June, 2006 News (continued)
'Netting' Online Predators
Jon Kyl
19 Jun 2006 12:00 am
The increase in Internet use today has, unfortunately, given predators new ways of reaching, harming, and exploiting our children. I introduced legislation recently to fight a growing child-pornography epidemic.
The need for renewed law-enforcement attention to child pornography is demonstrated in a recent Justice Department report, Project Safe Childhood, which looked at Internet sexual offenses committed against children. It determined that, “judging simply by crime statistics, it is clear that the Internet is helping to fuel an epidemic of child pornography.” Unfortunately, by providing greater technical ease and increased anonymity in swapping images, the Internet has “taken down barriers that at one time served as a deterrent to child pornographers.”
Girl's savior faces 3rd strike
SEAN WEBBY
19 Jun 2006 12:00 am
Last year, Hahn, a 26-year-old Los Gatos, felon with a rap sheet full of residential burglaries, anonymously sent police some stolen photographs -- photos that showed a man molesting a toddler. Using the photographs, police found and arrested John Robertson "Robbie" Aitken. Last month, Aitken pleaded no contest to molestation charges and received a 30-year sentence.
But Hahn, who was later arrested for a burglary spree after he turned in the photos, is facing a prison term that could be longer than Aitken's. The latest series of burglaries was Hahn's "third strike," and prosecutors have decided to seek a life sentence. His trial could begin this month.
Hahn's case comes when there are renewed efforts in the state to reform the three strikes sentencing law that began 12 years ago. For example, two ballot initiatives from the Los Angeles County District Attorney's Office aim to give judges more flexibility when giving three strikes sentences in nonviolent, less serious crimes.
Said Franklin E. Zimring, a professor of law at the University of California-Berkeley: "He's not violent, yet not inactive either. The question is how to balance these two. My tendency is to give him a break. If I ran for district attorney and all the people who worry about child sex abuse voted for me and all the people who worry about burglary didn't, I think I would get re-elected."
MAN CONVICTED OF SEX ABUSE IN WYOMING REMOVED FROM PRIESTHOOD
The Associated Press
19 Jun 2006 12:00 am
A man who served 15 months in prison for molesting a teenager in Wyoming was removed from the priesthood, the Roman Catholic Diocese of Steubenville said.
Anthony Jablonowski, 69, who was released last year from the Wyoming Honor Farm, a minimum-security facility, pleaded no contest in April 2004 to taking indecent liberties with a 17-year-old boy.
Pope Benedict XVI issued a decree April 7 dismissing Jablonowski from the clergy, according to a statement released Friday by the Steubenville diocese. Jablonowski had returned to southeastern Ohio after being released from prison and registered as a sex offender in Washington County.
Sex predator facility failing to treat inmates
JASON GROTTO
19 Jun 2006 12:00 am
A four-month review of monitoring reports, court cases and internal documents show so many breakdowns in medical and mental care that drugs often were dispensed without doctors' approval, men languished without treatment, and in some cases, those with severe psychological disorders were forced into solitary confinement -- some never getting treatment for sexual problems.
Gaps in care were often noted during state reviews, but problems continued. One man was given a powerful antipsychotic drug even though he was not diagnosed with a mental illness. Another was left in an infirmary for days while urine in his bedpan collected mold.
''All I ever heard from everybody was that they were sexual predators. But they're also human,'' said Beverly Babb, a former nurse who quit the center in 2004 after a year. Said Douglas Shadle, a psychiatrist who left because of conditions: "This is an asylum-era institution that has no place in this century.''
Despite problems, state lawmakers repeatedly refused requests to adequately fund the center. But they waived laws that require the civil commitment facility to meet state medical and mental care standards.
Seven years later, those decisions have exposed the state to a class-action lawsuit that places the entire program in jeopardy and exposes taxpayers to millions in potential court fines, a Miami Herald investigation has found.
By any measure, sex offenders involve a cost
O.K. CARTER
19 Jun 2006 12:00 am
Though the ordinance has a feel-good quality, a recent Arlington council measure requiring repeat sex offenders with victims 16 or younger to live at least 1,000 feet from places children gather will in actuality provide little or no benefit.
Start walking down the sidewalk from your front door and four to five minutes later you'll have covered that 1,000 feet. Drive it, never exceeding 30 mph, and 1,000 feet takes all of 23 seconds. And children live and play everywhere, not just at schools and parks.
Former officer sentenced to jail, probation
Joy E. Cressler
18 Jun 2006 4:53 pm
For the next 10 years, former Crowley police officer Jack Davis will answer to a community supervision officer in Tarrant County.
He was also led from the courtroom in handcuffs after being sentenced to serve 180 days in county jail and to wear an electronic leg monitor after his release.
Davis was released from the Tarrant County jail to the probation department on June 5, jail technician Alma Molina said.
He avoided prison time, but not because Tarrant County Assistant District Attorney Rebecca McIntire didn’t ask for it. McIntire is part of the Crimes Against Children Division.
Officers crack down on sex offenders
ALICE WALLACE
18 Jun 2006 6:01 am
With school out for summer, local and state law enforcement want to make sure the area's sexual predators and offenders are adhering to their probation rules.
