STOCKTON — Newly released grand jury transcripts show Melissa Huckaby drugged 8-year old Sandra Cantu and sexually assaulted her with a rolling pin before strangling her with an alcohol soaked noose.

Sandra”s body was found with a blood-soaked cloth knotted into a noose, and her official cause of death was listed as “homicidal asphyxiation,” according to court records that had previously been under gag order.

PORTLAND, Ore. — The search for missing 7-year old Kyron Horman has placed an unwelcome spotlight on family members.

Detectives appearing to be focusing their investigation on Kyron stepmother with a flier showing her picture, and asking if anyone saw her at the boy’s school the day he disappeared.

San Jose, CA- On Tuesday, a 5-year girl was playing on her front lawn when a man, who police believe is 35-year old Phillip Michael Dominguez, grabbed her and took her to his home where he then sexually assaulted her. The only good news about this story is that the girl was later released.

Atlanta, Georgia – What initially started out as a 911 call involving a 12-year-old boy suffering from a heat stroke turned into something far more horrific, with the boy’s sister and her boyfriend charged with his murder. Police say that Omar Pitts and Sabrina Powell were attempting to punish the boy Thursday afternoon by making him stand outside the Camelot apartments holding a paint bucket.

SEATTLE – A man who used his son to lure girls to his Lake Forest Park home and rape them was sentenced to 20 years in prison Friday. His son was sentenced to six months in jail.

The father, Victor Casarez Sr., said during Friday’s court hearing that he deserved the death penalty for what he did.

Casarez Sr. and his son had pleaded guilty after a 2009 incident in which a 15-year-old Shoreline girl was drugged, raped and photographed at Casarez’s home.

MANATEE — A 29-year-old man was sentenced to life in prison Friday by Judge Thomas Gallen after a jury deliberated for two hours to find him guilty of sexually battering a 5-year-old girl, according to prosecutors.

Kyle Wortman was convicted of raping the girl, who was from his neighborhood in the 2400 block of Bayshore Gardens Parkway. Wortman told the girl’s mother he was taking the child to the store with him to buy cigarettes on Dec. 30, 2006.

U.S. Marshals based in Abingdon, Virginia captured a fugitive wanted by North Carolina authorities on a first degree rape charge.

24-year old Eleuterio Diaz of Greensboro, NC was charged with raping of his girlfriend’s daughter, who is under the age of 13. Diaz was found working on a home construction site in The Virginian.

Not even the sacred halls of New Beverly Baptist Church afforded protection to the young boys who fell victim to Randall T. Hollifield, a 46-year-old Powell man who was sentenced to spend 50 years in prison Friday for molesting three children.

Hollifield, who was a youth volunteer at the Knoxville church, used his position to meet boys and even videotaped one of them performing sexual acts in the house of worship’s gymnasium and fellowship hall, authorities said during a hearing in Knox County Criminal Court.

Dr. Sonnet Ehlers, of South Africa, has invented a female condom with ‘teeth’ in an attempt to thwart rape in that country. South Africa has one of the highest rape rates world-wide, and very few convictions. Justice for a victim is rare, indeed.

Ehlers’ had to sell her home and car to fund the anti-rape project that some are calling a medieval device. The female condom contains jagged rows of teeth-like hooks line its inside, and is inserted in the woman like a tampon.

ANDREW, IOWA – The grandmother of a Jackson County four -year- old who drowned in a bathtub says several calls were placed to the state child abuse hotline over the past year, but were ignored.

”The Department of Human Services was called many times”, said Diane Haylock on Friday from her home in Maquoketa. ”It shouldn’t have happened. DHS was involved many times, why didn’t someone get him out of there?”

Collin Holdgrafer died Saturday at the apartment of his adoptive parents in Andrew, Iowa. Now, they’re charged in connection with his death. Danielle Holdgrafer is charged with first degree murder, accused of intentionally holding the four year old’s head underwater in the bathtub.

HUNTER police dealt with almost 40 child abuse victims every week last year but experts warn the figures are “just a drop in the ocean” because most offences against children go unreported.

The statistics, prepared exclusively for The Herald by the NSW Bureau of Crime Statistics and Research, show that while Lake Macquarie records the highest number of child assault and sexual assault cases, big increases are being reported in the Upper Hunter.

Drug abuse, soaring temperatures and a sagging economy are cited as factors in recent child abuse cases in the area.

In the past two weeks, there have been 23 children taken into state custody because of allegations of abuse or neglect in Bowie and Cass counties alone.

RICHMOND — A Berea man accused of seriously injuring his 6-week-old daughter was indicted Wednesday by a Madison County grand jury.

Brian Farris, 19, was charged with first-degree criminal abuse after state child abuse investigators contact Berea police Feb. 16 after the infant was admitted to the University of Kentucky Medical Center and diagnosed with a brain hemorrhage, lacerations to her liver, rib and wrist fractures, evidence of seizures and other internal bleeding.

In ancient times before cell phones, texting and other multi-tasks put safe driving in the back seat for too many people, we were often warned about leaving pets in a locked car on a hot day. But these days, even small children who are already in the back seat can be subjected to such dangerous indifference by distracted drivers who leave them in a car.

Across America, children are dying because parents or guardians who are in too big of a hurry or too much of a multi-tasking fog forget and leave them locked in a car as temperatures climb toward 100 degrees. Such a sad child death happened again Sunday in St. Augustine, Fla. Don’t let it happen on any day to the child for whom you are utterly responsible.