A 7-year-old boy in Bulgaria lived chained in his house supposedly for his own protection.

It is believed that Ilko [Todorov] was forced to sleep and live for long periods with the chain attached.

Authorities are said to be investigating whether the child missed school and why social services did not act earlier.

The father Ilija [Todorov] declined to comment and only said that he chained his son in a bid to keep him away from “bad company”.

Mary and Morgan Corrodi, 16-year-old twins with IQs of 70, disappeared from their California home and are now classified as runaways.

“[A neighbor] saw the girls standing there, just kind of hanging around like they were waiting for somebody, and a few minutes later, a small car pulled up and the twins got in the back seat,” Corrodi told FOXNews.com. “And then they drove away and we haven’t heard from them since.”

Corrodi said the girls are “very slow mentally” but appear to be much older than 16. He’s fearful someone they met online may take advantage of their disabilities.

“It’s possible, that’s what I’m afraid of,” he said. “They look, up close, like they’re 22, and mentally, they’re 10 or 11. They’re very slow mentally. They each have dolls and they still play with them and yet their interest is to meet boys.”

An 11-year-old girl in Boston went missing from a neighborhood McDonald’s earlier this week. Apparently it’s not the first time she has wandered off.

Marizali Aponti was last seen at about 6 p.m. on Tuesday at a McDonald’s near Central Square in East Boston with her 7-year-old brother, police said.

She is described as Hispanic, 4 feet 6 inches tall, with a medium build, brown eyes, and dark brown hair, according to police reports. She was last seen wearing a white T-shirt and blue jeans, police said.

Aponti’s mother informed police at about 11:40 p.m. on Tuesday that her daughter was missing, police said. She told police she went to the McDonald’s to pick up her two children, but only her son was there.

Her mother also told police Aponti had gone missing before, about nine months ago, but returned home after only a few hours, police said.

We spent a lot of time alone amongst the stacks at the library in our youth, and always considered it a safe haven. Ah, the innocence of youth.

An 10-year-old girl was molested in the bathroom of a St. Paul library Wednesday afternoon, according to St. Paul Police.

Authorities said the incident happened in the basement of the Riverview Library on East George Street at about 3:30 p.m.

The girl claimed a man grabbed her before groping and molesting her. After telling the library staff about the incident, police were contacted.

The suspect fled out a door in the library’s basement.

Can someone take this woman’s kids already? A mom who previously had been arrested for helping her daughters kick a teen girl’s ass at the mall is in trouble again. This time, she’s being accused of restraining her 12-year-old son with belts.

Police found the boy in the street with his legs and arms restrained.

[Marilyn] Camacho’s lawyer, Mark Finkel, said Wednesday in Framingham District Court that his client was just trying to stop a misbehaving child who struck another family member.

Camacho is scheduled to go on trial on Sept. 11 for allegedly helping her daughters — then 16, 13 and 12 — beat up a teen at the Natick Collection in May 2007.

A 4-year-old boy was trapped for 45 minutes on a speedboat zipping around Lake Michigan after his parents fell overboard.

Gary Marine Unit Patrolman Phillip Cook says the wake from a larger boat apparently tossed the adults overboard, where they were rescued by a passing boat. The father evidently turned the steering wheel as he fell Tuesday and the boat began going in circles at full throttle near the East Chicago marina.

Police and Coast Guard officers tried throwing tow lines to stop the boat, but it eventually stopped after drifting near rocks that clipped the propeller and killed the motor.

The Gloucester, Massachusetts high school principal who accused female students of getting pregnant on purpose after a sharp increase in teen pregnancies at the school has resigned.

Time magazine reported in June that Joseph Sullivan said a pact made by a group of teens to get pregnant and raise their babies together was at least partly behind a spike in pregnancies at Gloucester High School. Seventeen girls at the school became pregnant this year — four times the usual number.

Sullivan later said he did not recall using the word “pact” but believed many of the pregnancies were intentional.

The theory arose amid a debate over whether to dispense contraceptives at a school health clinic without parents’ knowledge.

This news must have gone over well. The son of one of the higher ups of the militant Islamic Hamas has shunned his religious upbringing and has turned to Christianity instead. We would have preferred he become an atheist, but oh well, you can’t win them all.

