Counter Pedophilia Investigate Unit

It will inevitably be called a dark moment for hockey, as if Graham James’ serial sexual abuse of children was a perverse anomaly.

It’s worse than that. It’s a dark moment for everyone, though we are learning that this sort of shadow finds too many corners in locker rooms.

Once again, former junior coach James stood in front of a judge on Wednesday and was convicted of sex crimes. The court sat in Winnipeg. James blandly delivered his lines via video link from Montreal, where he is free on bail. (more…)

Sexual predation on children and youths is back in the national spotlight since Jerry Sandusky, the former Penn State football defense coordinator, has been accused of sexually assaulting multiple boys over 15 years.

It doesn’t take much imagination to understand the horrors and damage caused by sex offenders. And it’s hard to talk about the facts of any criminal behavior since misinformation is common and ideas contrary to misinformation are quickly associated as soft on crime. The nuances of any criminal behavior are complicated.
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The first step in around-the-clock monitoring of pedophiles will be taken today, with five of the state’s most dangerous sex offenders to be fitted with GPS tracking devices.

A total of 67 individuals living in transitional housing at Wacol will be fitted with the new devices.

The introduction of GPS trackers followed a community campaign in which more than 10,000 Queenslanders signed a Courier-Mail petition calling for the State Government to roll out the technology as soon as possible. (more…)

AN alleged pedophile charged with committing 99 sex offences against a young girl, including child prostitution and producing child pornography, has been granted bail.

Richard Paul Baxter, 63, is the third person in three weeks to face court over the eight years of alleged abuse endured by the girl at a property in Brisbane’s southern suburbs, which police say ended only last month.

Mr Baxter was arrested on Monday and charged with 94 counts of indecent treatment of a child, four counts of obtaining prostitution and one count of making child exploitation material since 2004. (more…)

The mother of a boy molested by a registered sex offender was shocked to see his attacker out of prison and back on the street, having received no official notification of his release Saturday.

“This is ridiculous,” Caroline Mason, of Canyon Country, said Wednesday. “We are so done with not being informed about this guy living around our kids.”

In the spring of 2010, William Greggory Babb, 50, pleaded guilty in San Fernando Superior Court to one felony of contacting a minor with the intention of engaging in lewd or lascivious behavior. (more…)

A man who inadvertently gave a mother a digital photo card that contained pornographic pictures of her daughter, believing there were only images of the girl dancing and singing, faces up to eight years in prison.

Crown prosecutor Jenny Rees argued that the 48 images discovered on the card provided by Bradley Shawn Lemire on Aug. 28, 2009, half of them pornographic, led to more than 2,000 other images of child pornography being found on the accused’s computer after it was seized by police. (more…)

(Reuters) – Pennsylvania next month will become the third state in the nation with a court dedicated to bringing sex offenders to justice.

In an effort to stop repeat offenders, particularly those who target children, a pilot program will open June 23 in Allegheny County, according to the Pennsylvania Supreme Court. After a year, if deemed effective, it may be expanded statewide.

Judges hope that channeling sex abuse cases through a specialized court will speed up the process so that “victims and witnesses don’t have to wait before getting their day in court,” said Steve Schell, a spokesman for the Administrative Office of Pennsylvania Courts. (more…)

A Level 3 sex offender who spent more than 10 years in prison for sexually assaulting a woman was arrested Thursday and charged with sending indecent text messages to a minor, city police said.

Marlek E. Holmes, 37, who was released from prison in October, was arrested after two separate investigations into complaints against him, detectives Todd Crossett and Charles Dudek said. (more…)

Experts Lisa Paul, deputy prosecuting attorney at the Dawson Place Child Advocacy Center, and Dusty Olson, an advocate of Providence’s Intervention Center for Assault and Abuse and co-founder of the Snohomish County Sexual Exploitation and Intervention Network, discuss the problem of sex trafficking of children in Snohomish County.

When many think of sex trafficking, they think of prostitutes in Southeast Asia, Nepal, Bangladesh or another faraway country – anywhere but here in the United States, and especially not of our own kids in our own communities.

But it is happening here. (more…)