Grand jury indicts Days Creek, Ore, man on
child sex abuse charges
DAN BAIN The News-Review
A Days Creek man who was a former staff member at the Boys & Girls Club of the Umpqua Valley in Roseburg was arraigned in Douglas County Circuit Court on Monday morning on five charges, including second-degree sex abuse in an indictment from a Douglas County grand jury.
Kyle Humphrey, 30, of Days Creek, was arrested on Aug. 2 by Douglas County sheriff’s deputies.
Under the indictment, Humphrey is charged with two counts of using a child in display of sexually explicit conduct, second-degree sex abuse, unlawful delivery of marijuana and coercion.
The indictment alleges that Humphrey induced a 14-year-old girl into having sex and that he traded things like food, alcohol and marijuana for nude photos.
Humphrey did not enter a plea in front of Douglas County Circuit Court Judge Frances Burge on Monday morning, but a plea hearing was set for Aug. 21.
Sheriff’s investigators are still looking for other possible victims. Anyone who may have had contact of the same nature with Humphrey is asked to contact the Douglas County Sheriff’s Office at 541-440-4458.
Eugene, Ore, church leader faces new sex abuse charges
(The Oregonian/OregonLive)
By The Associated Press
EUGENE — A former Eugene church music ministry leader charged in a federal child pornography case is facing new charges related to the alleged sexual abuse of a child.
The Register-Guard reports a warrant was issued last month for the arrest of Edward Samuel Thompson in the new Eugene police case.
He is currently in a federal correctional institution awaiting trial in the child pornography case. He will be brought to Eugene later this week and arraigned on charges of sodomy and sexual abuse in Lane County Circuit Court.
An arrest warrant affidavit says the alleged abuse happened between 2012 and 2018. Documents say during the 2018 investigation federal case, investigators learned Thompson, who worked at Christ Fellowship Church, had regularly babysat a child.
The affidavit says in July the girl told a counselor that she had been abused by Thompson.
PLEASE don't use male babysitters - not even priests, pastors or ministers.
Springboro, OH, teacher’s sex abuse of 28 1st grade girls inspires group to educate parents
By: Lawrence Budd | Journal-News
MIDDLETOWN, Ohio — A new regional group is promoting an event designed to help parents talk to their children and recognize signs of child sexual abuse.
Meanwhile, the criminal case against a former Springboro teacher accused of gross sexual imposition on 28 girls in his first-grade classes, which prompted organization of the event, moves forward.
On Aug. 20, lawyers for John Anthony Hopkins and his prosecutors are scheduled to hold a pretrial hearing in his case.
On Sept. 12, the Coalition to End Child Sexual Abuse (CECSA) and Child Advocacy Center (CAC) of Warren County are putting together a “Night of Empowerment for Protecting Our Children” at Atrium Medical Center.
“We all have to stand up and take ownership of protecting our children,” said David Dale, facilitator of a training session for parents planned during the Atrium event.
Dale’s session will lead to a panel discussion and question and answer session with the representatives from the CAC, Warren County Prosecutor’s Office, Child Protective Services and Warren County Sheriff’s Office.
“If we’re going to make cultural change, we can’t rely only on these service providers,” Dale said.
Dale said he reached out to the CAC after reading about the case filed against Hopkins, a Clearcreek Elementary School gym teacher facing 36 counts of gross sexual imposition alleging he sexually abused the 1st graders during class.
Hopkins, 25, of Springboro is on house arrest. His lawyers are pressing for the release of all video or transcriptions from interviews of the alleged victims by prosecutors or CAC specialists.
“This information is crucial to the defense in this case and may need to be reviewed by expert witnesses hired by the defendant’s counsel once all the evidence has been reviewed by counsel,” lawyer David A. Chicarelli said in a July 29 motion.
No trial has been scheduled.
Some parents of the alleged victims said they struggled to discuss child sexual abuse with their kids. They joined a push for changes in Ohio law and curriculum in local school districts to require sex abuse prevention education for the youngest students.
Dale is an authorized facilitator of Stewards of Children, a training program through Darkness to Light, based in Charleston, S.C.
He and other facilitators from the Dayton, Cincinnati and Northern Kentucky region, and organizations formed CECSA and began working with Crossroads Church, with locations from Dayton to Northern Kentucky.
Since then the group has organized a Night of Empowerment at the Crossroads Church in Mason and brought in a speaker for an event at Crossroads Church on the east side of Cincinnati.
The training session beginning the Sept. 12 event at Atrium in Middletown will be a shortened version of the Stewards to Children course, aimed at parents.
The 45-minute session will focus on “how to have a conversation with children” about protecting themselves from child sex abuse and how to respond to “red flags”, Dale said.
