The calls, reporting suspicions of child abuse and neglect, come in at a rate of nearly 10,000 a day, to hotlines and law-enforcement offices across the country. They add up to 3.4 million reports per year — a daunting challenge for state child protection agencies, which must sort out the flimsy or trivial claims from the credible and potentially dire ones, and make decisions that balance the rights of parents with the welfare of children. Many states, after initial screening, deem more than half the reports they receive to be unworthy of further investigation. “In child protection, you are always walking a difficult line,” said Cindy Walcott, deputy commissioner of Vermont’s Department for Children and Families.

A woman who allegedly gave birth in a sports pub bathroom and hid her baby in a toilet tank before returning to the bar watch a pay-per-view wrestling match could face the death penalty. Prosecutors will seek the sentence for Amanda Hein, 27, who is accused of suffocating the boy by wrapping him in a plastic bag before hiding him in the toilet at Starters Pub in Lower Saucon Township, Pennsylvania last August. Northampton County District Attorney John Morganelli said that Hein deserves to be executed because she killed a child, according to NBC Philadelphia.

A convicted pedophile has been given permission to adopt a child in Sweden despite sexually abusing a five-year-old girl. Swedish authorities say the man, aged in his sixties, is now not in danger of re-offending. The man, from the town of Helsingborg, has committed more than 90 crimes (mostly fraud-related charges) including molesting a young girl from his neighborhood in 2004 according to The Local. He was also suspected of raping a young teenage girl. He now wishes to adopt his 10-year-old stepson following the death of the boy’s mother, whom the man married in 2009.

An actress whose childhood was blighted by years of sexual abuse at the hands of a family friend has waived her right to anonymity in the hope it will encourage other victims to speak out. Rachel Isaac, who played Trudy in popular sitcom The Office and later acted on Broadway, yesterday chose to talk about the ordeal after finally seeing her abuser brought to justice. Michael Batten, 70, was jailed for 30 months after a judge said he had ‘brainwashed’ his young victim and that the abuse had ‘tainted’ her teenage years.

A hospital has finally admitted that it failed a baby boy by making ‘catastrophic mistakes’ – more than seven years after the child was shaken to death. Kyle Keen was killed by his stepfather in 2006 after NHS staff failed to report his ‘suspicious bruising’ to police or social services. At the time, the hospital said there ‘appeared to be no direct evidence of abuse’ – but seven years later a report into his death has still never been published in full.

SOUTH JORDAN — Two young boys found dead in the basement of a home in the Daybreak neighborhood a week ago died in a murder-suicide, police said Friday. An autopsy determined that Taylor Wheeler, 12, died of a single gunshot wound and Dayton Gessell, 15, died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound. But what South Jordan police still could not answer Friday, was whether the shooting of Taylor was an intentional act.

SAN ANTONIO, TX — An eleven-year veteran of the San Antonio Police Department is free on bond after being arrested, charged with sexual assault of a 19-year-old woman during a traffic stop. Officer Jackie Len Neal, 40, was arrested while off-duty early Saturday morning, after the alleged victim notified SAPD within hours of the incident Friday. The arrest warrant affidavit states the young woman said she was handcuffed during the alleged sexual assault, outside by the trunk of Neal’s vehicle.

Three teenage sisters have been rescued from an Arizona home after being held captive for two years, police say. The mother of the three children, who were allegedly imprisoned in filthy conditions in the home, lied about the family’s whereabouts and wouldn’t let an aunt speak with her nieces on the phone, the aunt said during an interview Wednesday. Chame Bueno told The Associated Press that the 32-year-old mother said that the family was living in San Diego when they actually were in Tucson.

The police faced serious questions last night over why they failed to act sooner to stop Lostprophets singer Ian Watkins after it emerged fans had warned for nearly four years that he was obsessed with child porn. From early 2010 horrified fans who had become friends with Watkins went online to beg for help after discovering vile images on his computer. Friends claim they called police to tell them the 36-year-old was a pedophile but officers did nothing, allowing him to go on to subject babies to the most horrific abuse. A disturbing child porn profile created in that time by Watkins was viewed by more than 40,000 people on the internet and yet appears never to have been monitored by authorities.

A pregnant woman has had her baby forcibly removed by Cesarean section by social workers. Essex social services obtained a High Court order against the woman that allowed her to be forcibly sedated and her child to be taken from her womb. The council said it was acting in the best interests of the woman, an Italian who was in Britain on a work trip, because she had suffered a mental breakdown. The baby girl, now 15 months old, is still in the care of social services, who are refusing to give her back to the mother, even though she claims to have made a full recovery. The case has developed into an international legal row, with lawyers for the woman describing it as “unprecedented”.

A Pulaski County man who admitted to fathering a child with an underage family member was given 15 years for the crime. According to the Commonwealth Journal, Ronnie Logan had already pleaded guilty to one count of incest. According to the paper, authorities started investigating Logan around this time last year after receiving a tip about possible sexual abuse.

The Blancheter man who was arrested on Friday for asking a stranger online to rape a 4-year-old family member while he watched has also engaged in incest activity. A Fayette Advocate investigation revealed that Stewart Matthew Kidwell, 36, arrested on Friday and charged with one count of coercion and enticement to engage in illegal sexual contact with a minor and one count of child pornography distribution, solicited online, including social networking sites such as Facebook, to engage with others in incest activity.

Nelspruit – A pastor in Mpumalanga was jailed for 10 years by the Nelspruit Regional Court on Friday for sodomizing an eight-year-old boy. The pastor, from Tonga near Komatipoort, was arrested in March 2010 after his neighbor’s child was assaulted, a Sapa correspondent reported. The married father of five had pleaded not guilty to a charge of rape. His wife testified in mitigation of sentence and claimed neighbors falsely accused him after he asked them to join his church.

TACOMA, Washington — A 9-year-old girl was viciously raped more than a decade ago in Parkland, and police believe they’ve finally solved the notorious cold case. The suspect, Antonio Nieves, was just 17-years old at the time of the rape. Nieves has spent his adult life in and out of jail and was part of the state’s criminal database, but it was only recently that investigators were able to match his DNA to the rape.