YANKTON, SD – Authorities have released information surrounding a missing 6-year-old boy in Yankton. At approximately 7:29 p.m. Sunday, Lincoln Hilt was reported missing at Riverside Park. Family members were fishing on a boat dock and could not find the 6 year old. Several agencies started a ground search and Yankton County Search and Rescue brought in their dive team. On Monday, authorities are continuing their search in and around the Missouri River. Hilt was last seen wearing tan pants and a green shirt with tan shoes. He wears glasses and has blonde hair. His family confirmed his name and released a photo of Hilt Monday afternoon.

ROCK HILL, South Carolina – Two former officers sworn to serve and protect the community are accused of hurting their child so badly, officials say, he has to be fed through a feeding tube. The couple had a Department of Social Services (DSS) hearing Monday morning at the York County family court. WBTV’s cameras got a look at Audrey Schurig and Robert Taylor when they left the hearing, which was closed to the public, in Rock Hill with their families. Neither Schurig or Taylor’s lawyers would share what happened inside the courtroom.

California – A 2-year-old girl who was found alive hours after getting abducted from a Los Angeles County car wash was discovered naked and in shock, witnesses said. The girl was found sitting alone next to a dumpster outside a Cudahy burger joint Thursday, just two hours after she disappeared while screaming for her mother at a Gardena car wash. Police initially said the girl was “okay.” They have since said she was injured during the attack. They declined to describe her injuries and are no longer identifying her publicly.

PENNSYLVANIA – An infertile woman convinced her new husband to repeatedly rape her 15-year-old daughter so she could have another child. Misty Machinshok, 33, has been jailed for 15 to 30 years for the abuse in which she ‘coached’ the pair on the best positions to conceive, and held her daughter’s hand ‘the first few times’. She planned to tell friends and family that the teenager got pregnant with a stranger at a house party in their home town of Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania. Her 29-year-old husband Gary Machinshok, who she met through a website called onlinebootycall.com, will be sentenced this month after pleading no contest to raping the child ‘every few days’ throughout 2013.

A 13-year-old girl from Missouri who had been missing since Sunday morning has been found in New Mexico, 850 miles away from her home. Hannah Kennish sneaked out of her family’s home to meet up with Raymond Vallia, a 55-year-old man she had met online and developed a relationship with, according to Daily Mail. Vallia, who communicated with Kennish using Facebook, is a married grandfather. He lives in Texas, but also has an apartment in Albuquerque.

The unprecedented scale of current police investigations into historic child abuse can be revealed for the first time today, as senior officers warn of the challenge of investigating alleged crimes that go back decades.

A 25-year-old man has been charged with murdering his five-month-old daughter. Tomas Driukas was arrested after paramedics were called to his home in Birmingham in the early hours of Wednesday morning. His daughter was taken to Birmingham Children’s Hospital with breathing difficulties. The infant, who is believed to be a twin, died later that day after suffering ‘several injuries’, police said. Detectives arrested the baby’s parents on suspicion of murder yesterday. The couple had a young girl and twin babies, neighbors said.

NORTH LAS VEGAS, Nevada — Police said Friday that they’re trying to find a couple and five children who left a North Las Vegas home where a 3-year-old girl was found dead and a 4-month-old girl was so badly neglected by her 17-year-old mother that the child was hospitalized in critical condition. If Kellie Cherie Phillips, 38, and Jondrew Megil Lachaux, a 39-year-old ex-convict, aren’t in Nevada, they may be in the Los Angeles or Oakland, California, areas, North Las Vegas police Officer Aaron Patty said. Patty told reporters that Phillips and Lachaux were sought for questioning, and that no Amber Alert or arrest warrant had been issued.

Queensland toddler Kyhesha-Lee Joughin was forced to use the room she was locked in as a toilet before dying in severe distress of internal injuries, a court has heard.Shocking allegations of the circumstances surrounding the three-year-old’s 2013 death were revealed on Wednesday as family friend who was charged with the toddlers manslaughter was granted bail. The bail hearing revealed that Kyhesha-Lee suffered blows to her stomach causing severe bowel damage- ultimately leading to her death. Kyhesha-Lee was in the care of her father Matthew Lee Williamson and Christopher Arthur Neville Kent who have both been charged with manslaughter and child cruelty. Crown prosecutor Vicki Loury alleged the toddler also suffered a penetrative injury to her vagina three days before her death.

A former Florida teacher accused of repeatedly having sex with at least three students has pleaded guilty to three dozen criminal counts. Jennifer Fichter, 30, was set to attend a pre-trial hearing in Polk County Court Thursday morning, but instead she pleaded guilty to all 37 counts of unlawful sexual contact with a minor. Each charge carries a maximum of 15 years in prison. Fichter’s sentencing is scheduled for July 2. Fichter taught English at Central Aerospace Academy in Lakeland but was fired after her arrest last April. Prosecutors said Fichter had sexual relationships with at least three 17-year-old students. One of the trysts resulted in a pregnancy, which Fichter then terminated.

When Purvi Patel showed up in the St. Joseph Regional Medical Center’s maternity ward, bleeding and showing a protruding umbilical cord, Dr. Kelly McGuire immediately knew something was wrong. “There should have been a baby at the end of the umbilical cord,” he testified in an Indiana court room. McGuire, who is obligated to report cases of suspected child abuse, called the police, he told PRI. Informed that officials were heading to her home, Patel told her doctors that she’d had a miscarriage and had left her stillborn fetus in a dumpster behind a shopping center. Still in his hospital scrubs, McGuire followed police cars to the scene and examined the fetus, which he pronounced dead on arrival. Patel was charged with child neglect, and later with killing her fetus, and on Monday she was sentenced to 20 consecutive years in prison.

Thirty-three years after the lifeless body of a 6-year-old California boy was found at a construction site, authorities have arrested a convicted sex offender for the child’s murder. Jeffrey Vargo was last seen alive on July 2, 1981. He left his home on his bike to go to a fireworks stand in the city of Anaheim. His parents found his bike abandoned in an alley a few hours after he was last seen. The next day, two construction workers found his body at a construction site in the city of Pomona.

Within weeks of a Sydney mother starting a relationship with a Christian hip-hop producer, her seven-year-old son was allegedly being punished. He was forced to wear his soiled underpants on his head, stand on a coffee tin for hours and undergo “boot-camp” style punishment. Three months later, she believed the devil was working through him. A month after that, he was dead.

Perpetrators of child sexual abuse (CSA) may gain the trust of potential child victims and their caregivers by methodically “grooming” them. This process begins with identifying potential victims, gaining their trust, and breaking down their defenses. These grooming tactics are often directed at potential youth victims as well as the adult caregivers—parents, other youth-serving professionals, and the community-at-large. After gaining access to children and youth by achieving this trust, the perpetrator initiates some kind of contact that s/he finds sexually gratifying. This sexual contact may range from voyeurism to rape and other forms of child sexual abuse. Grooming helps the offender gain access to the victim, and sets up a relationship grounded in secrecy so that the crime is less likely to be discovered.