A $105 million lawsuit against NBC brought by a woman who claimed a televised sex sting by "Dateline NBC: To Catch A Predator" drove her brother to kill himself has been settled. You can find a prior post about the incident here. The lawsuit had claimed that the woman's brother, a suburban Dallas prosecutor, fatally shot himself after he was accused of engaging in a sexually explicit online chat with an adult posing as a 13-year-old boy. Terms of the agreement were not disclosed. The New York Times has more.
CNN is running an article entitled "Lawmakers vow to execute child rapists." South Carolina's Attorney General argues that states could fight Wednesday's ruling by "waiting for a change in the makeup of the Supreme Court or by getting legislatures to redo death penalty laws." The idea of simply redoing death penalty laws doesn't make any sense. Doug Berman rightfully says the justices' ruling makes such an effort difficult, but he does float an idea which might have some limited effect in the event the Court decides to revisit the issue.
CNN is also reporting that the FBI has "arrested more than 300 members of prostitution operations and removed 21 juveniles from sex-selling rings." The sweeps were conducted over the past five days in sixteen cities nationwide. FBI Director Robert Mueller said that this week's sweeps bring to 433 the number of child victims recovered in the five years since the FBI began its Innocence Lost initiative, which was designed to combat underage prostitution.
Daughter of the polygamous sect leader Warren Jeffs has "told her attorney ad litem in an e-mail to step aside." For more, see the Salt Lake Tribune article. The sixteen year old girl told the Salt Lake Tribune that her Texas attorney is restricting her visits with people she would like to see and has barred her from corresponding with her father, who was sentenced to prison last year for a term 10 years to life in Utah for rape. Her attorney has said in court papers that police believe she was spiritually married to an older man when she was fifteen year old.
@child prostitution article
Daniel Radosh has an interesting post on the media's manipulation of this story and the suspect statistics that keep popping up: http://www.radosh.net/archive/002328.html
Posted by: jjoe | June 27, 2008 at 02:24 PM