Maryland youth football coach charged with child sex abuse
By David Matthews and Sierra Fox
Published 3 hours ago
The Calvert County Sheriff's Office says 50-year-old Moshe Michael Imel of Owings, Md. was charged Thursday with four counts of sex abuse of a minor.
Sheriffs say two victims came forward with allegations dating back to 2009 and lasting till the present.
Imel coached youth football in Calvert County and nearby locations, police said.
A source tells FOX 5 that Imel coached with the Patuxent Rhinos youth football team based in Upper Marlboro, as well as Northern High School in Owings.
Imel was listed as the 14U coach for the Rhinos as recently as 2020, according to the youth team's website.
Detectives believe there are additional victims.
"Out of precaution, parents are asked to speak with their children about Imel and report any activity that could be deemed inappropriate," sheriffs said in a statement.
Anyone with information please contact Detective Mudd at Michael.mudd@calvertcountymd.gov.
New Jersey man charged with 1 murder
confessed he killed 16
Published: March 20, 2021 19:51
AP
Woodbury, New Jersey: A man who is accused of killing a New Jersey man he says sexually abused him in childhood, and who is considered a person of interest in the deaths of his ex-wife and three others in New Mexico, told investigators he is responsible for a total of 16 slayings, prosecutors say.
Sean Lannon, 47, said he was responsible for the killings in New Jersey and New Mexico _ that he had killed his wife and others, including "11 other individuals,'' NJ.com quoted Alec Gutierrez, an assistant prosecutor in suburban Philadelphia's Gloucester County, New Jersey, as saying during a detention hearing Friday.
"He admitted to killing a total of 16 people ... 15 being in New Mexico and one in the state of New Jersey. It's my understanding that the FBI is assisting New Mexico in their investigation,'' Gutierrez said.
Authorities allege in court documents that the admission came in a phone call to a family member who told Gloucester County investigators that Lannon expressed remorse.
Lannon was arrested in St. Louis on Wednesday morning after a search that stretched from New Jersey to Missouri. He was driving a car stolen from Michael Dabkowski, the New Jersey victim. He is behind bars in New Jersey.
He is accused of breaking into the 66-year-old Dabkowski's home and beating him with a hammer Monday, according to an affidavit.
Lannon is also a person of interest in the death of his wife and three others in New Mexico. Authorities say a vehicle was discovered last week in a garage at Albuquerque International Sunport, New Mexico's largest airport, containing four bodies.
The bodies were later identified as Jennifer Lannon, 39" Matthew Miller, 21" Jesten Mata, 40" and Randal Apostalon, 60. Sean Lannon lived 80 miles (130 kilometers) away in Grants, New Mexico.
Gutierrez alleged Friday that Lannon admitted to luring several victims to a home in New Mexico and dismembering some of them.
Apart from the five deaths already described by investigators, authorities hadn't earlier spoken of any other killings in which Lannon was a suspect. He has been charged only in the New Jersey killing and has not been charged in any cases in New Mexico.
Public defender Frank Unger challenged probable cause for the New Jersey murder charge, arguing that Lannon entered Dabkowski's home in East Greenwich Township with permission and that the acts that followed amounted, at worst, to passion provocation manslaughter, NJ.com reported.
Unger alleged that Lannon had been abused and went to the home to retrieve photos because he didn't want anyone "to have control over me any longer.''
Dabkowski mentored Lannon and his twin brother through a Big Brothers program in the 1980s, NJ.com reported. Lannon told investigators that Dabkowski had sexually abused him as a child and that he went to the man's home to retrieve sexually explicit photos of the two of them together.
Unger said that Dabkowski had "documented those sexual assaults, those rapes, by taking pictures of himself with Mr. Lannon in sexually compromised positions.''
Unger said Lannon retrieved two hammers from Dabkowski's garage and gave them to the victim, saying, "You're going to need these. I don't want to hurt you."
"I would suggest that this fact alone illustrates this was not purposeful murder. He did not even bring a weapon to the home,'' he said, further alleging that Dabkowski attacked his client and was then killed.
Unger also challenged prosecutors' comments on the New Mexico murders, saying Lannon hadn't been charged in those cases.
New Jersey Superior Court Judge Mary Beth Kramer told prosecutors to confine their presentation to information relevant to the New Jersey case but allowed limited references to the New Mexico cases.
Gutierrez said that the New Mexico victims had been lured to a home and argued that the idea of Lannon having been invited into Dabkowski's home "should be looked at through the lens of at least three prior incidents in New Mexico."
"Those individuals, self-admittedly, were lured into the residence and subsequently murdered,'' he said.
Unger argued for pretrial release, saying his client has no prior convictions and is an Army veteran with an honorable discharge.
