Rising FBI Child Porn Cases Creates Backlog

The FBI's stepped-up effort to fight Internet child pornography has led to an evidence backlog in the bureau's computer labs, according to auditors.

The Justice Department's inspector general said the number of such cases handled by the FBI rose more than 20-fold between the 1996 and 2007 budget years. As a result, the heavy volume meant it took an average of about two months to examine such evidence in 2007 -- and even as long as nine months.

The FBI, which has had to build a new lab in Maryland to handle the huge increase demand, agreed with the inspector general's recommendations to create deadlines to reduce the backlog.

In a written response to the report, the FBI's executive assistant director, Stephen Tidwell, said the bureau should try to hire more staff to handle the growing number of people needed to process digital evidence, not just in child exploitation cases but in other types of criminal investigations.

The FBI said they plan to work with federal prosecutors to find ways to negotiate plea deals earlier in child pornography cases, to reduce the demand on lab workers.

At the time the audit was conducted, there were 353 requests for processing digital evidence in cyber crimes against children cases. FBI.gov

Investigator Sara Kilgore
BrianBlackwell.com

Boy missing 10 years, adopted parents continued to collect money from the state

A young boy who was not reported missing for nearly 10 years after he disappeared was abused by his adopted mother, who along with her husband continued to collect money from the state for Adam.

Police in Kansas are searching for Adam Herrman, who was 11 or 12 when he was last seen in a mobile home park in Towanda in 1999.

Authorities received a tip about a month ago that Herrman had not been seen in more than nine years.

Butler County Sheriff Craig Murphy said Monday that his office was investigating the case as if it were a death investigation, but said it is possible Herrman is alive. He asked the public for help locating him.

Sheriff Murphy said the boy's adopted parents, Doug and Valerie Herrman, are considered "people of interest" in the case, though they have not been arrested or charged with a crime.

Through their attorney, the Herrmans have denied harming the boy.

But several immediate family members claim Valerie Herrman mentally and physically abused the boy, at times hitting or slapping him, refusing to feed him and making him sleep in the bathtub without a pillow or blankets.

The Herrmans, who adopted Adam when he was 2 years old, will not comment.

Valerie Herrman has denied that she hit Adam, refused to feed him or kept him chained to the tub, as her relatives have said.

On at least two occasions in 1996 and 1998, police investigated allegations that Adam was abused.

Relatives said suspected abuse was reported to child protection officials at least three times, though Adam Herrman continued to live with his adopted parents.

"She would punch him, pull his hair, use wooden spoons to spank him, push him," said Justin Herrman, one of Valerie Herrmans' biological children, who is now 29.

"He wasn't allowed to play. She locked him up in the bathroom, made him do housework all day long."

"When she's not acting crazy, my mom is actually a good person," Justin Herrman sad. "But when she's in a bad mood, she's a monster."

A spokeswoman for the Kansas Department of Social and Rehabilitation Services said state privacy laws prevented her from disclosing whether any alleged abuse had been reported to the office.

She said that extensive background checks are performed on prospective adoptive parents and that the department investigates allegations of abuse and neglect.

According to local police, the police and Social Rehabilitation Services investigated a report of suspected abuse in 1996.

The matter was referred for counseling through Social and Rehabilitative Services, according to the Derby police.

In 1998, police investigated a second suspected abuse call reported by Adam Herrman's school.

The investigation showed that his injuries were from playing sports with his siblings, police said. His siblings said they had not been playing with him.

The Herrmans admitted to not filing a police report when Adam disappeared, which is illegal in Kansas, and they continued to collect state adoption subsidy payments for Adam.

The Herrmans' attorney, Warner Eisenbise, said Adam Herrman, who was homeschooled at the time of his disappearance, frequently ran away from home and that the Herrmans searched for him after he disappeared.

He said they were afraid to report Adam missing for fear that the state would take away their other children.

I would run away too if I was beaten on a regular basis and chained to a bathtub. Wouldn't you?

Linda Bush, Valerie Herrman's former sister-in-law, said Adam Herrman was timid. "He reminded me of a forest creature who didn't know if he would be attacked," she said.

Justin Herrman and Valerie Herrman's brother, Sam Bush, said the couple told them in 1999 that they returned Adam to state custody because they couldn't handle him anymore.

When relatives asked about Adam as the years passed, the Herrmans would give so-called updates on his whereabouts, at one point saying he was in a state mental hospital.

They said Valerie Herrman was loving toward her biological children but not toward Adam.

Linda Bush said Valerie told her on several occasions that she couldn't stand him and that the boy "gives me the creeps."

