British Police Investigating Madeleine McCann Case in Portugal 'Prepare to Dig'

Those of you who prayed with or for the McCanns yesterday, thank you and God bless you.

Scotland Yard detectives are said to be planning to fly out to the Algarve 
They will excavate two sites at Praia da Luz resort where McCanns stayed
Officers will dig up a third site at the beach nearby in hope for fresh clues
Dig is not believed to have been prompted by any specific new information
Source said it was part of the Met's routine review in the unsolved case
Madeleine's parents, Gerry and Kate, will stay at home in Leicestershire
Police also want to speak to another British pedophile who was in the Algarve

British detectives are to fly to Portugal to dig up land near the holiday apartments from where Madeleine McCann went missing in May 2007.

Scotland Yard officers plan to excavate two sites near the Ocean Club apartments at Praia da Luz, and a third site on the nearby beach, it was reported today.

Madeleine's parents will not fly out for the search but her father, Gerry McCann, 45, said he and his wife, Kate, 46, were still 'hoping for a happy outcome'.

Map: British police are expected to excavate two sites near the Ocean Club and one site on the nearby beach

The decision to dig up the land in the Algarve is believed not to have come from a specific piece of new information but as part of a routine police review by British detectives into the unsolved case.

British police, who will use radar equipment to look for disturbed earth or potential evidence, are said to be hoping to find any pieces of information or clues that may have been missed by their Portugese counterparts.

A friend of the McCanns' said the police were not specifically looking for a body, but were hoping to rule possible scenarios out as well as find new information.

The source told the Mirror: 'There will be earth diggers everywhere and it will look very dramatic and it will be a heartbreaking and hugely emotional time for Madeleine's poor parents.'

'Certain areas should have been searched properly way back by the Portuguese authorities but were not.'

The latest Crimewatch television appeal for new leads on the hunt for Madeleine gave police fresh information and they are hoping that the digs might provide further clues.

Mr McCann, who on Saturday attended a prayer service in the his village of Rothley, Leicestershire, with about 100 supporters, on the seventh anniversary of Madeleine's disappearance, said that the police were heading out to Portugal shortly.

He said the detectives did have new evidence, and insisted he and his wife continued to hope for the best.

The cardiologist said: 'They are chipping away and there is new evidence.  We are going to continue hoping we get a happy outcome and one day we will know what's happening.'

Brian Kennedy, 75, the great-uncle of Madeleine, who would now be ten, said the family was hoping for news as not knowing what had happened to the child was so difficult.

A spokesman for Scotland Yard said it was protocol not to comment on specific reports on the McCann case.

News of the digs in Portugal comes after it emerged that British police were looking to speak to a British paedophile who was arrested at a campside in the Algarve in 2010 and extradited to Australia where he was wanted for a 1998 rape of an eight-year-old.

Officers are said to believe that Roderick Robinson, 77, who jumped bail in Australia and fled to the Far East following another conviction in the UK in 2012, may have information about a child sex ring operating in the Algarve when Madeleine went missing seven years ago.

Robinson received six months in prison after accepting a plea deal for indecently assaulting the child in Australia and fled to Thailand after he was released, but Thai authorities deported him back to the UK when they found out about his past.

Briton Roderick Robinson when
he was arrested in Pattaya, Thailand

He settled in Brighton, East Sussex, but, despite being made to sign the Sex Offenders Register, was convicted of molesting two girls, five and seven in 2012.

He received a year-long sentence but it was suspended for two years. What? What kind of sentence is that? He's on the Sex Offender Registry, he molests two little girls, he has a history of running and he gets a suspended sentence? Well that should teach him!

He changed his name and fled to the Far East soon after. Of course he did!

An international arrest warrant is out for Robinson, who at one point settled in Brighton before changing his name and going abroad.

Boko Haram 'to sell' Nigeria girls abducted from Chibok

Boko Haram admits to abducting Nigerian school girls
God tells Boko Haram leader to sell the girls
President Jonathan finally notices the girls are missing
The President's wife accuses protesters of fabricating the whole thing 

Nigerian Islamist militant group Boko Haram has threatened to "sell" the hundreds of schoolgirls it abducted three weeks ago. Last week I suggested that they might very well sell some of the girls. They would then become slaves and/or sexual slaves either to a single owner or they could end up in a brothel, addicted to heroin, anywhere in the world.

