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New Publication from NCJFCJ’s Permanency Planning for Children Department
Model Court Status Report 2004: A Snapshot of the Child Victims Act Model Courts Project – Presents an overview of the developments, emerging trends, and promising practices in the Child Victims Act Model Courts Project throughout the year. Includes 25 jurisdictions in 21 states and the District of Columbia.
To order this publication click here.
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The Victimization of Boys by Women
When seduced by adult women boys often don’t see themselves as victims and adult men look at incidents involving boys and women and remember schoolboy crushes. The reality is far different. A New York psychologist says that men who were abused as boys contact him after suffering problems including drug, sex or gambling addiction or realizing they are unable to sustain a relationship with women.
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National Court Improvement Progress Report and Catalog
The National Child Welfare Resource Center on Legal and Judicial Issues has a special web page that allows you to view CIP reports by state, by category and by sub-category. You can also print a copy of reports: state summaries, national summary, CIP Catalog, and a state contact list.
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Child Deaths at Home with Unrelated Adults
Living with an unrelated adult, especially an unrelated man, substantially increases the risk that a child will die violently according to research published in the November issue of Pediatrics. The study examined the cases of all children younger than 5 who died in Missouri from 1992 to 1999. Of the children studied, 149 died from injuries inflicted by an adult who helped provide care. A comparison group of 298 children died of natural causes.
Electronic article from Pediatrics, November 2005.
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• State Statutes Relating to the Representation of Children in Dependency Courts
• Public Access to Child Abuse and Neglect Proceedings
• Public Access to Dependency Court Records
First Star, a nonprofit organization dedicated to improving life for child victims of abuse and neglect, provides this information online in an easily accessible format. The information was compiled this summer (2005). You can look at statute information on all states or individual states. Bookmark this one. It’s handy to have around.
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Newspaper Series on Pennsylvania’s Care of Children in State Institutions
Barbara White Stack, a reporter for the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, reports on the conditions of care of children in state custody in Allegheny County, Pennsylvania in a series of articles about child abuse, physical injuries, and other abuses in group homes and correctional institutions. With recommendations for change. This is a four day series of articles that ends today.
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Recruiting and Retaining CASA Volunteers of Color
With a grant from the National CASA Association, the Center for Community Alternatives (CCA) in New York has published a manual on how to recruit and retain CASA volunteers of color. The manual is available for download at the CCA web site. Click on the link above.
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One Million Plus U.S. Children are Caregivers
1.3 million to 1.4 million children in the USA, ages 8 to 18, take care of sick or disabled relatives, shopping, feeding, dressing, medicating and even changing adult diapers, a government-financed study finds. Most of them care for parents and grandparents who have cancer, Alzheimer’s or similar diseases. At least 75% of them get some help, but half say they spend a substantial amount of time caregiving.
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Disclosure of Confidential Child Abuse and Neglect Records
This entry from NCCAN’s State Statutes Series 2005 is a brief overview of state statutes on the confidentiality of child abuse and neglect records.
From this document:
In approximately 23 States and the District of Columbia, some disclosure of information is allowed in cases in which abuse or neglect of the child has resulted in a fatality or near fatality.
In five States the alleged perpetrator of the abuse must be criminally charged with causing the fatality or near fatality before information may be disclosed.
Approximately 12 states allow disclosure of information for the purpose of clarifying or correcting the record when information has already been made public through another source.
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Investigating Child Fatalities – Portable Guides to Investigating Child Abuse Series
Provides concise, practical information to assist law enforcement officers in investigating fatalities in which it is believed that abuse or neglect may have caused or contributed to the child’s death. Describes how child fatalities differ from other homicide case and offers guidelines for conducting the investigation, documenting the case, interrogating suspects, and testifying in court. 36 page pdf file.
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62 People Convicted in France’s Biggest Pedophile Trial
Sentences ranged from four months suspended to 28 years for second-time offenders. The leaders of the huge pedophile ring received the longest jail terms. One man, known as Philippe, was jailed 28 years for his role which included the rape of his granddaughters. Another of his victims was his son, who himself was among the accused.
See also sidebar article: A Town Called Angers
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Posttraumatic Stress Disorder in Children
Children’s Services Practice Notes, an online newsletter for North Carolina’s child welfare workers, devotes its latest issue to PTSD in children. The contents of the newsletter include ten articles covering various aspects of children and PTSD, plus resource web sites. ++++++++++
National Sex Offender Public Registry Web Site
The Department of Justice has activated its National Sex Offender Public Registry (NSOPR) web site which provides real-time access to public sex offender data nationwide in a single Internet search. The site allows parents and concerned citizens to search existing public state and territory sex offender registries beyond their own states. Data from twenty-two states is currently available on the NSOPR web site.
Click here for an article about Utah’s participation in the web site.
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Child Molester May Have Molested Children as Many as 36,000 Times
Dean Arthur Schwartzmiller kept a series of spiral-bound notebooks with notes on more than 36,000 encounters with children listed in categories such as “Blonde Boys,” “Cute Boys,” “Boys Who Say No,” together with codes that appear to indicate how he abused them. Despite being arrested at least nine times for molesting boys in an arrest record begun 35 years ago, Schwartzmiller managed to avoid lengthy prison terms, coach youth football, and move in with another convicted sex offender.
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Another Look at Shaken Baby Syndrome
A debate between medical and legal experts brings into question the validity of shaken baby syndrome. The American Academy of Pediatrics calls shaken baby syndrome “a serious and clearly definable form of child abuse.” Legal experts argue there is room for doubt.
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Girl in Internet Child Porn Case Has Been Found
A couple of weeks ago I reported on the girl who had grown up on the Internet in child porn photos and the search of the Toronto police to find her. The Toronto police released photos of the room in which she had been photographed and, within hours, identified the hotel room. It turns out the girl has been in foster care since 2003, when her adoptive father was arrested on charges related to trading Internet child porn. The girl was originally from Russia and was adopted when she was five.
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Male Perpetrators of Child Maltreatment: Findings from NCANDS
Both the complete January 2005 report and an executive summary are available at the link above. From the executive summary:
Slightly less than one-half of all perpetrators were male.
Of these, about one-half (51%) were biological fathers, an additional one-fifth occupied some other parental role (adoptive fathers, stepfathers, mothers' boyfriends), and
About one-quarter were in nonparental relationships (including relatives, foster parents, day care providers, or friends) to their victims.
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A Desperate Hunt for a Pedophile
The Seattle Times reports on the search by the Toronto Police Child Exploitation Section of the Sex Crimes Unit for a young blonde girl who has appeared in 200 explicit photos collected by pedophiles trolling the internet. She has grown up online and is now about 12 years old.
The Toronto police are utilizing a tracking system that became available through Bill Gates this month to any police unit investigating child porn. Microsoft Canada and the Toronto Police collaborated to create the Child Exploitation Tracking System which is designed so that police in any country can plug into the system and cross-check data.
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