Justin Herrman said his mother often would not feed Adam.

More at ABC News

Brian Blackwell

Boy George gets 15 month jail sentence

Former Culture Club frontman Boy George was sentenced Friday to 15 months in jail after being found guilty by a London jury last month of falsely imprisoning a Norwegian male escort.

Tried under his real name George O'Dowd, the 47-year-old Britton denied the charge of false imprisonment at his London flat in April 2007.

After his conviction on Dec. 5, judge David Radford had warned him that he faced a prison term.

Shocked family members and friends in a packed courtroom at Snaresbrook Crown Court in east London gasped and broke down in tears after the sentence was read. O'Dowd, his head shaved and wearing a black coat and sweater, stared ahead impassively.

"This offence is so serious that only an immediate sentence of imprisonment can be justified for it," Radford said.

He said the escort, Audun Carlsen, was "shocked, degraded and traumatized" at being detained and attacked by O'Dowd, and said a guilty plea "would have been true evidence of remorse and saved your victim from .... Cross-examination."

The singer had told police he invited Carlsen back to his apartment after a cocaine-fueled pornographic photo shoot in January 2007, because he suspected the Norwegian of stealing pictures from his computer.

During the two-week trial, Carlsen countered that the singer had handcuffed him and beaten him with a chain because he was angry he had refused to sleep with him. MORE

Andre Thomas, TX Death Row Inmate, Pulls Out Eye and Eats It

A Texas death row inmate with a history of mental problems pulled out his good eye and told authorities he ate it.

He pulled out one of his eyes four years ago.

Andre Thomas, 25, was arrested for the fatal stabbings of his enstranged wife, their young son and her 13-month-old daughter in March 2004. Their hearts had been ripped out.

Thomas was convicted and condemned for the infant's death.

While in the Grayson County Jail in Sherman, Texas, Thomas plucked out his right eye before his trial later in 2004. A judge subsequently ruled he was competent to stand trial.

A death-row officer at the Polunsky Unit of the Texas Department of Criminal Justice found Thomas in his cell with blood on his face and took him to the infirmary.

"Thomas said he pulled out his eye and subsequently ingested it," said agency spokesman Jason Clark.

Thomas was treated at East Texas Medical Center in Tyler after the Dec. 9 incident. Then he was transferred and remains at the Jester Unit, a prison psychiatric facility near Richmond southwest of Houston.

"He will finally be able to receive the mental health care that we had wanted and begged for from day 1," Bobbie Peterson-Cate, Thomas' trial attorney, told the Sherman Herald Democrat. "He is insane and mentally ill. It is exactly the same reason he pulled out the last one."

At his trial, defense attorneys argued he suffered from alcohol and drug abuse.

Thomas does not have an execution date.

The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals in October upheld his conviction and death sentence for the death of 13-month-old Leyha Marie Hughes.

Also murdered March 27, 2004, were his wife, Laura Christine Boren, 20, and their son, 4-year-old Andre Lee.

Thomas, from Texoma, walked into the Sherman Police Department and told a dispatcher he had just murdered the three and had stabbed himself in the chest.

Thomas told police how he put his victims' hearts in his pocket and left their apartment, took them home, put them in a plastic bag and threw them in the trash.

Court document described the three victims as having "large, gaping wounds to their chests."

D. Brian Blackwell

There were no reports of Thomas pulling out one of his eyes himself four years ago in intial news reports that is why information about it was not written in my intial Blog report.

TX death row inmate pulls out eye, eats it

A Texas death row inmate pulled out his only good eye and told authorities he ate it.

Andre Thomas, 25, was arrested for the fatal stabbing of his enstranged wife, their young son and her 13-month-old daughter in March 2004. Their hearts had been ripped out.

Thomas was convicted and condemned for the infant's death.

While in the Grayson County Jail in Sherman, in an attempt to prevent his trial in late 2004, Thomas plucked out his right eye before his trial. A judge subsequently ruled he was competent to stand trial.

In October, the Texas Court of Appeals upheld Thomas' conviction and death sentence for the death of 13-month-old Leyha Marie Hughes. Also killed March 27, 2004, were his wife, Laura Christine Boren, 20, and their son, 4-year-old Andre Lee.

Thomas, from Texoma, walked into the Sherman Police Department and told a dispatcher he had just murdered the three and had stabbed himself in the chest.

Thomas told police how he put his victims' hearts in his pocket and left their apartment, took them home, put them in a plastic bag and threw them in the trash.

Court documents described the three victims as having "large, gaping wounds to their chests."
Yahoo! News

Brian Blackwell