Child Abuse

The father reportedly had some psychiatric drugs on him. Why parents with mental illnesses are allowed to be alone with their children will always keep MT in wonderment.

ROME — A French tourist beat his 4-year-old daughter’s head against the stone base of a Rome monument so hard the child was left in a coma, police said Sunday.

Blood still stained the travertine pavement of the Altar of the Nation, a towering monument to Italy’s war victims, hours after the savage beating late Saturday night in Piazza Venezia in the heart of Rome.

Bambino Gesu pediatric hospital said the child was comatose with severe head injuries when she was admitted shortly before midnight.

A woman who pleaded guilty to adopting 11 disabled children and collecting big, fat government checks while prosecutors say she severely abused the kids has been sentenced to 11 years in prison. Really? They only got her on the fraud charges? What about the abuse? This woman needs about 11 years for *each* child, served consecutively. Yeah, that ought to do it.

[Judith Leekin] was sentenced Tuesday on wire and mail fraud charges before U.S. District Judge Richard M. Berman in Manhattan federal court. Berman said that she had engaged in “a heartless dangerous money-driven scheme”. He noted that she had been abused as a child but said that “adoption is a privilege, not a right”.

Leekin apologized to the court and said “I love my children and I miss them”. The children, who now range in age from 16 to 28, have severe mental and physical disabilities such as autism and Downs syndrome.

Prosecutors said that Leekin treated the children like prisoners. They say that she beat them and made them wear handcuffs, locking them in a room and depriving them of medical and dental care. They were not allowed to attend school, officials said and have been so physically and emotionally abused that they will never recover.

Leekin was sentenced to 10 years and 10 months in federal prison and was ordered to forfeit $1.68 million.

A woman says that it was post-partum depression that caused her to begin poisoning her child with table salt. She then visited the infant at Children’s Hospital of Pittsburgh, where officials are saying she tried to “finish the job”.

Amber Brewington, 21, was arrested Wednesday morning on charges of attempted homicide, aggravated assault and endangering the welfare of children. She’s being held in the Allegheny County Jail, where she was undergoing psychiatric evaluation.

Pittsburgh police said a hospital staff member saw Brewington, of Duck River, Tenn., standing over the baby, Noah King, Tuesday night and noticed that someone had tampered with his feeding tube.

An Ohio man has been arrested for squeezing his 2-month-old son as hard as he could with his hands, breaking the infant’s ribs. Police say he was “in a fit of irritation.” Uh, no kidding.

Deputies said Cedric Butts, 23, became angry because his 2-month-old son, Jaylen, wouldn’t stop crying.

Investigators said two of the boy’s ribs were broken.

A mother in Oakland, California is being charged with child endangerment after she allegedly left her 4-year-old son home alone and he blew off 4 fingers with a large firecracker.

Adonneka Gilchrist, 26, is to appear in Alameda County Superior Court in Oakland in connection with last week’s incident.

The boy reportedly lost a thumb and three fingers on his right hand and suffered a shattered eardrum when he ignited a firecracker at his home on the 1100 block of 65th Avenue in East Oakland about 2 p.m. Thursday.

The boy was reported to be in fair condition today at Children’s Hospital Oakland.

The 17-year-old being accused of raping his girlfriend’s toddler is going to be tried as an adult.

Police say John Price beat, bit and sexually assaulted the little girl while he babysat her in a home in Woonsocket.

The girl’s mother says when she got home, she noticed her daughter had been abused. Price is charged with sexual assault and child abuse.

An Alabama woman has been arrested and charged with scalding her baby with hot water. Jesus, it seems like we read one of these stories every week.

A nine-month-old boy is recovering from severe burns after police in Northport said the child was deliberately scalded in hot water.

Investigators said it happened Wednesday night at a mobile home off U.S. 82 West.

Northport Police Chief Robert Green said Monday that investigators arrested the child’s mother. 19-year-old Patrona Sebastian was charged with felony child abuse and assault.

A Wisconsin teenager has been charged with starving her baby to death by refusing to breastfeed her.

The 19-year-old is being held on tentative charges of first-degree intentional homicide and hiding a corpse.

