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TYLER, Texas — A jury again needed just four minutes Thursday to convict an organizer of an East Texas swinger's club where prosecutors say young children were forced to perform sexual acts for an audience. Shauntel Mayo, 29, faces life in prison after being found guilty on charges that she forced three siblings, ages 7 through 10, to have sex with each other or perform sexual acts for club members who paid to watch.

ATLANTA — A pilot from Washington state was arrested in Atlanta this week on charges he sexually assaulted at least 20 boys at his home over a six-year period and videotaped much of the abuse. Police and FBI agents arrested Weldon Marc Gilbert, 47, in Atlanta on Thursday and charged him with nine sex crimes, including child rape, child molestation and sexual exploitation of a minor. The Lake Tapps, Wash., resident and pilot for the United Parcel Service was in jail in Atlanta late Friday awaiting extradition to Washington. Pierce County, Wash., sheriff's spokesman Ed Troyer said more charges are...

Remember all those dirty hippies who threatened to move to Canada if Bush was re-elected? Guess what, Canada doesn't want them either.... Peace activists Medea Benjamin and Ann Wright have been arrested in the U.S. while protesting the Iraq war, but they never dreamed that would prevent them from entering Canada. The arrests landed Benjamin's and Wright's names in an FBI-run database, the National Crime Information Center, which Canada also relies on to screen visitors. When the two women visited the country in August, they were told they would have to apply for "criminal rehabilitation" and pay $200 if they...

A homosexual foster couple were left free to sexually abuse vulnerable boys in their care because social workers feared being accused of discrimination if they investigated complaints, an inquiry concluded yesterday. Even when the mother of two of the children reported her suspicions to the council, officials accepted the men’s explanations and did nothing. Instead of banning children from staying with Faunch and Wathey, they sent youngsters with more serious problems to them. Between them, the couple abused four boys aged between eight and 14. Their victims included a 14-year-old boy with Asperger’s syndrome, a form of autism,who had a...

A married couple who had sex in front of a nine-year-old girl who was forced to watch on a webcam in the United States were both jailed for 10 years. Denise and Ronald Edwards of Cinderford, Gloucestershire, also encouraged a paedophile in New York to abuse the child as they watched online. Videos and CDs carrying images of children being abused were also later found by police at the Edwards’ home, along with a webcam in 2004. Mr Edwards, 54, admitted engaging in sexual activity in the presence of a girl, causing or inciting a child to engage in sexual...

WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. - Two teenagers were accused of gang raping a woman and forcing her 12-year-old son to join in the attack, then beating him and pouring cleaning solution into his eyes. Authorities allege Avion Lawson, 14, and Nathan Walker, 16, were among a group of about 10 masked suspects who forced their way into the woman's apartment in a crime-ridden housing project the night of June 18. The two were being held without bail Friday on suspicion of armed sexual battery by multiple perpetrators, sexual performance by a child, armed home invasion and aggravated battery. Both were...

Los Gatos man alleged to have 750,000 child porn photos A Los Gatos man faces 10 years in prison in what law enforcement officials are calling the largest child pornography bust in the Bay Area - more than 750,000 sexual photos of boys found tucked in in ammunition boxes and then buried in the man's backyard. Michael F. Palmer, 53, covered his buried stash of explicit photos with plywood and plants in the Santa Cruz side of unincorporated Los Gatos, deputies said. Most of the photographs, Sgt. Robin Mitchell said, came from overseas. But, officers also seized non-pornographic, homemade films...

TAMPA - A 2 ½ -year-old girl died Thursday afternoon, a day after being raped by her babysitter, authorities said. Eric James Tate, 18, of 14711 N. 30th St., Lutz, is accused of sexually assaulting the girl at about 11 a.m. Wednesday while babysitting at his home. Authorities searched Tate's mobile home and said they found the girl's panties soiled with blood on Tate's bed. Tate was dating the girl's mother, who brought the tot to St. Joseph's Hospital with severe head injuries Wednesday. Doctors put the girl on a ventilator. The identities of the girl and mother were not...

