Eugene, Ore, teacher allegedly paid teen for sex
Eugene Police arrested a Spring Creek Elementary School teacher for allegedly contacting a teenage girl online and paying her for sex
Posted By: Chris Lueneburg
KEZI - ABC News
EUGENE Ore.-- Police arrested a Spring Creek Elementary School teacher for allegedly contacting a teenage girl online and paying her for sex.
According to the Eugene Police Department, 37-year-old Willian Cantu Hamann, of Cresswell, was arrested on Friday afternoon when he arrived at a local school to meet the teenager.
According to Kerry Delf of Eugene 4J School District, Hamann has been an elementary school teacher with the district since 2008, and has been at Spring Creek for the past 5 years.
Officials say that Hamann was also the operator of the Frightuary, a Haunted House business at Lane Events Center in October.
The investigation is ongoing and we will continue to keep you updated with the latest information.
Officials suspect that Hamann met the teenaged girl online and then paid her for sexual relations for more than a year. The alleged victim was not a former student of Hamann, and there is no evidence that any children at Spring Creek Elementary School were victimized.
Eugene Police and the FBI are concerned that there could be additional victims. They recommend that parents who have children that have been in contact with Hamann tell them that he has been arrested for inappropriate behavior with a child, and tell them that if he did anything inappropriate to them to let them know. If the child shares that something did happen to them, the parent should contact Detective Jed Mcguire at 541-682-6308 before asking detailed questions about the incident.
Hamann is facing charges of prostitution, sexual abuse and sodomy.
Alleged serial child sex abuser from Grantsville, UT,
now faces 24 felonies
By Pat Reavy
@DNewsCrimeTeam
TOOELE — A Grantsville man already facing 13 felonies for allegedly abusing at least three children now faces additional charges.
On Friday, Mark Swan, 48, was charged with an additional two counts of rape of a child, object rape of a child, three counts of sodomy on a child, and two counts of aggravated sexual abuse of a child, all first-degree felonies. He was also charged with three counts of sex abuse of a child, a second-degree felony.
In total, Swan now faces 24 felonies in two cases, including a total of seven counts of sodomy on a child, five counts of object rape of a child, two counts of rape of a child, two counts of aggravated sexual abuse of a child, two counts of aggravated kidnapping, three counts of sex abuse of a child, and three counts of attempted sexual abuse of a child.
The investigation into Swan's alleged extensive years of abuse of multiple children began July 18 when a parent contacted police to report a family acquaintance had inappropriately touched their three children, according to a police probable cause statement for his arrest.
After news of his arrest was reported by the media, additional potential victims stepped forward.
According to the new charges filed Friday, a girl under the age of 14 was interviewed on July 22 and "disclosed that she had been consistently sexually abused for the last two years by the defendant, a family friend who often babysat her at his home when the victim’s parents were out of town."
Male babysitters!!!! Good grief!
The girl told police that she had been abused so many times that she couldn't recall every incident, according to the charges. Prosecutors even noted in their probable cause affidavit that "the charges represent a fraction of the number times the defendant sexually abused the child victim."
The abuse occurred as recently as the Independence Day weekend, the charges state.
A second boy, under the age of 14, also reported to police that on three of the five occasions he was at Swan's house, Swan touched him inappropriately over his clothing, according to charging documents.
Swan is currently being held in the Tooele County Jail without bail. A bail hearing was scheduled for Tuesday.
Broomfield, CO, pastor faces trial on charges she sexually assaulted teen parishioner over 3-year period
Erika Gonzalez is a pastor at a small, independent church called
Ministerios Rey de Reyes
Candy Orona Villalba - Andy Cross, The Denver Post
By ELISE SCHMELZER | The Denver Post
When she was 15 years old, Candy Orona Villalba’s pastor asked her to come live with her in a Broomfield apartment.
For the next three years, the pastor, Erika Gonzalez, sexually abused the teen, convinced her to drop out of school and said that Villalba would be punished by God if she left, Broomfield police and prosecutors allege in court documents.
“I don’t think there’s ever going to be a time that I heal from it,” Villalba, now 19, said in an interview Thursday with The Denver Post.
More than a year after she left the pastor’s apartment — and three months before a scheduled jury trial in the case — Villalba said she is telling her story publicly because she doesn’t want others to be victimized by the 36-year-old Gonzalez, who appears to have continued preaching at her church, Ministerios Rey de Reyes.
It's astonishing how undiscerning Christians can be.
The independent Christian church with a congregation of a few dozen people is unaffiliated to any larger denomination and operates out of rented space in Broomfield, Villalba said.
Gonzalez now faces three sexual-assault counts — including sexual assault of a child by a person in a position of trust — as well as a misdemeanor charge of obstructing the use of a telephone in connection to her relationship with Villalba.
Gonzalez’s attorney declined to comment on the allegations when contacted by a reporter. In a police interview last year, Gonzalez admitted to having what she called a consensual relationship with the teen. Her trial is scheduled for October.
Whitehall, NY, man charged with child sex abuse
WHITEHALL -- A Whitehall man was arrested Friday for allegedly sexually abusing a child, police records show.
Jessie A. Peare, 22, was arrested after a State Police investigation that began last month, according to the agency's public information website.
He was accused of having sexual contact with a child under the age of 12, resulting in a felony charge of first-degree sexual abuse and misdemeanor endangering the welfare of a child, the website showed.
Peare was released pending prosecution in Whitehall Town Court.
Centre, AL, man charged with sex abuse of a child
The court complaint states that the 64-year-old man had sexual contact with a 6-year-old girl.
