Child Molestation

A pastor was charged today with molesting a 14-year-old female parishioner, the Orange County district attorney's office said. Ricardo Avalos Maffey, 42, a pastor of the Apostolic Christian Church in San Clemente, is accused of engaging in illegal sexual contact with the alleged victim by kissing her on the mouth on multiple occasions. He also contacted the victim to meet and engage in kissing, authorities said. The district attorney's office said Maffey of Santa Ana was charged with three felony counts of lewd acts upon a child and one felony count of contacting a minor with the intent to engage in child molestation.

The investigation into ricin-laced letters addressed to the president, a U.S. senator and a Mississippi judge highlighted a personal feud Wednesday and an unusual cast of characters - starting with Paul Kevin Curtis, an Elvis impersonator who had pestered officials for years about his conspiracy theory that the federal government was involved in an organ-harvesting plot. Government plot or no, Curtis was, of course, glad that officials had decided to drop the charges against him. He had been arrested last week, days after the letters were sent, and was freed Tuesday.

Lyle Menendez testified Monday that his mother was "very strange" and frequently violent and that she--like his father--sexually abused him. Until he was 13, his mother would wash his body "everywhere," he said. She also would invite him into bed with her and he would touch her "everywhere," he testified. "I took it to be love," Lyle Menendez said, adding, "She was enjoying it." But he was not enjoying it, he said, so he stopped the activities, which enraged her.

A 44-year-old youth soccer coach convicted of molesting six boys in 2010 and 2011 was sentenced Tuesday to 225 years to life in prison. Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Henry Hall handed down the sentence to Jose Duarte after hearing four of the coach's victims read statements to the court. Duarte molested the boys, who were ages 11 to 14 at the time of the attacks. A jury on Feb. 14 deliberated less than a day before finding the coach guilty of 20 counts of child molestation and five counts of sending harmful material.

Kitty Menendez, who over the years was needy, pathetic, athletic, disorganized, suspicious and spacey, "all kinds of contradictory things," simply seemed strange three weeks before her sons killed her, a former neighbor testified Monday. Called by the defense as Lyle and Erik Menendez's murder trial resumed after a four-day recess, Alicia Hercz said Kitty Menendez "kept staring" into space when they met Aug. 1, 1989, at the Menendez home in Beverly Hills.

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.

Any examination of the sexual abuse crisis afflicting the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Los Angeles leads inevitably to a bell-towered campus in the rolling hills of Camarillo: St. John's Seminary. The 66-year-old institution has trained hundreds of clerics for the archdiocese and smaller jurisdictions across Southern California and beyond. It is the alma mater of Cardinal Roger M. Mahony, Diocese of Orange Bishop Tod Brown and other prominent prelates.

Three decades ago, they were teen idols. Todd Bridges played Willis on the popular sitcom "Diff'rent Strokes. " Corey Feldman starred in "Gremlins,""The Goonies" and "The Lost Boys. " The two men held the same dark secret: Each had been molested in his adolescence by men with Hollywood connections, experiences that would lead to downward spirals and years of drug addiction. Today, they are making a highly public case for California legislation they hope will protect child actors from sexual predators, a problem they say continues to bedevil the entertainment industry.

SACRAMENTO - Thousands of paroled child molesters, rapists and other high-risk sex offenders in California are removing or disarming their court-ordered GPS tracking devices - and some have been charged with new crimes including sexual battery, kidnapping and attempted manslaughter. The offenders have discovered that they can disable the monitors, often with little risk of serving time for it, a Times investigation has found. The jails are too full to hold them. "It's a huge problem," said Fresno parole agent Matt Hill.

What teacher would deny a hug to a crying child? Or reject a toddler's plea for a moment of closeness? Many would--and do, children's advocates say. A decade of highly publicized child-abuse accusations--from the McMartin preschool case to Michael Jackson--has taken a troubling toll: more parents on the alert for child molestation; more teachers afraid of being wrongly accused. Three million cases of suspected child abuse were reported last year, up from 1 million 10 years ago.

In a recording played on NBC's "Today" show on Monday, Jerry Sandusky said that Mike McQueary misinterpreted him showering with a young boy in Penn State football team facilities in 2001. Sandusky told documentary filmmaker John Ziegler that he does not understand how McQueary concluded “that sex was going on” when he witnessed Sandusky showering with a boy. “That would have been the last thing I would have thought about,” Sandusky said. “I would have thought maybe fooling around or something like that.” Sandusky, 69, is serving a 30- to 60-year prison sentence after being convicted last year of 45 counts of child sexual abuse.