BILLERICA -- A 24-year-old Brazilian man is being held at the Middlesex County jail in Cambridge, accused of raping a local 12-year-old girl, police said. Paulo Jose Dos Santos was arrested last week by Billerica police, charged with two counts of rape and two counts of indecent assault and battery on a child under 14. Detective Sgt. Roy Frost said police acted quickly to arrest Dos Santos after a short investigation, fearing he might flee the country. Police believe Dos Santos is in the United States illegally. Frost said the man has been deported by Immigration and Naturalization Services before,...

WATERBURY -- A man already in prison for his admitted role in the death of Maryann Measles said she hardly resisted when the eight people she had once called friends joined in a frenzied attack to kick, beat and rape her along the banks of the Housatonic River in New Milford Oct. 19, 1997. One of those people, Jeffrey Boyette testified, was Keith Foster. "Everyone was yelling, loud and angry," said Boyette, on the stand in the second day of Foster's trial in Waterbury Superior Court. "I don't know how it could have been worse. We were her friends." Foster,...

Kidnappers kill crying baby By Daily Telegraph Correspondent (Filed: 03/04/2006) Horrified Italians called for the death penalty after a toddler was killed by his kidnappers, apparently for crying too much. For a month, the nation had hoped for the safe return of Tommaso Onofri, a curly haired 17-month-old snatched from his home on March 2. He suffered from epilepsy and his parents issued televised warnings to the kidnappers of the child's need of regular medication. After a month of silence from the kidnappers, police discovered his body late on Saturday in a wood near the northern city of Parma, just...

NEW PORT RICHEY -- A mother confronted a neighbor who allegedly raped her 7-year-old son and threatened to call police, but reportedly accepted $600 to let the man molest her son again, authorities said. The 30-year-old unemployed mother was charged Tuesday with capital sexual battery and child abuse. The neighbor, Nicholas Quiles, 48, has been charged with capital sexual battery. Both are being held without bail. It couldn't immediately be determined Thursday if they had lawyers.

PHILADELPHIA - Two teenagers taunted a man rummaging through a trash bin and then killed him after he bared his buttocks at them, police said Tuesday. "He didn't want to be harassed by these kids or whatever and he mooned them," Upper Darby Township Police Sgt. David Madonna said. Christopher McEneaney, 16, and Andre Mark, 18, were charged Monday in the slaying Friday night of Martin Malone, 47. He was stabbed with a multi-tool and bludgeoned with a shovel. Police said the teens were walking through an apartment complex just outside Philadelphia when they saw Malone picking through the trash...

The stepfather of a 10-year-old girl was charged with first-degree criminal sexual conduct with a minor after she became pregnant, police said. William Edward Ronca, 26, was being held Friday at the Abbeville County jail. The girl's mother told The (Greenwood) Index-Journal that she had no idea her daughter was pregnant. A school guidance counselor told the mother the girl was acting withdrawn and not participating at school. The girl was later taken to Abbeville County Memorial Hospital, where it was discovered she was about seven to eight months pregnant. Warrants said Ronca had been having sex with the girl...

INDIANAPOLIS -- A federal judge has sentenced a Bloomington man to 100 years in prison for producing and possessing more than 5,000 pieces of child pornography. David Turner, 41, pleaded guilty in August. U.S. Attorney Susan Brooks said Bloomington police and the FBI found more than 100 computer disks containing images of child pornography. Investigators said Turner used both alcohol and drugs in order to film two 13-year-old girls engaging in sex acts with a 32-year-old man over a three-year period. Brooks said she's pleased with the lengthy sentence imposed by the court.

AIDS activist charged with sex crimes Tuesday, January 10, 2006 The Associated Press BURLINGTON An AIDS activist was one of two people accused of sex crimes against a 13-year-old boy last year over several weeks. Ricky Odell Yow, 42, of Elon, was charged with five counts of taking indecent liberties with a child, three counts each of a first-degree sex offense with a child, using a minor to assist in an obscenity, first-degree sexual exploitation of a minor, crimes against nature, and two counts of contributing to the delinquency of a minor. He was in jail Tuesday under $1.5 million...

