California teen confesses to molesting 50 children,
judge sets bail of $1mn
Joseph Hayden Boston © Riverside Police Department
Bail has been set at $1 million for an 18-year-old California man who was turned into the police by his mother after confessing to molesting at least 50 children.
Joseph Hayden Boston's mother flagged down a police sergeant outside Riverside Police Department at 3am local time on Saturday and said she wanted to turn in her son for suspected molestation. The teen had called her to say he had molested two young boys, aged four and eight, earlier in the day.
“The suspect had recently been staying at the Simply Home Inn & Suites,” Riverside police said in a statement. “It was there when he befriended [the] 8-year-old and 4-year-old male victims, who were also staying at this motel with their parents. The children were allowed to go into the suspect’s room last night when the molestation occurred.”
During an interview with officers Boston confessed to sexually assaulting the two boys in his motel room. He also admitted to molesting upwards of 50 children since he was 10-years-old in different cities in Southern California.
“This is going to affect not only the victims for a long time, but also our detectives and officers involved in this - to hear someone just be very open about what they've done, and they're only 18 themselves,” said Officer Ryan Railsback of Riverside police said to local TV station ABC 7.
Detectives from the Sexual Assault & Child Abuse Unit have launched an investigation. They believe he has victimized other children who have not yet come forward.
Boston was arrested on counts of oral copulation on a child under the age of 10. He was booked into the Robert Presley Detention Center with bail set at one million dollars. Child Protective Services took custody of the two boys Boston assaulted on Saturday.
Horrific Ritual/Sexual Abuse Just Gets Worse
By Keith Kinnaird
SANDPOINT, Idaho — A criminal case against a Bonner County man accused of perpetrating ritualized and sexual abuse expanded on Friday.
Dana Andrew Furtney initially faced five criminal charges ranging from lewd conduct to sexual battery and ritualized abuse, but the criminal complaint was supplanted Friday with a grand jury indictment alleging 10 counts of lewd conduct and lone counts of sexual abuse of a child under the age of 16, ritualized abuse, felony injury to a child and felony domestic battery causing traumatic injury.
Furtney, 48, pleaded not guilty to all 14 felony counts during his arraignment in 1st District Court on Friday, court records show. A four-day jury trial is set for February 2018.
Furtney is charged with four counts of lewd conduct against a 14-year-old girl, five counts of lewd conduct and one count of sexual abuse against a 12-year-old girl and one count of lewd conduct with a 6-year-old girl, according to the indictment. Furtney is further charged with ritualized abuse for forcing an 11- to 12-year-old boy ingest Furtney’s excrement as part of a ceremony or rite.
All of those offenses are alleged to have occurred in 2010.
Furtney is also accused of chaining the preteen boy by his neck to an unheated outhouse for multiple days in March 2013. The boy was given limited food and water during his captivity, the indictment alleges. Finally, Furtney is accused of locking his wife in a stockade, where she was beaten and made to sodomize herself with a foreign object over the course of a five-year period leading up to Furtney’s arrest earlier this fall.
The alleged crimes took place on property in the 900 block of Peninsula Loop Road north of Priest River.
Four of the alleged victims testified during the sealed grand jury proceeding. Bonner County Sheriff’s Det. Barry Reinink also testified, court records show.
Furntney, according to court documents, used manipulation and religious beliefs to control the alleged victims. Furtney also told them that Jesus approved of Furtney’s disciplinary actions and sexual contact as appropriate forms of punishment.
During his arraignment, Furtney thanked people for their attendance in court, including Prosecutor Louis Marshall, and said he had spoke to God earlier in the day, court documents indicate.
Furtney is being held at the Bonner County Jail in lieu of $500,000.
Legendary opera conductor molested teen
for years: police report
The Stars are Falling - Legendary Met Opera conductor
By Isabel Vincent and Melissa Klein
Legendary Metropolitan Opera conductor James Levine molested an Illinois teenager from the time he was 15 years old, sexual abuse that lasted for years and led the alleged victim to the brink of suicide, according to a police report obtained by The Post.
The alleged abuse began while Levine was guest conductor at the Ravinia Music Festival outside Chicago, a post the wild-haired maestro held for two decades.