Militant leader Abubakar Shekau sent a video obtained by the AFP news agency, in which he said for the first time that his group had taken the girls.

About 230 girls are still believed to be missing, prompting widespread criticism of the Nigerian government.

The Boko Haram insurgency has left thousands dead since 2009.

The girls were taken from their boarding school in Chibok, in the northern state of Borno, on the night of 14 April.

Boko Haram, which means "Western education is forbidden", has attacked numerous educational institutions in northern Nigeria.

'God instructed me'
In the video, Abubakar Shekau said the girls should not have been in school in the first place, but rather should get married.

"God instructed me to sell them, they are his properties and I will carry out his instructions," he said. What a lunatic! That's not God talking to you, Mr Shekau, it never has been.

However, BBC Hausa Service editor Mansur Liman points out that the Boko Haram leader did not state the number of girls abducted, nor where they were taken or are now.

Mother of one of the missing girls

Assurances from President Goodluck Jonathan have done little to convince Nigerians of the government's commitment to freeing the girls, says our correspondent.

The Associated Press news agency says it is unclear whether the video was made before or after reports last week that some of the girls had been forced to marry their abductors, who paid a nominal bride price of $12 (£9).

Others are reported to have been taken across borders into Cameroon and Chad.

The girls were in their final year of school, most of them aged 16 to 18.

The BBC Hausa Service has received reports of a gun battle on the Nigeria-Cameroon border, and houses being burnt down by individuals suspected to be members of Boko Haram. No further details are available.

Meanwhile, a woman who helped organise protests over the abduction was detained and later released.

Patience Jonathan

Naomi Mutah was taken to a police station after a meeting called by First Lady Patience Jonathan.

Mrs Jonathan reportedly felt slighted that the girls' mothers had sent Ms Mutah to the meeting instead of going themselves.

Mrs Jonathan is seen as a politically powerful figure in Nigeria but has no constitutional power to order arrests.

Ms Mutah, a representative of the Chibok community, organised a protest last week outside parliament in Abuja.

President Goodluck Jonathan:
"Wherever these girls are, we will surely get them out"

Pogo Bitrus, another Chibok leader, described Ms Mutah's detention as "insensitive", telling the BBC he hoped Mrs Jonathan would soon "realise her mistake".

The AP news agency quotes another community leader, Saratu Angus Ndirpaya, as saying that Mrs Jonathan accused the activists of fabricating the abductions and supporting Boko Haram. That should be helpful. Apparently, empathy is not high on Mrs Jonathan's list of character traits.

In a TV broadcast on Sunday, his first comment on the abductions, President Jonathan said he did not know where the girls were but everything was being done to find them.

Infamous Writer Gore Vidal Exposed as Being Gay and Perhaps a Pedophile

He was an icon of the liberal Left on both sides of the Atlantic, a man of letters whose acid-tongued wit earned him comparisons with Oscar Wilde, and whose vituperative attacks on conservatism led to him being courted by the Clintons and the Kennedys alike. 

Famously imperious, Gore Vidal was once asked by a magazine to interview the then Prime Minister John Major, only to complain that Major should be interviewing him.

But for all his vanity, he could be very funny - when a New York taxi driver once told him to ‘Have a nice day,’ Vidal shot back: ‘No, thank you. I’ve made other plans.’

Vidal boasted that he’d had 1,000 sexual partners by the time he was 25.

In private - surrounded by his coterie of celebrity friends such as Princess Margaret, Paul Newman, Audrey Hepburn and his  step-sister, Jacqueline Kennedy - he loved nothing better than to brag about his rapacious homosexuality. 

Now, however, it has emerged that there was one area that the late Vidal spent much of his life — and a small fortune — trying to conceal.

His half-sister and nephew, who were very close to Vidal, have revealed they strongly suspect he was a globe-trotting paedophile who preyed on underage boys.

Gore Vidal - no-one thought more
highly of him then he, himself

The startling accusations are contained in a new book about the writer’s private life that also reveals - in the crude language that the outspoken Vidal loved to use - how he worked his way through the gay fraternity of Fifties Hollywood, sleeping with the likes of Rock Hudson, Fred Astaire and Noel Coward.