District attorney Tim Gruenke said Monday the woman gave birth last August but stopped feeding the girl after two days, knowing the infant would die. He says she put the girl’s body in a cooler and then put it out with the garbage this spring.

We’re not even all that comfortable leaving our 9-year-old home when we go down to the corner hardware store. And we certainly wouldn’t leave him in charge of two kids under 3!

A 30-year-old woman was arrested and charged over the weekend with leaving her four youngsters - including a toddler and an infant - alone in an apartment.

Ortegga Oliver faces four counts of child endangering after police said they found the children, ages 9, 7, 2 and 7 months, home alone Friday night, court records show.

Several large ISP’s (Internet service providers) are cracking down on child porn and will have strict policies going forward, scrubbing child porn sites off their servers.

Unfortunately, we know that many of these sites are currently and will ultimately move to off shore ISP’s, but this zero tolerance for child exploitation and abuse must start with the most educated of societies who actually care about their children in effort to set an example to the entire world - we won’t have it!!!

AT&T Inc., one of the nation’s largest Internet service providers, has signed an agreement saying the company will purge all servers containing child pornography Web sites and block user access to newsgroups that center around pornographic material relating to children, according to a press release issued by New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo. AOL signed the same agreement this week.

An Oklahoma man has been accused of spraying hot water on his girlfriend’s 2-year-old son, giving him 2nd and 3rd degree burns. Hmmm, we think we know of an appropriate punishment…

Ottawa County Sheriff Terry Durborow says 24-year-old John Cellner of Wyandotte was arrested on a child abuse complaint.

Durborow says the child suffered second- and third-degree burns over half of his body.

Durborow says the burns occurred June 27 but that no professional medical attention was sought until July 2.

Thank you, Mr. Scum of the Earth, for speeding up the process to lock your ass up for a long, long time.

A 23-year-old drugstore worker accused of keeping a young girl as a sex slave in the Daly City home he shared with his father and stepmother pleaded no contest Wednesday to 14 felonies.

John France Gonzales, who had faced than 140 felony counts ranging from lewd and lascivious acts with a child under 14 to sodomy, entered his pleas in a Redwood City courtroom to a reduced number of counts that included statutory rape, domestic violence and criminal threat charges.

Gonzales disputes that he kept the girl imprisoned and contends they had a consensual relationship, said his attorney, Paul De Meester.

A teenager in Evanston, Illinois is being accused of causing the death of an 11-month-old infant.

James R. Jackson, 17, of the 2000 block of Dodge Avenue in Evanston, was charged with two counts of first-degree murder in the death of Clarashea Hebron, who was found injured in Jackson’s home before dying at a hospital, Evanston police Cmdr. Tom Guenther said Wednedsay.

Clarashea, of the 0 block of East 59th Street in Chicago, died at Children’s Memorial Hospital at 7:21 p.m. Monday, the Cook County Medical Examiner’s office said.

An autopsy Tuesday revealed the baby died of multiple injuries resulting from child abuse, the medical examiner’s office said. Her death was ruled a homicide.

Wow, putting your own 2-year-old in harm’s way to escape the police. This guy actually has scumbag drug dealers saying, “Man, that’s messed up.”

With a Taser pointed at him, a LaPorte man barricaded inside his home grabbed his 2-year-old daughter early Tuesday and used her as a shield.

“That’s pretty sad,” said LaPorte Police Chief of Detectives Clyde Crass.

“We’re talking about a 2-year-old child who I’m sure was frightened,” he said.

Child neglect and battery to a police officer were among the charges leveled against Brandon Hockman.

A baby boy found in a trash bag in Chicago’s Uptown neighborhood has survived and is expected to make a full recovery.

Feldman said the 5-pound baby suffered from hypothermia, a cut lip and swelling on the back of his head. He estimated the baby was less than a day old and was born at full-term, between 36 and 38 weeks.

About 12 hours after an Uptown resident brought him to the fire station at 1212 W. Wilson Ave., the baby’s temperature was up, blood pressure was stable and he was responding to stimuli, Feldman said.

Mark Levison, assistant deputy fire commissioner of EMS operations, praised the actions of Brandon Shepard, the 25-year-old who heard the baby’s cries outside the building where he lives in the 4600 block of North Beacon Street and raced with the baby to the fire station.