Child Abuse

More than 91,000 babies were mistreated in their first year of life in the United States in 2006, according to the first national estimate of abuse of the nation’s youngest children, prepared by federal officials on the basis of cases substantiated by state and local children's protective services agencies. Officials estimated that abuse killed an additional 499 children in 2006 before their first birthday.

A homeless man pleaded not guilty Monday in the death of his 3-month old son, whose body was discovered weeks after Los Angeles County social workers interviewed the father at a skid row mission and decided he could care for his child. Mikeal Abdul Wah-hab Sr., 50, was charged March 27 with assault on a child, two months after a Times article highlighted the unsolved death along with efforts by Supervisor Gloria Molina to press detectives and prosecutors to resolve the case.

Texas law enforcement officials met in Utah with the man accused of abusing the 16-year-old girl whose call for help triggered a raid on the West Texas compound of a secretive polygamous sect. Dale Barlow, 50, of Colorado City, Ariz., has denied physical and sexual assault allegations made in a March 29 telephone call to a Texas domestic violence hotline. A spokeswoman for the Texas Department of Public Safety offered few details of the interview between Barlow and Texas Rangers.

Child welfare agents returned to a polygamous sect's ranch near Eldorado in search of children who may have arrived since more than 460 minors were swept into state custody last month over allegations of sexual abuse. Guy Jessop, a guard at the ranch run by the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, refused to admit two Child Protective Service workers and a sheriff's deputy. The agency could seek a court order. State officials say the sect forces underage girls into marriage and sex. The sect's members deny any abuse.

Families of children seized from their polygamist sect's ranch could flee Texas if they regained custody, child welfare authorities said Tuesday as they urged the state Supreme Court to block a ruling that found the massive removals to be improper.

As officials haggled Friday over how to return more than 400 children to their parents, it was becoming increasingly clear that Texas' audacious attempt to rein in the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints had backfired -- and become a lesson in the difficulty of cracking down on the 10,000-member polygamist sect. "If you want to make any change . . .

A self-described polygamist has been convicted of charges that he tortured and abused some of his wives and 19 children and stepchildren. A Riverside County jury found 55-year-old Mansa Muhummed guilty on 25 counts Wednesday, including torturing seven of the children, abusing 12 of them and falsely imprisoning two wives. He could face seven life sentences. Muhummed told authorities that his Muslim faith gave him the right to take multiple wives.

The dean of students at a South Los Angeles school was arrested Thursday for allegedly concealing evidence that one of his colleagues, former Assistant Principal Steve Thomas Rooney, had a sexual relationship with a student. Alan Hubbard, 49, was charged with two felony counts of being an accessory after the fact to a crime and dissuading a witness, according to the Los Angeles County district attorney's office.

For two years, authorities said, a mother subjected her son to what veteran detectives described as shocking, ritualistic abuse. The 5-year-old was hung by his hands and wrists from a door jamb and beaten with some sort of leash or chain, police said. He was routinely denied food and water, burned with cigarettes on his body and genitals, and left to sit in his own urine and feces. In the past few weeks, his hands were held to a hot stove, according to Capt.

More than a year before a boy was allegedly subjected to extreme abuse and torture, Los Angeles County officials in 2005 investigated allegations that he suffered from neglect and was at "substantial risk." But officials ultimately determined the claims to be inconclusive, according to county records obtained by The Times. At the time, the boy's mother, Starkeisha Brown, had been arrested on suspicion of stealing a bracelet and other items at a Macy's department store with the child in tow.