The alleged victim came forward to the Lake Forest, Ill. Police Department in October 2016 to detail the molestation, including times when Levine would masturbate in front of him and kiss his privates, according to the report.
The now 74-year-old maestro, who spent 40 years as music director of the Metropolitan Opera and is currently director emeritus, conducted a performance of Verdi’s “Requiem” at Lincoln Center Saturday.
The alleged victim’s 2016 claims came nine years after the statute of limitations on a possible child sex crime in Illinois had expired. The age of consent in that state is 17. The Lake Forest Police Department investigated the allegations anyway, and turned its findings over to the Lake County State’s Attorney. A State’s Attorney spokeswoman told The Post Friday the case is still under review and no charges have been brought.
“I began seeing a 41-year-old man when I was 15, without really understanding I was really ‘seeing’ him,” the alleged victim, now 48, said in a written statement to the police department. “It nearly destroyed my family and almost led me to suicide. I felt alone and afraid. He was trying to seduce me. I couldn’t see this. Now I can.”
The alleged victim, whose name is being withheld by The Post, said Levine showered him with $50,000 in cash over the years.
Rumors about improper sexual contact have long swirled around Levine, who closely guards his private life. The pianist and musical prodigy made his debut at the Metropolitan Opera in 1971 at the age of 28 and within months became its main conductor.
Levine rose to music director at the Met in 1976 and held the title until April 2016. The Met paid him $1.8 million in 2015, according to its latest available tax filings.
Earlier this year, Ravinia bestowed a new title on Levine — conductor laureate — and he is expected to lead concerts and hold master classes during two-week summer residencies through 2022. It was at one such Ravinia concert in 1973 when the alleged victim, then a 4-year-old boy living in a nearby suburb, was taken backstage by his parents to meet the great maestro.
The boy would see the conductor during subsequent summer visits to the festival and, according to the police account he later gave as an adult, the older man “took an interest” in him, even sending conductors’ batons and other gifts to his home.
The alleged victim said he did not see Levine for several years starting at age 10 and met him again at 14 when he started going backstage at Ravinia on his own, according to the report. In 1985, when the alleged victim was 15, he told police that Levine drove him home and stopped the car in the back section of his family’s driveway.
“He started holding my hand in a prolonged and incredibly sensual way,” writes the alleged victim. “I was not aroused as I never was during my relationship with him as I am a heterosexual individual. But there were some feelings of affection and mostly confusion. … I was very uncomfortable with the hand holding.”
During that encounter, Levine allegedly told the young man “I want to see if you can be raised special like me.” He also asked him to “Come to New York so I can audition you as a conductor.”
He said he later asked fellow students at a summer program, “Am I gay because he held my hand?” according to the report.
The alleged victim said that Levine first fondled him when he was around 16 years old. He said the alleged encounter happened at the Deer Path Inn in Lake Forest, Ill., 10 miles from the Ravinia Festival.
The luxury hotel, styled as an English inn, was the scene of “hundreds of incidents” over the years, according to the report. The alleged victim said Levine would invite him to dinner, keep him waiting as to the appointed time, and then ask to meet him immediately at the Deer Path Inn, the report says.
The teen thought he was talking to his mentor about how to achieve his ambitions in classical music, according to the report. “I would get there and the lights were off and he would say to me, after I came in, and after a hug, ‘Take off your clothes. I am working very hard and need to rest,’” the report says.
Levine would masturbate in the bed or in the bathroom, the alleged victim told police.
The maestro told the young man “Only with him … could I safely explore my feelings,” the report says. In 1987, he said the alleged abuse escalated to digital penetration according to the report.
That same year, Levine wrote the alleged victim a college recommendation letter on Met stationery, which is included in the police report, praising the young man and saying “over the years I have always found him to be exceptionally responsive and concentrated, curious and eager to learn.”
The alleged victim said his encounters with Levine continued until 1993, sometimes in New York City where they dined at Cafe des Artistes and Shun Lee on the Upper West Side near the Metropolitan Opera’s home at Lincoln Center.
In one instance in New York City, Levine “kissed my privates,” the alleged victim said. He also told police “he would fondle me many times,” the report says.