CENTRE, Ala. —
Centre Police have arrested a man who is charged with one count of sex abuse with a child under the age of 12.
Court records show that a witness said 64-year-old Curtis Lee Johnson had sexual contact with a 6-year-old girl last week.
Johnson was booked into the Cherokee County Jail on $50,000 bond.
NY's ethics watchdog pursues lobbying case
against alleged rape victim
Watchdog wants to know if Kat Sullivan spent more than
$5,000 pushing Child Victims Act
Is this an attempt to declare the act illegal and roll it back?
Nothing would surprise me.
By Chris Bragg
ALBANY — New York's ethics watchdog agency is doggedly pursuing a case of alleged unregistered lobbying. The subject of its inquiry has received multiple calls and emails demanding a response and threatening large fines, even criminal sanction.
But the target of the state Joint Commission on Public Ethics isn't a high-profile professional lobbyist. Instead, the panel's attentions are trained on Kat Sullivan, a woman best known for publicly alleging in 2016 that she had been raped by a history teacher at Troy's Emma Willard School almost two decades earlier.
Sullivan reached a confidential settlement with the prestigious all-girls school in 2016 related to the alleged assault and what she described as Emma Willard's efforts to cover up the incident. She spent a portion of those funds pushing for passage of the Child Victims Act, legislation that extended New York's statute of limitations for claims of child sexual abuse.
The measure passed this year, and the first suits made possible under the one-year "look-back" window opened by the law can be filed next month. Because Sullivan settled in 2016, she never stood to benefit financially from the law she fought to pass.
During its eight years of existence, JCOPE has not gained a reputation for aggressive enforcement of the laws within its purview: The agency has rarely brought cases against prominent elected officials, their top staffers or prominent lobbyists. Its performance on cases involving alleged sexual harassment by public officials has also faced criticism.
But in its pursuit of Sullivan, JCOPE has been energetic: Since June 2018, she has received a steady stream of phone calls, emails and letters from investigators, who allege that during the 2018 legislative session Sullivan failed to register as a lobbyist after exceeding the $5,000 spending threshold for advocacy.
Her efforts consisted of taking out a rotating ad on a billboard near the state Capitol urging lawmakers to pass the CVA, and getting a plane to buzz the building while towing a banner.
Sullivan insists she did not spend $5,000 on her advocacy in New York, and has refused to register.
Asked about its pursuit of Sullivan, a JCOPE spokesman said the agency was simply enforcing the lobbying law, and treated "all people and entities" in the same way.
'To the wolves'
Sullivan's activism was spurred by her personal trauma. She alleges that as an 18-year-old Emma Willard student in 1998, she was bound and gagged in the apartment of her history teacher and soccer coach, who proceeded to sodomize her. She never filed charges, and the criminal statute of limitations has run out.
After reporting the episode to school officials, Sullivan said, she was effectively banished from campus.
In April 2017, about a year after Sullivan came forward publicly, Emma Willard released a comprehensive report — assembled by an outside law firm — excavating credible reports of sexual misconduct by faculty members spanning almost seven decades. The report showed that while Sullivan's teacher had been fired, he was given letters of recommendation that enabled him to find new teaching posts.
JCOPE staffers have left eight voicemails for Sullivan over the past year. She has taken part in often lengthy phone calls with investigators more than a dozen times, and has received three official letters. She's been part of a dozen more email threads with JCOPE staff, totaling 65 pages. She paid a lawyer $1,900 to speak to the agency.
JCOPE has even called Sullivan's boyfriend, who was not involved in her CVA advocacy, after apparently learning his phone number from caller ID. On a June vacation to San Francisco, both Sullivan and her boyfriend got daily calls at 5 a.m. Pacific time (8 a.m. in Albany) from JCOPE staffers, she said.
Sullivan said being targeted by another powerful institution has been stressful and brought back feelings from her past.
"You are harassing a rape survivor that NY state threw to the wolves to die," Sullivan wrote to a JCOPE staffer in June. She described herself as someone who "is spending her settlement money for social justice and donating to nonprofits. A person who wanted to warn the public about her rapist and about laws that prevented her from police helping her."
According to Sullivan, JCOPE staff has threatened her not only with large fines, but a criminal Class A misdemeanor.
Burlington, NC, woman gets 8 years for child sex abuse
By Isaac Groves Times-News, Burlington, N.C.
GRAHAM — A Burlington woman will spend at least eight years in prison after pleading guilty to sexually abusing a 5-year-old boy.
Misty Dawn Amore, 48, of 2186 Roney Lineberry Road, Burlington, pleaded guilty to four counts of taking indecent liberties with a minor, and was given four consecutive sentences of at least two years to as much as 29 months in prison. Part of the Alford plea -- pleading guilty without admitting guilt -- was an order to have no contact with the victim for the rest of her life, and to get sexual abuse counseling.
The victim has developmental disabilities and is now in his teens. In 2016, he was reported to Graham police for performing a sex act on a younger relative. When interviewed at Crossroads Sexual Assault Response and Resource Center, he told investigators Amore made him perform various sex acts on her when he was younger and on the younger relative.
Investigators determined most of the abuse happened in 2008 and 2009 when the victim was 4 and 5 years old.
The victim told his family and therapist he was having graphic nightmares about Amore that got worse as the potential trial date got closer, and that he could not testify with her in the room. Superior Court Judge Orlando Hudson granted a motion allowing the boy to testify by video.
Charges of rape of a child by an adult, incest with person younger than 13 and sexual offense with a child were dismissed in the plea agreement.
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