Child Abuse, Kids | featured news

The Archdiocese of L.A. took $115 million from its cemeteries' maintenance fund in 2007, nearly depleting it. The move seems legal, but it was not announced, and relatives of the dead were not told.

Amid reports of widespread sexual abuse of children in the late 1980s, several leading youth organizations began conducting criminal background checks of volunteers and staff members. Big Brothers Big Sisters ordered the checks for all volunteers starting in 1986. Boys and Girls Clubs of America recommended their use the same year. One of the nation's oldest and largest youth groups, however, was opposed — the Boy Scouts of America.

Increased public awareness of how child predators operate, along with better law enforcement and policies to protect children, may be helping to reduce child sex abuse despite this year's headlines about cases connected to institutions like Penn State, the Boy Scouts and the BBC....

A photography student who posed as a babysitter and filmed himself abusing girls is jailed for life.

A popular Colorado Boy Scout leader named Floyd Slusher allegedly had a strategy when it came to molesting boys: He first plied his victims with alcohol, then abused them and threatened to kill anyone who talked.

Police say Escalona was so mad that her daughter soiled her pants that, as punishment, she super glued the girl’s hands to the wall then beat her in front of her other siblings... Escalona’s kids told investigators their mother kicked the girl in the stomach and repeatedly hit her.

Los Angeles Times review of Boy Scout documents shows that a blacklist meant to protect boys from sexual predators too often failed in its mission. For nearly a century, the Boy Scouts of America has relied on a confidential blacklist known as the "perversion files" as a crucial line of defense against sexual predators.

Teachers hurled insults like "bastard," "tard," "damn dumb" and "a hippo in a ballerina suit." A bus driver threatened to slap one child, while a bus monitor told another, "Shut up, you little dog."...

An Alabama woman has given birth the same day she was arrested for the death of her 9-year-old stepdaughter, who authorities say died after being forced to run for three hours as punishment for eating a candy bar....

Rarely mentioned is the sobering statistic that more than one-third of the sexual abuse of America's children is committed by other minors.