Speaking to Tim Teeman, author of In Bed With Gore Vidal, Nina Straight suggested her half-brother had committed ‘Jerry Sandusky acts’ - a reference to a recent notorious case in which a  U.S. college football coach was found guilty of sexually abusing young boys.

She said the conservative commentator William Buckley - Vidal’s nemesis, who had a long-running public feud with him - had kept a file on his sex secrets.

Vidal believed Buckley possessed ‘incriminating’ evidence proving that he liked to have sex with underage boys, and he was ‘terrified’ it would come out, she told Teeman.

Buckley and Vidal exchanged insults in television debates and in subsequent magazine articles, which led to an expensive legal war with both suing each other for libel.

Ms Straight believes Vidal - who was the first to sue -  spent $1 million fighting the battle to keep Buckley from revealing details of his dealings with underage boys.

Ms Straight and her son Burr Steers were very close to Vidal in his last years before he died in 2012 aged 86.

They are contesting the writer’s request in his will for his £23  million estate to be given to Harvard University (which he never attended).

Mr Steers, an actor and film director, said: ‘I know Buckley had a file on him that Gore feared. Buckley had something over him. It would make sense if that material was about him having underage sex.’

And he added, pointedly: ‘Gore spent a lot of time in Bangkok, after all.’

The Thai capital is infamous for child prostitution and Gore would visit every year. Friends say he had sex there with young male prostitutes.

Mr Steers said Gore appeared to condone child abuse perpetrated by Catholic priests: ‘He would say that the young guys involved were hustlers who were sending signals.’

He added that when Vidal’s half-brother, Jamie Auchinloss, was caught with child pornography, ‘Gore would not condemn him’.

Audrey Hepburn - one of Vidal's
many friends. It's her birthday today.

In the Seventies, Vidal even spoke out in support of paedophiles who formed a notorious group set up to campaign for legalised sex between adults and children called NAMBLA, the North-American Man/Boy Love Association.

Yesterday, the organisation - which still lobbies to abolish the age of consent - refused to say what connection Gore had with it.

Mr Steers says he ‘doesn’t know for sure’ whether his uncle had sex with underage men and doesn’t want to know - but it is clear he suspects it.

Vidal himself revealed in his memoirs that he was ‘attracted to adolescent males . . . like most men’. Really?! I don't know about you, but I was never attracted to adolescent males or any other males.

One of his friends admitted he was astonished when Vidal once told him: ‘You know I’m a pederast.’

Was he being serious? Or was he once again trying to shock? (Pederast - a man who desires or engages in sexual activity with a boy).

Some friends told Teeman they doubted he had sex with underage boys. They included Scotty Bowers, a notorious Hollywood male prostitute and close friend of the writer. Of course, if he was frightened that Wm. F. Buckley was going to expose him as a pedophile, he would be extremely cautious and probably only exercise that perversion in Thailand or other remote locations.

Some have cast doubt on Bowers’ veracity but Teeman, a British journalist who was for many years U.S. correspondent for The Times, believes that where Vidal’s gay affairs are concerned, Bowers’ account is credible. 

He says insiders, including Katharine Hepburn biographer William Mann, writer Dominick Dunne and director John Schlesinger, had attested to his reliability as a source.

Vidal appeared at the launch of Bower’s tell-all memoirs two years ago and said he had ‘never caught Bowers in a lie’. 

Bowers told Teeman that he would frequently arrange for other so-called ‘hustlers’ to visit Gore.

Vidal was a Hollywood screenwriter in the Fifties, boasting that he once inserted a gay-love subplot into the film Ben-Hur.

Paul Newman - another of Vidal's friends

Bowers used his Hollywood connections to introduce him to many of his famous clients and contacts.

Fred Astaire may have married twice and had children, but Vidal told his nephew he seduced the famous dancer and actor in Hollywood. 

This was just the start of a succession of star conquests that Vidal’s friends say he chalked up in Tinseltown.

Matinee idol Tyrone Power had affairs with Judy Garland and Lana Turner - as well as Vidal, it turns out.

‘I fixed him up with Tyrone Power which Gore asked me as a favour, and he did me a favour and had sex with [British actor] Charles Laughton,’ said Bowers.

