A music teacher at the Onondaga Indian Nation School has been falsely accused of molesting 13 female students, his defense attorney said Tuesday.
Albert Scerbo is a "solid man, a solid citizen" who has been made "a victim of scandalous, smearing accusations by a bunch of little girls who may now believe everything they are telling you," defense attorney Edward Menkin told an Onondaga County Court jury during opening arguments at Scerbo's trial.
Menkin suggested the girls, all Indians, collectively concocted the accusations against Scerbo, who is not Native American.
Scerbo, 45, of Clay, is charged with 28 criminal counts, including sexual contact with children, endangering the welfare of a child and sexual abuse. The incidents occurred at the reservation school from Sept. 4, 2002 through Dec. 18, 2006 and involved victims between ages 7 and 14, prosecutors said.
Scerbo was originally arrested in December on charges he had sexual contact with two girls, ages 7 and 8. But the list of victims grew to 17 as deputies investigated the case. Last week, Judge William Walsh dismissed seven counts against Scerbo, dropping four victims from the case because of insufficient or contradictory evidence.
"This was a crime of opportunity," said Assistant District Attorney Gary Dawson. "He had access to these little girls for a long period of time. He had the opportunity, and he took advantage of it.
"This wasn't a stranger. This was their teacher. Someone they see everyday. Someone they respect and obey," Dawson said. "Instead, he abused their trust for his own sexual gratification."
Dawson said he planned to call all 13 young victims to testify.
The victims said that Scerbo would touch them through their clothing as they sat on his lap in the back of a darkened room while he showed movies or videos to the class.
Dawson said Scerbo never used physical force against his victims.
"He didn't have to. He was their teacher and they trusted him," Dawson said.
Scerbo taught at the Onondaga school for eight years. School officials suspended Scerbo after his arrest and the Lafayette Central School District placed him on administrative leave. The reservation school has about 90 pupils.
Scerbo is married with two children and is active in his church and community, Menkin said. About 30 relatives and friends packed the courtroom Tuesday to support Scerbo. More than a dozen Onondaga residents, including several clan mothers, sat on the opposite side of the courtroom.
"There's nothing more upsetting, more repugnant than a child molester," Menkin said. "The only thing worse is to be called a child molester when it's not true."
The trial is expected to last about a week.
Source: Tonawanda News
The Government has submitted its latest report setting out progress in implementing the Convention on the Rights of the Child.
The Consolidated 3rd and 4th Periodic Report states that since the last report the UK's commitment to fulfilment of its obligations has been reflected by an increased policy focus on children and young people.
The Report is in three distinct parts:
- The first concentrates on the UK's progress in implementing the Convention
- The second summarises the progress made by each of the Overseas Territories and
- The third consists of annexes of containing statistical and resources data; copies of relevant legislation since the last report; additional information about the views of children and young people; and the full reports of the UK's devolved administrations and Overseas Territories.
A groundbreaking study of the first 200 people cleared by DNA testing in the U.S. identifies flaws that led to the wrongful convictions and to the failures of appeals courts to detect and remedy them.
The author, Brandon L. Garrett, a professor at the University of Virginia School of Law, says the first empirical examination of how such cases were handled from start to finish will be published in the Columbia Law Review in January.
Garrett is a former associate of lawyers Peter Neufeld and Barry Scheck, founders of the Innocence Project that helped many of the 205 people cleared by DNA testing since 1989.
DNA testing not only revolutionized law enforcement when it began helping to solve crimes two decades ago, but it also has demonstrated the fallibility of the criminal-justice system by scientifically proving the innocence of prisoners, some of whom were sentenced to death.
Though the number of such exonerations is relatively small, most convictions do not involve biological evidence and cannot be overturned with DNA.
Garrett said the DNA exonerations provide an unprecedented opportunity to conduct analyses on how things can go wrong despite the safeguards built into the legal system to prevent and then correct such errors.
Because the standards and rules are so unforgiving in appeals, many wrongfully convicted individuals do not even challenge the accuracy of flawed evidence, be it false or mistaken, he said.
Appeals court judges have a tough time ruling on the validity of evidence years later without thorough records, Garrett said yesterday. He said reforms such as requiring the videotaping of police interrogations could greatly aid the appeals courts or prevent a wrongful conviction from happening.
