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EAST PALO ALTO -- A woman beat up her brother after she caught him sexually assaulting her 2-year-old daughter in his East Palo Alto home, police said today. Joel Aguilar Guizar, 23, was allegedly attacking the child when his sister broke down a locked bedroom door about 1 p.m. Wednesday, said East Palo Alto police Detective Jeff Liu. The woman, whose name was not released, saw Guizar pulling up his pants, grew enraged and "beat the crap out of him," Liu said. Police were called to investigate reports of a domestic battery in progress. When they arrived, officers heard the...

Spokane, Wash. (AP) -- Sherry Jones knew it would be hard to get her first novel published. Getting "The Jewel of Medina" into bookstores was even harder. After overcoming the formidable hurdles any new author faces, Jones was overjoyed to sell the book to Random House. Then Random House canceled its publication at the last minute for fear the historical novel about Aisha, child bride of the prophet Muhammad, would incite riots in the Muslim world.

Raynham father warns Market Basket shoppers of ‘predator’ employee he says groped his 4-year-old son A father says he was horrified to find out that a janitor accused of groping his son in a bathroom stall at Market Basket is still working there. RAYNHAM, MA — One Raynham father is taking justice into his own hands, warning other parents this week about an alleged “predator” who he says groped his 4-year-old son in a supermarket bathroom last month. Police said the suspect, an elderly janitor at Market Basket, allegedly reached under a bathroom stall partition and touched the boy’s calf...

SOLEDAD - A 30-year-old convicted child molester is dead after being killed at Salinas Valley State Prison in Soledad. Lt. Eric Moore of the prison said Donald Jones was assaulted by a group of prisoners Friday morning in the general population maximum-security yard. He was pronounced dead about 90 minutes later. Prison officers recovered a stabbing weapon at the scene. Jones had been in the facility since 1995, serving a 20-year sentence out of Los Angeles County for sodomy on a child under 14. Authorities said six men are suspected in Jones' death. They already are serving sentences for convictions...

In broadening the legal definition of rape, Maryland's highest court has rightly expanded women's rights, recognizing the importance of their being able to assert control at times of particular vulnerability. The seven judges may have relied on different legal reasoning, but they were unanimous in concluding that a woman can change her mind and withdraw consent during sexual intercourse - and that a man has to honor her decision. Making that more clear in the law is a welcome advance that should help juries as they weigh the facts in individual cases. Rape generally involves physical or psychological power and...

A team mother of a private basketball team has posted bail following her arrested for allegedly having sex with a 16-year-old boy on the team, police said Monday. Janice Marie Niccoli, 37, was arrested at her Vacaville home Friday on two counts of unlawful sexual intercourse with a minor more than 10 years younger, Sgt. Charlie Spruill said. Niccoli posted bail Saturday afternoon, Spruill said. Niccoli, the single mother of two boys, allegedly met the victim while traveling with a private club boys basketball team last year. Spruill said the alleged sexual encounters happened at Niccoli's home in April and...

A top official in the Patrick administration has been placed on unpaid leave because he was arrested in Florida and charged with sexually assaulting a 15-year-old male in a steam room at a $500-a-night Gulf Coast resort. Carl Stanley McGee, 38, assistant secretary for policy and planning, is scheduled to be arraigned next week for sexual battery in Lee County, Fla. McGee helped draft Patrick's casino bill, life sciences legislation, and his plan to bring broadband Internet service to the farthest reaches of the state. According to police reports, McGee was arrested Dec. 28 and accused of performing oral sex...

Omaha, Neb. (AP) -- A 14-year-old boy who fled to Mexico with his former teacher will be allowed to return to the United States for a year, his lawyer said Thursday. The Department of Homeland Security has granted the boy, an illegal immigrant, humanitarian parole, according to a letter sent to his lawyer, Amy Peck. "(The boy) is going home," Peck told reporters. "At the very least, he gets to speak about what happened to him." Marilu Cabrera, a spokeswoman for Citizenship and Immigration Services, said she couldn't comment on specific immigration cases. The boy's former teacher, Kelsey Peterson, 25,...