Bowers says he also introduced Vidal to a young Rock Hudson.

And British writer John Bowen, another friend of Vidal, recalled how he described having sex with Noel Coward:  ‘Coward said to him, “Let’s have a roll in the hay.” And they did. Gore said it was quite enjoyable, but nothing very new.’ 

According to Bowers, Vidal was desperate to go to bed with James Dean, but took against him when they met.

Tennessee Williams lusted after Vidal. Although Vidal didn’t reciprocate, they became friends and ‘cruising’ partners, sharing male prostitutes in France, Italy and Egypt. 

In London, Vidal picked up male prostitutes in Piccadilly Circus. A friend recounted how Vidal once got into an argument with one of them over how much he should pay.

Vidal called his butler at the Savoy Hotel and had the young man removed, but when he checked out, £100 had been added to the bill for ‘sundries’.

Vidal had an even darker side, his half-sister told Teeman. In 1957, he and a group of men, including the British poet Stephen Spender, beat up a male prostitute under a bridge.

Burr Steers says the incident - which has never been reported - happened in England.

Perhaps this violence was because, in the words of a close friend, Vidal was a ‘self-hating gay’ who always claimed he was capable of being attracted to both sexes. 

He boasted of having girlfriends including the British actress Claire Bloom and American erotic author Anais Nin, and even claiming he had a ‘little dalliance’ with actress Debbie Reynolds.

But close friends and family insist the women were a front.  

In later life, Vidal would hold court in a grand villa on Italy’s Amalfi Coast, surrounded by a circle of friends that included Sting, Mick and Bianca Jagger, and Sophia Loren. 

By his bedside was a picture of a 17-year-old youth who was his first and possibly only true love. He was Gore’s boarding school friend Jimmie Trimble, who died in World War II.

Vidal never fell in love again, he said, settling for ‘a thousand brief anonymous adhesions’.

Whether those ‘adhesions’ included underage boys may be something we will never learn for certain.

In 2012, several years after William Buckley’s death, his son, Christopher, said he had thrown away the file his father kept on Vidal.

‘Into the dumpster it went, and I still remember the sigh of relief upon heaving it in,’ he said.

Gore Vidal’s devoted admirers, anxious to preserve pleasant memories of the man, will no doubt be very relieved, too.

In Bed With Gore Vidal by Tim Teeman is published by Riverdale Avenue Books.

Junior Golf Coach Busted Trying to Hire Hit Man to Kill His Victims of Child Sex Abuse

Andrew Nisbet, 32, who was a golf pro at Las Positas Golf Course in Livermore, California, was arrested last December on a battery of child molestation charges. He now faces three felony charges of solicitation of murder after allegedly trying to contract a killer to take out his victims.

Nisbet is accused of writing letters to a contract killer, saying the young boys needed to be “taken care of,” Alameda County district attorney’s Inspector Jeff McCort wrote in a court affidavit.

Nisbet

Nisbet, who is married, worked at Las Positas Golf Course in Livermore, is being held on more than 75 felony charges that include child molestation and possessing child pornography.

Authorities say he “groomed” his male students, all aged between 12 and 17 years old, for sex during for more than two years while working at the golf course starting in December 2009.

He allegedly wrote several letters from his cell at Santa Rita Jail to a confidential informant — who handed the notes to authorities, according to a copy of the court documents obtained by the San Francisco Chronicle.

The letters included information about each victim and the price offered for each hit, the court papers show.

Prosecutors planted an undercover inspector to pose as a hit man and meet with Nisbet in March to discuss the details of the planned murders, authorities said.

Police are also investigating the possibility of other victims around the country where Nisbet formerly worked.

3 Men (Unrelated) Charged with Child Porn or Child Sex Abuse from Thunder Bay

A 52-year-old man from Thunder Bay, Ontario, Canada, faces two child pornography charges, after a tip came into police from the National Child Exploitation Coordination Centre.

Thunder Bay, on the northwest shore of Lake Superior, is the main shipping port for the lake.

Police said they were advised that child pornography images were uploaded to Twitter.

Jeffrey Frederick Miro turned himself into police on Tuesday, and was taken into custody. He made a court appearance Wednesday on charges of possession of child pornography and making it available.