In a sweep Friday night, law enforcement checked on 42 sexual offenders and predators in Alachua County. Of those, five were arrested and a sixth will have a warrant placed for his arrest.
Million-dollar mistake?
MARK BONOKOSKI
18 Jun 2006
For more than a decade, the Brockville Psychiatric Hospital had every reason to believe that its worst nightmare was psychopathic killer David Krueger, ruled insane in 1957 for the sex murder of four-year-old Carol Voyce of Toronto, and confessor to the sex slayings of two boys and at least 100 vicious sex assaults on children.
Convicted sex offender faces new charge
The Associated Press
18 Jun 2006 12:00 am
A worker at an Alexandria church who is a registered sex offender with felony convictions dating to the 1970s is charged with fondling a girl, police said Friday.
Bryan Goodwin, 49, a groundskeeper at All Nations Church of God, was arrested after the girl told her mother, who also works at the church, that he had touched her inappropriately, police spokesman Capt. John Crawford said. The woman called police.
Crawford did not detail the girl's accusation but said detectives had enough evidence to get an arrest warrant. Goodwin was charged with aggravated sexual battery of a minor and was being held without bond at the Alexandria jail, Crawford said.
Goodwin, whose past includes convictions over about three decades in Fairfax and Arlington counties for forcible sodomy and aggravated sexual battery, was last convicted of a sex crime in 1989, according to the state's sex-offender database.
Church officials and the girl's mother knew of his history, Crawford said.
Education, awareness key to preventing molestation
BARBARA J. MILLER
18 Jun 2006 12:00 am
I am writing to distinguish between the terms sex offender and child molester.
There are occasions of a 17- or 18-year-old young man having a consensual relationship with a 15- or 16-year-old female, a minor, who cannot legally consent to having sex and whose parents petition the young man into court. If found guilty of a sexually oriented crime, he is listed on the registry of sex offenders and ordered to register his address for the rest of his life.
There is the sex offender who forcibly rapes his victim, usually a female. This person deserves to be sentenced to prison for a long time, made to register his address and ordered to report to a parole officer for the rest of his natural life.
Then there are child molesters. He or she is in a category all by themselves. We hear about serial pedophiles or those who deal with kiddy porn. We don't hear about the fathers, mothers, step-parents, grandparents, brothers, sisters, aunts, uncles, cousins, babysitters, neighbors, family friends, etc., who routinely abuse innocent children. They usually get away with their crimes because they threaten that something will happen to the victim's families if they tell.
What is a registration of sex offenders going to do for any of these children if communities continue to bury their heads in the sand over the severity of this problem?
Teach children they have the right to say no when anyone tries to do something they are not comfortable with. Teach parents and other adults what signs to look for in detecting whether a child has been a victim of molestation. Teach parents to believe their child when they tell them someone has molested them.
How we deal with this issue now and in the future is going to define us to future generations.
Repeat molester seeks freedom
LARRY WELBORN
14 Jun 2006 12:00 am
The original poster boy for "Megan's Law" disclosure of child molesters wants out of custody again, claiming he is no longer a threat to children.
Sexual Predator Moves to Harrison County
Elizabeth Schubert
14 Jun 2006 6:29 pm
The county prosecutor and sheriff's deputies are holding a public meeting to educate residents.
The meeting is scheduled for June 27, at 6:30, in the Robert C. Byrd High School Auditorium.
Judge Releases Accused Molester's Diary
14 Jun 2006 9:57 am
Search warrant affidavits made public Tuesday are offering graphic accounts of the crimes a former Children's Hospital nurse is accused of committing.
[The alleged perpetrator] originally denied ever touching children, but eventually confessed that he touched a 4-year-old patient under his care to see what would happen, according to an SDPD affidavit.
A second warrant served at his home turned up video and image files depicting child pornography in a peer to peer file sharing folder, according to the affidavit. Several notebook journals were also found at his apartment, officers said.
One journal entry states "I want to lay down at night & feel love & the presence of a (loved, comforted) little girl ..."
Another entry reads "This is killing me. The little girl downstairs is playing and I want to go play
with her, ahhhh!!!"
His 4-year-old alleged victim suffers from a rare disease and remains hospitalized.
Mom denied new trial in son's death
Toya Graham
13 Jun 2006 1:05 am
Circuit Judge John C. Hayes denied Sharron Blaskey Jarrell's request for a new trial.
Jim Boyd, Jarrell's attorney, disagreed and plans to seek an appeal within 10 days of receiving a certified copy of Hayes' order.
During Jarrell's 1999 trial, several inmates testified that Jarrell helped molest her son and plotted to kill him. A pathologist also testified that scar tissue on the child's buttocks showed he had been sexually abused for several months and within 12 hours of his death.
Donald Jarrell Sr. pleaded guilty but mentally ill to sexually abusing and suffocating his son. Jarrell is serving two life sentences.
During Sharron Jarrell's hearing last month, several witnesses -- including inmates and a former inmate -- testified that several of the original prison inmate witnesses plotted to scheme against Jarrell in pursuit of reduced sentences.