Ten men convicted of rape or murder have been cleared by DNA in Virginia, the fourth-highest total in the country. A long-term DNA effort involving testing of old evidence -- primarily in rape cases -- is under way in Virginia and is expected to clear even more.
In response to the exonerations, Virginia created exceptions to its "21-day-rule" for DNA testing and for non-DNA evidence in very narrow circumstances. The 21-day rule does not permit evidence of innocence discovered more than 21 days after sentencing to be used in a state court.
The state's exception for non-DNA evidence, called a "writ of actual innocence," has been in effect for more than three years and has not resulted in an exoneration.
Of the 200 cases studied by Garrett, 141 were convicted of rape, 44 of rape-murders, 12 of murders and three of other crimes.
Fourteen were convicted of capital murder, including seven who falsely confessed and three who were mentally retarded. Eight of the 200 pleaded guilty. In 70 of the cases, DNA testing implicated the real criminal.
The wrongful convictions were the result of incorrect eyewitness identification in 79 percent of the cases, forensic evidence in 55 percent, informants or snitches in 18 percent, and false confessions in 16 percent.
Of the 133 who appealed convictions before DNA testing and received a written opinion, one-third of the time the judges ruled that while constitutional errors were found in their cases, the errors were "harmless due to outweighing evidence of guilt."
In 9 percent of the cases, the rulings said there was overwhelming evidence of guilt.
While appeals courts sometimes excuse constitutional errors, the courts do not provide wrongfully convicted people a way to claim innocence. Garrett said there is no federal constitutional claim of innocence that can be filed, and states do not have effective means of doing so.
Twelve of the wrongfully convicted whose convictions were reversed on appeal were convicted in a retrial before DNA freed them.
Garrett's suggested reforms include adopting more dependable eyewitness identification procedures nationwide, videotaping identifications and interrogations, evaluating the use of jailhouse informants, improving or establishing oversight of crime labs, and giving defendants access to independent forensic experts.
There's has been mixed reaction in Connecticut's legal community over a state prosecutor's request to have a former teacher take out a newspaper ad saying she falsely accused a colleague of raping her.
Prosecutor Adam Scott proposed the action earlier this month in Manchester Superior Court in the case of former East Hartford Middle School teacher Angela Schmidt.
Scott asked Judge Leslie Olear to require Schmidt to place an ad as a condition of the special probation she received. The judge rejected the idea, but the request has sparked a debate among lawyers and legal experts.
Scott says anyone who wrongly accuses someone of a crime should be on notice to the public, and potential victims need to be aware of Schmidt.
Schmidt, who is 55 and lives in Simsbury, received accelerated rehabilitation, meaning the charges would be erased if she completes probation.
Her lawyer, Richard Brown, says Scott's recommendation reminded him of the pilgrims and stockades in town squares. Brown says it would not be right to ask a defendant who has not been found guilty to be put through such humiliation.
While some legal experts agreed with Brown, others said it could be an appropriate punishment.
Source: (here)
A supply teacher has been cleared of hitting a 13-year-old boy who teased him about looking like a character from the Chuckle Brothers' TV show.
Jonathan Burrett, 41, from Newport, had denied attacking the boy after he sung the Chucklevision theme tune in class.
Mr Burrett told Cardiff Crown Court he was used to being compared to Barry Chuckle but it had not been a problem.
The jury took less than an hour to find the married father-of-one not guilty of assault causing actual bodily harm (more)
An independent commission has urged the Catholic bishops of England and Wales to bring their child-protection measures in line with the Code of Canon Law amid fears that false allegations are driving priests away from working with young people.
Produced by a commission headed by Baroness Cumberlege, a member of the House of Lords, the report published July 16 warned the bishops that "persistent and tenacious" fear among the clergy over malicious accusations of abuse needs to be addressed urgently.
The report, called "Safeguarding With Confidence," said many priests believe the system brought in five years ago after several high-profile clerical abuse cases is loaded unjustly against them. The report was the result of the first five-year review of the bishops' 2002 child protection policies.
Many priests believe the procedures treat them as if they are guilty as soon as an accusation has been received - even if the police later find there is no basis for the accusation, several priests told Catholic News Service. They said they are often immediately evicted from their homes, then spend years unable to practice their ministry while undergoing a series of grueling psychological "risk assessments."
Sometimes action has been taken against priests without telling them what exactly they have been accused of and who has made the allegation, both of which are in breach of canon law.