The brute who raped a Bronx honor student on the roof of her building was punishing the teen because she didn't have enough money to give him when he robbed her, her mother said yesterday. "What do you have?" the stranger, waving a knife, barked at the 16- year-old in the hallway of her Fordham walk-up. "She held up her hand and said, 'Only my earrings and a dollar and some change,' " her mother recounted. "Well, that's not enough," the attacker declared, before holding a knife to her throat, dragging her to the roof and stealing her innocence.

view low speed video view hi speed videoWSBT) An Osceola police officer is on the wrong side of the law. Officer Ronald Lusk faces two felony counts of sexual misconduct with a minor. The allegations involve sexual acts with a 15-year-old girl. In court Monday the judge entered a not guilty plea to the charges on Lusk’s behalf. Court documents say Lusk initially denied having any sexual contact with the girl, who was 15 at the time. Lusk later admitted that he had engaged in sexual conduct with the girl beginning in the early summer of this year. He told...

<p>ASHVILLE, Ohio -- Police believe a child was raped inside her home last week.</p> <p>Neighbors said they contacted authorities several times about one of their neighbors and the treatment of her 6-year-old daughter. But what they allegedly saw inside the Ashville apartment frightened them, NBC 4's Barbra Flannigan reported.</p>

An Orange County, California Superior Court judge pleaded guilty on Tuesday to four felony charges of possession of child pornography. He admitted that he had at least 100 images of minor boys engaged in sexually explicit conduct. Judge Ronald Kline, a 65-year-old resident of Irvine, pleaded guilty in Los Angeles before United States District Judge Consuelo B. Marshall. Pleading guilty to four of seven counts contained in a grand jury indictment, Kline admitted that the images of child pornography were on his home computer, two computer floppy disks and one Zip drive disk. Kline was initially indicted by a federal...

A Santa Ana high school teacher was arrested Wednesday morning on suspicion of lewd conduct with a student during a five-year period, police said. Lee Henry, 56, of Tustin, was pulled out of his English class at Middle College High School about 10 a.m. and arrested in the office, said Lt. Jim Peery, a spokesman for the Tustin Police Department. ADVERTISEMENT The alleged abuse began when the student was 13 years old and attended Carr Intermediate School, where Henry was his teacher, Peery said.

Breaking news from Ohio, where a press conference was just held: The two bodies found in Hudson, OH are those of the two missing and murdered Gehring children

A 10-month-old baby is fighting for her life after being attacked for her necklace on a busy New York street. Horrified witnesses said a man lunged at little Isabelle Avins in her stroller and began stabbing her with one hand as he tried to rip off her gold chain with the other. The girl's 20-year-old nanny tried to fend off the man but was overpowered. 'He just came out of nowhere,' eyewitness Hennessey Arias told the New York Post newspaper. 'The baby had a chain on her neck, a simple little chain, not all that much. 'Everything happened so fast,...

An Irving woman turned her 14-year-old daughter into a sex slave who was raped by 100 to 150 men over several months, Dallas County prosecutors say. Athena Stoddard was convicted Wednesday on charges of compelling prostitution and enabling sexual assault after her traumatized daughter testified against her. A judge also saw evidence that the child had suffered internal injuries and sexually transmitted diseases. "She would drive her to these apartment complexes and round up men and tell them, 'Sex for money,' " prosecutor Michelle Willbanks said. "She was doing it for drug money." Ms. Stoddard, 44, generally stayed nearby during...

SEATTLE - Two soldiers who just returned from a year in Iraq were badly beaten in an attack outside Pioneer Square. But believe it or not, someone caught the beating on videotape. Now, police are asking for your help identifying the suspects. The brutality of it all was captured on tape outside of Larry's Nightclub on First and Yesler on July 31. Police say the victims were with two women who'd been groped by the suspects. One of the women threw a hot dog at the suspects and walked away. They didn't get very far. The three suspects ran after...