Police report the charges stem from an investigation that started on April 4.

Based on that initial investigation, police later searched a home on Chilton Avenue and seized a computer, a tablet, two smart phones and two flash drives.

Police said they found child pornography on the devices.

Also

A 41-year-old man in Thunder Bay faces child pornography charges.

Geoffrey Arden Filmore was arrested and charged with Possession of Child Pornography and Distribution of Child Pornography after a home located in the 2000 block of East Arthur Street was searched on April 14.

The search resulted in a computer, a USB stick, CDs and an SD card being seized. Police say the examination of these items confirmed the existence of child pornography.

The investigation started after the Thunder Bay Police Service’s Computer Crime Unit reviewed a referral that had been received from the National Child Exploitation Coordination Centre. Police say the investigation had initially been started in Toronto.

Filmore appeared in court Friday morning and was released. He will be back in court on May 20.

And

Last August, Jeff Paxton, of Thunder Bay, was arrested for 23 counts of child sexual assault.

It's a remarkable and weird coincidence that the only 3 people that I have found in the past year from Thunder Bay, who have been charged in child pornography or child sex abuse are named Jeff, Jeffrey, and Geoffrey.

No Charges in Relation to the Alleged Rape or Bullying that Caused Suicide

A provincial court judge in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada, has cited a mandatory publication ban in reference to a prominent child pornography case that had made national headlines.

The mandatory ban referred to prohibits the identification of the alleged victim.

The name of the girl, who is deceased, has been previously widely reported but Judge Jamie Campbell noted the mandatory ban on identification during a hearing Wednesday. The judge said he expected this would create "considerable difficulties" for media.

It's considerably stupid, too. Half of the industrialized world knows the name of the victim. What is the point of running this farce to protect a name that everyone knows and a girl who is dead? 

The publication ban cited comes under Section 486 of the Criminal Code, which prevents the naming of alleged victims in some cases.

Craig Botterill, N.S. Crown Prosecutor

In another oddity...

Earlier, a defence lawyer in the case dropped a subpoena to have a senior Crown prosecutor testify about why the charges were laid against two teens under the Youth Criminal Justice Act.

Ian Hutchison, who had filed the subpoena last Wednesday, didn't say why he no longer wished to hear from Crown prosecutor Craig Botterill in the case.

He declined comment outside court.

Two teens face charges of distributing child pornography in connection with the case, while one of them also faces a charge of making child pornography.

Since the images involved were central in the bullying of the victim who committed suicide because of it, I contend that there should be charges that tie the two teens to the suicide. 

I also think that those teens who were in on the bullying, and there were many of them, I suspect, should also be held accountable for driving her to suicide. As it stands, there's no reason why such bullying won't happen again.

Court will resume May 16 to hear Campbell's ruling on a defence application for disclosure of further police and Crown materials about the arrests and prosecution of the two accused.

Is Boko Haram Using Kidnapped Girls to Build Utopian Society?

It's been nearly three weeks since men dressed as soldiers kidnapped more than 300 girls from a Nigerian boarding school, an attack that has critics decrying the lack of action from a military that may not have the capability to mount an effective rescue operation.

“It’s really hard to say what will happen,"said Brandon Kendhammer, assistant professor of political science at Ohio University, who focuses on religion and politics in northern Nigeria . "The Nigerian military doesn’t have a particularly strong track record in being able to free hostages.”

Although they haven’t claimed responsibility, nearly all have pinned the kidnappings on the Islamic extremist group Boko Haram, which had threatened to take young women captive almost a year ago.

Nigerians have expressed their outrage that the girls have not been found, accusing the government, even with its limited military capacity, of not doing more.

People attend a demonstration calling on government to rescue
kidnapped school girls of a government secondary school Chibok,
during workers day celebration in Lagos, Nigeria. 

According to a report from allAfrica.com, the army has drawn up plans to storm Sambisa Forest this weekend with about four battalions in an attempt to find and rescue the students. It would be the first substantial move from a military that, according to experts, is squeezed for resources, under-trained and possibly compromised.

"You hear they've got fighter jets but clearly [they are] not the right tools to help find young women in an area like this," Kendhammer said. "The sense is that the tool kit that is available here is not particularly apt given what needs to happen."

