Kids, Child Sex Abuse | 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 43-year-old Department of Homeland Security worker allegedly used Facebook to solicit more than 70 area children for sexual acts, according to authorities. Robert B. Rennie Jr., a Loudoun County resident, was charged Oct. 24 with five counts of using a computer to solicit a child under the age of 15, after a school resource officer was tipped off to suspicious activity on a Mercer Middle School student's Facebook page.

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.

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.

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

A Florida woman is sent to prison for 25 years for sexually assaulting her own children and emailing pictures of the sex acts to a Michigan man.

Carl Sutphin was a problem priest who left ministry in the Roman Catholic church just before being charged nearly a decade ago with 14 counts of molestation for sexually abusing six children....

Reports that the Vatican intends to force the head of the Catholic Church in Ireland to resign are denied.