“Levine was not a person you ever said no to,” he told police. The alleged victim said the abuse continued even after he was 18 because he had so much trust in Levine.
“He inflicted shame and guilt on me. Making [it] hard for me to see the wrong. Emotionally I have been hurt by this and confused and paralyzed,” he says in his statement to the police. The alleged victim said he finally told his mother about the abuse in 1993.
In 2016, after contemplating going public, the alleged victim said he called a former board member at the Met who advised him to contact the police. The board member, Beth Glynn, later told Lake Forest Police Detective Wendy Dumont that she spoke to the general manager of the Met about the victim’s phone call.
Glynn told Dumont there were “always rumors” about Levine “because he was socially awkward but he never had any issues at the Metropolitan Opera House for 40 years.” When contacted by The Post, Glynn confirmed she urged the man “to call the police.”
Dumont also reached out to classical music blogger Greg Sandow, who told her he had been contacted by three men in past years purporting to have been abused by Levine, one of them being the alleged victim.
“The rumors of [Levine’s] alleged abuse have been widespread for decades and in my experience they seemed to be widely believed inside the classical music field though I’ve never heard anyone cite anything specific,” Sandow told the police.
Levine himself acknowledged existence of these rumors in a 1987 New York Times article about management changes at the Met, but seemed to dismiss them.
He said 10 years earlier the Met’s general manager “called me about reports of a morals charge in Pittsburgh or Hawaii or Dallas. Both my friends and my enemies checked it out and to this day, I don’t have the faintest idea where those rumors came from or what purpose they served. Ron Wilford says it’s because people can’t believe the real story, that I’m too good to be true.’’ Wilford was Levine’s manager.
Levine went on to say that he was “not a doctor married with three children living in suburbia. I live my life openly; I don’t make pretenses of this or that. What there is is completely apparent, so if people want to damage me, they have to invent things that are lurid and vicious.’’
Levine has been hobbled in recent years by back problems and Parkinson’s disease. He lives at the famed San Remo apartment building on Central Park West where former oboist and Levine pal Sue Thompson was long his roommate.
Neither Levine nor his New York agent returned multiple requests for comment. A spokesman for the Met did not respond to repeated requests for comment. Its general manager, Peter Gelb, did not return a message.
Couple Arrested in Delaware Child Rape Investigation
MILFORD, Del. -- The Milford Police Department arrested a suspected child rapist and the victim's mother in an investigation spanning three years.
According to Milford Police, Carlos Gonzalez-Valesquez, 30 of Richmond, VA, was arrested November 20 by U.S. Marshals following a 2014 child sex abuse investigation in which the suspect sexually abused a female juvenile. Police said after the victim's initial report, Gonzalez-Valesquez ran from Delaware and disappeared; however, a tip in November of 2017 helped police find Gonzalez-Valesquez with the victim's mother in Richmond, VA. According to police, an additional investigation revealed that the victim’s mother was planning on going back to Delaware and taking custody of the victim before moving the victim to Richmond.
With the help of the U.S. Marshals Service, both Gonzalez-Valesquez and the victim's mother, Emma Dorly-Ventura, 38 of Richmond, were arrested on Nov. 20th.
Milford Police said Dorly-Ventura was charged with attempting to hinder prosecution and endangering the welfare of a child and committed to the Department of Corrections on a $4,000 cash bail, She will appear in Sussex County Court of Common Pleas for a preliminary hearing.
Gonzalez-Valesquez was extradited from Virginia on November 30, and formally charged for rape in the first degree, among other charges, and committed to the Department of Corrections on $50,000 secured bail. He appeared in the Sussex County Superior Court for an arraignment on Friday.
Police said further indictments are coming for Gonzalez-Valesquez.
Teenage victims: 45 days in Brighton rape case
a betrayal; where is justice?
Tresa Baldas, Detroit Free Press A high school boy charged with raping 3 middle school girls got 45 days in a youth home. The victims are outraged as he may return to their school.
One by one, he charmed them.
Three middle school girls, two of them only 12 years old, totally smitten with the high school lacrosse player who was paying attention to them and wanted to be their friend.
