ALMOST one child a minute contacted Childline for support on Christmas Day. The ISPCC said 1,384 youngsters looked for help on Christmas Day — 38pc up on last year — with many experiencing family difficulties and loneliness. Margie Roe, national Childline manager, said for most children Christmas is a time to have fun and spend time with family, but for many others it can be a time of fear, stress and trauma with alcohol abuse having a huge negative impact.

AN international karate champion is facing jail after being convicted of child abuse against a girl of 13. Liam O’Grady, a World and European gold medalist, collapsed in the dock after being convicted by a jury which heard he texted her 4,759 times over eight months. He sent the girl sex texts and pictures and […]

CALGARY — A dramatic rise in crimes against children is prompting Calgary police to bump up its child abuse unit. The addition of seven investigators, nearly doubling the unit, is designed to help police deal with an increasing workload of disturbing cases of violence against youngsters. “It’s not just Calgary that’s seen this dramatic increase. It’s right across Canada and the U.S. It’s a dramatic, notable increase in offences against children,” said Calgary police Chief Rick Hanson. In Calgary last year, there were 873 cases of children being beaten, sexually abused or killed. That’s up from 713 in 2006.

A couple who allegedly left four young children alone in an apartment covered with algae, mold and feces have been charged in court. While the children were alone, two of the four boys climbed on the edge of a second-story balcony drawing concern from neighbors. Jonathan Robert Brown, 30, and Warintip Loto, 24, both of Tamuning, are being held on $5,000 cash bail after being charged with multiple counts of felony child abuse, said Carlina Charfauros, a spokeswoman for the Office of the Attorney General.

STOKES COUNTY, N.C. — Authorities said a 22-year-old Stokes County man has been charged with abusing his son.The child’s mother, Jennifer Daehnke, said she was at work last Dec. 4 when she received a call that her 5-month-old son, Payton, had been injured.

LOS ANGELES — A man in police custody after allegedly having sex with and pimping a 12-year-old girl. Michael Vincent Pree, 23, was arrested last week on charges of sexual assault of a minor, according to LAPD. According to LAPD, Pree contacted the victim, who was under the age of 12, took her to his home and forced her to have sex with him.

The 24-year-old San Jose mother who dropped her toddler from a two-story windown on Christmas morning has been booked on attempted murder, child abuse and assault with a deadly weapon charges, San Jose police said Monday. Sgt. Jason Dwyer did not know whether Lupita Cotez had been “paper booked” and was still in the hospital suffering from broken bones in her ankles and feet, or whether she had been physically taken into jail custody. A jail spokesman did not immediately return comment to determine her exact location.

DAVENPORT, Iowa — More charges have been filed against a 29-year-old Davenport woman who’s accused of doing nothing to stop her boyfriend from molesting her three daughters. The woman had already been charged with misdemeanor child endangerment. Scott County Attorney Mike Walton told television station WQAD that the new charges include three counts of neglect and three of child endangerment. Three of the counts are felonies.

The Mount Diablo Unified School District Custodian who was arrested on child molestation charges last week worked at at least two Concord elementary schools, according to sources. Law enforcement & the school district aren’t saying where 44-year-old Walnut Creek resident John Astor worked, but we’re hearing it was at Holbrook Elementary & Cambridge Elementary, which are both located in the City of Concord.

Many sex-related stories captured popular attention in 2011. Most upsetting, many of the incidents involved sexual violence. Taken together, they indicate something bigger, deeper, taking place in America, a social crisis. It’s as if the body politic is moaning, declaring that sexual intimacy, too, is a terrain of the mounting social crisis.

NORMAN — Multiple felony charges of rape and lewd acts with a child were filed Monday afternoon against a suspended University of Oklahoma professor. The case involves at least three teen girls, court documents show. Dwain A. Pellebon, 54, was charged with two counts of rape in the first degree of a victim under age 14, two counts of child sexual abuse by lewd acts and two counts of lewd acts with a child under 16.

A state Governor and her appointees obstruct an investigation into repeated coverups of child rape. When they find they can no longer stave off the inevitable, they destroy the evidence. Along the way they try to have the prosecutor disbarred. The Governor later becomes a member of the President’s Cabinet. These are the makings of a major scandal that should be plastered across the front page of every newspaper in America. Instead, hardly anyone has heard of it. Why?

Tricia McKnight is no stranger to domestic abuse and her mission is to share her story in the hopes it will encourage and help other women get out of violent, abusive situations.”A lot of them are like me,” said McKnight, 48, of Breese. “They were ‘trained’ to behave in a certain way and accept certain things and not think anything about it. It becomes a pattern of abuse. I spent 32 years afraid to breathe, literally afraid to breathe.”

Lawyers for the state of Kentucky went back to court Thursday seeking to block the immediate release of hundreds of pages of uncensored records in cases involving child-abuse deaths and injuries — one day after Franklin Circuit Judge Phillip Shepherd ordered them produced for his review.Lawyers for the Cabinet for Health and Family Services said they want a chance to appeal any decision Shepherd makes about releasing records that contain details they believe should be withheld, or redacted.