The Child Protection eNewsletter

Pope:  "Deeply ashamed" of clergy abuse scandal... 

Pope Benedict XVI said today he was "deeply ashamed" of the clergy sexual abuse scandal in the Catholic Church and will work to make sure pedophiles don't become priests.  Read More

Benedict was answering questions submitted in advance by reporters aboard a special Alitalia airliner as he was flying from Rome to Washington to begin his first papal pilgrimage to the United States.

"It is a great suffering for the Church in the United States and for the Church in general and for me personally that this could happen," Benedict said.  "It is difficult for me to understand how it was possible that priests betray in this way their mission ... to these children."  "I am deeply ashamed and we will do what is possible so this cannot happen again in the future," the pope said.

Benedict pledged that pedophiles would not be priests in the Roman Catholic Church.  "We will absolutely exclude pedophiles from the sacred ministry," Benedict said in English.  "It is more important to have good priests than many priests.  We will do everything possible to heal this wound."

Benedict's pilgrimage was the first trip by a pontiff to the United States since the scandal involving priests sexually abusing young people rocked U.S. dioceses and triggered lawsuits that have cost the Church hundreds of millions of dollars in settlements.

Pedophilia is "absolutely incompatible" with the priesthood," Benedict said.

Vatican officials selected four questions to be read by the journalists to the pontiff aboard the plane.

Texas custody case of 416 sect children begins… 

Nearly all the 139 women from the Fundamentalist Church of Latter Day Saints, who volunteered to accompany the group's children taken by authorities, left police custody and headed back to the polygamist sect's rural Texas compound.  Read More

The move came shortly after a local judge indicated she would not make a decision this week on whether to keep the children in state custody or return them to their parents in what is shaping up to be the largest child custody case in state history.  Lawyers from the state bar association are planning an "unprecedented" volunteer effort to provide lawyers for each of the children in time for a hearing where the state will have to justify its decision to remove the children.

A spokesman for the families said they would insist each child be represented by a lawyer and that a judge consider each case individually, rather than as a group, presenting a potential logistical nightmare for State District Judge Barbara Walther.  "If I gave everybody five minutes, that would be 70 hours," she said at a court hearing on Monday.

But the families argued that the time should not be a factor.  "Just because there are logistical issues doesn't mean they can violate the constitutional rights of 500 parents and children," said Rod Parker, a lawyer who identified himself as a spokesman for the FLDS families.

Walther said one of her priorities was to determine how many girls taken from the remote Yearning for Zion Ranch were underage mothers.  She said lawyers would be assigned to those girls.

During the hearing the state argued that the children not be returned to the sect's ranch in Eldorado, Texas.  Gary Banks, a lawyer representing Child Protective Services, told the judge the state believes "there is a systematic process at the ranch near Eldorado at which children were exploited and sexually abused."

Polygamist sect members who were moved to the Texas compound from their longtime homes along the Utah-Arizona line were hand-picked for their fierce loyalty to leader Warren Jeffs, and that allegiance may be a stumbling block for law enforcement, authorities say.  Read More

Jeffs, the imprisoned leader of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, transferred people to Eldorado, Texas, to escape growing government scrutiny on the sect's base in Colorado City, Arizona, and Hildale, Utah, Arizona Attorney General Terry Goddard said.

"This was Warren Jeffs' all-star cast," said Goddard, who has been investigating the sect since 2004.  "They had the strongest sense of obedience."

Meanwhile, Arizona child-welfare officials are investigating a call from a 16-year-old girl alleging sexual abuse in the polygamist stronghold of Colorado City--a call similar to the one in Texas that led officials to raid the related polygamist compound last week.  Read More

It is unclear at this time whether the calls are related.

But the Arizona case prompted a significantly different response than in Texas where police officers stormed the compound of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, took all the children into state custody and confiscated evidence from the temple.

In Arizona, no children have been taken into state custody--in part, officials say, because of differences in the communities and state laws.

"I don't have the authority, and local officials don't have the authority, to go in and, based on an unverified phone call, sweep up 400 children," said Attorney General Goddard, who has made cracking down on abuses in Colorado City a hallmark of his administration.  "If we found that girl (who made the allegations), we could take her into custody and perhaps her siblings in custody.  There is no way in Arizona law we could reach any further."

Goddard also notes that hundreds of members of the polygamist group in Texas reside on a single compound.  In Arizona, nearly 10,000 people, most of whom are members of the sect, live in separate family homes in an open, independent town with its own government and police force.

"In Arizona, we need to have a verifiable statement of abuse from the person who has been abused," Goddard said.  "We could not attach that complaint to folks outside the household."

Anti-polygamy activists have long criticized Arizona and Utah for failing to do more to protect girls in the twin cities of Hildale, Utah, and Colorado City, the headquarters of the FLDS, which is known for its spiritual marriages of young girls to much older, already married men.  In Arizona, a few men have been prosecuted for their relationships with underage girls, and Warren Jeffs, the sect's leader, awaits trial in Arizona.  Jeffs was convicted in Utah last year of rape as an accomplice in the arranged marriage of a 14-year-old girl.

