The jury trial of a Rapid City area couple accused of using fan belts and a cattle prod to discipline their three young sons started Wednesday at the Pennington County Courthouse. David Roney, 53, and Mary Roney, 41, are each charged with two counts of aggravated child abuse of a child under 7-years-old and one count of child abuse. The abuse allegedly occurred over a 16-month period spanning the last half of 2008 up until Dec. 2009 when the Pennington County Sheriff’s Office and the Department of Social Services took the children into protective custody.

A teenage mother in North Las Vegas has been arrested for child abuse after her newborn baby died last summer. North Las Vegas police said the 16-year-old, who was not identified, was arrested Tuesday for child abuse with substantial bodily harm and child endangerment with substantial bodily harm.

ELIZABETHTON — Criminal Court Judge Robert Cupp denied requests for probation for two Carter County women who had been accused of child abuse and ordered them to serve 4-year sentences. Tina Woods, 44, and Toinette Worthington, 38, had each been originally charged with two counts of aggravated child abuse in December 2007, when investigators of the Carter County Sheriff’s Department found a boy under age 8 at their Lovers Lane residence who had been taped to a potty chair. The boy was said to be a bed wetter. Investigators said the boy had been taped to the chair on other occasions and had his eyes taped shut as well.

HONOLULU — A Big Island school P.E. teacher charged with child abuse has been placed on leave by the Department of Education, officials confirmed.Clifford Fabacher was arrested Jan. 6 in connection with the abuse of a child in his home, DOE officials said.After he was formally charged on Jan. 13, Fabacher was placed on “department directed leave” from his job at Kealakehe Intermediate School in Kona.

GENESEE TOWNSHIP, Michigan — Corey Martin Yeager, 21, was arraigned this afternoon on first-degree child abuse charges after authorities alleged he landed his 8-month-old baby in the hospital by shaking her. The charge is a 15-year felony.Yeager’s 8-month-old daughter, Lily May Yeager, is in critical condition in a local hospital.

TUPELO, Miss. _ A Tupelo man is in the Lee County Adult Detention Center on felony child abuse charges.
Sheriff Jim Johnson tells WTVA.com Jimmy Whitfield, 27, was arrested after his office was notified of a 10 month old child brought into the North Mississippi Medical Center on Monday. Johnson says doctors told them the child had suffered a head injury and his brain was swollen.

PORTLAND, Ore. — A Portland day care worker was arrested earlier this month for child sex abuse and detectives feared there could be more possible victims. On January 9 Portland detectives arrested 24-year-old Inez Lambert of Northeast after a tip came in from the Child Abuse Hotline.

An East Side woman regularly left her 3-year-old son locked in an unlit linen closet for hours at a time when she wasn’t home, authorities say. The space was 24 inches wide and, because of shelving, just 12 inches high, said Sgt. John Hurst of the Columbus Police Division’s special-victims bureau. “No lights; (he) couldn’t sit up, couldn’t stand up – had to lay down,” Hurst said yesterday. “It was kind of like an area (where) you’d put your towels next to the bathroom.”

A doctor who ran a “house of horrors” abortion clinic has been charged in the deaths of one woman and seven babies who prosecutors say were born alive then killed with scissors. Dr. Kermit Gosnell, who treated mostly poor and immigrant women, was arrested Wednesday along with nine employees from his West Philadelphia Women’s Medical Society – among them a high school student who performed medial treatments with no license.

(ARLINGTON, Va.) – A US Army lawyer and 1997 West Point graduate has pleaded guilty in Virginia court to forcible sodomy with an infant. Daniel A. Woolverton, 35, of Arlington, VA, and originally Lakeland, FL, had a second charge of raping the infant dropped in court. His prison sentence of 37 years will be served concurrently with federal charges earlier this year where he also pleaded guilty and was sentenced to 27 years for sexually assaulting a several month-old infant boy which he videotaped.

Braintree resident Michael J. Cimmino is facing yet another charge of indecent sexual assault against a minor after a victim came foward and lodged a complaint dating back to 2009. Cimmino, 54, of 400 Commercial St., was arraigned this week in Quincy District Court on charges of indecent assault and battery on a child under 14 years of age and open and gross lewdness. A judge ordered Cimmino held in the county lockup on $15,000 bail, in addition to the $15,000 bail amount set in connection with other charges against Cimmino.

Dubai: The bus driver accused of raping a four-year-old girl on a school bus was employed with the school and its transportation service provider for 14 years, Gulf News has learnt. The conductor of the bus, among the three suspects arrested, was with the school for seven years. The Indian child, a pupil of Modern High School, was allegedly raped on November 11. The parents notified police on January 9. “My daughter is scared and can’t sleep”

CINCINNATI, OHIO – A woman is charged after being accused of raping a 6-year-old child. Police say that Kenya Gilliam, 26, had inappropriate sexual contact with that child in 2005. Gilliam faces one count of rape and is being held on a $50,000 bond. She is also not allowed to have any further contact with the victim.

Parents whose child is the last pupil to be dropped off now live in constant fear. The ‘last child’ syndrome has witnessed many a psychologist publish tomes on being the youngest born in a family and its social ramifications during the growth cycle. However, these days the term takes on a new meaning for parents who fear the safety of their child just because s/he happens to be the last one to step off the school bus on the route home. Rape is an ugly word. It gets uglier when the word child is latched on to this heinous crime, which wields enough power to strike fear in the hearts of parents.