Although born in Massachusetts, Lannon spent most of his early years in Gloucester County before he was deployed to Germany, and he has family in southern New Jersey, including his mother and sister, and could stay locally on electronic monitoring if released, Unger said.
Gutierrez said Lannon adopted an assumed name to avoid detection when he returned to the East Coast and was arrested in New Mexico several weeks ago for failure to appear and spent a week in jail.
Gutierrez alleged that Lannon had admitted to dismemberment of victims and efforts to conceal evidence and "is a significant danger to the community, based on those statements."
The judge agreed and ordered Lannon to remain behind bars.
Metro Atlanta man facing several child sex abuse charges
7 hrs ago
A Clayton County man is behind bars facing several child sex abuse charges.
According to Clayton County police, officers responded to a “sex abuse allegation” call on March 18 near the 100 block of Museum Circle in Jonesboro.
Officers reached out to the detectives working the other juvenile case to get more information on the status of that case.
Osorio was then taken into custody and interviewed by investigators, according to Clayton County police.
Osorio was charged with enticing a child for indecent purposes, criminal attempt to produce child sex material, and two counts of distributing child pornography.
A Clayton County police spokesperson said detectives are still investigating the incident that allegedly happened in the 100 block of Museum Circle.
Sex Traffickers Target Native American Children
in South Dakota
By Cecily Hilleary, VOA News
March 20, 2021 03:06 AM
FILE - Dawn Stenberg, from the Junior League of Sioux Falls, stands near the group's anti-trafficking billboard in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, Oct. 27, 2015. About 50% of the women and girls falling prey to trafficking in the state are Native American.
WASHINGTON - Note: This report contains content that some may find disturbing or offensive.
In fact - everyone should find disturbing and offensive!
“I was very young when I was introduced to a pedophile,” said Lisa, 41, a survivor of sex trafficking who asked that her real name not be used. Raised on an Indian reservation in South Dakota, she cites a family history of sexual abuse.
“My mother was sent to a boarding school where the dean raped her repeatedly,” she said.
She believes she is the product of that rape.
“Later on, my mother got involved with men who were part of a pedophile ring. I’d wake up in the middle of the night, and I’d see prominent people from the community at our house — even the local sheriff.”
Child sex predator
Sometimes, she said, her stepfather would “rent them out” to the landlord to cover the monthly rent.
Julie, a 31-year-old trafficking survivor grew up in foster care on a different South Dakota reservation. When she was 13, her foster father, a long-distance trucker, began taking her along on road trips.
“We’d pull into truck stops, and if I wanted to eat, I would have to go to other truck drivers and do sexual things,” she said.
Tower sign advertising a truck stop in Van Horn, Texas, 26 June 2008.
At 14, she got pregnant.
“We lived on a farm. They’d say whatever I gave birth to, they’d feed it to the pigs,” she said, crying. She believes they made good on that promise.
At 16, she ran away.
"They found out where I was, and they came and took me back home. And then they would lock me up in the basement for weeks at a time," she said.
Julie and Lisa’s stories are sadly familiar, says Melissa Farley, a clinical psychologist and founder of Prostitution Research and Education (PRE), a San Francisco-based nonprofit. She says most trafficking victims in America come from vulnerable, oppressed or marginalized groups because they are the easiest to recruit and control. Children are especially vulnerable because they are easier to manipulate.
Elementary school class of Indian students with botanical specimens at United States Indian School, Carlisle, Pennsylvania. Photo by Francis Benjamin Johnson, Dec. 31, 1900
Historical prey
Native American women have always been vulnerable to sexual predators. Historians say early explorers, trappers and settlers read Native women’s dress and comparative freedoms as signs of moral defect and “assumed the right to kidnap, rape and prostitute Native women and girls without consequence.”
During the 19th and 20th centuries, the U.S. government forced Native children into residential boarding schools where violence and sexual abuse were rampant. That history of trauma, combined with the poverty, addiction and other social ills on rural reservations, left Native women especially vulnerable to being trafficked, even by their own families.
“You have three or four kids, and you and your children are hungry. And someone comes along and says, ‘Give the child to me. I'll put her through school. I’ll make sure she gets a really good job. And oh, here's a thousand dollars,’” Farley told VOA.
Hunters arriving at the Sioux Falls Regional Airport on Thursday, Oct. 13, 2011 for South Dakota's pheasant hunting season, an even that attracts hunters and sex traffickers.
A market state
The problem is especially bad in South Dakota, where Native Americans make up only 8% of the population but 40% of trafficking victims.
Pheasant and big game hunting attract tens of thousands of hunters to the state each autumn. Hundreds of thousands of motorcycle enthusiasts attend the annual summer Sturgis Motorcycle Rally.
Each year, state and federal law enforcement agents have conducted undercover sex trafficking "stings” during the Rally, targeting individuals seeking to purchase sex with minors. According to the U.S. Justice Department, these operations have resulted in 62 arrests.
