‘It seems to be that every area of my life is affected,’ Michael M. told The New York Daily News. Now, some 30 years later, Brown, 62, is behind bars, after Kirby randomly spotted him going after children in Central Park.

A 17-year-old honor student planned to bomb and shoot his way through a Minnesota high school to commemorate the 15th anniversary of the Columbine massacre, authorities claim. John David LaDue’s plot to use pressure cooker bombs, Molotov cocktails and multiple firearms including an assault rifle to kill his parents, set fire to a field and go on a killing spree through Waseca High School was foiled Tuesday by an alert citizen, police said. ‘A great catastrophe and tragedy was averted,’ Waseca Mayor Roy Srp said at a Thursday afternoon news conference.

LAGOS, Nigeria – Scores of girls and young women kidnapped from a school in Nigeria are being forced to marry their Islamic extremist abductors, a civil society group reported Wednesday. Parents say the girls are being sold into marriage to Boko Haram militants for 2,000 naira ($12), Halite Aliyu of the Borno-Yobe People’s Forum told The Associated Press. She said the parents’ information is coming from villagers in the Sambisa Forest, on Nigeria’s border with Cameroon, where Boko Haram is known to have hideouts.

WASHINGTON – From huge state universities to small colleges and the Ivy League, 55 schools across America are facing federal investigation for the way they handle sexual abuse allegations by their students. For the first time, the Education Department revealed its list of colleges under investigation on Thursday – though no details of the complaints – as the Obama administration sought to bring more openness to the issue of sexual violence on and around the nation’s campuses.

What is the profile of a child molester? An average child molester will offend 200–400 times before being caught, if ever. The vast majority of offenders do not get caught, and they have no criminal records. According to the FBI, only one out of ten cases of child sexual abuse is reported to law enforcement. Many of the statistics on these types of crimes are gleaned from incarcerated perpetrators, who have provided civil authorities with an inside view into the lives of child molesters. This information has helped law enforcement authorities ascertain that only the tip of the iceberg is being disclosed and reported.

A 23-year-old Michigan man is facing child abuse charges after police say he savagely beat his 6-month-old son, leaving the infant clinging to life. Nicholas Spiridione, an EMT from Detroit, is accused of sending baby Jesse to the hospital with severe head trauma last Saturday. The baby boy, who is suffering from brain swelling and hemorrhaging, has undergone emergency surgery and is listed in critical condition at Children’s Hospital of Michigan in Detroit.

A teacher handed police shocking secret footage which allegedly shows two colleagues slapping and choking a special needs student before knocking him off a chair. The video was filmed at Harper-Archer Middle School in Atlanta, Georgia, over four days by an anonymous teacher who claimed the principal did not act on her complaints. Classroom aide Alger Coleman, 42, was arrested and charged with child cruelty and simple battery.

BOSTON — The secretary of Health and Human Services announced Tuesday that Olga Roche has resigned as commissioner of the Department of Children and Families. Secretary John Polanowicz announced he accepted Roche’s resignation during a press conference Tuesday. “I agree the commissioner should step aside,” said Gov. Deval Patrick at the press conference. “I do so with some sadness, but agree it’s time.” Gov. Patrick went on to say he thought the time for change is now and that he doesn’t think it is right, but he thinks it is necessary.