Free Republic

School nurses mistakenly gave the swine flu vaccine to two students who didn't sign up for it - including a Brooklyn girl with epilepsy who wound up in the hospital. "I was outraged," Naomi Troy, 26, told the Daily News after her 6-year-old daughter, Nikiyah Torres-Pierre, had a possible allergic reaction to the shot. Officials at Public School 335 in Crown Heights called an ambulance to take Nikiyah to SUNY Downstate Medical Center when she fell ill following the arm jab. "My stomach was hurting, and I was itching," Nikiyah said after she was released from the hospital. The snafu...

As the news comes to our attention, it seems as if open season has been declared on our children. The latest incident from California, the teen allegedly getting gang raped outside a school dance http://www.contracostatimes.com/ci_13640320?source=rss&nclick_check=1, just proves that not enough is being done in foresight to prevent these heinous acts. But the Indiana House is taking steps to protect our most precious commodity. They have enacted HB 1511. This is mainly a custody/guardian law. One of the stipulations in the enacted bill either denies custody/guardianship.....

My prepubescent 11 year old son was solicited for homosexual sex by a 15 year old male on the schoolbus two weeks ago. The police, led by the school resource officer, are charging the perp with assault, and I'm waiting to hear from the DA whether the charge will be upgraded to sexual assault. The perp admitted to all of it to the school administration and the sheriffs deputy so there's no debate on guilt. The problem is that the school administration isn't interested in suspending, expelling or otherwise punishing this perp. By all accounts--especially my son's--this perp hasn't had...

A six-month-old boy has miraculously survived a train slamming into his stroller after it rolled off an Australian railway platform. The collision happened as a city-bound service pulled up to Ashburton station, in a Melbourne suburb. A security video shows the boy's mother taking her hands off the stroller's handles and failing to notice as it slowly edged toward the tracks.

A two-year-old girl accused of hitting a car with a stick was investigated by police on suspicion of vandalism. The vehicle’s owner called the police claiming the child had deliberately damaged his car...

Number of reported child abuse cases increasesThe number of reported child abuse cases within the local school district increased by more than fifty percent. District officials say “heightened awareness” could be attributed to the increase. By Jonathan Friedman / Special to The Malibu Times Wednesday, October 7, 2009 12:15 PM PDT The number of reported cases of child abuse in the Santa Monica-Malibu Unified School District jumped from 77 in the 2007-08 school year to 123 in 2008-09, according to the Annual Child Abuse Report that the Board of Education reviewed at its meeting last week. One of the cases...

When a poll was posted to the popular social networking site Facebook asking if President Obama should be killed, the Secret Service launched an investigation. Today they announced the results: Turns out a kid was behind the poll. And no criminal charges will be filed against him or his parents, according to the Associated Press, citing a Secret Service spokesman. The poll, posted to the site over the weekend, asked, "should obama be killed?" The possible answers were "yes," "maybe," "if he cuts my health care" and "no." At least 730 people took the user-generated poll before it was removed...

Lila Rose must be smiling at this! Hannah Giles and James O'Keefe just rolled ACORN! First, the two get the goods in Baltimore and then wait for ACORN headquarters to respond by saying that the whole thing was just an "isolated" incident. But, what ACORN didn't know was that after they left Baltimore, these two went to the ACORN offices in Washington D.C. and got more video! A Second Set Of Videos Exposing ACORN! 84rules September 11, 2009

A foster child was sent to live with the family of the ringleader of the airlines bomb plot by the same council that was at the centre of the Baby P abuse case. Haringey Council placed the child with relatives of Abdulla Ahmed Ali who was found guilty of planning to kill thousands of innocent people by blowing up trans-Atlantic airliners in coordinated suicide attacks. The child was placed in a house in Walthamstow, East London, where Ali and his wife lived along with a number of her relatives. The couple later moved out to a council flat nearby, paid...

