Child Molestation

Child welfare investigators who entered a polygamist compound in West Texas this weekend found many pregnant teenagers and underage girls who said they were forced to marry, according to court documents unsealed Tuesday. The documents detailed the evidence that Texas officials presented to a judge to justify taking temporary state custody of more than 400 children from the YFZ Ranch, near the tiny town of Eldorado, built by the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints.

Authorities searching a remote polygamist compound for a 16-year-old girl who had claimed she was sexually abused discovered a bed inside a towering limestone temple and were told by a "confidential informant" that men used it to have sex with underage girls, according to a court document unsealed Wednesday.

In an unprecedented gesture, Pope Benedict XVI met privately Thursday with a small group of men and women who were sexually abused as youths by their clergy, an emotional encounter of prayer and tears. Participants said later that they had experienced a long-overdue sense of "fulfillment." Inside the chapel of the Apostolic Nunciature, the pope spoke to the victims individually and as a group, and they prayed together, said Father Federico Lombardi, the Vatican spokesman.

The Orange County district attorney's office said Wednesday that it was trying to determine whether a sheriff's deputy who killed himself after being charged with molesting a 12-year-old boy may have sexually assaulted other minors. Gerald Stenger, 41, of Aliso Viejo was found dead earlier this month inside an unmarked car. Earlier the same day, he had learned that a warrant had been issued for his arrest in the molestation case.

Miranda Meza's biggest fear about going to the police was that the man she says molested her would lie. If he said he never touched her, how could she prove he did? But he'd made that part easy. He admitted to police that he had. Now they were both here, in the courthouse. She watched her grandfather across the lobby. He was nearly 80 years old, his hair white and sparse. He wore an oxygen tank strapped across his skinny chest. It had taken more than 16 years to get to this point.

A Los Angeles assistant principal who already faces charges of lewd acts against one student was charged Monday with molesting two others, broadening a case that has caused outrage in the South Los Angeles community in which he worked. Assistant Principal Stephen T. Rooney was transferred to Markham Middle School in South Los Angeles last year, even though he was accused of engaging in a sexual relationship with a student at a previous school, Foshay Learning Center.

Senior Los Angeles school officials, including the district's police chief and its former chief operating officer, knew of sex allegations against a school administrator months before he was transferred to a Watts middle school, where he allegedly molested two students, officials said Monday. District officials have been heavily criticized for allowing former Assistant Principal Steve Thomas Rooney back into a school after he had been accused of sexual contact with a student.

The dean of students at a South Los Angeles school is under investigation by police for allegedly concealing evidence that one of his colleagues, former Assistant Principal Stephen Thomas Rooney, had a sexual relationship with a student. The dean, identified by authorities in court as "Mr.

Only one religious order refused to join the $660-million settlement the Los Angeles Archdiocese reached with hundreds of sexual abuse victims last summer: the Salesian Society. Across the country, the Roman Catholic order of priests has aggressively fought legal culpability for mishandling predatory priests, victims' advocates say. They continue to fight accusations as a civil lawsuit heads to trial over alleged abuse in the 1960s at St. John Bosco High School, a Salesian school in Bellflower.

A Santa Monica middle school teacher who allegedly molested five of his female students will face nine additional charges today involving three new victims, officials said. Thomas Arthur Beltran, 60, is expected to be arraigned today on the new charges, which allegedly involve incidents spanning from September 2000 to June 2004, said Jane Robison, a spokeswoman for the Los Angeles County district attorney's office.