The story of how his life unfolded is truly amazing, whether you agree or disagree with his views. Below is a transcript on an exclusive FOX News interview with Hassan as he tells firsthand how a West Bank Muslim became a West Coast Christian.

JONATHAN HUNT: Why, after 25 years, did you change?

MOSAB HASSAN YOUSEF: I believe that all those walls that Islam built for the last 1,400 years are not existing (sic) anymore. They don’t recognize this. They built those walls and made people ignorant because they’re afraid. They didn’t want people to discuss anything about the reality of Islam, about the big questions of Islam and they asked their followers, the Muslims, ‘Don’t ask about those certain questions.’

A French 13-year-old died after his parents left him locked in a sweltering hot car while on vacation in the Caribbean. It was some sort of high security vehicle which can’t be unlocked/opened from the inside. We would think “security” would mean keeping people from getting in, not out.

The boy had struggled violently to escape from the locked car, slashing at the upholstery with scissors and hitting the reinforced windows, a police spokesman said.

He added: “There were signs in the car that he had fought to get out, but it was a very high security new model car that can not be opened from the inside.

“As the sun rose in the morning, the temperature would have risen to 50C and he must have passed out from heat exhaustion.”

An 11-year-old boy and his friends were playing a “mummy game”, where they wrapped him up in toilet paper to look like, naturally, a mummy. Of course this is a common event at sleep overs and pep rallies the world over, but in this case the boys somehow managed to set their friend on fire.

“The boys were all playing together, and they were all about the same age ranging from 8 to 11,” Police Capt. Ned Jackson said. “At this point, we think it’s just accidental — no hazing. That’s what people immediately think when you think of someone being wrapped up to a pole and burnt, but it appears that was not the case.”

[Tyler] Morgan and four to six other boys were playing in a park when the boys decided to turn him into a mummy. He was willing to go along, Jackson said.

After wrapping Morgan up against a pole, the boys strung more toilet paper to form a sort of wrestling ring. One of the boys lit that toilet paper, and when he and his playmates tried to douse the fire sparks lit the toilet paper wrapped around Morgan.

We had to dig numerous broken off pencil points out of our skin when we were younger. It seemed like being stabbed with a pencil was some sort of right of passage. So it seems like this story isn’t exactly newsworthy, except for the fact that the school seems to be making an incredibly big deal out of a small incident.

Late Tuesday afternoon Fulton County School officials were alerted that a 8-year-old girl had been stabbed with a pencil by an 8-year-old boy during the ride home.

Wednesday morning district spokeswoman Susan Hale said the pencil did not pierce the girl’s skin but she was checked out by a physician because of a pre-existing health concern.

“We understand now that her mother took her to see a doctor, not an ambulance,” she said.

Hale said an investigation into the incident is ongoing. School officials are talking to several of the children who were on the bus to determine whether the boy’s actions were intentional or accidental. The bus is equipped with video surveillance but did not capture the incident, Hale said.

A man in Vernon, Connecticut is being charged with forcing 3 young children to whomp on each other with whiffle ball bats, then beating them himself. His fiancee, the mother of the children, has also been charged.

A Rockville man who police say urged three children to beat one another with plastic baseball bats, then allegedly beat them himself afterward, remained jailed Tuesday after his arraignment in Superior Court on a host of child abuse charges.

Christopher Dubay, 24, of 105B High St., was held on $150,000 bail and ordered by Judge Carl J. Schuman to have no contact with the three children, as well as a fourth. The children, ages 6, 4, 2 and 1, lived with Dubay and his fiancee, Krystal R. Burgess, 24. Burgess is the mother of the four. Dubay is the father of the youngest two.

Burgess was ordered held on $35,000 bail on charges that she failed to get medical attention for the children and tried to hide them from state Department of Children and Families investigators.

A Georgia man is being accused of keeping his wife and 4 children in captivity for 3 years inside their mobile home.

Lavonia Police Chief Bruce Carlisle says 36-year-old Raymond Daniel Thurmond was arrested Tuesday when he showed up for work. He has been charged with rape, child abuse and false imprisonment.

He is awaiting a bond hearing and does not yet have an attorney.

Carlisle says the wife and children had been allowed to leave just once since 2005. A 14-year-old once attended first grade, but the other children had never been to school.