ACORN engages in voter fraud and Obama invites them to shape national policy. ACORN engages in embezzlement schemes and Obama invites them to help with the national census next year. Now that ACORN is shown to be engaged in child prostitution rings, what will Obama offer them next? Control of America’s public schools? VIDEO: ACORN Aids And Abets Child Sex Trade 84rules September 10, 2009

Montevideo, Uruguay, Aug 17, 2009 / 04:44 pm (CNA).- Archbishop Nicolas Cotugno of Montevideo, the president of the Bishops’ Conference of Uruguay, issued a statement last week warning that a new law intended to allow homosexual couples to adopt children would have serious consequences for society, especially for the young. “The adoption of children by homosexual couples is not a question of religion, philosophy or sociology. It has to do with respect for human nature itself,” he said. “To accept the adoption of children by homosexual couples is to go against human nature itself, and consequently, it is to go...

Please help me out! My daughter grew a massive sunflower from seed in a wildflower garden that we planted late this spring. This flower was MAGNIFICENT, it had eight blooms and 3 or 4 more on the way! Neighbor boys cut it down with a tent pole this morning and Bachman's has told us that it will likely die. We are in MN (twin cities area), so I'm trying to find somewhere, anywhere, that has sunflowers (mature ones preferably). Bachman's told us no dice - they don't have any. My 2.5 year old is going to be crushed, and Mom...

Forget about the birthers, and the nutty claims that Barack Obama was not born in the United States. More and more, we are hearing from people who might best be described as anti-birthers. Their claims have nothing to do with long- versus short-form Hawaiian birth certificates. Instead, they advance a simple proposition: that the birth of each additional American child is a kind of calamity for the environment. The most recent example of anti-birth thinking comes from Paul Murtaugh and Michael Schlax of Oregon State University. In a study called “Reproduction and the carbon legacies of individuals,” they suggest...

MUSKEGON, Mich. (WOOD) - Daniel Nichols, who accidentally ran over his 5-year-old son while the boy lay sleeping in a tent, says the state is threatening to take away his children. A Muskegon County Department of Human Services worker visited Nichols' wife Thursday at the hospital, where his son is recovering, and told her a campground was no place for children to live, Nichols told 24 Hour News 8. "She went to the hospital and told my wife that she doesn't think it's acceptable for us to be staying in the campground, which we weren't staying in the campground, we...

CHESNEE, S.C. — Police in South Carolina say an 8-year-old girl has been shot to death by the estranged husband of her father's girlfriend. Spartanburg County Sheriff Chuck Wright says the man grabbed the girl in a headlock Wednesday and shot her twice in the driveway of a home in Chesnee, about 60 miles southwest of Charlotte, N.C.

The prevailing view among parents, the general public and mental health professionals that infants as young as six months old "do not remember" traumatic events that happen to them or to their loved ones has recently been disproved, a professor of infant mental health said at a Jerusalem conference on Sunday.... [snip] ... Most professionals and parents have pooh-poohed this idea because infants and young toddlers do not have the verbal ability to describe the trauma, but it nevertheless is stored in their brains, she asserted....[snip]... People are wrong to assume that when traumatized infants grow up and don't speak...

The mystery of Amber Swartz-Garcia, a 7-year-old Northern California girl who disappeared after going to jump rope outside her home 21 years ago, has been solved, police said Monday. Curtis Dean Anderson confessed in 2007 _ a month before dying in prison _ that he kidnapped and killed Amber, Pinole Police Chief Paul Clancy said. ... Amber's father, a Pinole police officer, was killed while pursuing a parolee in 1980. His wife was pregnant with Amber then. "I almost lost her at the time my husband died and I had made a prayer that if I could be allowed to...

PORTSMOUTH, Ohio (WSAZ) -- A man from Scioto County is facing a rape charge after police say he sexually assaulted two young girls. Bobby Dean Boggs was arrested at a relative's house in the Clarktown area. He is accused of sexually assaulting two girls, aged 5 and 10, in Portsmouth. Investigators say more charges are expected when his case is presented to a grand jury. His preliminary hearing is set for July 2nd.

