The National Sex Offender Registry: All 50 states and the District of Columbia and Guam participate. Cyber Tipline: The Cyber Tipline handles leads from individuals reporting the sexual exploitation of children. The Child Protection eNewsletter Volume 6, Issue 74 November 25, 2008 Breaking news: Van der Sloot claims he sold Natalee Holloway... In an interview with Greta Van Susteren broadcast on Fox last night, Joran van der Sloot claimed that he had sold Natalee Holloway to a strange man on a boat the night the 18-year-old disappeared from a school trip to Aruba in May, 2005. Fox News story here But the rough transcript of the video interview, held in Asia, contains a postscript by Van Susteren that van der Sloot has since denied the whole story. Van Susteren prefaced the interview with the following comments: "Van der Sloot went "On the Record" with us in 2006, claiming he had left Natalee alone on a beach. Then in February of '08, Van der Sloot was shown on hidden tape saying that Natalee had collapsed on the beach and that he had disposed of her body. Well, now his story changes again. Joran contacted us, claiming he wanted to tell us the truth about what happened that night. He produced as evidence three telephone conversations saved on a digital chip. Joran claims the recordings are conversations between his father and him. If authentic, the recordings suggest that Joran told his father what happened to Natalee." Van Susteren reports that she has been conducting an investigation into the details of van der Sloot's video interview, and into trafficking, and will be reporting on those in her Fox News show as this week continues. Recently, van der Sloot has told another investigator on video that he has been involved in trafficking girls from Thailand for prostitution. See vol6_iss72. Prosecutors release video of 8-year-old's murder confession... Arizona prosecutors released a police interview with an 8-year-old boy accused of killing his father and another man in which he admits to firing at least two shots at each man. CBS News story here The boy said that he did not fire the first shots at the men but later shot them so they wouldn't suffer. The boy gives conflicting accounts of the shootings during an hour-long video of his interview with authorities in St. Johns, but the video ends with him admitting to pulling the trigger. He then buries his head in his jacket. "I'm going to go to juvie," the boy says after an officer asks what he's thinking. The roughly 12-minute video posted last week on Phoenix television station KTVK's Web site shows part of the questioning the boy underwent as authorities in the eastern Arizona community of St. Johns investigated the November 5 killings. The station said it got the video from the prosecutor's office in Apache County, where the shootings occurred. "There was blood all over his face, I think," the boy said in the video, referring to his father. "And I think I touched him." Citing the boy's age and the sketchy circumstances surrounding the case, CBS News chief legal analyst Andrew Cohen said, this ranks as "one of the most egregious examples of pretrial publicity." The boy has been charged in juvenile court with two counts of murder in the deaths of his father, Vincent Romero, and Timothy Romans, who rented a room there and was Romero's co-worker. A defense attorney has said police overreached in their questioning of the boy, who was not represented by a family member or lawyer during the interview. Legal analysts who spoke with CNN were united in their opinion that the police questioning was improper and that any incriminating statements the boy made shouldn't stand up in court. CNN News story here A review of the tapes shows that the boy's demeanor was more suitable for a session of show-and-tell than for a soul-baring confession as he describes the carnage he saw inside his home. He does not appear to be depressed, scared or sorrowful. Because this video has been made a public record, we have included a link to it here. Video police interrogation In other news... A 14-year-old boy from Yolo County, California was left at a hospital in Kimball, Nebraska on Friday, just hours before the Nebraska Safe Haven law changed to limit legal abandonments to babies 30 days old or younger. KETV News story here Todd Landry, the director of the Division of Children and Family Services for the Department of Health and Human Services, said the boy's mother drove to Nebraska from California and dropped him off. The boy is currently in a foster home. Landry said DHHS is in the process of gathering additional information and is in contact with appropriate agencies in California. The incident brings the total number of children left at a hospital to 36 since the initial law went into effect on July 18. Governor Dave Heineman signed the new bill into law on Friday and it took effect just after midnight on Saturday. ABCNews takes a look at the families who left teens under the old law. ABC News story here CNN takes a look at a desperate parent who considered dropping her troubled teen off at a nearby hospital. CNN KETV story here A Canadian pedophile who was tracked down after "swirled" images of him were unscrambled has been convicted of abusing a second child. http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,456706,00.html A global search led to the arrest of Christopher Paul Neil, 33, in Thailand in October 2007, where he was sentenced to more than three years in prison for abusing a 13-year old Thai boy. Thailand's Criminal Court has since found him guilty of three more charges of also abusing the victim's brother, who was nine at the time. The verdict, which had not been previously released, found Neil guilty of abuse and illegal detention of a minor. The former teacher was given a nine-year prison sentence, but he will serve only six years and his two sentences will run consecutively. See more at vol5_iss67, vol5_iss68, and vol6_iss63. A lawsuit can continue against the Vatican alleging that top church officials should have warned the public or authorities of known or suspected sexual abuse of children by priests in the Archdiocese of Louisville, a federal appeals court ruled Monday. AP News story here The 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals gave the go-ahead for the lawsuit filed by three men who claim priests abused them as children. They allege the Vatican orchestrated a decades-long cover-up of priests sexually abusing children throughout the U.S. Louisville attorney William McMurry is seeking class-action status, saying there are thousands of victims nationally in the scandal that haunts the Roman Catholic Church. He is seeking unspecified damages from the Vatican. Several lawsuits around the country have sought damages against the Vatican, but many have been bounced around in lower courts. Attorneys