Dale said the event would not include discussion of the Hopkins case. “We are going to try to address that up front,” he said.
Warren County Prosecutor David Fornshell and his wife, Amy, who manages the county CAC, supported the upcoming event.
“The idea from our office’s perspective is to provide general information and insight relating to ways to talk to your children to protect them from becoming a victim of sexual abuse,” Fornshell said. “I do not believe talking to parents about child abuse prevention compromises any case.”
Amy Fornshell said the CAC is working with CESCA to provide community outreach on child abuse prevention at the Atrium event.
Chicarelli declined to comment on the event.
Florida man arrested in North Carolina on
child sexual abuse charges
The suspect is accused of abusing a 12 year old who was in his care
WXII12.com Web Staff
GRAHAM, N.C. —
The Alamance County Sheriff's Office has arrested Robert Charles King, 39, of Hudson, Florida on four counts of felony first degree sex offense and one count of indecent liberties with a child.
According to the Sheriff's Office, investigators received a report of sexual abuse from the Hernando County Sheriff's Office in Spring Hills, Florida in December 2018.
The Hernando County Sheriff's Office was investigating a case of sexual and physical abuse involving King and a 12 year old child.
Detectives determined that the sexual abuse happened in Alamance County multiple times over an extended period of time.
King was arrested on Monday in Alamance County.
He's being held in jail on $500,000 bond and is set to appear in court on Tuesday afternoon.
Alamance Co., NC
Groundbreaking lawsuits claim JWs covered up
years of child sex abuse
BY DANIEL AVERY
Newsweek
Two lawsuits being filed this week are targeting the leadership of the Jehovah's Witnesses for what the plaintiffs claim is a history of child sexual abuse.
Heather Steele, 48, and John Michael Ewing, 48, were abused as children, but they're filing suits this Wednesday, when New York's new Child Victims Act goes into effect. Signed earlier this year, the measure removes the statute of limitations on abuse suits, no matter how long ago the abuse occurred.
Steele was still a toddler when, she says, a Jehovah's Witness elder started molesting her in the mid-1970s, when her family lived in New York. "My first memory would be of him fondling me when I was just about 2 or 3 years old while he held me in the back seat of my dad's car," Steele told The New York Post.
There are approximately 8.4 million Jehovah's Witnesses worldwide, including 1.2 million in the U.S.
GETTY IMAGES
When she was 10, Steele finally told her mother. But rather than tell police, her mom went to the elders. "It was basically them trying to convince us it was in our minds, that none of this stuff actually happened or that we had bad dreams," Steele said. The elders "told us that we should pray for [Nicholson]."
After Steele's parents finally went to secular authorities, Nicholson was arrested and served three-and-a-half-years in prison. But when he got out, he was quietly placed in a New Jersey congregation where few knew of his past.
Ewing was 14 when he was paired with a Ministerial Servant at Florida's Coral Springs East Congregation. The two worked as "pioneers," going door-to-door to proselytize. According to Ewing, the older man raped him repeatedly, everywhere from Virginia to New York, where his case is being filed. (The World Headquarters of Jehovah's Witnesses recently moved upstate from Brooklyn to Tuxedo Park.)
"He groomed Michael, made him think sexually abusing him was part of the religion," attorney Irwin Zalkin, who is representing both Steele and Ewing, tells Newsweek. "Like, 'I'm going to teach you what you need to know to be a man.'"
At 21, Ewing reported the abuse to his father—who, like Steele's mother—brought the allegations to church elders. A religious tribunal was convened but because Jehovah's Witnesses have a "two-witness rule"—any act of wrongdoing must be corroborated by two witnesses—Ewing wasn't believed. Accused of engaging in homosexual activity, both he and his abuser were disfellowshiped, a severe form of excommunication where family and community cut all ties.
"Michael still considers himself a Jehovah's Witness," says Zalkin. "His parents are vehemently opposed to what he's doing. But he feels the silence needs to stop. He wants to be a voice for change."
Zalkin has represented 24 former or current Witnesses in abuse lawsuits, plus about 10 more that settled out of court. In most, accusation were brought to congregation elders, who either dismissed them or disciplined the perpetrator privately.
"They don't tell anyone else why the person is being disciplined," says Zalkin. "And if someone confesses and demonstrates—in their mind—that they're repentant, they'll get a 'private reproof,' which is like a slap on the wrist."
Over the past two decades there have been dozens of cases alleging the church hid or mismanaged allegations of child sexual abuse. In September 2018, a Montana woman who claimed her elders were ordered not to report her abuse won a $35 million suit. The Watchtower is currently petitioning the Supreme Court to review another case in California, claiming a database it maintains of alleged molesters is protected by clergy-penitent confessional privilege.