JACKSON COUNTY, W.Va. (WSAZ) -- A Ravenswood man is facing sexual assault charges for allegedly abusing his then girlfriend's 10-year-old relative. 49-year-old Myron Starcher is behind bars at the South Central Regional Jail. He is charged with sexual assault in the first degree, sexual abuse by a parent, guardian, custodian or person in a position of trust, sexual abuse in the first degree and filming/photographing a sexual act on a minor. According the criminal complaint, the crime took place in May 2007 at a trailer in Ravenswood.

The 4-year-old Stoughton girl run down in a crosswalk by an elderly driver yesterday has died, Norfolk District Attorney William R. Keating’s office announced this morning. Diya Patel was hospitalized in a coma at Tufts Medical Center in Boston, but did not survive the night after being hit on her scooter by an 89-year-old woman at the wheel of a Toyota Camry on Washington Street in Stoughton late yesterday morning. According to Keating’s spokesman David Traub, the collision remains under investigation by the Stoughton Police Department with assistance from state police, and no charges against the driver have been announced.

"The spread of small arms creates a serious global problem and requires an equally urgent response because the lives and futures of children are at stake. These weapons have extinguished more young lives than they have protected." – Carol Bellamy, Executive Director, UNICEF The vast majority of Americans, regardless of their opinions on the increasing scope of international law, agree with the proposition that children should not be used as soldiers. Accordingly, much of the UN literature that addresses children and guns deals with this military-related issue. However, a second theme is quickly found in virtually all UN pronouncements about...

Mooadieb, a fellow Liveleaker and my oldest UMSC brother (and Best Friend) was over at the house a few minutes ago and we were swimming, grilling, and having a blast. He and his 10-year-old left to get ready for our evening with Shakespeare's "Midsummer Night's Dream" in the park, but on the way home, Mooadieb's little boy accidentally opened the door to the truck and fell out onto the road at 45 MPH. He's hurt really bad. So if you pray (and in this instance I don't care which God you pray to) then please take a minute to get...

Five-year-old Kayla Mitchell and her two sisters have their own bedroom, but the girls have always felt safer sleeping with their mother. But early this morning, as Kayla slept with her family, she was struck in the head by one of six bullets that pierced their Pleasant Grove home in an apparent drive-by shooting. “I can’t think of a safer place to be for a 5-year-old than with her mother in bed,” said Lt. Andrew Harvey, a Dallas police spokesman. Kayla was in serious condition after undergoing three hours of surgery at Children’s Medical Center Dallas. Her mother, Shanika Sherman,...

CHILD abuse campaigners Sara Payne and Shy Keenan have backed a top cop who is risking jail in a battle over suspected paedophile images. They said they were “1,000 per cent” behind Chief Constable Colin Port, who is refusing to return 87 computer hard drives to their owner. They were seized from the man’s home along with 2,500 child porn images — but he claimed the raid was illegal and won a High Court order banning police from examining them. Ms Keenan said: “Sara and I cannot believe this man has used the law to stop the police taking proper...

A counter-terrorism expert researching extremism at U.S. mosques claims authorities in Nashville, Tenn., ignored his report of child abuse by teachers at a local mosque due to fear of retribution from Muslim organizations such at the Council on American-Islamic Relations. Dave Gaubatz, a former Air Force special agent, told WND he informed the local prosecutor, the FBI and Sgt. Brooks Harris of the Metropolitan Police Department in Nashville of a 7-year-old girl who says teachers at the Al-Farooq mosque "hit the children" during Shariah, or Islamic law, lessons. Harris insists he was not initially given enough information to pursue the...

(04-11) 07:59 PDT TRACY -- A Sunday school teacher was booked early today on suspicion of murder and kidnapping in the slaying of 8-year-old Sandra Cantu, whose body was found in a suitcase in an irrigation pond. Melissa Huckaby, 28, was arrested at 11:55 p.m. Friday after she drove to the Tracy Police Department to be interviewed. She was booked at 3:25 a.m. today at San Joaquin County Jail in French Camp, where she is being held without bail. "She revealed enough information that we had probable cause to arrest her for both kidnapping and murder," Tracy police Sgt. Tony...

