Having difficult conversations and asking tough, sometimes awkward questions — of your children and those whose care you put them in — is the key to helping protect kids from becoming victims of sexual abuse, experts say. “You have to be strong enough to overcome your fears about teaching your children about sex and their sexuality, so you can arm them with knowledge to arm themselves,” said Kimberly Steward, a Park Forest resident and facilitator for Darkness to Light, a national group aimed at ending child sexual abuse.

Cleveland, OH— A Cleveland man was arrested and charged with endangering a child after his infant son had to be taken to the hospital and put on life support. A baby wipe was found shoved down his throat. Joshua Rains, 25, told police that the wipe disappeared after he wiped his son’s mouth. He claimed in trying to pull the wipe free, it would only go deeper inside the baby’s throat.

Four teenagers have been found guilty of murdering pupil Zac Olumegbon outside the gates of his school, and one offender has been convicted of manslaughter. Judge Giles Forrester lifted a ban on reporting the identities of the defendants, who are all from south London and 18 or younger. Helder Demorais, 17, Ricardo Giddings, 17, Jamal Moore, 17, and Kyle Kinghorn, 18, were found guilty of murder and face life terms. Shaquille Haughton, 16, was found guilty of manslaughter.

OHIO–A 13-year-old boy has been arrested for the rape of a 5-year-old girl at a McDonald’s Playland in southern Ohio, police said Friday. The assault allegedly occurred on October 29 in Anderson Township, near Cincinnati. The 5-year-old old was visiting the restaurant with her grandmother and playing in the Playland area at the time of the alleged attack.

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Fresno police have arrested a 20-year-old man and charged him with murdering a toddler Sunday in a horrific case of child abuse. The man, Xavier Christopher Hawkins, was the live-in boyfriend of the boy’s mother, police said. Hawkins also goes by the last name Weeks. He was arrested Thursday and booked in Fresno County Jail on charges of murder, child abuse causing great bodily harm and penetration with a foreign object.

The words “world’s best dad” are embroidered on hats and printed on t-shirts all over this country, but a Frenchman named Andre Bamberski just cornered the market on paternal superlatives. After three decades spent trying to find justice for his daughter’s rape and murder in 1982, Bamberski found the man he says did it, kidnapped him in Germany, and placed him in the hands of police in France. Can you really blame him?

Child sexual abuse has been at the center of unprecedented public attention during the last decade. All fifty states and the District of Columbia have enacted statutes identifying child sexual abuse as criminal behavior (Whitcomb, 1986). This crime encompasses different types of sexual activity, including voyeurism, sexual dialogue, fondling, touching of the genitals, vaginal, anal, or oral rape and forcing children to participate in pornography or prostitution.

Houston, TX – Arlene Alaniz, a 28-year-old Texas woman was jailed Tuesday after she allegedly tied her special needs toddler to a crib and then starved him to the point of cardiac arrest. According to police, an investigation was launched early last month after Alaniz’ 3-year-old son was rushed to a Houston area hospital while in cardiac arrest.

AKRON, OH– An Ohio man has been charged with beating his daughter because she couldn’t do her alphabet homework. Christopher D. Curry, 39, of Akron, Ohio, allegedly beat his 5-year-old daughter for having trouble identifying the letter D on Tuesday. Akron police said Curry picked up the girl by the neck and struck her in the head repeatedly.

Chat Roulette, launched online in November, instantly puts users face-to-face with a stranger anywhere in the world. In a concept Queensland Police say is one of the most dangerous on the web, the site shows webcam footage of the stranger – one of more than 20,000 on the site at one time – and has an option to “spin the wheel” to the next stranger.

A Massachusetts mother is facing child endangerment charges after authorities said she forced her daughter to pose nude in hopes of winning a $20,000 mother-daughter bikini photo shoot. Ann Lussier, 41, of Attleboro, Mass., allegedly made her daughter strip down to her bra and underwear and then completely disrobe while a man who identified himself as a Florida-based photographer watched over Skype.

COMPTON, CA — Parents at an elementary school in Compton are expressing outrage that a former porn star was invited to read to their children. Earlier this month, recently-retired porn star Sasha Grey was a guest reader at Emerson Elementary School for their Read Across America Day.

ABILENE, TX — A West Texas woman is accused of buying a 7-week-old infant from the child’s mother for $2,000 — to be paid in installments, Abilene police said Friday. The woman, Marilu Munoz, 27, and the child’s mother, Joana Delacruz Huerta, 29, were charged late Thursday with the sale or purchase of an infant, a third-degree felony, police said.