California Pastor Charged With Child Sexual Assault
COLTON (CBSLA) – An Orange County pastor is facing misdemeanor charges of sexually assaulting a minor in the San Bernardino County city of Loma Linda.
On Thursday, the San Bernardino County district attorney’s office filed two misdemeanor counts of annoying or molesting a child against 57-year-old Harold Dien of Colton.
While Dien resides in Colton, he is a pastor for the Laguna Indonesian Seventh-day Adventist Church in Laguna Hills, according to the Seventh-day Adventists website.
The alleged abuse did not occur on church property, the San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department reports.
Deputies began investigating Dien on Feb. 5 after being notified by county Child Protectives Services regarding a possible case of child abuse that occurred in Loma Linda.
Investigators believe Dien may have other victims. Anyone with information should call the sheriff’s department at 909-387-3545.
Iowa prosecutors hearing it from public for
disgusting plea deals
Michael Robinson, Pella, Letter to the Editor
Des Moines Register
Rekha Basu is spot on when she asks in her recent article, "Why is our state so kind to child rapists?"
I keep asking myself the same question. When individuals commit hideous acts such as the rape and abuse of children, the law is in place to provide a legal mechanism to punish such people and isolate them from the public.
Apparently this has been lost on county attorneys and judges in many Iowa counties. There is always an excuse as to why a person such as Randy Johnson was allowed to enter an Alford plea. Randy Johnson had been charged with 13 counts (4th story on link), five felonies and eight misdemeanors for his abuses of a child. Why is this individual not doing hard time? Dallas County District Court Judge Terry Rickers allowed Johnson to enter an Alford plea, but only to injurious child endangerment and indecent exposure. Why wasn’t Johnson tried on all 13 counts? The county attorney’s office had to also agree to the Alford plea in order for the defendant’s attorney to present the plea to the presiding judge.
The county attorneys and judges did not protect the public. Instead they allowed each criminal to be released back out on the streets where they can brutalize a child again.
We do not need additional laws regarding sexual assault and abuse of children. What we do need are for county attorneys and judges to do their jobs. That means for county attorneys and judges to stop agreeing to Alford pleas left and right. Enforce the law, ensure due process and a fair trial, then lock up sexual predators to the full extent of the law.
— Michael Robinson, Pella
Dean Hilpipre, 61, of Alden has pleaded guilty to two felony charges of sex abuse for inappropriately touching his now 7-year-old granddaughter. Because of a plea deal, prosecutors agreed to recommend Hilpipre receive a suspended sentence.
The 7 y/o now has to try and go to sleep at night knowing her grandfather is free and knowing he was not even punished for the evil he committed on her. How is that justice, or even close to it? The creep should be put away until the child is an adult. The problem is, the child has no voice! No lawyer is looking after her rights! The DA should be, but obviously, that's not the case.
Maryland substitute teacher arrested on charges of
sexual abuse of elementary student
CLOVERLY, Md. - A Montgomery County substitute teacher has been arrested on charges of inappropriate touching of an elementary school student, police say.
Montgomery County police say 59-year-old Steven Katz from Columbia, has been charged with Sexual Abuse of a Minor, as well as a fourth-degree sex offense.
According to detectives, on March 8, a Cloverly Elementary School student told his parent that his substitute teacher, identified as Katz, had touched him in a way that made him feel uncomfortable at school that day.
Investigators say the parent told school administrators, who then notified police.
Officers spoke to both the student as well as Katz. They say Katz made admissions related to inappropriately touching the student in their interview.
Katz turned himself into police after a warrant was issued for his arrest, they say.
Police are asking that parents of children who may have had contact with Steven Katz to talk to them and contact police at (240) 773-5400 if they believe their child was victimized.
Sex offender gets 17 years for killing
Massachusetts woman
Marie Szaniszlo
Jason Fleury, at right, stands for his sentencing in Salem Superior Court after pleading guilty for manslaughter for the 2014 murder of Jaimee Mendez. Steven Mendez, above, holds the hand of Jaimee’s son, Jayson Newton, 9.
A convicted sex offender charged with first-degree murder in connection with the 2014 death of Jaimee Mendez pleaded guilty yesterday to voluntary manslaughter and was sentenced to 17 years behind bars, despite the objections of the Swampscott mother’s grief-stricken family.
Jason J. Fleury, formerly of Lynn, was scheduled to go to trial on April 3 in Salem Superior Court, where he could have been sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole if he had been convicted of the original charge — first-degree murder.
Beatrice Mendez, holds a picture of her niece, Jaimee Mendez, during the hearing at Salem Superior Court where Jason Fleury plead guilty to manslaughter for the 2014 murder of Jaimee Mendez. Friday, March 16, 2018.
“I’m truly terrified about what will happen when this monster is back on the street,” Alyssa Mendez, the victim’s sister, told Associate Justice Thomas Drechsler as Fleury, 39, stared blankly ahead. “Today, your honor, you’re making a deal with the devil. ... I wonder if he felt anything when he watched the life drain from her eyes.”
Assistant District Attorney John Brennan said there were questions that he believed could not have been answered had the case gone to trial.
As a result, both Brennan and Fleury’s attorney, Michael T. Phelan, recommended a sentence of 17 years — three years short of the maximum for voluntary manslaughter — a sentence that Drechsler accepted.
“I hear and feel the loss here,” the judge said. “But nothing I do or the commonwealth does is going to bring Jaimee Mendez back.”
That's true, your honor, but you might have made it more difficult for someone else to join her.
Mendez, 25, was last seen Nov. 6, 2014, getting into a van consistent with the one Fleury owned, Brennan said. When a friend of hers spoke to her by phone later that day, he said, she was scared and told him Fleury “seemed to be on drugs or all coked-out.”
In a dumpster outside a CVS in Lynn, Brennan said, Mendez’s sneakers were found, along with the van’s passenger side door panel and carpet, both of which had droplets of blood consistent with the victim’s DNA profile.
The day after she vanished, Fleury showed up at his landscaping job with scratches on his face and hands, the prosecutor said. Fleury initially denied spending any time with Mendez but later said he had left her at CVS, Brennan said.
Cellphone records showed he had been in the Swampscott area the day she disappeared, he said.
For the next 83 days, police and Mendez’s family searched for her until a dog walker found her skeletal remains washed ashore on King’s Beach in Swampscott on Jan. 28, 2015.
An autopsy found the cause of death was homicide “by violent tendencies,” Brennan said.
Fleury was arrested that August in Hampton, Va., after an Essex County grand jury indicted him on a murder charge in connection with Mendez’s death.
Fleury is a Level 3 sex offender — the level deemed mostly likely to reoffend — who was convicted in 1997 of rape and abuse of a child in Virginia.
And why will this man ever be allowed to walk the streets of USA again, ever? Astonishing!
Swampscott, MA
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