The report, which has 72 recommendations with the goal of implementing a single, uniform set of child protection policies in the church, insisted that the protection of children in the church must remain paramount. But it also addressed a "damaging tension that has driven a wedge" between the bishops and priests who feel they are being hung out to dry to save the skins of their superiors.
It said the church risked a "serious reversal" of some of the gains it had made in tackling child abuse if it failed to deal with tensions within its own ranks over the issue.
It urges the bishops to restore confidence by applying to the Vatican for a decree, or "recognitio," to bring their child protection measures into line with canon law. A similar territorial provision was granted to the U.S. bishops in 2002.
"A strong and vocal lobby of priests now believes that the system for dealing with allegations against them leaves them exposed and vulnerable and is a breach of canon law and natural justice," said the report.
"They believe they can no longer count on the support of their bishop (or) congregational leader because they perceive the system to be weighted against priests," it said.
"This has both eroded the trust between priests and bishops and between religious and congregational leaders and has engendered a fear among the clergy (including those in formation) of the false or malicious allegation - a fear which is tenacious and persistent despite there being no evidence of any upturn in the numbers of allegations made against priests," it said.
Figures released in June by the Catholic Office for the Protection of Children and Vulnerable Adults revealed that in 2006 police in England and Wales investigated 41 allegations of abuse in the church, which resulted in one conviction.
However, 24 allegations immediately resulted in no further action, suggesting that the majority of the allegations were unfounded.
Baroness Cumberlege sits on the Conservative Party benches of the British Parliament's House of Lords. From 1992 until 1997, she served in the government of Prime Minister John Major as a junior health minister. She had been commissioned to produce national reports on nursing and maternity services for two governments before undertaking the review of the child protection in the church.
Baroness Cumberlege told CNS in an interview July 13 that she was confident the Vatican would grant a "recognitio" because Msgr. Charles Scicluna, promoter of justice at the Vatican's Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, personally had assured her that "what we are proposing in no way conflicts with canon law."
In a statement released July 13, Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O'Connor of Westminster, president of the Bishops' Conference of England and Wales, said the review had been "thorough, painstaking and independent."
"Later this year, we will make a more formal response to the commission's findings once the best way forward has been discerned," he said.
Among its other findings, the commission identified a view held by some in the church that child protection policies and procedures are "too long, overly bureaucratic and impenetrable," and lacking in theological and spiritual context.
It said that "some resistance to change and a fear and suspicion that the authority of the leadership is being undermined has impeded the delivery of consistently good - let alone excellent - safeguarding arrangements."
There should also be "much more" focus on safeguarding vulnerable adults, the report added.
Source: Catholic On-line
See Also: Cumerberlege Commission
In a new report, Forgotten and Failed, Barnardo's examines what has happened to protect children in London from sexual exploitation since its 2005 report Meeting the needs of sexually exploited young people in London. The report finds:
- Sexual exploitation is not a formal police priority in London.
- The Sexual Offences Act 2003 has not succeeded in bringing sufficient perpetrators to justice.
- Most sexually exploited children in London do not have access to a specialist support service.
- Vulnerable young people are ending up criminalised because they are too scared to name their abusers.
- As a result, many of the capital's most vulnerable children are still at risk from sexual exploitation.
Barnardo's is working in partnership with the Metropolitan Police and Local Authorities throughout London, but report that despite these efforts only three specialist services exist in the whole of the capital.
The Government have announced details of the new ministerial team in the Department for Children Schools and Families, and their responsibilities.
- Secretary of State for Children, Schools and Families - Ed Balls
- Minister of State for Schools and Learners - Jim Knight
- Parliamentary Under Secretary of State for Schools and Learners - Andrew Adonis
- Minister of State for Children, Young People and Families - Beverley Hughes
- Parliamentary Under Secretary of State for Children, Young People and Families - Kevin Brennan
Further details on the minister's experience and background can be found on the DCSF website
Our attention has been drawn to the following aritcle which appeared on the BBC website on the 13th July 2007. What is particulary interesting is that the appellant was sentenced to two years in prison but spent only nine days in jail before being released on bail to await the outcome of his appeal.
A former monk has appeared in court to contest his conviction for torturing children more than 40 years ago.
The Court of Criminal Appeal in Edinburgh heard how Michael Murphy, 73, worked at St Ninian's school in Stirlingshire.
In 2003, Murphy, known as Brother Benedict, w