A 31-year-old Aurora man who posed as a teenager was charged in connection with 18 sexual assaults of underage boys and girls, Aurora police said Monday. Due to his youthful appearance, police said that Zuri-Key Latifbay McGhee had been passing himself off as being 13 to 15 years of age. Police began their investigation when the parents of a 14-year-old boy came forward after he told them he had been sexually assaulted by McGhee starting in 2002 and continuing into 2005. McGhee was arrested while living in an Aurora home with an 11-year-old boy and the boy's parents. Police said...

George Galloway has come under fire after he blamed yesterday's bombings in London on UK foreign policy in Iraq.'The loss of innocent lives, whether in this country or Iraq, is precisely the result of a world that has become less safe and peaceful place in recent years,' Galloway said. Defense Minister Adam Ingram accused the Respect MP for Bethel Green and Bow of 'dipping his poisionous tongue in a pool of blood' after he made a statemet that the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq helped to bring about the attacks.Mr. Ingram, addressing the House of Commons last night, termed such...

Couple In Jail With Bail Set At $200,000 For EachCENTER, Texas -- Authorities say an East Texas couple have admitted to molesting their 1-year-old son and broadcasting the sex acts on the Internet. They also said Billy Don Latham and Ethel Latham allowed a stranger to sexually abuse the child. The Center-area couple are both charged with aggravated sexual assault of a child. They're in the Shelby County Jail in Center with bail set at $200,000 for each. Shelby County District Attorney Lynda Russell said the Lathams' home was visited by a police officer and a Child Protective Services worker...

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - A convicted pedophile may have chronicled sex acts with children in 36,000 notebook entries over three decades as he moved across the United States, hiding his identity, police said on Friday. The handwritten coded records were logged on more than 1,000 pages in seven notebooks that police seized at the home of Dean Arthur Schwartzmiller in San Jose, California, which he shared with another convicted child molester. "A lot of them like to document their acts," said Detective David Gonzalez, referring to pedophiles. "But the scale, I've never seen anything like it or heard of anything...

VENICE BEACH, California -- One of Northeast Ohio's most wanted fugitives has been captured Monday afternoon. John Dallas Lockhart, a 36-year-old attorney from Akron, was arrested by Akron Police detectives and United States Deputy Marshals in Venice Beach, California. Lockhart has been on the run since August of 2004 days before prosecutors filed a series of sex crimes charges against him, including the rape of a 4-month-old baby girl. What prosecutors call photo evidence of the crimes was recovered from a computer Lockhart shared with a business associate. United States Marshal Peter J. Elliott tells Channel 3 News "Lockhart had...

May 19, 2005 -- In a shocking and vile attack last year, a prowling pedophile plucked a sick 13-year-old girl from her Bellevue Hospital bed. He dragged the girl into an empty conference room, tore off her blue pediatric gown, and then beat, choked and violated her — leaving her bloodied and unconscious...

DELAND -- A self-described Internet evangelist who has preached about everything from morality to spirituality on his family's Web site was arrested Wednesday and charged with raping a child younger than 12. Balfe Charles Michael Balfe, 60, was picked up at his job site at 84 Lumber in DeLand, DeLand Police Cmdr. Randel Henderson said. He is being held at the Volusia County Branch Jail without bail. Balfe, married and the father of three, is accused in three warrants of raping a child younger than 12, Henderson said. The remaining counts accuse him of sexual battery, lewd and lascivious molestation...

SANTA ANA, Calif. — Jurors were shown crime scene photos of the nude body of 5-year-old Samantha Runnion on Tuesday during closing arguments in the trial of a factory worker accused of kidnapping, assaulting and murdering the little girl three years ago. "This is the hard part of the trial right now, folks," Deputy District Attorney David Brent said, holding up photos for only the jury to see. "What kind of an animal poses a little girl like this?" Samantha's mother, Erin Runnion, was seated in the front row of the courtroom, and dabbed at her eyes with a tissue...