A Carpinteria youth pastor is accused of raping two teenage girls he met through his church work, authorities said Thursday. Louis Joseph Bristol, 28, is being held at Santa Barbara County Jail in lieu of $2-million bail, according to a news release from the Santa Barbara County Sheriff's Office. Authorities said the girls, both juveniles, received "inappropriate" texts and photos from Bristol this year and in 2012. He raped each of them in vacant rooms at the Holiday Inn Express where he worked as an assistant manager, according to the release.

SACRAMENTO - Thousands of paroled child molesters, rapists and other high-risk sex offenders in California are removing or disarming their court-ordered GPS tracking devices - and some have been charged with new crimes including sexual battery, kidnapping and attempted manslaughter. The offenders have discovered that they can disable the monitors, often with little risk of serving time for it, a Times investigation has found. The jails are too full to hold them. "It's a huge problem," said Fresno parole agent Matt Hill.

Re "Trying to make sense of it all," Feb. 4 The article quotes Msgr. Robert J. Gallagher as telling his parishioners at St. Charles Borromeo Church in North Hollywood on Sunday that "young people whose lives were ruined … need a sense that they are being invited back into God's grace. " This strikes me as an astonishingly cruel and insensitive statement - thoughtless, really. Are the targets of the Roman Catholic Church's predators to understand that they've been separated from God by being victims of crimes and that they are now, somehow, eligible to embark on a journey of redemption?

City prosecutors Monday charged a Tarzana-area middle school teacher with more than half a dozen counts of misdemeanor child molestation in connection with the alleged sexual battery of three girls, authorities said. Jason Leon, 32, who taught at Portola Middle School, is being held at Van Nuys Jail in lieu of $35,000 bail. He faces four counts of child molestation and three counts of battery. If convicted on all charges, Leon could face a maximum sentence of up to 51/2 years and $26,000 in fines, the Los Angeles city attorney's office said.

A former priest and suspected child molester left employment with the Los Angeles archdiocese to work for the L.A. Unified School District, officials confirmed Sunday. The former clergyman, Joseph Pina, did not work with children in his school district job, L.A. schools Supt. John Deasy said. He added that, as a result of the disclosures, Pina would no longer be employed by the nation's second-largest school system. Over the weekend, Deasy was unable to pull together Pina's full employment history, but said the district already was looking into the matter of Pina's hiring.

Texas police issued an arrest warrant Wednesday for millionaire artist Stanley Marsh 3, who stands accused of nearly a dozen counts of child molestation. Matt Powell, director of the Lubbock County district attorney's office, told the Associated Press that Marsh, 74, was charged with six counts of child sexual assault and five counts of sexual performance by a child involving two victims. Marsh lives in Amarillo, Texas, where he is best known for his Cadillac ranch, an artistic display of 10 brightly painted Cadillacs buried nose-down along a Panhandle highway, the AP reported.

City prosecutors Monday charged a Tarzana-area middle school teacher with more than half a dozen counts of misdemeanor child molestation in connection with the alleged sexual battery of three girls, authorities said. Jason Leon, 32, who taught at Portola Middle School, is being held at Van Nuys Jail in lieu of $35,000 bail. He faces four counts of child molestation and three counts of battery. If convicted on all charges, Leon could face a maximum sentence of up to 51/2 years and $26,000 in fines, the Los Angeles city attorney's office said.

When he took office in 1985, Roger M. Mahony set about modernizing the operations of the Los Angeles Archdiocese. He brought in computers and put women in top jobs. He then appointed an Irish-born academic to a brand-new cabinet position: Vicar for Clergy, a human resources director of sorts for priests, brothers and nuns. Msgr. Thomas J. Curry would shape the way the nation's largest archdiocese responded to claims that its priests had molested and raped children. In his five years in the role, Curry was a staunch defender of the church and its clergymen.

About a dozen readers have sent their reactions to The Times' front-page story Tuesday reporting that Cardinal Roger M. Mahony, archbishop of Los Angeles from 1985 to 2011, plotted to conceal child molestation by priests from law enforcement. While several of the letters raise legal questions for Mahony, many also call out the former archbishop for his moral failure to protect children. Others blame Roman Catholic Church policy for setting the conditions that led to child sex abuse.