Darren Kew, a professor of conflict resolution at the University of Massachusetts Boston, and executive director of the schools' Center for Peace, Democracy, and Development, said the Nigerian military is clearly overstretched, noting that troops are deployed in most of the country’s states and involved in overseas peacekeeping operations. 

The military also lacks the capacity of counter insurgency or a counter terrorist strategy or the surgical strike capacity of a more advanced military, said Lew, who was in Nigeria in March.

There has also been speculation that the military has been compromised by members of Boko Haram, with reports that some members of units engaged in firefights with the extremist group have either refused to fight, left the fight, or joined the insurgent organization.

Meanwhile, the military's attempts to secure the release of hostages in past kidnappings have often been fatal.

“[There's] been rampant speculation that the military has hesitated to go where at least some of the girls might be held because previously when they’ve done that in kidnapped situations, the kidnappers have promptly murdered the victims," said John Campbell a senior fellow for Africa policy studies at the Council for Foreign Relations and author of Nigeria: Dancing on the Brink.

On April 14, about 300 girls from various institutions had gathered at the Government Girls' Secondary School in Chibok, Borno to take their final exams after all schools in the state had been shut because of attacks by Islamic extremists. Around midnight, men dressed in military clothing burst into the school, claiming they had evidence that the Islamic extremist group Boko Haram was about to strike and that they were there to move the girls to a safe place.

The girls were loaded into trucks and buses and shipped out. Some of the girls got suspicious and escaped while en route, while others managed to flee the camps of their captors. Those interviewed have said their captors identified themselves as fighters in the Boko Haram network. About 50 girls escaped, while 276 remain missing. The numbers change every day but seem to almost always increase.

“Boko Haram has been doing a wide range of things that are horrific and this is just the latest one,” Kew said.

The militant organization believes Western influences have corrupted their society and only an Islamic state can restore purity to Africa's most populous nation of about 170 million people, divided almost equally between Muslims and Christians.

“From their twisted perspective, they see this as improving the lives of these women, bringing them to the proper faith and putting them under the supervision of men who are living the righteous life,” Kew said. Murderers, kidnappers, rapists, thieves - strange what qualifies for righteous in Islam.

The motivation may also be more base – to force the girls to become slave wives of their fighters. 

“The central goal of Boko Haram was not to take these girls. Their central goal is the establishment of a utopian Islamic state — in their eyes very much like the Taliban-style governance — that returns at least northern Nigeria if not all of Nigeria to the way things should be in their eyes.

“The taking of the girls just a sideshow from their perspective.”

As to where the girls are, reports say they have been divided into groups, some sent to Cameroon or Chad, while others sent to various Boko Haram camps.

“But we have to underline the fact that we don’t know, which is part of the massive frustration you see coming from Nigeria," Campbell said.

US Spy-Satellite Agency Failed to Report Sex Crimes Against Children to Authorities

While this report comes from RT - Russia Today, and so has to be considered suspect at best, it is well documented, so I present it here. It raises the question for a lot of government departments, whether they are reporting child sex abuse and child pornography indications, or are just ignoring them?

The agency that controls US intelligence satellites failed to inform law enforcement when some employees and contractors admitted during lie detector tests to child abuse crimes, according to the intelligence inspector general.

The US National Reconnaissance Office (NRO), which operates surveillance satellites for the US intelligence community, was also found in other cases to have delayed reporting to authorities admissions of criminal activity uncovered during security clearance polygraph tests. Two inspector general reports released Tuesday found these delays possibly imperiled evidence in investigations or even endangered children.

In one case, an NRO legal counsel advised employees against reporting admissions by a government contractor of child molestation, viewing child pornography, and sexting with a minor, according to the Office of the Intelligence Community Inspector General.

“Doubt we have enough to interest the FBI,” the NRO’s then-assistant general counsel told another agency official in an email, adding, “the alleged victim is fourteen years old and fully capable of calling the police herself.”

The NRO employee reported the confession anyway, revealing that the girl was still in contact with the contractor who had admitted to the crimes. The US Department of Justice was not informed of the confession for nearly five weeks, according to McClatchy news service.