TRACY, Calif. (April 11) - A Sunday school teacher was arrested on suspicion of kidnapping and killing 8-year-old Sandra Cantu, whose body was found in a suitcase in an irrigation pond. Melissa Huckaby, 28, was arrested at 11:55 p.m. Friday, about five hours after she drove herself to the local police station at the request of officers, said police Sgt. Tony Sheneman.

BAGRAM AIRFIELD, Afghanistan, April 9, 2009 – A 2-year-old girl from Afghanistan’s Gardez province and her family flew to Cincinnati earlier this month to have reconstructive surgery on the child’s trachea, a procedure made necessary after the girl swallowed a battery last year. Air Force Maj. (Dr.) Robert Elwood, chief of pediatrics at Craig Joint Theater Hospital, Bagram Airfield, Afghanistan, and Air Force Capt. LaRita Abel, nurse manager in the hospital’s intensive-care wing, hold a news conference about Nazia Gardezi’s upcoming surgery at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center with Afghan media, March 30, 2009. In the middle, Nazia sits...

(04-06) 21:03 PDT Tracy -- Police in Tracy announced tonight that they found the remains of a child who went missing 10 days ago inside a black suitcase that was discovered earlier today floating in an irrigation pond. Sandra Cantu vanished March 27 after telling her mother she was going to a friend's home to play. The suitcase was found by farm workers at about 10 a.m. as they were draining the pond at a dairy farm on Bacchetti Road in Tracy. The location is about two miles from Cantu's home. Witnesses told investigators the suitcase was not there when...

CHARLESTON, W.Va. (WSAZ) -- A normal trip to the store ended up changing the lives of two families forever. Vincent West, a convicted sex offender, is in court again. He's accused of molesting a 12-year-old girl at a Charleston Kmart in 2007. As the case is coming to a close, emotions continue to run high. The alleged victim said she was in the Kmart along Patrick Street when she said a man rubbed her chest and tried to pull her pants down. Surveillance tape captured West and the girl in the store at the same time, but cameras did not...

[photos] What the hell? You all remember the story Fox News Producer Aaron Bruns arrested on child porn charges, right. We don’t know how we missed it this week, but on Monday the Kenneth in the (212) blog uncovered (NSFW)–so to speak–that Aaron Bruns had a starring role in the soft-porn instructional book entitled The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Supercharged Kama Sutra Illustrated. We’re not going to show the NSFW photos here. But, we did clean up one photo that shows you an interesting Kama Sutra move with a stick. We know it’s Saturday, but being the curious guys and...

The disabled 6-year-old son of Britain's top opposition leader David Cameron died Wednesday, the Conservative Party said.Ivan Cameron had cerebral palsy and Ohtahara syndrome, a rare and severe form of epilepsy. He was the eldest of three children of Cameron and his wife Samantha.Cameron, 42, is widely expected to become Britain's next prime minister. His party consistently leads Prime Minister Gordon Brown's Labour Party in opinion polls.The Conservative Party said in a statement that Ivan became ill overnight and died early Wednesday in a London hospital.

Song/poem about grief and loss. Click link to watch performance. Thank you. Please don't take my baby. To my sick child I will cling. Please don't take my baby. I would trade 'most anything. Just go 'way grim reaper With the sadness that you bring. Wake up with the night sweats To confirm my baby's here. Wake up with the night sweats Overwhelmed by pain and fear. Just go 'way grim reaper. Don't you quench your thirst for tears. Goodbye to my baby. Watch 'em put you in the grave. Goodbye to my baby. Life your doctors couldn't save. Please...

LARGO — Police this week removed an unruly 7-year-old from his classroom and forced him to be hospitalized under the state's Baker Act — against the wishes of his outraged parents. The boy spent the night alone at Morton Plant Hospital before he was seen by a child psychologist the next day and discharged. "This is a total abuse of police power," said the boy's father, Richard Smith, 41. "My son has no mental health problems. He's never hurt himself. He's never hurt anyone else." Smith and his wife, Barbara, said they want to consult a lawyer. But Largo deputy...

