Ah, wasn’t it much simpler when kids just spread outrageous lies about each other through bathroom graffiti?
Instead, four teens allegedly created a Facebook profile for Laura Cook’s son. The page, which featured the teen’s name, photo and cell phone number, claimed that the boy was having sex with other boys and made racist remarks, including one about President Barack Obama. The fake profile might have been nasty and crude, but it was popular, quickly collecting at least 580 online friends.
The page has since been taken down, but Cook, a Chicago-area mom, isn’t satisfied. She filed a lawsuit this week in a county circuit court, claiming that her son was defamed and his reputation damaged, theChicago Tribune reported.
The lawsuit lists the teen defendants only by their initials, R.C., A.G., K.Z., and M.S. Cook is asking for unspecified damages.
A Dallas-area child psychiatrist had to register as a sex offender after pleading no contest to charges of taking indecent liberties with a 10-year-old girl. But Dr. William Olmsted can still keep his medical license. The Texas Medical Board will allow Olmsted to practice as long as he does it in a group setting and stays away from kids. (It’s not clear how he’s going to practice child psychiatry if he can’t have contact with kids. Maybe teleconferencing?)
But now, a second family has come forward to say that Olmsted behaved inappropriately when he treated their 10-year-old daughter, the Dallas Morning News reports. In 2005, the family says, Olmsted dropped his pants in front of the girl. Her parents pulled the girl out of treatment and reported the incident to the medical board, but say there was no follow-up.
“To find that the state board knew of not one but two complaints of impropriety with young girls and yet allowed this doctor to continue his practice with children is unconscionable,” the father wrote in a statement. “I am severely disappointed with the state of Texas right now and doubtful of its ability to stand watch.”
At least one state legislator is looking into whether laws need to be changed so doctors don’t get to keep their licenses so easily. The Texas Medical Board says that currently, licenses are revoked only if a doctor is convicted. Although Olsted pleaded no-contest to the charges, he received a sentence of six years’ deferred adjudication in January, which means that judgment will not be decided until then. The victim was a neighbor of Olmsted’s who was visiting his kids when he touched her inappropriately and sucked her toes.
Thanks to her fast-texting fingers, an Atlanta-area teenager alerted her friends to rescue her from a sexual assault.
The 16-year-old girl was walking home when a stranger jumped out of a car, grabbed her and forced her into the woods, reports the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. While her head was being held down, the teen managed to text a friend for help, police said. As the girl’s buddies arrived, the suspect and two other men fled the scene.
On Tuesday, police arrested Jose Hernandez-Ruiz and charged him with kidnapping and sexual battery for the Aug. 20 attack.
Tiffany Shepherd was fired last year from a Florida high school after officials saw photos of her in a bikini, working part-time on a fishing charter. Now, the 31-year-old ex-biology teacher has turned to porn to make ends meet.
Shepherd told Page2live.com, a news blog based in Palm Beach, that she wasn’t able to get any other job despite sending out 2,500 resumes. “I’m an educated woman, but I never thought it would come to this,” she says. “No one gets brought up thinking they’ll be a floozy.”
Shepherd, a divorced mom of three kids who formerly taught at Port St. Lucie High School, uses the screen name Leah Lust. She’s made five porn films so far; one is titled “My First Sex Teacher.” She doesn’t seem too worried that her ex-students will see her films, telling the web site, “They’d be adults now anyway.”
Teens have been doing it, now it’s teachers’ turn.
A Detroit-area middle school teacher allegedly sent 10 sexually explicit text messages and a partially nude photo of herself to one of her 14-year-old students. Michelle Simsonson, 28, has been charged with enticing a minor for immoral purposes and distributing sexually explicit material to a minor.
Simsonson had been the boy’s teacher during the past school year, but has since resigned from Sashabaw Middle School, the Detroit Free Press reported. She was arraigned in court last week.
The boy told investigators that he and his teacher began texting each other in the fall, but then the content became more sexually explicit. He said he told her to stop and that there was never physical contact between the two.
If convicted, Simsonson faces up to four years in prison.
One-year-old Giselle Gomez was so overheated after being left in a car that her face and body became covered with yellow heat blisters. The child died on Wednesday, and now her mother, Jennifer Gomez, has been jailed and charged with felony child endangerment.
Jennifer Gomez, 22, had left Giselle and her two-year-old sister in the car while she visited at relative at an insurance agency in Belleville, Mo. The kids had been sleeping, and the car’s engine was left running, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch reported.
The older child might have accidently turned on the heater, but later managed to leave the car and was not injured, detectives told the newspaper. Giselle wasn’t so lucky — she was strapped into a car seat — and was trapped inside the hot vehicle for at least an hour. The outside temperature at the time was 89 degrees.
A New York social studies teacher pleaded guilty on Tuesday to having sex with a male student seven times in an empty second floor classroom after school.
Melissa Weber, 28, who taught at a public school in Queens, NY, has given up her teaching license and will enter sex-offender treatment, the New York Daily News reported. For the second-degree rape plea, she was sentenced to 10 years probation and is barred from all social networking sites frequented by minors.
The boy’s mom found out about the sex incidents when she looked at her son’s cell phone and saw messages and calls from Weber. The teacher’s lawyer says that Weber is remorseful and that her behavior was the result of a dysfunctional childhood.
When Weber was initially charged, she denied the allegations. She told police that the teen had been the aggressor and grabbed her butt.
Photo from Facebook
The red SUV had just crashed into an oil tanker, flipped and caught on fire on a southern California freeway. But John McDonald apparently didn’t hesitate. He pulled over, stepped onto the SUV’s sunroof and yanked out the trapped 3-year-old girl.
Watch the video of the rescue here. McDonald, 41, just says it was the “natural thing to do.” “It’s kind of embarassing to talk about,” he told the Pasadena Star News. “Because you don’t do it for the attention.”
A flat tire on the SUV may have caused the vehicle to careen out of control on Wednesday in El Monte, Calif. The driver and her 9-year-old daughter had gotten out of the vehicle, but the younger child was still inside, buckled up and screaming hysterically. All three are fine, with only minor injuries.
Jennifer Rice had a sexual relationship with a 10-year-old boy for several months while she was teaching at an elementary school in Tacoma, Wash., prosecutors said. She also had sex with the boy’s older brother, who was 15 at the time.
Last week, Rice was sentenced to 25 years to life in prison — she won’t be eligible for release until she serves at least 25 years, the Olympian reported. “I am desperately sorry for what I have done,” Rice said in court.
The 33-year-old mother of three kids was caught in August 2007, after she sneaked the boy out of his home and drove him to another town, where they had sex at a rest stop. Rice received a mandatory tough prison sentence thanks to laws passed after another Washington teacher — Mary Kay Letourneau – was convicted of having sex with a student. Certain child molestation charges are deemed as predatory offenses when a teacher is accused of crimes involving a student.
Rice’s husband, Jason, says he still loves and supports her. “We would give anything to change what’s happened,” he told the court.
The three-day-old baby had just come home from the hospital when the family dog dragged him into the woods. The child, who was later found by his father, suffered cuts and puncture wounds and was in intensive care at a University of Kentucky hospital, authorities said.
The newborn was in his crib on Monday when the Native American Indian dog took the baby into its mouth, “like a toy or small pup,” a sheriff’s deputy told the Lexington Herald-Leader. “The dog had a history of grabbing things off counters and hiding things,” said Deputy Sheriff Anthony Purcell.
Animal control officers took the dog from the the Nicholasville, Ky., home. Even the most well behaved dog may not recognize a new baby as a human and treat it gently. Click here for tips on how to introduce your pets to the newcomer.