Family Rights and Child Abuse News

Lesbian teacher rapist off hook - no jail time

For the third time this week, a public school teacher convicted of raping a same-sex student has been sentenced to no jail time - this time it's a lesbian coach in Florida who had relations with a 15-year-old.

Amy Lilley, 36, a former teacher and softball coach at Lecanto High School in Lecanto, Fla., was sentenced yesterday to two years of house arrest and eight more years of probation. Lilley, who was arrested in November, pleaded no contest to lewd and lascivious battery, a second-degree felony punishable by up to 15 years in prison.

World Net Daily (FL)

January 20, 2006

Give boot camps the boot

Florida's military-style boot camps for juvenile delinquents should have been shut down long ago.

The programs aren't effective. Worse yet, they're dangerous. Earlier this month a 14-year-old boy died within hours of his arrival at a boot camp in Bay County. Fortunately, this wake-up call has been received loud and clear by some state lawmakers.

Orlando Sentinel

January 19, 2006

Adopting Accountability

Where do babies come from' For people who adopt from overseas, the operating assumption is that children who need a home were abandoned by their birth mothers and somehow delivered to an orphanage.

Yet the circumstances of each baby's background often remain elusive. China is the biggest source of American adoptions from overseas. Last November, authorities in Hunan province uncovered a baby-selling scheme run by a trader charging $100 a newborn. In a separate case last year, duffel bags containing 28 baby girls were discovered on a bus, the infants heavily sedated to keep them from crying.

Los Angeles Times

January 15, 2006

Signs of Trouble at Agency Assigned to Protect Children

by Leslie Kaufman

The last eight weeks for the city's child welfare agency have been, by any measure, grim and jarring: four children dead, all from families known to the agency.

One because of what prosecutors have called criminal neglect, others allegedly killed outright by their parents. All died in Brooklyn. Now, with this week's death of a 7-year-old girl - the circumstances of which bear a striking resemblance to that of the 6-year-old child whose case a decade ago set off an overhaul of the child welfare system - the agency's own statistics indicate there may have been warning signs of trouble building for months.

The New York Times

January 13, 2006

Shasta probation search leads to meth lab bust

REDDING - A probation search in Mountain Gate unearthed what appeared to be a boxed methamphetamine lab, the Redding Police Department said.

While investigators were on the scene, Tyler Christopher Schweizer, 20, of Mountain Gate, and Chaundra Mae Wilson, 24, of Weaverville, arrived in a stolen vehicle, the RPD said. Four children, ages 4 to 10, were taken into protective custody by Child Protective Services and the Drug Endangered Children Program, the RPD said.

Red Bluff Daily News (CA)

January 8, 2006