Atwater, Calif. (AP) -- Prison officials say a convicted child molester and kidnapper died last month after choking on a hot dog. Forty-five-year-old Frederick Fretz was serving a 20-year sentence at the federal penitentiary in Atwater.

13-year-old initiated sex, judge says Article from: Herald Sun December 17, 2007 01:51pm A JUDGE has labelled a man's rape of a 13-year-old boy "adolescent experimentation" and said the teen and the perpetrator were "both victims". Judge Michael Kelly's comments come a month after a prosecutor accused him of making inappropriate and disrespectful statements about the sexual assault victim during a plea hearing. The Melbourne County Court was told that in March 2001 a 24-year-old man began a relationship with a 13-year-old boy.

Men Jailed in Sudan for Selling Book on Mohammed's Child-Bride By Patrick Goodenough CNSNews.com International Editor December 18, 2007 (CNSNews.com) - A Sudanese court reportedly has sentenced two Egyptian men to six months' imprisonment for harming Islam after they marketed a book deemed critical of one of Mohammed's wives. The men, who work for an Egyptian publishing house, were arrested at an international book fair in Khartoum while promoting a book on Aisha, who Muslim historians record as one of Mohammed's 12 wives and concubines. According to an authoritative Hadith -- the traditions and sayings of Mohammed -- the middle-aged...

A former Claiborne County schools teacher aide faces rape charges after allegedly engaging in oral sex with two of her teenage students. Christy Michele McCartt, 25, of Tazewell is charged with two counts of statutory rape and two offenses of contributing to the unruliness of a minor, according to Claiborne County Sheriff's Office Detective David Daniels. McCartt is free on a $25,000 bond. She is slated to appear Dec. 27 in Claiborne County General Sessions Court. The statutory rape charges involve 16- and 17-year-old boys, Daniels said. The contributing charges also involve male students ages 16 and 17, he said....

SHEPHERDSVILLE, Ky. (WAVE) -- WAVE 3 has learned that a man who is a local high school wrestling coach, a substitute teacher and a youth minister has been arrested. The Bullitt County Sheriff's Department says the Shepherdsville man sexually abused a 15 year old girl at the church. WAVE 3 Investigator Scott Harvey has the details. We had a chance to speak to the victim's mother who -- obviously distraught -- described 25-year-old Clayton Pruett as a wolf in sheep's clothing. She now has a strong warning for all parents. "Don't trust people that are alone with your children," said...

NASHVILLE - Nashville police are investigating why a registered sex offender was allegedly driving drunk with five young boys in his car. An officer stopped Michael Wayne Ingram early Saturday after seeing him drive recklessly. Police say Ingram was convicted of raping a boy in 1991. Officers said they tried to conduct a field sobriety test, but Ingram was nearly too intoxicated to stand. Authorities say Ingram may have met one of the 12- and 13-year-old boys in his car through a Web site. The report says the boys were having a sleepover when Ingram called one of them and...

Former labor leader Carl "Bubba" Scarbrough is pleading guilty this morning to molesting a teenage boy in the sauna at Fort Sanders Health and Fitness Center in West Knoxville in June 2005. The plea in Knox County Criminal Court comes after newly filed court records indicate the 13-year-old boy might not be Scarbrough's only victim. In a stunning set of records filed in Knox County Criminal Court by Assistant District Attorney General Willie Lane, witness after witness recount Scarbrough allegedly spied on them in either a fitness center shower or sauna while masturbating. "Surely, he's not doing what I think...

BERKELEY -- Berkeley police on Tuesday arrested a 64-year-old Sea Scout leader on six felony counts of sexual assault on boys ages 13 to 17 who are members of the maritime youth group. Eugene Evans of Kensington, who has been the skipper of the Berkeley group's boat for 35 years, was booked into the Berkeley police jail. Police served search warrants at his home and "several other locations," according to a police statement. The group maintains its boat, the Farallon, at the Berkeley Marina. Police said charges could include lewd and lascivious acts against a minor younger than 14, oral...

Presidential candidate Rudolph Giuliani hired a Catholic priest to work in his consulting firm months after the priest was accused of sexually molesting two former students and an altar boy and told by the church to stop performing his priestly duties. The priest, Monsignor Alan Placa, a longtime friend of Giuliani and the priest who officiated at his second wedding to Donna Hanover, continues to work at Giuliani Partners in New York, to the outrage of some of his accusers and victims' groups, which have begun to protest at Giuliani campaign events. "This man did unjust things, and he's being...