During his freshman and sophomore years, the Brighton High School student Snapchatted the girls, used terms like "baby girl" and "princess," listened to their problems and played the trusting, big brother. As one of the girls’ parents noted, “He seemed like a polite young man.”
He manipulated them all.
In Livingston County Juvenile Court last spring, the bushy-haired, 6-foot-tall athlete was charged with 20 counts of first-degree criminal sexual conduct on charges of raping the three girls on multiple occasions when he was 14 and 15 years old. Prosecutors said he used his size to overcome them and manipulated events and the girls to get what he wanted.
A 12-year-old girl was raped in a ditch behind a Brighton movie theater, they said. Another 12-year-old ran barefoot in the snow to a neighbor's house to escape him when he tried to rape her a third time.
And he used the same scheme with each girl: He sexually assaulted them, returned to their houses days later to apologize, then raped them again, prosecutors said. One victim said he threatened to kill himself if she told anyone what happened. Another said he threatened suicide if she refused to see him.
Rumors quickly spread at school. The girls were called sluts and liars. One attempted suicide. Another dropped out of school for a while.
But after months of enduring name-calling and judgmental stares — including taunting by the boy's mother — the young victims are speaking up, especially given the latest turn of events in the criminal case.
Last month, the now-16-year-old boy was sentenced by a juvenile court referee to 45 days in a youth facility after pleading guilty to one count of first-degree criminal sexual conduct as part of a plea agreement. Had he been charged as an adult, he would have faced up to life in prison.
His punishment has the victims reeling. They had hoped he would be placed in a lockdown, residential treatment center for sex offenders for a year — with a follow-up evaluation — as was stipulated in his plea agreement.
Perhaps more alarming, the victims and their parents say, is that the now-16-year-old boy could return to school as early as this week. He has an evaluation hearing on Monday in juvenile court, though the girls pleaded with the Brighton School Board last month to expel him.
Adding to their frustration is the fact that his name will not be added to the public sex offender registry list because he was charged as a juvenile, which means no one but police will know about his rape conviction.
None of this makes sense to the victims and their families, who believe the criminal justice system has let them down over and and over again.
“I feel betrayed,” one of the victims told the Free Press last week, stressing she feels as if her attacker “has more rights than we do.”
“I’m hurt,” she said. “He made me question myself. He made me hate myself. But now I know that I’m strong. … I know I’m not to blame for this.”
And she refuses to hide in the dark. So do the others.
Bolstered by the recent explosion of sexual harassment complaints against celebrities and politicians, the three girls and their mothers are taking a stand and publicly speaking out about their painful experiences. They want their faces seen. They want their stories told.
"It's gone faceless for so long and it's easy to forget about," one victim's mother, Ashley, said of sexual assault. "When you put a face to it — it's real."
Jury acquits Iowa man of 2016 sex abuse
By Grayson Schmidt, Staff Writer gschmidt@amestrib.com
After a three-day trial, a jury acquitted an Ames man of charges he allegedly sexually abused a young girl on multiple occasions in early 2016.
William Donald Glazebrook, 30, was arrested in early May and originally charged with assault with intent to commit sexual abuse and indecent contact with a child.
Court documents alleged the victim reported that on one occasion, Glazebrook touched her inappropriately and kissed her on the lips. On another occasion, documents allege the victim was sleeping and Glazebrook picked her up off the floor, put her in his bed and began hugging her and touching her inappropriately.
The victim awoke while Glazebrook was touching her and was able to get out of the bed to stop the assault, documents state.
According to Glazebrook’s attorney Michelle Wolf, these cases are extremely difficult to decide on, and she is pleased the jury found Glazebrook innocent.
“We appreciate the hard work of the jury,” Wolf said. “These are hard cases. We’re just glad the jury reached a just result.”
Story County Attorney Jessica Reynolds thanked the jurors and Ames Police Department, and also talked about how cases like this are never easy.
“I accept the jury’s verdict. I thank the jurors for their service,” Reynolds said. “These are difficult cases. My thanks to Ames Police for their hard work.”
It would have been nice if we had some insight to what the jury was thinking. Did they believe the child was lying or misinterpreting events? I sure hope they are right because if they are not, some child, perhaps even the same one, will be victimized but this man.
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