Overall, 30 individuals of the 30,000 who took the NRO polygraph tests from 2009 to 2012 confessed to child abuse or possessing child pornography, the inspector general found. The inspector general’s office referred for investigation seven confessions related to child pornography or child abuse that the NRO failed to report.

Meanwhile, in some reported cases, delays as long as several months meant “individuals could continue the criminal activity or tamper with or destroy evidence in the interim,” said the inspector general’s office.

The NRO’s lawyers at the time told the inspector general’s investigators that they “were not legally obligated … to report child sexual abuse to DOJ or law enforcement organizations because child abuse is a state crime, not a federal crime,” according to the report.

“Therefore they generally chose not to report those crimes unless the admissions also involved federal crimes such as possession of child pornography.”

While not technically obligated to report child abuse crimes, neither the law nor intelligence-community policy bars the NRO from flagging such cases, especially those that pose “imminent danger,” according to the inspector general.

The NRO did not report "some alleged federal crimes that it was required to," McClatchy wrote, due in part to “inconsistent and inaccurate advice” from the agency’s top lawyers at the time, the inspector general found.

Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) requested a review of the agency’s practices after a 2012 investigation by McClatchy first raised questions about the NRO polygraph policies. Grassley said at the time the NRO exhibited a “complete lack of common sense in failing to require reporting of serious state crimes of this sort.”

The NRO reformed some of its reporting policies after the 2012 McClatchy report, telling the inspector general it had “strengthened internal and external coordination and facilitated identification, referral and reporting of potential crimes.”

Yet a subsequent inspector general investigation – the second of the two released Tuesday – of the same NRO polygraph division found “significant shortcomings” in the agency’s lie detector program, saying it “may result in potential negative national security implications originating at the NRO.”

The intelligence inspector general found one Air Force lieutenant colonel who confessed during a 2010 polygraph test to molesting a child and to downloading child porn on his Pentagon computer. The NRO reported the admission to the Air Force division that has oversight of security clearances, but not to the Justice Department or the Air Force’s special-investigations unit.

According to the inspector general, the Department of Homeland Security investigated the case of the Air Force lieutenant colonel, though the new report did not offer what resulted from the inquiry. McClatchy reported that the officer still held a security clearance as of earlier this month, according to Sen. Grassley.

“The NRO has made important strides in reducing the time it takes to report crimes from over 100 days to an average of three days, but quite frankly, sometimes that’s still too long,” Grassley said. “It’s unacceptable to give a person who has admitted to viewing child pornography or of sexually abusing children any time to destroy evidence or strike again.”

Portuguese Police and their Confusing, Frustrating Search for Madeleine McCann

Kate and Gerry McCann and family will be praying today, Saturday, for Madeleine's safe return. I'm asking Christians everywhere to join them in spending a few minutes in prayer for Maddy and her family.

A SUSPECT in the disappearance of Madeleine McCann was questioned about a string of sex assaults linked to the youngster's disappearance before he died, his widow said last night.

Euclides Monteiro's wife Luisa Rodrigues said Portuguese police probing Madeleine's abduction questioned the convicted burglar the year after she vanished about a spate of sex attacks at Algarve holiday villas.

She claimed DNA tests had put the recovering heroin addict - a former worker at the Ocean Club holiday complex Madeleine vanished from seven years ago today - in the clear.

Euclides Monteiro

And she insisted detectives leading the hunt for Madeleine never asked Cape Verde-born Monteiro, who died in a 2009 tractor accident, about the missing child.

The revelation, pointing to an apparent failure by Portuguese detectives to link the breaks-ins to Madeleine's abduction early on, will raise fresh concern about the original police probe which led to her parents Gerry and Kate being made suspects.

It also raises questions about why Portuguese police heading a cold case review decided to question Monteiro's widow last year after making a link between Madeleine McCann's 2007 disappearance and the sex attacks his widow says he proved five years earlier he had nothing to do with.

British police heading a separate probe into Madeleine's disappearance are trying to identify a serial sex attacker who may have struck at least 18 times in Algarve holiday resorts, starting in 2004.

They have described the intruder as "smelly and pot-bellied", wearing a burgundy top with a distinctive white circle on the back - but never pointed the finger at Monteiro.