SAN JOSE -- A man who allegedly kidnapped and tried to sexually assault a 12-year-old San Jose girl after he deliberately struck her with his car has been arrested, police said today. San Jose police made the arrest late Wednesday, Officer Enrique Garcia said. He would not release more information on the suspect or how he was caught. "We have the right guy in custody," Garcia said. "It's a big relief for us and for the community." . . . Police said the girl and her younger sister were crossing the street as they walked home from a store near...

INTERPOL is seeking the help of the public to try to identify this man, photographed sexually abusing children in a series of images posted on the Internet. The photos shown here are from a series of around 200 pictures involving 12 different young boys, believed to have been taken in Vietnam and Cambodia in 2002 or 2003. These pictures have been produced by specialists from Germany’s federal police force, the Bundeskriminalamt, working from originals found on the Internet, which had been digitally altered to disguise the man’s face. Extensive police efforts worldwide to identify the man have so far failed...

A former West High School student teacher whose affair with a student led to murder snatched her children from her mother’s Nashville home last week and hasn’t been seen or heard from since, her estranged husband’s attorney confirmed today. Erin McLean climbed through a window of her mother’s home on Gale Lane in Nashville last Saturday, grabbed her two sons, ages 11 and 8, and left, defense attorney Bruce Poston said, citing information from Erin McLean’s grandmother and younger sister. “She told an uncle she was going to California to meet a man she met over the Internet,” Poston said....

OAKLAND - Alameda County has agreed to pay $188,000 to settle a lawsuit filed by three women who said the late leader of Your Black Muslim Bakery, Yusuf Bey, sexually assaulted them and abused them as minors after the county placed them in his home. The three women, identified in the lawsuit only as Jane Doe 1, 2 and 3, were foster children or wards of the court from 1978 to 1994 and were placed in Bey's home by county social service workers. Bey routinely raped them, defecated on them, forced them to drink his urine and semen and threatened...

The estranged wife of a North Knoxville man who shot her alleged teen lover has reportedly lost a teaching job in Middle Tennessee after claims of “inappropriate contact” with another teenage boy. The CBS television affiliates in Nashville and Knoxville are reporting that Erin McLean got a job teaching English at Pioneer Christian Academy. She used her maiden name, WTVF-TV in Nashville reported this evening. WVLT-TV in Knoxville picked up its sister station’s story on its Web site. The stations reported that McLean started about a month ago but that students went to the headmaster recently, complaining she made several...

A Superior Court judge Friday ordered self-described pedophile Jack McClellan to stay away from children for the next three years, issuing a permanent injunction sought by two local attorneys after McClellan had visited the Santa Clarita Valley to watch little girls. The judge issued a permanent injunction narrowing his initial order earlier this month and also issued a three-year-restraining order that was given to all law enforcement agencies in the state. "We will not be seeing him again," Rick Patterson, one of two lawyers who sought the injunction, said following Superior Court Judge Melvin Sandvig's ruling. "Jack will not be...

PARIS - A French prison doctor accused of prescribing Viagra to a paedophile suspected of raping a child after his release said he did not know the man was a sex offender, a newspaper reported on Tuesday. Francis Evrard, a 61-year-old repeat offender who spent 18 years in prison for raping children before being freed on July 2, snatched a five year-old boy from a street in the northern town of Roubaix last Wednesday, police say. The pair were discovered later that day partly clothed in a garage used by Evrard. He said he had been prescribed the anti-impotence drug...

Santos Was Trusted Member Of The Community; Illegal Alien; Alleged Child Rapist William Santos was a trusted member of his community, until a young boy came forward with a scary story. William Roberto Santos worked as a laborer at a horse farm in Owensboro, Ky. Nobody seemed to know much about his past, but his behavior and personality quickly made him a trusted member of the community. He attended church regularly, and parents felt safe leaving their young children in his care. One child in particular, who spent time at the same horse farm where Santos worked, spent four or...