Maryland Residents - Please contact your state representatives and urge them to support the Shared Parenting Bill now being debated in the Judiciary Committee. Maryland is only one of 13 remaining states NOT to support the right of father's to have shared custody of children in divorce. Many fathers such as myself have had their children stolen from them by the courts as a result of a contentious divorce. I was personally denied all access to my 4-month old son by a judge in Montgomery County for nearly 16 months and am still only permitted to see him one hour...

Tens of thousands of politicians, celebrities and local bigwigs will be able to keep their addresses and details about their families off the Government's new children's database, it was revealed yesterday. They will be allowed to withdraw everything but their children's names, sex and ages from the controversial computer record. Powerful and influential parents who believe they will be in danger from others who may be 'hostile' will have their details struck off the ContactPoint database along with domestic violence victims and those in witness protection programmes. But the great majority of ordinary families will be compelled to display their...

President Obama on Thursday will order the closure of so-called black sites, where CIA and European security services have interrogated terrorist suspects, under executive orders dismantling much of the Bush admistration's architecture for the war on terror, according to four individuals familiar with a draft executive order. Mr. Obama will shutter "all permanant detention facilities overseas," the draft said, according to the individuals who asked not to be named because the orders have not yet been signed. There are at least eight such prisons, according to published reports. The Bush administration never revealed the number or location of the facilities,...

TAJI — A 13 year-old boy from a remote area in southeast Iraq will soon learn how to walk again after using crutches for more than five years, with the help of Iraqi doctors and U.S. Army Special Forces. A Special Forces team medic met the boy, named Abbas, in June during a medical assistance visit to the region. Abbas’ right leg was broken during a vehicle accident. At the time of the accident, he was treated but the device holding the bones in place was removed too soon and the bones never fused. “The wound itself healed, but the...

BROCKTON -- Police described an Abington elementary school teacher today as an obsessive predator who allegedly seduced a 13-year-old boy and carried on a sexual relationship that lasted for 18 months. Christine A. McCallum, 29, had become like a surrogate mother to the teen, who was being raised by a single father, prosecutors said today. That relationship allegedly progressed to snuggling and kissing after McCallum plied the boy with alcohol. Then on Feb. 7, 2006, she allegedly had sex with the teen for the first time, said Assistant Plymouth District Attorney Michael Scott. The boy, who is now 16, told...

PORTSMOUTH, Ohio (WSAZ) -- Detectives with the Scioto County Sheriff’s Office have arrested and charged a 17-year-old girl in connection with a series of sexual assaults at a home daycare in Portsmouth, Ohio. Sheriff Marty Donini says detectives received a complaint from the mother of one of the victims. Donini says their investigation found that the victims, ranging in age from one to five years old, had been sexually assaulted multiple times while at the Toddlers Haven Daycare. The sheriff says the series of assaults happened over the past six months. Donini says the suspect is related to owner of...

LINCOLN COUNTY, W.Va. (WSAZ) -- The couple accused of giving a fatal overdose of methadone to a 3-year-old boy they were babysitting said it was a mistake. West Virginia State Police officers in Hamlin didn't have to go far to catch Theresa and Oscar Hyatt; the couple turned themselves in Wednesday morning. "I've got nothing to hide," Theresa Hyatt said. "I loved that child and I loved him dearly." The Hyatt couple is charged with child neglect causing death after they gave Danny Cole Ross a lethal dose of methadone for his cold. The Hyatts were babysitting for a friend...

EL DORADO, Kan. | The adoptive parents of a missing Kansas boy who failed to report his disappearance nearly a decade ago are considered “people of interest” in the case as authorities expand their search nationwide, a sheriff said Monday. Butler County Sheriff Craig Murphy told reporters no charges would be filed immediately, while investigators focus on finding Adam Herrman. The boy was 11 when he disappeared in 1999 from a mobile home park in Towanda where he lived with his adoptive parents, Doug and Valerie Herrman. “We are not sure what happened to Adam Herrman,” Murphy said. “We are...