Kelly R. Patterson founded and directs Treasured Lives, a nonprofit organization that offers support, crisis care and mentoring to trafficking survivors in South Dakota.
FILE - In this Aug. 7, 2020, file photo, people congregate at One-Eyed Jack's Saloon during the 80th annual Sturgis Motorcycle Rally in Sturgis, S.D. Federal/state law enforcement arrested eight persons seeking to purchase sex with minors.
“Whenever you have a gathering of men anywhere, you always have bad apples. And the traffickers know that,” Patterson said.
A survivor herself, she relates her own experience at Sturgis.
“The trafficking ring loaned me out for two months to a very well-known motorcycle club because I was always trying to escape,” she said. “What they didn't know was I would have preferred to stay with the bikers, because at least with them, I wasn't being tortured.”
Recruitment
Traffickers have increasingly turned to social media to recruit young victims, luring them with false promises of jobs, money or drugs, or threatening them with violence. Most victims enter trafficking between ages 12 and 14 and include young boys.
A 2011 study of Native American prostitutes in Minnesota revealed that the majority had been abused as children by an average of four men and were tricked into the sex trade with no understanding of what they were getting into.
According to the nonprofit Nonstate Torture, sex traffickers use a variety of physical, sexual and psychological methods to “break” victims: They may deprive them of food or sleep, humiliate them or torture them into submission.
Young woman locked in a cage. Shot in dramatic lighting. Modern day slavery (human trafficking) concept.
Experts say sex traffickers often use confinement to isolate and degrade trafficking victims.
“I’ve heard from women who are put in dog cages and treated like a dog, forced to wear a dog collar, no clothing, and even to eat dog food," said Patterson. “And when they were let out, they were forced to sit on their hands and knees like dogs.”
Patterson knows of child victims who were made to believe a doll was a live baby, then forced to stab it with a knife.
“And then the trafficker told them, ‘See how bad you are? You killed a baby,’” Patterson said.
Rituals
Sometimes, torture involves elements of ritualism.
Lisa’s abusers claimed to be “Satanists,” something she says is “big” on reservations.
“Whether they believe it themselves for real or not, I don’t know. But they make you believe it’s real,” she said. “They’ll wear devil masks just to scare kids.”
A 2014 study by Los Angeles public health officials shows that fear and violence ultimately create an emotional bond with the trafficker that may be difficult to break.
A Navajo police officer patrols in his vehicle on the Navajo Reservation, by a remote section of the Grand Canyon near Little Colorado River, Arizona June 23, 2013.
Barriers to identifying and freeing victims
Some local advocates say trafficking is a low-risk crime in South Dakota, a state with plenty of open space and room to hide.
Studies show that local law enforcement agencies often lack the training, tools and protocols to recognize human trafficking, even when it is going on in plain sight.
Tribal police are severely underfunded and understaffed. Huge caseloads mean they may prioritize other crimes.
Sometimes, the police may fail to act, citing a lack of evidence or the belief that victims are willing participants in the sex trade.
Traffickers constantly move victims across jurisdictions, and tribal, local and state police may fail to share information.
And, as Julie suggested, some police officers themselves may be involved in trafficking, though VOA was unable to corroborate her statement.
An unidentified Native American woman in South Dakota participates in an event to raise awareness about sex trafficking.
Media, lawmakers can do more
Lisa Hope Heth is the founder of Wiconi Wawokiya, Inc. (Helping Life), a nonprofit working to end domestic and sexual violence on the Crow Creek Reservation in South Dakota.
She believes that the media is not doing enough to raise public awareness.
“Maybe it’s because bringing attention to trafficking might deter tourists and hunters from bringing money into the state,” she said.
Heth is currently working to help the Lower Brule and Crow Creek Nations take matters into their own hands.
“We've decided to share these cases amongst ourselves so the local law enforcement can look into them,” she said. “If they find anything, then they can pull the feds [FBI] in.”
All 50 U.S. states prohibit human trafficking. South Dakota has also created a victims’ assistance program, which funds programs that shelter, counsel and advocate for victims of sexual assault, domestic violence, trafficking and other violent crimes.
FILE - South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem stands on the White House lawn during the Republican National Convention in Washington, Aug. 27, 2020.
It was one of the first states to aggressively prosecute buyers of sex from trafficked victims. But the advocacy group Shared Hope says South Dakota needs to work harder to ensure child victims are not criminalized.
South Dakota Governor Kristie Noem signed a bill in March making the torture of sex trafficking victims a Class I felony in that state. Representative Peri Pourier, a Democrat from the Pine Ridge Reservation, introduced legislation which, if signed, would require the state’s attorney general to create and staff an office dedicated to handling missing person cases.
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