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A counselor at the Pleasantville Cottage School, a school for troubled teens, was attacked by girls who set her face on fire and poured bleach on her burns, put barrettes in her hair and told her she would look good in a coffin.  Eight suspects, including one still at large, were indicted on charges of attempted murder, assault and gang assault.  All were charged as adults and will be tried in adult court, although the six who are under 16 will face lesser penalties if convicted.  

In another incident,

On Tuesday, the Supreme Court agreed to hear an appeal from the state of Alaska, which has a sweeping sex-offender law that a federal appeals court overturned part of last year as unconstitutional.  The laws in about a dozen other states will also be affected by the Supreme Court’s decision.  Megan’s Law is named after Megan Kanka, a young girl who was molested and killed by a neighbor in 1994.  All states have some version of New Jersey’s Megan’s Law, with requires the names and addresses of dangerous sex offenders

A Roman Catholic priest known as Oskar Pelaez by the Hartford police and as Oscar Alberto Pelaez by the police in California, was arraigned in Superior Court in Hartford yesterday after being arrested on Saturday at a Hartford behavioral treatment center.  The 35 year old priest was sought in California as a fugitive from justice on child molestation charges.  He served at Sacred Heart Church in Turlock, California.  He was charged with being a fugitive from justice and held in $500,000 bail.  He agreed to be extrdited to California, where

The Supreme Court agreed today to decide whether laws that inform the public of the whereabouts of convicted sex offenders after the offenders’ release from prison impose extra punishment in violation of the Constitution’s ban on ex post facto legislation.  

(Washington)

    In one of the most outrageous cases of injustice, a Suffolk County court judge recently sentenced John Shelton to only one year of jail after he pleaded guilty to raping and sodomizing his stepdaughter for years.  In a statement from the girl read by her mother, the judge was asked: is this all my life is worth to you?  She added, When someone does something wrong, they should be punished, and I have been punished for five years.

    This child got a profoundly powerful message that the price

When David Carpenter pleaded guilty to rape and sodomy in Sullivan County Court on February 7, the case may have seemed an aberration.  But national and local statistics say the case, sexual assault on a child, committed by someone the victim knew, is really the typical portrait of sexual assault in the United States.

Roughly two-thirds of sexual assault cases reported to police, based on preliminary statistics for 2001, involve victims younger than 18.  Thirty-four percent are under 12.  According to federal Bureau of Justice Statistics, 88 percent of sex