HURRICANE -- Police arrested the mother of a three-year-old girl after the toddler was found walking along State Route 34 in Hurricane. April Dowdy was arrested at about 1 a. m. Saturday morning. She is charged with child neglect with injury and is being held at the Western Regional Jail on a $25,000 bond. Hurricane police have been investigating the incident since Friday, December 26 when the little girl was found walking on State Route 34. Investigators say it's not the first time the toddler has been found on the busy roadway. Police said the little girl was wearing only...

NEW ORLEANS – A man who initially told police gunmen kidnapped his 2 1/2-year-old son was arrested Saturday, accused of committing an "extremely hideous" murder because he was ordered to pay child support, Police Superintendent Warren Riley said. Danny Platt confessed, told police where to find the child's body and will be booked on a charge of first-degree murder in the death of Ja' Shawn Powell, Riley said at a news conference. "He had said he would kill either his wife or his child before he paid child support," which he recently had been ordered to do, Riley said.

Spc. Mario Aguirre witnesses the birth of his daughter, Gabriela, via Web camera at the Red Cross's Legacy Room, Joint Base Balad, Iraq, Dec. 15, 2008. Photo by Spc. Kiyoshi Freeman, 3rd Sustainment Command (Expeditionary). JOINT BASE BALAD — An Arizona National Guardsman recently witnessed the birth of his daughter from halfway around the world here at the Red Cross’ Legacy Room. Opened back in July, the Legacy Room allowed Spc. Mario Aguirre, an artilleryman with the 123rd Mobile Public Affairs Detachment, and native of El Paso, Texas, to communicate with his wife, who was delivering their second child in...

3-year-old girl found walking on Route 34 partially clothed. Hurricane -- In Putnam County, a disturbing case of apparent child neglect has police looking for answers tonight. According to a police report, a 3-year-old girl was found just before 6:00 p.m. last Friday walking on State Route 34 in Hurricane, and investigators say it's not the first time the toddler has been found walking on the busy roadway. The report states the little girl was wearing only a pair of panties. She was very dirty and shivering. Police Chief Mike Mullins says no arrests have been made at this point,...

AP – Shyima Hall, 19, who was 10 when she was trafficked to a gated community as a domestic worker, is shown … IRVINE, Calif. – Late at night, the neighbors saw a little girl at the kitchen sink of the house next door. They watched through their window as the child rinsed plates under the open faucet. She wasn't much taller than the counter and the soapy water swallowed her slender arms. To put the dishes away, she climbed on a chair. But she was not the daughter of the couple next door doing chores. She was their maid....

Michael Turberville has walked past countless toy shops in recent weeks and speculated wistfully on the presents he might, were circumstances different, buy his son for Christmas. There's the new bicycle, a computer game or two, perhaps even an old-fashioned train set. It remains just wishful thinking, however, because a huge question mark hangs over whether the 41-year-old IT consultant will see his only child at all, let alone over the festive season. In fact, Michael has not laid eyes on seven-year-old Ashley for four years and his relationship with him - if it can be called that - is...

Ill child has Christmas wish -- cards, and plenty of them BY TOM KNAPP, Intelligencer Journal Staff Hannah Garman wants to celebrate Christmas in a very big way. But the plucky 4-year-old -- she will turn 5 in January -- was diagnosed in late October with glioblastoma multiforme, an aggressive brain tumor, in her cerebellum. The prognosis, according to her grandmother, Shirley Garman, is not good. "The tumor is very aggressive," Mrs. Garman said. "It is not something they can take away." The Garman family is working overtime not to dwell on grim reality. Mrs. Garman said they'd rather focus...

GULFPORT -- With what she says was inspiration from above, Deborah King made her decision when it was clear her 11-year-old son wasn't going to survive the illness that hit him Saturday. King donated her son Cameron Emanuel King's organs, knowing it was what the child, remembered by friends for his generosity, would want. And the move has given hope to other families waiting for organs for their seriously ill children, which Cameron's survivors said comforts them. "The Lord just laid it on my heart," King said. "He was a healthy little boy and he said he always wanted...