Zalkin has previously targeted the Watchtower, local congregations and alleged perpetrators themselves. But Ewing and Steele's cases mark the first time he's named the eight-member Governing Body of Jehovah's Witnesses, the organization's ruling council, as defendants.
"Before, having to sue from another state, we've had trouble even getting a deposition from these guys," Zalkin says. "But given that [the Governing Body] operates from the state of New York, and control the conduct of Witnesses worldwide, we think have a good shot."
He's also encouraged by the fact that some of Ewing's abuse happened while he was staying at the Bethel (branch complex) in Wallkill, New York, in the mid-1980s. Steele lived in New York State when her abuse occurred.
"There was an incredible amount of knowledge among elders about Heather's abuser," he says. "There's such a volume of evidence. There's very little question of responsibility on the part of the Governing Body."
Maysville, NC, man sentenced to 65 years for
sexual abuse of three children
by Annette Weston, ABC12
MAYSVILLE, Jones County — A Maysville man will spend 65 years in prison for the sexual abuse of three children.
An Onslow County jury found Corey Greenfield guilty of two counts of sexual offense with a child by an adult and four counts of statutory sexual offense with a person younger than 15, among other charges.
Greenfield's wife, Bambi Townsend, was arrested and charged with three counts of failing to report child abuse or sexual abuse and three counts of contributing to the delinquency of a minor.
Prosecutors say Greenfield was 31-years-old in 2017 when he sexually abused a nine-year-old girl and 14-and-15-year-old boys.
Once he's released from prison Greenfield will be required to register as a sex offender for life.
- What's left of it!
Riverside, CA, school district faces new sexual abuse lawsuit involving former technology aide
By SCOTT SCHWEBKE | Orange County Register
A new lawsuit has been filed against the Riverside Unified School District on behalf of two more girls who allege they were sexually abused by a Liberty Elementary School technology aide over more than two years.
In addition to aide Fernando Figueroa and the district, the suit filed last week also names as defendants Liberty Elementary Principal Esther Garcia; Gary McGuire, the district’s director of pupil services; and teachers Tuesday Ramunni and Ashlea Infante.
The complaint seeks unspecified damages.
Aide ‘cast a dark shadow’
Justin Grayson, a spokesman for the Riverside school district, did not specifically address the lawsuit’s allegations in a statement Monday.
“We remain shocked and disappointed that the high standards and expectations to which we hold our classroom aides were not met by Mr. Figueroa,” he said. “Although Mr. Figueroa had passed a Department of Justice background check, he has cast a dark shadow on the Liberty Elementary School community and the Riverside Unified School District as a whole.
“As an educational institution, we embrace our duty to keep kids safe each day. We are committed to supporting all of our students, parents and staff members, including the victims and their families, as the process moves forward.”
The victims in the latest lawsuit, who attended Liberty Elementary from 2015 to 2017, were 8 years old when they first were allegedly molested by Figueroa, 26. Another lawsuit was filed in April against the school district and the same defendants on behalf of three other alleged victims. That suit is still pending.
$6.2 million payout already
The Riverside school district agreed to pay $6.2 million in November to settle another lawsuit on behalf of three other victims and their parents who also accused Figueroa of abuse.
In November, a grand jury indicted Figueroa on 25 felony counts, including lewd acts with a child under 14 and oral copulation or sexual penetration with a child under 10. He being held in the Larry D. Smith Correctional Facility in Banning and faces up to life in prison if convicted on all charges.
The latest suit alleges that Riverside school district officials negligently hired and then failed to monitor and supervise Figueroa, giving him unfettered access to the victims.
It also contends that several victims, eyewitnesses and parents reported Figueroa’s misconduct to Garcia before or during the time he allegedly was engaging in abuse. The suit also alleges Garcia and her staff failed to take action or alert authorities as required by California’s mandatory reporting law.
Lawsuit: “Epic failure’ to protect kids
The lawsuit represents an “epic failure” by the Riverside school district to protect the victims, said Ronald Labriola, an attorney with The Senators Firm, which is representing the victims.
The district also is accused of falsifying records showing Figueroa was being supervised by a credentialed teacher, when, in fact, he wasn’t.
“This lawsuit represents a continuing pattern of abuse and disregard of the civil rights of students and families who are overwhelmingly poor and Latino.” said Morgan Stewart, a partner in the law firm of Manly, Stewart & Finaldi that also is representing victims.
The Riverside Unified School District and several of its employees have been reported to the state attorney general, the California Department of Education, the Riverside Police Department, and the Commission on Teacher Credentialing for falsifying records and child endangerment, said Saul E. Wolf, a senior attorney with Manly, Stewart & Finaldi.
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