Government education at its finest! I’m appalled, but in no way surprised.

A former Virginia State Police captain will not serve jail time for the molestation of his former step-daughter.

On Tuesday morning, Edward Hope stood stoically before a Brunswick County judge and pleaded guilty to one felony count of aggravated sexual battery against a child under the under of 13.

The guilty plea was a part of a plea agreement with the Commonwealth of Virginia.

The judge sentenced Hope to 20 years in the state penitentiary, but suspended the entire sentence. Instead, Hope will be on supervised probation for two years and be forced to register as a sex offender.

In recent decades, more than 100 police officers have had sex with Explorers they were entrusted with mentoring, the vast majority of them underage, including an incident in 1999, just twenty miles west of St. Louis, down Interstate 44. In just the past year, two sheriff’s deputies in San Bernardino, California, were arrested for having sex with underage girls; a New York City cop was charged with child sex abuse after sending racy text messages to a fifteen-year-old; an officer in Bremerton, Washington, was reprimanded for sleeping with an eighteen-year-old; and a former cop in Burlington, North Carolina, pleaded guilty to taking indecent liberties with a minor after being accused of having sex with a fourteen-year-old he’d taken on ride-alongs.

A Boy Scouts of America subsidiary called Learning for Life has administered the Exploring program since 1998. Offering “Real-World Career Experiences” to teens and young adults, Exploring extends its reach far beyond law enforcement, providing more than 110,000 young people each year the chance to see firsthand workplaces in fields ranging from aviation to architecture to the law. The organization’s mission, says Learning for Life executive director Diane Thornton (who for the purposes of this article responded only to questions submitted in writing), is to “enable young people to become responsible individuals by teaching positive character traits, career development, leadership and life skills so they can make moral choices and achieve their full potential.”

The exact number of exploited Explorers is not known. (For a list of known cases, see the interactive feature accompanying this article here.) And Thornton won’t say whether Learning for Life tracks sex-abuse cases against Explorers, nor would she comment on why the vast majority of those cases involve police officers. “We do not release that type of information,” she wrote.

Learning for Life, Thornton says, has sought to reduce instances of Explorer sex abuse — which she characterizes as “very rare” — limiting one-on-one contact between mentors and Explorers, banning non-work relationships and requiring those who work with Explorers to watch a twenty-minute training video.

“The protection of all youth in Learning for Life programs is of paramount importance, and Learning for Life views any abuse of youth as unacceptable,” says Thornton.

But a review of Explorer sex abuses dating back to the 1970s shows that the Boy Scouts and Learning for Life waited years to enact rules barring inappropriate contact between police and Explorers. And once these rules were in place, the Boy Scouts and Learning for Life have not enforced them, mostly leaving police departments to police themselves.

SALT LAKE CITY — A 9-year-old boy suffered a broken collarbone while being restrained and handcuffed by a Sandy police officer after an incident at school, his grandparents say in a federal lawsuit.

Craig and Britt Hawker claim officer Tina Marie Albrand used excessive force while attempting to get their grandson to stand up and answer questions about an iPad he stole from Bell View Elementary School last August.

Albrand grabbed the boy and placed him in a “lock twist” to get him to stand, according to the complaint filed Tuesday in U.S. District Court. When he began to kick and scream, she forced him against a wall and handcuffed him.

“In her report, officer Albrand claims that (the boy) grabbed for and took hold of her weapon, but the assertion is false and no other witnesses made that assertion,” the suit says.

The boy later complained of arm and shoulder pain. Britt Hawker, who along with her husband is his legal guardian, took him to see a doctor who treated him for a fractured collarbone.

(Source: beatyourselfup)

A Nanticoke man arrested for public intoxication and disorderly conduct at a city bar left his children home alone, under “God’s” supervision, police said.

Julian Jay Johnson, 32, was found inside of a silver Jaguar sedan with the car running and headlights on, after trying to initiate fights with several patrons inside of Tommyboy’s Bar and Grille, 12 N. Market St., police said.

Bar manager Stephanie Smith told police she saw Johnson pull out a large pipe-like item from the sedan’s trunk after he said he was coming back with “something” for the patrons, according to police. Smith locked the bar’s door, prompting Johnson to return to his vehicle, police said.

Upon arrival at the Nanticoke police headquarters, Johnson told officials he needed to go home because his children were there and that “God was watching them,” Nanticoke police said.

Officers arrived at Johnson’s home, 55 Loomis St., and discovered three children, ages 1, 3 and 6, home alone, police said.

Alongside Children and Youth caseworker Jamie Stuart, police observed several safety issues and insufficient living conditions within the home, police said. All three children were taken into protective custody.

Luzerne County 911 indicated that Johnson’s operating privileges were under suspension for offenses related to driving under the influence, according to the police report.

Johnson was charged with public drunkenness, disorderly conduct, two counts of harassment and endangering the welfare of a child.

He was arraigned in Wilkes-Barre Central Court on Tuesday, and jailed in Luzerne County Correctional Facility on $5,000 cash bail.

Researchers at the University of Michigan and five other universities looked at practices and perceptions of discipline in six countries. They found that spanking leads to more child aggression and anxiety, regardless of the country.

So what should parents do to teach children right from wrong?

“It may be that the long-term investments that we make in children, like spending time with them, showing that we love them and listening to them, have a more powerful positive effect on behavior than any form of discipline,” said Andrew Grogan-Kaylor, U-M associate professor of social work.

The study, appearing in the March/April issue of the journal Child Development, examined the associations of mothers’ discipline techniques with children’s aggressive and anxious behaviors in China, India, Italy, Kenya, Thailand and the Philippines.

Unlike other studies, this project collected information from both mothers and their children. Participants included 292 mothers and their 8- to 12-year-old children.

Researchers used the sample to address two questions:

—When multiple discipline techniques are considered at the same time, which forms of discipline emerge as having the strongest associations with children’s aggressive and anxious behaviors?

—Are significant associations between discipline practices and child behaviors moderated by the extent to which mothers and children perceive these practices to be normal in their communities?

The 11 discipline techniques analyzed included: teach about good and bad behavior; get child to apologize; give a time-out; take away privileges, spank; express disappointment; shame; yell/scold; withdraw love for misbehavior; threaten punishment; and promise a treat/privilege.

Mothers and children were asked about the frequency with which others in their communities used each discipline technique.

“When children perceive a discipline technique to be (normal) within their culture or community, they may be less likely to evaluate their parents’ use of it as aberrant or objectionable,” Grogan-Kaylor said.

The research, he said, showed that the relationship of some kinds of discipline with behavior problems varied according to how common that type of discipline was used in the community. However, despite small variations, there was a strong consistency in the results across countries.

The bottom line: giving a time-out, using corporal punishment, expressing disappointment and shaming were significantly related to greater child anxiety symptoms. Child aggression resulted from spanking, expressing disappointment and yelling.