UTAH – A Utah man who allegedly punched his 3-month-old son in the face after the infant spit up on him last weekend has been charged with second-degree felony child abuse. Mason Allen Blair, 22, of Ogden, was charged Friday in Provo’s 4th District Court, accused of leaving the baby suffering from “severe head trauma, including multiple brain bleed.” Police said earlier this week that the child was initially in critical condition, but had been stabilized and was thought to be gradually improving. A condition update was not immediately available Friday.

WANTED IN TRI-CITIES, WASHINGTON: Convicted child molester, Jamie Torres, is running under the radar in the Tri-Cities, where he’s wanted for failing to register as a sex offender — a felony crime he’s been busted for several times already — both in Franklin County and Benton County. Torres is also a High-Violent Offender whose been convicted of assault.

A convicted sex offender has been sentenced to 20 years in jail after sexually assaulting and getting a 12-year-old girl pregnant. Jose Anthony Caracciolo, 50, is already behind bars and serving a 25-year federal prison sentence for transporting the girl out of state for sex, and had pleaded guilty in September 2014 to first-degree aggravated sexual assault. Investigators with the Atlantic County Prosecutor’s Office first became aware of Caracciolo’s crimes in New Jersey in April 2013 after police in the town of Egg Harbor looked into the girl’s pregnancy.

CLEVELAND, Ohio – A Cleveland man accused in a 2015 child rape turned himself in to authorities Tuesday night, officials said. Kayoiunderne Hicks, 29, surrendered to the Cuyahoga County Sheriff’s Office, the U.S. Marshals said in an email. Hicks is charged in Cleveland Municipal Court with one count of aggravated rape, records show. The incident took place in June 2015, court records state. The rape victim is a child younger than 6, the marshals said.

BUCYRUS, OH – He told police he raped a 5-year-old girl, and now could spend the rest of his life behind bars. Donald C. Fisher, 56, of Bucyrus, was sentenced Monday to life in prison with the possibility of parole after 15 years after he entered a plea of guilty to one count of first-degree felony rape.

DETROIT, MI – Detroit police are investigating after an 11-month-old baby died due to alleged child abuse. According to police, the baby was left with family on May 17 around 7 p.m. By 9 p.m., the family had taken him to the hospital due to difficulty breathing. The baby was in critical condition and after investigating at the hospital, they determined the baby had been abused and notified Child Protective Services.

A Knox County stepmother will spend more than two decades behind bars for abusing her stepsons. On March 12, Jessica Cox was found guilty of beating, burning and starving her two stepsons. She was convicted on 24 of the 29 counts against her. That includes 23 counts of aggravated child abuse and 1 count of reckless endangerment.

Whether it is psychological, emotional or sexual, being a victim of abuse can leave emotional and mental wounds that are much more difficult to heal than cuts and bruises. Survivors of childhood abuse may often find it immensely difficult to cope with the damage to their own mental health and the intense, negative thoughts and feelings that plague them for a long time after the actual abuse has ended. Going through abuse in childhood can lead to mental health issues in adulthood, which can hinder an individual’s ability to find peace and happiness in their life.

NEVADA – Las Vegas police arrested the father of a 3-year-old boy late Friday after the child reportedly drowned in a bathtub that afternoon and had apparent signs of abuse. The father, Brandon Nicholson, faces multiple felony charges including murder by child abuse, police said. About 2:10 p.m., Metropolitan Police Department officers responded to a home on the 4600 block of Vegas Drive to investigate the possible drowning incident.

Pope Francis acknowledged Saturday that the Vatican has a 2,000-case backlog in processing clerical sex abuse cases and says criticism of the slow pace was justified. But he says more staff are being added and insists the Vatican is “on the right path.” Francis was making his first comments about the criticism leveled at the Vatican’s handling of sex abuse cases by Marie Collins, an Irish abuse survivor who resigned from Francis’ sex abuse advisory commission in March. Collins quit because of what she said was the “unacceptable” level of resistance within the Vatican to implementing the group’s proposals to better care for victims and protect children from priests who rape and molest them.

PENNSYLVANIA — Police have found the body a young female believed to be a 13-year-old girl abducted Tuesday, authorities said Thursday night. An Ashtabula man suspected of kidnapping Kara Zdanczewski of Ashtabula was nabbed Thursday afternoon by police in Sharon, Pa., authorities said. The suspect did not bring Kara back home after an outing, police said. The Pennsylvania State Police Major Crimes Unit identified the man as 46-year-old John R. Bove, of Ashtabula. Initial reports, however, identified the man as from Pennsylvania. Bove is a registered sex offender in Ohio, according to the Ohio Attorney General’s database. He was convicted of rape in 1990 in New York.

SOUTH CAROLINA – When the University of South Carolina became NCAA women’s basketball champions early last month, longtime referee Wesley Dean was spending his 57th day in Cobb County jail on child molestation charges. Weeks later, a Cobb grand jury indicted him on two molestation charges and a count of enticing a child for indecent exposure, court records show. As of Thursday afternoon, Dean remained in jail without bond.

Twenty six men and two women appeared before a judge at Leeds Crown Court charged with offences including rape, trafficking, sexual activity with a child, child neglect, child abduction, supplying drugs and making of indecent images of children. The 29th defendant, who is in custody, did not appear for the hearing on Thursday. The defendants were greeted by protesters outside the court building, where a number of police were on duty. The allegations are non-recent sexual offences, dating back to between 2004 and 2011, and relate to 18 women, who were children at the time. The youngest child involved was 11 years old.

Scandinavian experts are urging the use of child-like sex dolls in a bid to stop pedophiles from abusing real life children. The Sexpo Foundation in Finland wants the disgusting dummies to be made available to pedophiles following a reported boom in imports in neighboring Norway. Norwegian cops revealed they are increasingly seizing creepy child-like sex dolls, mostly made in Hong Kong.