for both sides say the Louisville case is unique. It centers on a 1962 directive from the Vatican telling church officials to keep under wraps sex-abuse complaints against clergy. The document became public in 2003. McMurry claims that document makes the Vatican liable for the acts of clergy whose crimes were kept secret because of the directive. U.S. District Judge John Heyburn II ruled in January 2007 that the men may pursue their claim that church officials should have sent out warnings about abusive clergy. But the judge also dismissed a large chunk of the lawsuit. The appeals court upheld Heyburn's decision to dismiss claims that the Holy See was negligent in failing to provide safe care to the children entrusted to the clergy, along with claims of deceit and misrepresentation by the Vatican. For more information on clergy abuse see eGuide/vol1_iss36. It started as a radio program discussion about a taboo subject: child molestation among members of the insular world of Orthodox Jews. AP News story here Since he broached the subject on his radio show this summer, says a New York state assemblyman, dozens of people have come forward with stories about children being molested in the Orthodox community, which strictly follows Jewish law. Dov Hikind says as many as four people a day have come to him over the past three months with painful accounts of secrets often kept for decades, accusing more than 60 individuals. His campaign has set off a firestorm in the Orthodox community, where people are reluctant to involve secular authorities. One rabbi said he got death threats for speaking out. "In our community, people don't talk about the things that they've come to my office" and revealed, said Hikind, himself an Orthodox Jew. Hikind said he won't breach victims' trust by disclosing his private exchanges to prosecutorsor to a lawyer who subpoenaed him in a civil case against a school accused of concealing abuse. However, he has been working on devising mechanisms within the Orthodox world for reporting sex abuse and sharing information on school staffers' previous positions. He aims to present a plan to rabbis this winter. Hikind said he encourages people who confide in him to talk to the authorities. But none will, he said, for fear of ostracism. The five years since the abduction and murder of a University of North Dakota student have brought tougher laws against sex offenders. Fox News story here Top state and federal prosecutors say it's not enough. Dru Sjodin, a UND senior from Pequot Lakes, Minnesota, was taken from the parking lot of a Grand Forks shopping mall on Saturday, November 22, 2003. Alfonso Rodriguez Jr., a convicted rapist from Crookston, Minnesota, was sentenced to death for kidnapping and killing the 22-year-old Sjodin. "Alfonso Rodriguez is not the first and he's not going to be the last," the prosecutor who sent Rodriguez to death row, U.S. Attorney Drew Wrigley said. "We need to ask ourselves, 'How do we allow that to happen?' To me, it's the irony of the whole thing. Why does a Level 3 sex offender get out of prison?" State and federal lawmakers have since tried to bolster that protection. North Dakota Attorney General Wayne Stenehjem said the case has created an intolerance toward sex offenses that was long overdue. But more is needed, he said. Minnesota made major changes in the way it handles sexual predators in the wake of the Sjodin case, partly because it was Minnesota that let Rodriguez go free in the first place. See more at vol4_iss40. An Arkansas judge says 20 children removed from the Tony Alamo Christian Ministries compound by child welfare officials will temporarily remain in state custody. AP News story here A spokeswoman for the Arkansas Department of Human Services said Monday's ruling came after parents waived a hearing over the November 18 seizure. Another hearing on the status of the boys and girls has been set for January 12. Alamo was arrested in September after his Arkansas compound was raided by state and federal agents. He has pleaded innocent to federal charges that he took minors across state lines for sex. Hearings continue on whether six other girls removed from the compound in September will remain in state custody. See more at vol6_iss67 and vol6_iss73. The stepfather of a 3-year-old girl, known as Precious Doe after her body and severed head were discovered four years ago, was sentenced to life in prison without parole for killing the girl. CNN News story here The child had apparently been killed three years before her body was found in a wooded area near Kansas City, Missouri. Harrell Johnson, 29, was convicted last month of first-degree murder in the death of Erica Michelle Marie Green, as well as endangering the welfare of a child and abusing a child. Sixteenth Circuit Judge John Torrence sentenced Johnson to four years and 25 years, respectively, for those convictions, ruling that those sentences will run consecutively to the life sentence, according to court spokeswoman Mary Jacobi. Prosecutors did not seek the death penalty against Johnson. See more at vol6_iss67. Child molestation charges continue to mount against a former South Carolina school administrator after several additional victims have contacted state agents to report years of alleged sex abuse, dating back to the late 1970s that reportedly continue on through the early 1990s, according to officials. The State news story here Stephen Coke Eubanks, 67, faces a total of 15 charges. Nine charges have been added to the list of six previous counts lodged against him on October 21. He was denied bond on the most recent nine that include two counts of second degree criminal sexual conduct with a minor, engaging a child for sexual performance, two counts of lewd act upon a child under 16, kidnapping, two counts of contributing to the delinquency of a minor and enticing enrolled child from school. For more on educator abuse see eGuide/vol1_iss30. A 19-year-old college student took his own life in front of numerous spectators online. WiredPRnews.com As reported by the Associated Press (AP), Abraham Biggs took an overdose of medications while being filmed through a live webcam, with some visitors to the site showing the tragedy watching in horror, and others urging Biggs to go forward with his suicide. Biggs was reported to have suffered from bipolar disorder, and announced his plans to commit suicide online at approximately 3:00 Wednesday morning. His webcam was said to have been active for approximately 12 hours after the announcement. Information had not been known at the time of the report on how many people watched the developments occur. For information about teen suicide see eGuide/vol1_iss23. *for access to member only sites like the New York Times, use the ID "JohnDoeID" and the password "whatever". 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