Child Abuse

A 19-year-old Long Beach woman and her boyfriend were charged Tuesday with felonies stemming from the death of her 2 1/2-year-old son, who suffered severe head injuries and several broken bones. The child was rushed to Memorial Medical Center of Long Beach on Saturday after paramedics were summoned and found that his heart had stopped. Long Beach Police Officer Sheila Cannan said the boy was "the victim of obvious child abuse," having "numerous scars, welts and marks appearing to be caused by belts."

A report released Thursday by the state auditor describes widespread deficiencies in Los Angeles County's oversight of abused and neglected children, finding that problems with the speed and quality of investigations remain despite years of promises by the Board of Supervisors. In July 2010 the department reported 9,300 child abuse investigations that were open longer than the state's 30-day deadline. Although the backlog has decreased substantially, in January it was still 3,200, more than twice as large as it was in July 2009, according to the audit.

A Boyle Heights man was charged Monday with murder and sexual child abuse in connection with last week's brutal killing of his girlfriend's 2-year-old daughter. Manuel Bonilla, 22, who was arraigned in Municipal Court, is being held without bail. Maria Gutierrez, 22, the child's mother, was charged with child abuse and with being an accessory after the fact for helping Bonilla mislead police. The pair, both of whom wore prison clothing and were handcuffed and chained at the hearing, have been in custody since Thursday on suspicion of beating to death Gutierrez's daughter Johanna.

A father who made headlines for using his 9-year-old daughter as his designated driver when he had too much to drink was sentenced Thursday to two years' probation. In exchange for the sentence, Shawn Weimer pleaded guilty to charges stemming from an Oct. 8, 2011, incident in which security cameras outside a Detroit-area gas station caught the 9-year-old doing her best to maneuver the family van alongside the gas pumps. Moments later, security cameras inside the store caught Weimer bragging to onlookers about his daughter's driving skills and calling her his "designated driver.

Entertainer Paula Poundstone, an adoptive and foster parent who has been a fixture on the stand-up comedy scene for 20 years, pleaded no contest Wednesday to one count of felony child abuse and a misdemeanor charge of inflicting injury upon a child. As part of a plea agreement with Los Angeles County prosecutors, Poundstone is expected to be placed on probation for five years but will not go to jail, attorneys said.

Is severe childhood obesity a life-threatening form of abuse that justifies removing a child from his or her parents? Doctors, lawyers and child welfare experts have grappled with this question in recent years, and the debate was renewed this summer by a high-profile commentary in the Journal of the American Medical Assn. Dr. David Ludwig, director of the obesity program at Children's Hospital Boston, and Lindsey Murtagh, a research associate at the Harvard School of Public Health, argued that when children are near death due to morbid obesity, state intervention should be considered.

Her relatives had always described her as a colicky baby. When Luo Cuifen was 26, she found out a likely reason why. Doctors discovered more than two dozen sewing needles embedded in her body, some piercing her vital organs. X-rays of her head and torso look like a dart board. Doctors believe the needles were driven into her body when Luo was days old. One in the top of her skull could only have been stuck there when the bones in her head were still soft.

Lt. Clarence (Buzz) Harvey at first did not know what to make of the blonde 42-year-old woman who appeared at the front desk of this town's solitary police station on the morning of Sept. 18, 1986. Those in the station familiar with the downtown strip joints in nearby St. Paul might have recognized Jerry Ann Sherwood from her earlier tenure at Alary's Club Bar. Her features were still attractive, although the years had added a certain hardness and fleshiness. She had a story to tell.

A jury decided Wednesday that Marcus Wesson should be put to death for killing nine of his children in a cult-like murder-suicide pact in this city's worst mass murder. Jurors deliberated nine hours before deciding on the death penalty for the 58-year-old Wesson, who had been convicted June 17 on nine counts of homicide in the March 2004 shooting deaths, even though he probably did not fire the murder weapon.

The hottest topical record of the Christmas season isn't another hunger-relief song or a catchy remake of a yuletide classic. It's "Dear Mr. Jesus," a gentle lullaby featuring a little girl singing about child abuse. Sample lyric: Dear Mr. Jesus I just had to write to you Something really scared me when I saw it on the news A story about a little girl beaten black and blue . ... Please don't let them hurt your children.