Neighborhood alarmed to learn ice-cream truck vendor is registered sex offender 01:13 AM PDT on Saturday, July 14, 2007 By SARAH BURGE The Press-Enterprise A group of Perris homeowners has launched a campaign to run their local ice cream man out of the neighborhood. Anthony G. Toles, his neighbors discovered recently, is a registered sex offender who has been living and driving his ice cream truck in the Villages of Avalon, a newer housing development near Lake Perris. On the Fourth of July, about 10 neighbors distributed 500 custom-printed door hangers alerting residents to "a potential threat to our children"...

A JUDGE spared a man who raped a girl of ten in a park — because she wore a “provocative” frilly bra and thong. Window cleaner Keith Fenn, 25 — who could have got life in jail — will be free in just FOUR MONTHS after admitting twice having sex with the child. Judge Julian Hall decided to be lenient because the girl “didn’t look 10”. He caused fury earlier this year by freeing another paedophile, telling him to buy his six-year-old victim a new bicycle. The judge referred to the 10-year-old as a “young woman”, and called her “very...

CAMBRIDGE CITY, Ind. -- Police officers on Tuesday arrested a registered sex offender in connection with the death of a 16-year-old girl whose body was found the night before in a wooded area. Leonard Wesley Dickey, 47, of Cambridge City, was being held in the Wayne County Jail on a murder charge following his arrest after he crashed his car in Connersville while being chased by officers, police said. The arrest came after investigators identified him as the suspect in the death of Tarra Pickett, a sophomore at Cambridge City High School. Her body was found about 10:30 p.m. Monday...

A Middle Georgia man has been sentenced to mandatory life in prison without parole after being found guilty of enticing a 12-year-old child to travel with him to Florida to engage in sexual conduct, according to a U.S. Attorney's Office news release. Samuel Robert Cole reportedly befriended the victim's family and took the child to Florida without parental permission on Sept. 16, 2006. While at a motel, Cole had sexual contact with the victim. The child later reported the incident to a parent, who notified law enforcement, according to the release. Further investigation reportedly revealed Cole had been convicted of...

A psychologist cast doubt Wednesday on defense claims that the man convicted of killing 9-year-old Jessica Lunsford is mentally retarded, rating John Evander Couey as average in ability to hold jobs and get through daily life. The testimony by prosecution expert Harry McClaren is important as a jury weighs whether to recommend a life prison sentence or the death penalty for Couey. McClaren's remarks suggest that Couey is able to adapt adequately despite any mental challenges, including low IQ. Mentally retarded people cannot be executed under both Florida law and a 2002 U.S. Supreme Court decision. But a key factor...

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The Supreme Court unanimously reinstated a Nevada child molester's conviction Wednesday in a decision that continued the justices' refusal to apply recent rulings on criminal procedure to older cases. Marvin Bockting was convicted in 1988 on the strength of his stepdaughter's statements to police. But then-6-year-old Autumn Bockting did not testify at Bockting's trial so his lawyers never had the opportunity to question the child. In 2004, the court ruled that defendants have a constitutional right to cross-examine witnesses against them. The question in this case was whether that rule would apply to older cases like Bockting's....

U.S. Border Patrol agents on Sunday apprehended a 36-year-old man from Mexico, who had served 18 months in a U.S. prison for criminal sexual contact of a minor, and a 15-year-old boy traveling with him near N.M. 9 in southern Luna County, the Deming Headlight reported. Border Patrol spokesman Doug Mosier said Manuel Augustine Cobos had been deported following his prison sentence, and he now faces additional prison time if he is convicted of re-entry into the United States after deportation, the Headlight reported. The teenager was to be transferred to the Mexican Consulate in El Paso, the Headlight reported.

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WILMINGTON, Del. - A man was sentenced to nine months in prison Friday for beating to death a 77-year-old man he believed had molested his 5-year-old daughter. Robert Fontanez Jr. pleaded guilty last year to killing Bismark Vasquez. Police have said that although there was no physical evidence to support his daughter's allegations that Vasquez had fondled her, the account she gave police was consistent with what she had told her family. In April, an infuriated Fontanez punched Vasquez so hard that Vasquez went through the back door of his home. Fontanez punched him several more times as he lay...