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- A prominent Washington-area Muslim cleric was convicted Tuesday of urging his followers, days after the attacks of September 11, 2001, to go to Afghanistan and help the Taliban fight U.S. military forces. Ali al-Timimi, 41, was convicted on all 10 counts of an indictment brought in U.S. District Court in Alexandria, Virginia. U.S. Attorney Paul McNulty called the verdict a victory in the war on terrorism. In a written statement, he called al-Timimi "a kingpin of hate against America." "He not only wanted Americans to die, he recruited others to his cause at a time when our...

LAUDERDALE LAKES, FLORIDA- A 9-year-old boy has told detectives his mother videotaped an assault on him by an adult male, who has been arrested. Broward Sheriff's detectives are investigating allegations by a 9-year-old boy who said his mother videotaped him being raped, then sold the tape. Investigators are looking into allegations that the boy was raped at least five times between July and October 2004, according to BSO spokeswoman Veda Coleman-Wright. She would not say when the detectives first heard about the alleged assaults. Detectives arrested Kevin Jerome Bynes, 27, of Lauderdale Lakes, Tuesday on five counts of sexual battery...

FORT BRAGG, N.C. (AP) — A military jury has convicted Sgt. Hasan Akbar on charges of first-degree murder and attempted first-degree murder stemming from an attack on an Army camp in Kuwait.

A man pleaded guilty yesterday to raping a five-year-old girl so brutally he tore her vagina and broke the blood vessels in her eyes. Nicholas Dean Sennie, 46, will be sentenced next Tuesday for a crime he told the court only "an evil person" would do. After a night of drinking with the girl's mother in September 2003, Sennie went into the sleeping child's bed and raped her, court heard. "Her vagina was split with a third-degree tear to her anus and she required surgery to repair the injury," said Crown attorney Mick Makar. "He strangled her to the point...

RUSKIN, Fla. — Police said Saturday they found an unidentified body in a creek near the home of a missing 13-year-old who disappeared a week ago.

A 15-year-old girl was fatally shot after refusing a man's demand for a kiss, authorities said. The alleged gunman was captured Wednesday night in Washington, D.C. Atlantic County Prosecutor Jeffrey Blitz said Alfred R. Bishop, 21, will be charged with murder in the death of Elisa Hernandez, a high school sophomore. Hernandez had gone to an apartment in her housing complex to visit girlfriends just before midnight Tuesday, Blitz said. Bishop, a friend of the apartment's occupants who stored some of his belongings there, arrived shortly afterward. After some casual conversation, Bishop tried to get Hernandez to kiss him, but...

ALAMEDA - A former teacher at Wood Middle School faces multiple counts of distributing child pornography after police said he used a computer in his classroom to post photos of boys having sex with boys on the Internet. Michael Allen Wallace, 41, whom police began investigating in May, surrendered today at the county courthouse on Shore Line Drive after learning an arrest warrant had been issued for him. He was released after posting a $385,000 bond. No Wood students are in the photographs and no one else in the school district came under investigation in connection with the case, Alameda...

Organization 'dismayed and shocked by allegations DALLAS, Texas - The national director of programs for the Boy Scouts of America has been charged with receiving and distributing child pornography, the U.S. Attorney's office here told NBC News on Tuesday. Douglas S. Smith Jr. was charged with one felony count of having photos that show "minors engaging in sexually explicit conduct." Sources in the U.S. Attorney's office told NBC that Smith was expected to plead guilty. The images were of young boys and the investigation started in Germany, the sources added.

Florida couple accused of torturing and starving five of their seven children were captured Friday night in Utah after detectives were able to track their cell phone signals, authorities said. Deputies in San Juan County, Utah, apprehended Linda Dollar, 51, and John Dollar, 58, on a road after recognizing their gold 2000 Lexus sport utility vehicle.

THE LYNCHING OF DAN RATHER On British TV, Dan feared the price of "asking questions" Monday, September 20, 2004 E-Mail Article Printer Friendly Version By Greg Palast "It's that fear that keeps journalists from asking the toughest of the tough questions," the aging American journalist told the British television audience. In June 2002, Dan Rather looked old, defeated, making a confession he dare not speak on American TV about the deadly censorship -- and self-censorship -- which had seized US newsrooms. After September 11, news on the US tube was bound and gagged. Any reporter who stepped out of line,...