On July 15, 2002, Samantha Runnion became the victim of a convicted child molester. As she played with a friend outside her house in a suburban, gated, Southern-California community, she was kidnapped, then driven seventy miles away, sexually assaulted, beaten upside the head and finally asphyxiated via pressure to the chest. (In other words, her killer pressed on her chest until the breath was forced from her lungs and her heart stopped.) Samantha would have turned 6 eleven days later.

A man accused of breaking into a Brisbane home and raping a three-year-old girl also used a digital camera to take photos of him abusing her, a court has been told.

The 31-year-old man, who cannot be named for legal reasons, is facing the first day of a trial in Brisbane District Court today.

Kristina Davies, 19, and Ricky Winter, 23, inflicted terrible injuries on the youngsters, both aged under four, including fractured bones, bruises and bites to their private parts.

Winter will serve his sentence in an adult prison while Davies will spend two years in a youth institute.

One expert witness, a paediatrician, said the case was the worst he encountered in 30 years.

PRYOR — A Salina couple is in jail and facing charges of child abuse by injury and child neglect.

Brandon V. Clark, 22, and Amy Jo Bertrand, 26, were arrested following an investigation that began with an anonymous tip. Salina Police Detective Doug Inman said the tip came in around 10 a.m., on Wednesday.

“We received a report of a baby in a vehicle that appeared badly bruised around the head,” Inman said. Police began searching for the vehicle, eventually locating it on the 500 block of Whittington Street in Salina.

Brussels – The hundreds of child sex abuse cases detailed in a report last week “should never, never have happened”, the head of the Belgian Roman Catholic Church, Andre Leonard, said on Monday in his first public statement since the document was published.

Cleveland, Ohio — More information released on the woman we covered back in August who was accused of beating her son with an iron. After 37-year-old Talthina Jackson found her her 15-year-old son on her computer, she accused him of stealing then choked him, hit him with her keys, an aerosol can and an iron. The bleeding boy ran to a neighbor who called police.

Convicted killer Antonio Rodriguez was given the death sentence by a Superior Court judge Thursday for sexually assaulting and beating to death his girlfriend’s 5-year-old daughter.

Rodriguez, 29, was convicted in July of several charges, including murder, torture and sexual penetration with a foreign object.

No charges have been filed as of Sunday morning for the suspicious death of a three-month-old South Side boy who died Thursday from blunt force trauma caused by child abuse.

As of 8:45 a.m. Sunday, no charges have been filed, according to police News Affairs Officer Michael Sullivan.

Joel Bainter, of 940 W. 32nd Pl., was pronounced dead at Children’s Memorial Hospital at 9 a.m. Thursday, the Cook County Medical Examiner’s office said.

BRUSSELS – Hundreds of sex abuse victims have come forward in Belgium with harrowing accounts of molestation by Catholic clergy that reportedly led to at least 13 suicides and affected children as young as two, a special commission said Friday.

Professor Peter Adriaenssens, chairman of the commission, said the abuse in Belgium may have been even more rampant than the 200-page report suggests.

“Reality is worse than what we present here today because not everyone shares such things automatically in a first contact with the commission,” he told reporters.

Arthur Harold Cox, 58, of Conway, was sentenced Tuesday to 20 years in the Arkansas Department of Correction after pleading no contest to the charge of rape involving a 6-year-old girl.

Based upon the plea, Cox will serve a minimum of 70 percent of his sentence before becoming eligible for parole.

Momentarily at rest, Kristen Stillman sits with her hands clasped, displaying the tattoos on her forearms: “family” on one, “first” on the other. She keeps her hands clasped as she slowly starts her story, a story of the most dysfunctional family imaginable, a story filled with unspeakable horrors.

Riverside – A man suspected of kidnapping and sexually assaulting a 12-year-old Riverside girl was behind bars today.

Matthew David Sutton, 24, of Riverside was arrested Sunday morning after he allegedly exposed himself to two children near Ivanhoe and Campbell avenues, according to Riverside police.

Sutton apparently was cruising the area in an older blue van, Sgt. Wayne Ramaekers said.

Jurors in Dakota County baby rape case didn’t buy man’s tale

The baby girl, raped at 9 months, was one of the county’s youngest sex-assault victims ever. Her assailant faces up to 30 years.
The foreman of a Dakota County jury that convicted a Hastings man of raping a baby said Tuesday that jurors had no doubt defendant Michael Frederick Schmidt was lying when he claimed the girl’s injuries were accidental.

SALEM – A homeless man accused of strangling and raping a 17-year-old girl in the elevator at the Central Square Commuter Rail station in June has been deemed too dangerous to be released, pending his trial.

Following several hearings in Salem Superior Court, Judge John T. Lu ruled that Joseph Sarcione is a danger to the community, “specifically to women, girls and female commuters on the rail system” as he ordered him to remain held without bail at the Middleton Jail.