LOS ANGELES - A former inmate who was severely beaten after other inmates learned he was an accused child molester was awarded $2.8 million to settle a lawsuit he filed against Los Angeles County. The Board of Supervisors voted unanimously Tuesday to resolve the suit by Jose Beas, 41. The award was the most the county has paid to settle a lawsuit involving a jail attack. Beas sustained brain injury and spent months in a semi-vegetative state after the Dec. 13, 2003, incident. He remains bedridden, unable to walk or talk. Attorneys for Beas contended that sheriff's employees endangered Beas...

MARTINEZ - Police have arrested convicted sex offender Cary Verse on suspicion on violating the conditions of his release, authorities said. Walnut Creek Police arrested 36-year-old Cary Verse at 2 p.m. on Saturday, a spokesman at the County Jail said. Verse has lived on the Bay Point property of two defense attorneys since February 2005. Under the conditions of his release from Atascadero State Mental Hospital in 2004, he may leave his home for work and to see friends and therapists, only during authorized times and in the company of authorized people. He must carry a GPS tracking device. Sheriff's...

Former U.S. Rep. Gerry E. Studds, the first openly gay person elected to Congress, died early yesterday, several days after being hospitalized for head injuries sustained while walking his English springer spaniel, Bonnie, in Boston. Studds, 69, who salvaged his 12-term congressional career from near ruin in 1983 over a sex scandal involving a House page, was remembered as a devoted environmentalist and inspiration to the gay community for his openness and push for equal rights. ‘‘Gerry often said it was the fight for gay and lesbian equality that was the last great civil-rights chapter in modern American history. He...

The sight of a moustachioed former Marxist revolutionary and American Cold War foe hugging babies and autographing baseball caps as he embraces democracy should bring a frisson of pleasure to the US.But instead, the fact that the election campaign of the Sandinista leader Daniel Ortega is going so well that he may return to power in Nicaragua next month is causing alarm in Washington. For although Mr Ortega's old Soviet mentors have gone, his country is once again the focus of a crucial regional power play in Washington's Latin American back yard. Some 27 years after his Sandinista movement overthrew...

Where does a man go when he has been pilloried on cable television talk shows as an unrepentant pedophile and possibly a murderer despite never having been convicted of a crime? Nobody would say what John Mark Karr, the former suspect in the murder of JonBenet Ramsey, is going to do since he was freed Thursday after child pornography charges were dropped in Sonoma County, but his plans became partly clear about noon on Friday. That's when an employee of the Convent of the Sacred Heart school in San Francisco, where Karr worked briefly as a teacher's aide in 2000...

Democrats trying to make political hay out of the resignation of Florida Republican Congressman Tom Foley should take a good look at their own party. There was Bill Clinton’s last minute pardon of former Rep. Mel Reynolds, D-IL, who had been imprisoned for having sex with a 16-year-old staffer. (He was later hired by Jesse Jackson’s Rainbow/PUSH Coalition; both Clinton and Jackson had also had sex with subordinates.) There is the case of Rep. Barney Frank, D-MA, whose office housed a prostitution ring. However, less known is one Hawaiian case, in which more than seven high ranking Democrat senators and...

The San Francisco Chronicle Blog "broke" the story and the Associated Press is now running with it: Mel Gibson wrote a fundraising letter for Tom McClintock. Gasp! And McClintock stopped using it earlier this year. Uh, gasp? No gasp? Nothing? Meaningless? Well, if Gibson writing a fundraising letter for McClintock carries any weight or significance, then surely it is significant to point out that John Garamendi, McClintock's opponent in the race for Lt. Governor, benefited from a fundraising letter written by Peter Yarrow, of Peter, Paul and Mary fame. Yarrow, you may or (probably) may not recall, was convicted of...

Death Row inmate Richard Allen Davis, who kidnapped and murdered 12-year-old Polly Klaas in Petaluma in 1993, was found unconscious in his San Quentin Prison cell Sunday night and rushed to the hospital, authorities said today. Davis, whose crime is largely responsible for California's three strikes law, overdosed on opiates, according to prison spokesman Vernell Crittendon. It was not clear Monday whether it was a suicide attempt or an accidental overdose. The drugs are believed to have been obtained from an outside source, probably during visiting hours, Crittendon said. Prisoners, he said, "are still allowed to visit with their loved...