Ms Rodrigues' claims that Portuguese detectives believed the Algarve sex assaults were the work of one man as far back as 2008 will also lead to questions about why they were only made public recently.

Luisa Rodrigues

Euclides' widow, who never spoke about her late partner's 2008 police quiz when she admitted earlier this year two Portuguese women detectives had questioned her last October, broke her silence on Portuguese state broadcaster RTP, Insisting he had nothing to do with Madeleine's disappearance and went straight after finishing a five-year prison sentence in 1999.

She told the TV station: "Euclides was summonsed to the police station in Portimao, the same one heading the Madeleine McCann investigation, in 2008.

"He was told they were looking for a tall black man who had broken into country homes and sexually assaulted children inside.

"He didn't commit a single crime after he left prison.

"He denied any involvement in the indecent assaults. Police did DNA tests at the time and ruled him out as a suspect and apologised for troubling him.

"They never mentioned Madeleine McCann. Until the day he died the police never contacted him again." 

Luisa also gave her late husband an alibi over Madeleine - by producing a poem she said he had written on his computer around the time she vanished.

She said computer records showed he wrote at 9pm on May 3 2007 - an hour before Kate McCann discovered Madeleine missing.

Maddy at 3 and her possible appearance now

She added: "I know Euclides had nothing to do with Madeleine's disappearance. It's impossible he had a double life. I knew everything about him."

Porto-based Policia Judiciaria officers heading a review into the Algarve-led Madeleine McCann investigation began to suspect Monteiro after pinpointing him to the area where the British youngster disappeared from by his mobile phone.

Kate McCann, 46, made a veiled attack on the Portuguese police ahead of the seventh anniversary of her daughter's disappearance today.

Kate McCann and Maddy

British police have to send time-consuming international 'Letters of Request' to Portugal every time they want something done.

Met Police said recently they were confident of being able to start "operational activity" in Portugal soon but their hopes have so far failed to materialise and their desire for a joint investigation has also been rejected.

Kate said: "The passing of further weeks and months as a result of unnecessary delays and barriers are not only frustrating, they are distressing.

"Each day without Madeline and each day of not knowing is another day too many."

Kate McCann is often still “paralysed” by sadness over the disappearance of her daughter Madeleine, who vanished seven years ago today.

The sad milestone will be marked by Kate, husband Gerry and close family praying for the girl’s return.

Kate, 46, said: “Our situation seems as unbelievable as it did that very first night without Madeleine.

“Whenever I find myself becoming paralysed with disbelief, unease, frustration or sadness, I have to refocus my mind on the positives.”

Unfortunately, there are not many positives  mostly because of the intransigence of the Portuguese - their unwillingness to cooperate with Scotland Yard.

Let's join the McCanns today in praying for Madeleine's safe return or at least a breakthrough in this horribly frustrating search.

Many Compensation Claims for Child Sex Abuse Already Settled at Beechwood

Former residents at a children's care home have been awarded compensation after claims they were sexually abused.

The information came to light a Freedom of Information request submitted by the BBC about the Beechwood home in Mapperley, Nottingham.

Details were requested from Nottingham City Council and Nottinghamshire County Council who both ran the home.

The councils said settlements had been made without admitting responsibility and some claims were still ongoing.

The children's home closed eight years ago and was run by both authorities because of a boundary change.

The Beechwood children's home was run by both the city and county councils

Rape arrest
In total, £250,000 has so far been paid out to 26 former residents and a "significant" number of other claims are still being considered.

Four of the claims fell into a period when the home was managed by the city council and 21 when the homes was managed by the county council.

One other claim spans both periods and has been part funded by both councils.

In a statement, Nottingham City Council, which is dealing with the claims on behalf of both councils, said: "These are complex cases and each of the claims received has been considered on its individual merits and there may be different outcomes for different cases.

"The councils have settled a number of cases on legal advice, and in consultation with their insurers.

"These cases have been settled without any admission of liability. A significant number of other claims are ongoing, so it would be inappropriate to comment further at this stage."

On Friday a man was arrested on suspicion of child rape at the former home. It followed an investigation into more than 50 claims of child sex abuse dating back to the 1970s. (See post immediately below).

He has since been bailed pending further enquiries.