OKLAHOMA CITY — A man has been arrested for allegedly making violent threats against children at four area schools.
Authorities say 47-year-old Troy Kegel told a friend Monday he was going to shoot at school children. Sgt. Gary Knight said on Monday, Kegel called a friend and said he was very upset with events going on in his life. “He made a threat to her that he was possibly going to go out and shoot school children,” said Knight. That friend called police. Police came to Kegel’s house in the 4200 block of N.W. 16th Street and did a search, but no weapons were found.

NEW YORK — A Hasidic rabbi and three of his sons are suspected of sexually abusing at least four female relatives after the eldest victim confided in a co-worker at a Jewish school, police said Friday. The 58-year-old father and his 21-year-old son fled to Israel two days ago and are wanted for questioning in the case, police said. They were apparently driven to the airport by the mother.

Two other sons, a 24-year-old and a 15-year-old, were arrested on sexual abuse and rape charges. It was unclear whether they had attorneys, and a message left at the home wasn’t immediately returned. The suspects’ names are being withheld by The Associated Press to avoid identification of victims.

Police say the abuse came to light after the oldest victim, now 20, who worked as a teacher’s aide at a yeshiva in Brooklyn, told a teacher there she had been abused. Authorities believe she was assaulted by her father repeatedly for 15 years. The other victims range in age from 8 to 19, and investigators believe the abuse was also repeated.

WILLIMANTIC, CT ( KTLA) — A school teacher from a Willimantic magnet school was given 13 years in prison after being caught having repeated sexual encounters with a 15-year-old student. Adam Friedman, 46, of Newington, received his sentence Thursday after pleading guilty to second-degree sexual assault, risk of injury to a minor, possession of child pornography and violation of conditions of release.

UNION CITY, Calif. — A registered sex offender has been arrested on suspicion of raping a 2-year-old girl in a Union City Dollar Tree Store while her family was in the next aisle. Thirty-six-year-old Eugene Ramos of Union City has been booked into Santa Rita Jail in Dublin on suspicion of kidnapping, rape, sexual acts with a child and false imprisonment in the attack around 1 p.m. Wednesday. Union City police say Ramos snatched the girl and sexually assaulted her within a span of about 30 seconds while her grandmother and aunt were Christmas shopping in the next aisle.

A 35-year-old Tigard man Tuesday received a 20-year sentence in federal prison after he admitted to begging an 8-year-old girl via e-mail for sex. Assistant U.S. District Attorney Gary Sussman said in the court Tuesday that Darrick Haaby was “relentless” in his pursuit of his friend’s young stepdaughter. Haaby and his wife sometimes babysat his longtime friend’s two stepdaughters, and when his friend found several inappropriate e-mails to his 8-year-old stepdaughter in October 2009, he called police.

Over a period of six months Newton, 32, recorded himself hitting, slapping and kicking little Charlie Hunt. He then gave the clips titles including “Happy Slap”, “Two Minutes Of Pain” and “Crying In Cot”. To the outside world, Newton looked a typical family man. He was pictured holding Charlie aloft just four months before he died. But it hid a sinister side. And last night the role of social services in the period before Charlie’s death was being looked into. The Sun can reveal that Charlie’s mother Laura Chapman, 30, lost custody of her two other children – known as Child A and Child L. They were taken into care amid allegations of ill-treatment. And it can also be disclosed that she was still being monitored by social workers when she started dating factory worker Newton in 2009.

A former Miami-Dade County social worker’s aide will spend the rest of his life in prison — and not face the death penalty — for stabbing his wife 61 times and stabbing her two young children, a jury recommended Thursday. In a surprise decision, jurors — after only an hour of deliberations — rejected a death sentence for Grady Nelson, 53. He was convicted in the grisly January 2005 murder of his wife, Angelina Martinez. Miami-Dade Circuit Judge Jacqueline Hogan Scola immediately sentenced Nelson to life behind bars.

Australians participated in child abuse which fuelled an international network of websites selling pay-per-view video and still images of sickening child porn, authorities say. A coalition of detectives from seven countries and Interpol has shut down 230 websites, first set up in the US and then run from eastern Europe. The first phase of the investigation, begun by US authorities in 2006, identified 30,000 customers in 132 countries accessing the degrading pictures and videos. Authorities, having already caught many of those alleged to have run the sites, now expect to begin arresting customers, having secured their credit card and other personal details. Australian Federal Police (AFP) assistant commissioner Neil Gaughan says it’s clear some of the abuse featured on the websites originated in Australia.

CORPUS CHRISTI — The 10-year-old daughter of a Corpus Christi man accused of forcing her to take a scalding hot shower testified on Wednesday that she also endured slaps to the face, kicks and belt whippings from her father and his girlfriend. The girl’s father, Palanco Tatman, 30, and Crystal Robinson, 27, each face seven felony counts of injury to a child. The girl was brought to Driscoll Children’s Hospital on June 15 and was flown that same day to a Galveston hospital for treatment of burns on more than 20 percent of her body.

MISSOULA, Mont. — A 35-year-old Helena man who counseled sexually abused children has been sentenced to 17½ years in a child pornography case. Alejandro Arturo Scholz was sentenced Thursday by U.S. District Judge Donald Molloy in Missoula after previously pleading guilty to sexual exploitation of children, receipt of child pornography and possession of child pornography.

A Morris man who brutally beat his former best friend’s 2-year-old son to death after starting an affair with the man’s wife was sentenced to 52 years in prison Wednesday. Gilbert Knowles, 36, described by a prosecutor as a high school dropout and drug user who worked occasionally and survived on borrowed money, must serve the entire sentence. In August, he was convicted of first-degree murder in the 2007 beating death of Devin Owens, who was found wedged between his bed and a wall above two pools of blood. Authorities have repeatedly described it as one of the worst cases of child abuse they’ve seen.

Jacksonville, FL — Justin Satterfield, 25, and Brandy Purvis, 24, are being held without bond this morning, both having been charged with child abuse, after a nasty little incident at a Super 8 Motel early Wednesday morning. Authorities say the two were fighting that morning when one of them went for an AK-47 that had been concealed under a mattress. That led to more arguing as the two began rasslin’ over the weapon. At some point during the tug-o-war, the gun went off, injuring the couple’s 7-month-old baby boy.

HENNIKER, N.H. — A 73-year-old convicted pedophile was charged with touching a 10-year-old girl over the weekend told police he had abused hundreds of children and will continue to do if released. On Wednesday, John Esbensen was arraigned on a charge of aggravated felonious sexual after police say he touched a 10-year-old girl inappropriately while at the Hillsborough transfer station on Saturday. Hillsborough Police Capt. Darren Remillard said that when he interviewed Esbensen on Tuesday, he admitted he had abused hundreds of children. Esbensen, who has already served three years in prison for sexually assaulting two children in 1996, also stated that he wasn’t rehabilitated in prison and that the offender program “was a joke.”

A popular kitchen spice is gaining popularity with teenagers, but not for cooking. Many kids are apparently using ground nutmeg to get high. Homemade videos on YouTube show teens consuming large amounts of the spice by eating it, snorting it and even smoking it. The spice is typically used in desserts and drinks like eggnog. An oil in the nutmeg apparently creates hallucinations. Authorities say the side-effects of using nutmeg to get high, like upset stomach and vomiting, will often act as a deterrent from using it again.