Santa Ana -- A convicted child molester who got surgically castrated to curb his urges wants to be released from custody. Kevin Reilly won a court order and paid to have his testicles removed in 2003. "He felt that this was the only way to stop his cravings and immoral conduct," said his attorney, Orange County Deputy Public Defender Dinah Granafei. Reilly says he has completed a sex-offender treatment program, undergone castration and is no longer a threat to children. He wants to be freed from Atascadero Mental Hospital, where he has been locked up since 2000 when the Orange...

Prosecutors want a former Oak Ridge labor leader and politician accused of rape jailed, and his alleged victim wants $10.5 million from the operators of a West Knoxville health club where the two crossed paths. Assistant District Attorney General Willie Harper has filed in Knox County Criminal Court a motion to revoke or increase bond set for Carl "Bubba" Scarbrough in a pending rape case. Harper's motion came hours after Scarbrough was charged Thursday night with driving under the influence and refusing to take a test to measure the level of alcohol in his blood stream. "Our firm is in...

SAN JOSE, Calif. - A former Los Altos scoutmaster who pleaded no contest to molesting three Boy Scouts a decade ago was sentenced to 23 years in prison. Gregory Allen Wagner, 43, was arrested at home in August after three former Scouts came forward and accused him of molesting them on scouting trips between 1987 and 1992. The Scouts were between 12 and 17 years old when the abuse began. Wagner, the former scoutmaster for Troop 31 of the Boy Scouts Pacific Skyline Council, pleaded no contest in December in Santa Clara County Superior Court to nine felony child molestation...

SEVIERVILLE — A former Seymour High School teacher caught performing oral sex on a student pleaded guilty this morning to statutory rape. District Attorney General Al Schmutzer, Jr. recommended an 18-month sentence for Kristi Dance Oakes. Sevier County Circuit Court Judge Dick Vance set a sentencing hearing date for July 24. Oakes’ plea stems from a June 23, 2004, incident. A police officer at 11:30 p.m. found her topless and performing oral sex on the then 16-year-old student. She resigned from her position as a biological sciences teacher at Seymour High School soon after the charges. Oakes’ lawyer Barry Valentine...

HIV-positive man sentenced to 8 years for molesting two boys ANGOLA, Ind. - An HIV-positive man was sentenced to eight years in prison after the parents of two young boys he molested told a judge their children face years of medical tests. Bobby E. Lehner Jr., of Orland was sentenced Friday after pleading guilty to child molesting and vicarious sexual gratification in January. The parents of the victims, described in court documents as two boys ages 6 and 9, became emotional as they told Steuben County Magistrate Randy Coffey that because Lehner, 34, is HIV-positive, their children face HIV testing...

OKLAHOMA'S governor, Brad Henry, a Democrat, signed a bill this month that would allow jurors to sentence to death repeat sex offenders for crimes against children younger than 14. The day before, South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford, a Republican, signed a bill that would allow capital punishment for repeat offenders guilty of sex crimes against children younger than 11. Sanford announced that the bill would be "an incredibly powerful deterrent to offenders that have been released." I could not disagree more -- and I support the death penalty, and believe that men (and women) who repeatedly rape or molest children...

Bartow, Fla. -- In Internet and phone chats with someone he thought was a 14-year-old girl, a Department of Homeland Security press aide talked about underage sex, boasted about his job and called President Bush a "liar," according to transcripts released by prosecutors. Brian Doyle, 56, of Silver Spring, Md., acknowledged his chat room pal — "Ashlynne" — could be a police officer "trapping" him, according to about 400 pages of records released this week. Undercover Polk County sheriff's detectives posed as the girl. Doyle allegedly wrote that "law enforcement is very good at this ... i have soooo much...

ATLANTA - Lawyers for convicted killer Wayne Williams, blamed for the murders of two dozen boys and young men in the Atlanta area during the 1970s and '80s, are casting suspicion on a child molester they say lived or worked near where many of the bodies were found. In court papers made public Friday, the defense asked a federal judge for access to police files on the molester. The papers do not identify the man by name but say he is a multiple child molester serving time in a Georgia prison. They also allege that investigators knew the man was...