One of Britain’s biggest child abuse scandals is likely to have been even larger than previously thought, police revealed yesterday. Dozens of former residents of North Wales children’s homes have given detectives ‘graphic’ accounts of appalling abuse at the hands of 84 staff – most of whom have never been prosecuted. Barely a decade after a 13 million public inquiry that was meant to uncover the extent of the scandal, police yesterday revealed they had ‘significant’ new evidence of ‘serious and systemic’ abuse.

PHOENIX – Phoenix police have arrested a 36-year-old mother of nine on suspicion of first-degree murder in the suffocation death of her newborn daughter. “Anyone who has a child, particularly a new baby, it tears at their heart,” said Phoenix police Sgt. Tommy Thompson. “It shocks them to think a mother, for whatever reason, would ever suffocate or, for that matter, do any type of injury to their newborn child.” Police said Bradley Koistinen found his daughter’s body in bed next to her mother around 6:45 a.m. April 8 and called 911.

In Homedale, Idaho, 29-year-old Veronica T. Herrera has pleaded to involuntary manslaughter in connection with the death of her 2-year-old daughter, Nakita. According to Idaho Statesman, Herrera initially told police that her daughter hit her head while potty training.

Residents of Calaveras County, California were warned by police to stay indoors after 8-year-old Leila Fowler was stabbed to death by an unknown assailant, who is still roaming the streets of the small town. CBS San Francisco identified the young girl who was due to turn 9 this June. Her 12-year-old brother walked in on an intruder in the house and ended up finding his sister, suffering from multiple stab wounds.

In late 1993, the Criminal Division of the Washington State Attorney General’s Office undertook a 3-1/2 year research project, partially funded by the U.S. Department of Justice, Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention, to study the investigation of child abduction murder cases. In this first research project, published in 1997, researchers reviewed more than 600 child abduction murder cases across the United States, then interviewed the investigating detectives. This data provided law enforcement valuable insight into what investigative techniques tend to be most productive. Now the Attorney General’s Office has released a follow-up study, including 175 additional solved cases.

A Sacramento family was torn apart after a 5-month-old baby boy was taken from his parents following a visit to the doctor. The young couple thought their problems were behind them after their son had a scare at the hospital, but once they got home their problems got even worse. It all began nearly two weeks ago, when Anna Nikolayev and her husband Alex took their 5-month-old boy Sammy to Sutter Memorial Hospital to be treated for flu symptoms, but they didn’t like the care Sammy was getting.

JONESBORO, AR – Police in Jonesboro say a 15th person has been arrested in connection with a rape and child pornography investigation involving a 12-year-old girl. Sgt. Lyle Waterworth told The Jonesboro Sun that a Searcy man was arrested Friday. Police say the 15 people arrested in the case includes a relative of the victim and several juveniles.

On July 3, 2000, Herman Carroll was arrested for sexually assaulting his 12 year old daughter. He is a child sex offender with two prior convictions. He is currently WANTED in Moultrie County, Illinois for: Failure to Appear, Predatory Criminal Sexual Assault of a Child, Criminal Sexual Assault, and Aggravated Criminal Sexual Abuse. He is a skilled trim finisher specializing in new construction. He has family in the Peoria and Mt. Vernon areas of Illinois. Frequently stays in campgrounds. Possible locations are: The Ozarks, Las Vegas, or the Florida Keys. Other Possible Locations: Springfield, MO

On December 26, 1985, Awilda Maddox, age 71, was excited to be spending time with her five grandchildren. Mrs. Maddox’s son, Curtis Jr., had recently moved in with his mother after separating from his wife. The boys, Jody, age 10, and William, age 8, and the girls, Evelyn, age 9, and twins Dawn and Jennifer, age 7 were spending that Christmas with their father and Mrs. Maddox. The children went to bed that evening and were looking forward to watching movies the next day on the new VCR their grandmother had gotten for them for Christmas. Sadly they would never get the chance.

The daughter of a prostitute has won a landmark £20,000 payout after suing social services for failing to take her into full-time care when she was a child in order to protect her from her abusive mother. Collette Elliott, 35, launched legal action against Birmingham social services last year, in what is thought to be the first case of its kind in Britain. Mrs Elliott, from Erdington, Birmingham, had managed to get hold of her social services records which showed officers had been aware of serious concerns about her mother Maureen Batchelor. Batchelor, who died of a brain tumor last August, had been cautioned for soliciting, criminal damage and for failing to feed her daughter properly.

Three men who abducted a vulnerable 13-year-old girl from the streets of London and forced her to become their sex slave have been jailed. The girl, who was described as being from a broken and troubled family, was subjected to sexual abuse over four days after being persuaded to travel with the men to Ipswich in Suffolk in July last year. Mohammed Sheikh, Hamza Ali and Suran Uddin were all convicted of trafficking and sex offences following a trial.

Actress Emily Lloyd has revealed for the first time that she was sexually abused when she was five years old. Emily, 43, who shot to fame as a 16-year-old in the hit 1987 film Wish You Were Here, makes the revelations in her forthcoming autobiography Wish I Was There, which is serialized in The Mail on Sunday’s Event magazine today. She says her abuser was a family friend who babysat for her and her younger sister. Emily writes: ‘Mum had so many demands on her time that she often trusted babysitting duties to friends. ‘One family friend was an older man. What she didn’t know was that he was a depraved predator.

The Palm Beach County Sheriff’s office responded to a call at the St. Mary’s Hospital emergency room in reference to a five-month-old Lake Worth boy being admitted in critical condition with subdural hematomas (brain bleeding). Medical personnel say that the boy’s parents Yasika and Santos Adames denied any knowledge of what happened to him. The parents claim that the mother, Yasika, watched the child during the day, while the father, Santos, was at work and the father watched the child later that day when the mother was at work.

SANTA ANA, CA — A Santa Ana man charged with raping his 11-year-old stepdaughter and impregnating her has been sentenced to 61 years in state prison. Mariano Castro, 58, was found guilty in February of two felony counts of lewd acts on a child, three felony counts of aggravated sexual assault and one felony count of continuous sexual abuse of a child under 14.