A year after George and Bette McFetridge adopted a troubled teenage girl, the Irvine couple contends, her behavior grew increasingly disconcerting. She neglected her grades, kept company with grown men and ran away repeatedly. On her camera, the Orange County deputy district attorney and his wife found a photograph of a pentagram, and of words written on pavement: "Torture. " "Agony. " To punish her for lying about her whereabouts, Bette McFetridge took a pair of scissors and cut off locks of the girls' hair in early 2008 — a snip for each lie. The "tough love" punishment led to an allegation of emotional abuse that a social worker deemed "inconclusive" but nevertheless landed the couple on the state's Child Abuse Central Index, where they remained for 11 months.

Prosecutors in the Jerry Sandusky child sex-abuse case asked Tuesday to have jurors brought in from another Pennsylvania county, a day after disclosing in court records they would tell the former Penn State assistant coach the names of his 10 alleged victims. The attorney general's office argued in a court motion that pretrial publicity and Penn State's prominent role in its local community mean Sandusky's criminal trial warrant the use of jurors from outside the State College area.

Crediting him with building not just better athletes but better men, former Penn State football stars and others paid tribute to Joe Paterno in a huge campus memorial service Thursday that exposed a strong undercurrent of anger over his firing. In a 21/2-hour gathering that capped three days of mourning on campus, Nike Chairman and Chief Executive Phil Knight instantly brought the near-capacity crowd of 12,000 to its feet in thunderous applause when he defended the coach's handling of child sex abuse allegations leveled against former assistant Jerry Sandusky . Paterno was fired over the episode on Nov. 9. "This much is clear to me: If there is a villain in this tragedy, it lies in that investigation and not in Joe Paterno's response," Knight said.

In his private journal, Jason Michael Handy once described himself as a "pedophile, full blown. " Handy snapped more than 1,000 photos of girls at the elementary school across the street from his house, using a camera with a telephoto lens, according to court documents. He volunteered at a Malibu church, where he worked with 6-year-olds. And his job as a production assistant at one of the nation's most prominent producers of children's television programs, Nickelodeon, gave him access to child actors on and off the set, and allowed him to exchange email addresses and phone numbers with them.

California Gov. Jerry Brown is considering granting clemency to Shirley Ree Smith, a grandmother convicted in 1997 of shaking to death her 7-week-old grandson, Etzel Glass. Sentenced to 15 years to life in prison, Smith insists she's innocent. Prosecutors built their case against Smith almost entirely on the findings of forensic pathologists at the Los Angeles County Department of Coroner. During an autopsy, doctors discovered a small amount of bleeding on the infant's brain and in his optic nerves.

San Antonio Spurs guard Manu Ginobili will have surgery on his broken left hand and is expected to be out for at least two months. Ginobili posted on Twitter on Wednesday that he will have a plate screwed onto his shooting hand Thursday. He broke his fifth metacarpal, below his pinkie, during the San Antonio Spurs' loss to the Minnesota Timberwolves on Monday. "Not thrilled," Ginobili wrote. Ginobili, 34, is averaging 17.4 points a game and has overtaken Tim Duncan as the Spurs' emotional and offensive leader.

The call to police and emergency services Nov. 2 reported a child having difficulty breathing. But when officers and technicians arrived at the Greenwich Village apartment, in a building where Mark Twain once lived, they found an infant boy tethered to a chair, covered with dirt and soaking in his own urine. Blood was spattered on the walls and on the single mattress the family apparently shared. On the kitchen floor lay a naked 6-year-old girl.

The Times assumes that both domestic violence and child abuse are things men do to women and children ("Deciding If a Child Is Safe," Jan. 14). Nothing could be further from the truth. There are well over 100 scientific studies indicating that men and women are equally likely to be violent toward their partners and that women commit the majority of child abuse (including child homicide). Shawn Larsen Livermore, Calif.

With a Friday deadline looming, the NCAA signaled it would give Penn State more time to respond to its inquiry over the university's handling of child sex abuse accusations against former assistant football coach Jerry Sandusky . Penn State general counsel Cynthia Baldwin said in a letter to NCAA President Mark Emmert released Thursday that answers to the NCAA's questions about the Sandusky case might come from other, separate probes already...

Former Penn State assistant football coach Jerry Sandusky was arrested and jailed Wednesday on new charges of child sex abuse brought by two new accusers. One of the accusers claims that Sandusky molested him numerous times in a basement bedroom, authorities said. The claims bring the number of Sandusky's alleged victims to 10, and he now faces more than 50 charges stemming from accusations that he molested boys for years on Penn State property, in his home and elsewhere. The scandal has raised questions about whether Penn State officials did all they should have to stop the alleged activity and ended the careers of school president Graham Spanier and football coach Joe Paterno . Sandusky, 67, was first arrested last month and has said repeatedly that he is innocent.