SANTA ANA – A notorious child molester’s latest bid for freedom from a state mental hospital was taken under submission by a judge Friday, who said he’d decide within a month whether his petition warrants another jury trial.

Sid Landau, who was hounded from one Orange County home to another in the late 1990s by protesters shortly after the enactment of Megan’s Law, is seeking release through a fourth civil commitment trial in two years.

ARCADIA – A San Gabriel convicted sex offender received a sentence of 30 years to life in prison Thursday for molesting a 5-year-old girl at a mall bookstore in Arcadia, officials said.

Jaime Elvis Elizondo, 35, was convicted June 8 in Pasadena Superior Court of committing a lewd act on a child, Los Angeles County District Attorney’s Office spokeswoman Jane Robison said.

ORANGE COUNTY — Orange County sheriff deputies say a 170-page manual is circulating around Central Florida. It shows people, step-by-step, how to molest children. It also includes where to find potential victims.

“I’ve never seen anything like it. It was pretty amazing when I first saw it just because how detailed it was,” said Detective Philip Graves with the Orange County Sheriff’s Office (full interview) .

A Mountain Drive man pleaded no contest to crimes Friday morning that will put him in state prison for over two-and-a-half years and require him to register as a sex offender for the remainder of his life.

Instead of going through a preliminary hearing on Wednesday — where details of the allegations Jeffrey Johnson faced would begin to emerge — Johnson pleaded no contest on Friday to two counts of unlawful genital penetration with a foreign object of a child under the age of 14.

UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) – More than two dozen children in the Democratic Republic of the Congo are among the hundreds of victims of a recent wave of rapes in the nation’s conflict-torn east, the United Nations said on Friday.

All but one of the 28 confirmed child victims were girls, and one of the cases involved attempted rape, the office of U.N. special representative for children and armed conflict Radhika Coomaraswamy said in a statement.

The United Nations defines a minor as a child under 18 years old. The statement said the child victims were between the ages of 12 and 17.

Three individuals charged with child rape and other crimes in Nashville could face charges in Rutherford County after the case is adjudicated there.

Clarence Valentine, 45, and Paula Valentine, 44, along with the mother of the 13-year-old female victim, were recently arrested in Enterprise, Ga., after Rutherford County Detective Mickey McCullough received information that suspects of a child rape investigation might be there and notified the U.S. Marshal’s Service.

THE truth about child abuse has long been obscured. Many adults and institutions have used a range of weapons to silence children. The full extent of the lying and deception is still being uncovered.

Sadly, children make perfect victims. They are smaller and weaker than their abusers. They are easily intimidated by rapists and others who assault them.

SALISBURY — A Salisbury charged in the sexual abuse of a 10-year-old girl was convicted on nine counts of child sex abuse by a Circuit Court jury on Thursday.

Rahymeen Jamel Barber, 30, was charged following an eight-month investigation by S.A.R.A.H.’s house — the Wicomico County Child Advocacy Center.

KANSAS CITY, Mo. — A 2-year-old girl who was taken to Children’s Mercy Hospital on Wednesday night not breathing has died, according to a Kansas City police spokeswoman.

Doctors were able to revive Brandi L. Clemoens Wednesday night, but she remained in critical condition with no brain function until she died shortly after noon on Friday.

A Birmingham computer engineer who befriended a mother via a dating website and then raped her daughter has been given an indeterminate prison sentence.

Phillip Anthony Brown, 37, who previously lived at Ox Leasow, Woodgate Valley, Birmingham, pleaded guilty to two counts of rape, five counts of making indecent images of a child and five accounts of making indecent images of other children.

BOULDER, Colo. — A Boulder man has been arrested on 22 counts of sexual exploitation of children and one count of child abuse.

Marciene Sullivan, 52, is accused of distributing and possessing child pornography, including pornographic pictures of a juvenile girl he knows.

DANVERS — A Danvers man charged with beating a 2-year-old girl and her 6-year-old sister is being held without bail today, pending a hearing to determine whether he is too dangerous to release.

J. Franco A. Bertone, 22, of 96 Newbury St., 23B — an address for a mobile home park on Route 1 — was arrested Tuesday by Danvers police and charged with two counts of assault and battery on a child with injury.

VICTORVILLE • After a month-long investigation, San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Victorville station authorities arrested a couple for abusing and starving their 3-year-old daughter, officials said Thursday.

The toddler was described as looking like an 18-month-old and was covered in new and old injuries throughout her tiny body, authorities reported.

An alarming spike in child abuse or neglect reports involving children who are 5 years old or younger has led several government of Guam agencies to urge parents to take a proactive approach in protecting victims who are too young to protect themselves.

During a press conference yesterday, Lydia Tenorio, administrator of Child Protective Services, said the number of incidents involving these young victims had climbed noticeably in recent weeks.

According to figures provided by the agency, there have been about 450 reports involving victims under the age of 5 made to CPS this year, including more than 150 in the current quarter, which doesn’t end until October.