In other news… 

Forget about passing notes in study hall; some teens are now using their cell phones to flirt and send nude pictures of themselves.  Read More  The instant text, picture and video messages have become part of some teens' courtship behavior, police and school officials said.  The messages often spread quickly and sometimes find their way to public Web sites.  "I've seen everything from your basic striptease to sexual acts being performed," said Reynoldsburg police Detective Brian Marvin, a member of the FBI Cyber Crime Task Force of Central Ohio.  "You name it; they will do it at their home under this perceived anonymity."

A 12-year-old girl who ran away with a man she met on the Internet was found safe a day after she disappeared.  Investigators said she was with the 19-year-old in Quincy, Florida.  Read More   Deputies said they were working to get 12-year-old Tiffany Tyson back with her mother.  There is a sense of relief, at least for investigators, but the girl's mom is not saying anything.  Investigators in the Quincy area are questioning both the 12-year-old girl and the 19-year-old man about where they have been and what they have been doing.  Sheriff's deputies had been looking for Tyson since she disappeared from her home in Port St. John on Thursday morning.  Investigators said she left behind a note that said she was leaving with 19-year-old James Linch, who she had been communicating with through MySpace.  The pair was found around 9:30 Friday morning in Quincy, Florida, outside of Tallahassee.  Linch's father apparently called police there after they pulled into his driveway.

Recent high-profile videos featuring real-life "mean girls" have created interest and a conversation about a possible increase in girl-on-girl aggression, but in reality violence among teens has decreased.  Read More  Physical violence among teens has dipped by 10 percent during the last 10 years, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.  But media coverage and videos--like a recent incident where a gang beating of a 16-year-old girl was posted online--have contributed to chatter about girls' aggressiveness.  Teen violence experts said the Internet could be fueling the type of girl violence that has captured headlines because it's becoming the teen place to see and be seen.  "The best [way] to hurt the victims is to hurt the victims as wide as possible.  There is no better place than the Web to show it. It's maximizing the bullying and the pain in the victims," said Dr. Young Shin Kim of Yale University School of Medicine's Child Study Center.

The rampage carried out nearly a year ago by a deranged Virginia Tech student who slipped through the mental health system has changed how American colleges reach out to troubled students.  Read More  Administrators are pushing students harder to get help, looking more aggressively for signs of trouble and urging faculty to speak up when they have concerns.  Counselors say the changes are sending even more students their way, which is both welcome and a challenge, given that many still lack the resources to handle their growing workloads.  Meanwhile, threats closed some college campuses and nearby schools as the Virginia Tech anniversary nears.  Read More

The teen birth rate in the U.S. rose for the first time in 14 years in 2006, and the number of cesarean deliveries and births to unmarried women hit all-time highs, according to the CDC's National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS).  Read More  Teen childbirths rose by 3 percent in 2006, to about 42 births for every 1,000 females between the ages of 15 and 19.  While it is too early to say if the rise represents the beginning of a trend, Stephanie J. Ventura, who heads the NCHS reproductive statistics branch, says it is cause for concern.  "This could continue or it could reverse, but it is not the direction we want to see," she tells WebMD.  The increase in births among unmarried women is definitely a trend, Ventura says.  Births among this group hit historic highs in 2006.  The 1.6 million births among unmarried women represent an 8 percent increase over 2005 and are 20 percent higher than the recent low point for births in the group seen in 2002.  "Most of this increase is in women in their 20s," Ventura says.  "This definitely suggests a change in attitudes about the issue."  The CDC also issued its latest statistics on postpartum depression, and the figures show that certain groups of women may be at higher risk.  Read More  Postpartum depression was more often reported by teenage moms, mothers with less than 12 years of education, Medicaid patients, smokers, victims of physical abuse before or during pregnancy, and women under traumatic or financial stress during pregnancy.

Herschel Walker has always been something of a puzzle.  As difficult as the star running back was to bring down on the field, it was harder, still, to figure out what made him tick.  Read More  For the first time, the 46-year-old former professional football player reveals in a book published this week, "Breaking Free," that he has a rare and controversial mental illness called dissociative identity disorder--or D.I.D.--formerly known as multiple personality disorder.  "I had it the whole time, I just didn't know what it was," Walker said.  The athlete who played 15 seasons of professional football in the NFL and USFL and pushed a bobsled for the 1992 U.S. Olympic team in Albertville, France; the family man who married his college sweetheart; the man who once danced with the Fort Worth Ballet; the business man--Walker says none of those guys were him.  Not really.  Those were his "alters," he says--alternate personalities.  For more information about Dissociative Identity Disorder visit Read More

A central Florida police officer is charged with having sex with a 16-year-old girl while on duty four years ago.  Read More  The Florida Department of Law Enforcement says Jody Beaudry committed the crime in 2004.  He is the deputy police chief in the Polk County town of Mulberry, east of Tampa.  The 39-year-old Beaudry is accused of having sex with the girl after threatening to have her probation revoked.  He was arrested Monday after the FDLE investigation.  Beaudry is being held without bond pending a court hearing.  It's not clear if he has an attorney yet.

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