By Kim Zetter, Wired Magazine (http://blog.wired.com/)

LOS ANGELES — The woman accused of making unauthorized use of MySpace to  inflict emotional harm on a 13-year-old girl, who then committed suicide, “fully intended to hurt and prey on Megan Meier’s psyche,” a prosecutor charged Wednesday, as opening statements began in the first federal cyber-bullying trial.

After some initial problems finding unbiased jurors, a jury of six men and six women was finally impaneled in the trial Wednesday afternoon. Prosecutor Thomas O’Brien immediately launched into his opening argument, in which he previewed the case he plans to present in the days ahead.

Defendant Lori Drew, a 49-year-old Missouri woman, watched O’Brien’s opening salvo wide-eyed from the defense table, jotting notes occasionally on a notepad, until O’Brien reached the details of Meier’s suicide and its aftermath. Then Drew began scribbling intently on the pad, averting her eyes from the prosecutor and jury.

O’Brien claimed that Drew actively conspired with two others in creating and maintaining a MySpace profile for a nonexistent 16-year-old boy named “Josh Evans” in September 2006. The Evans account was used by multiple people to flirt with, befriend and ultimately reject 13-year-old Megan Meier, who’d had a falling-out with Drew’s daughter.

One of the users of the account, Ashley Grills, a then-18-year-old woman employed by Drew and her husband, has admitted to sending a final, cruel message to Meier while posing as Evans: “The world would be a better place without you. Have a shitty rest of your life.” Meier then hanged herself in her bedroom.

Grills has been granted immunity from prosecution in exchange for her cooperation with the government, and is scheduled to testify against Drew.

Though the prosecution concedes that Drew did not send that final message, O’Brien argued that the whole purpose of the hoax from the start was to inflict emotional distress on a vulnerable young girl.

O’Brien said he’d offer testimony that Drew conspired with her daughter, Sarah, and with Grills to humiliate Meier, and was heard laughing about the hoax they were perpetrating on the girl.

Drew discussed using Meier’s personal notes to “Evans” to humiliate her at school, and conspired at one point to lure the girl to a nearby mall to meet Evans, whereupon Meier would similarly be confronted with the messages she’d sent the nonexistent boy, said O’Brien.

After Meier’s death, Drew’s hairdresser allegedly asked Drew why she was going to the wake, given her role in the cyber-bullying. Drew’s response, O’Brien said, was, “It’s not like I pulled the trigger.”

At that point in the opening argument, one of the jury alternates, an elderly woman, visibly cringed.

Defense attorney H. Dean Steward, delivering his opening remarks, painted a very different picture. He claimed that Drew knew about the plan to create the hoax MySpace profile and manipulate Meier, but neither encouraged nor participated in it.

Steward told the jury that forensics evidence will prove the account was not created from Drew’s computer, and that no messages were sent by Drew.

end of article

And so it begins….I’ll be updating this story on a daily basis as new information presents itself, so stop by often to check on it. And good luck to the prosecution.

-Editor

You know how it is when you’re hanging out with your buddies, having a few drinks and a few laughs. You crack a few lame jokes and pull a few party tricks out of your hat. Some of the old favorites are “The Blue Flame” and “Spin the Bottle” or better yet “Shove the Baby in the Clothes Dryer until She Bleeds from the Head.” Oh and what about the one where you lift the baby up high and then drop her to the ground????

What’s that you say? You have never played that one? Not ever?

It was a favorite of Wiremu Curtis, 19 and Micheal Curtis, 22. They would play this game, and many, many others with little Nia Glassie, while her mum, 22 year old Lisa Kuka and her cousin, 20 year old Micheal Pearson and his partner, 18 year old Oriwa Kemp watched and laughed.

On August 3rd 2007 Nia Glassie was pronounced dead after lapsing into a coma 36 hours before as a result of bleeding between her skull and her brain.

The Curtis brothers, Kemp, Pearson and Lisa Kuka were soon questioned and arrested on charges relating to Nia’s death.

During their investigation, local police found that a number of adults, both family members and neighbors, were aware of the neglect and abuse Nia was subject to…but did nothing to stop it.

A child witness to Nia’s constant plight has told a jury that Nia Glassie’s tormentors would not let her rest because they liked to hurt her. She said that brothers Micheal and Wiremu kicked the little girl three times in the head in the hours before she died, stating that they kicked her, “hard as a rock” and that Nia “then started to fall asleep.”

Micheal Curtis denied kicking Nia, telling the court she had fallen from his shoulders and hit her head on the ground.

The child witness (who cannot be named) also stated that Nia was “smashed up” by the Curtis brothers’ every day. She was there to witness the clothes dryer incident and described it in detail. “They shoved her in there and turned it on. She went round and round until her head bled. She was stuffed in there and they turned it on for about five minutes, and then they turned it off and she was hot. Boiling hot.”

The one thing constant in little Nia’s life was torment. The “games” she endured and suffered through included:

* Being kicked in the face, causing her nose to bleed.
* Being hit and slapped punched and jumped on.
* Having objects such as shoes thrown at her.
* Being subjected to verbal insults, such as being told she was ugly and stupid.
* Being forced into a T.V cabinet drawer.
* Getting dragged through the sandpit half naked causing friction burns.
* Getting shoved into piles of rubbish.
* Being made to bathe in cold water in the middle of the harsh New Zealand winter.
* Being folded into a sofa bed and sat on.
* Getting flung against a wall.
* Being held high in the air and then dropped to the floor.
* Being used for adult wrestling moves, copied from a PS2 game.
* Being whirled rapidly on a rotary clothes line until she was flung off.
* Getting put into a tumble dryer and spun on high temperature.
* Having her head and feet dangled into the fire place…while it was lit.
* Being kicked repeatedly in the head because she was crying.
* Getting left dying in a coma for 36 hours while mum and her friends’ party and think up new “games” to play with Nia.

Thankfully, the jury didn’t like the games any more than Nia did, and Wiremu Curtis and Micheal Curtis were found guilty in Rotarua High Court, in New Zealand, of murder.

Nia’s mother, Lisa Kuka was found guilty of 2 manslaughter charges relating to lack of protection and failure to seek medical help for her critically injured daughter.

Nia’s cousin, Micheal Pearson and his partner Oriwa Kemp were found not guilty of manslaughter in relation to her death. They were however found guilty along with the Curtis brothers of numerous other charges against the child.

They are all awaiting sentencing.

Justice Judith Trotter broke down following the verdicts and offered the jury counseling.

Editor’s comment: You know it’s bad enough when an adult hurt a kid because the adult gets angry. It’s even worse when a child is molested by a pedophile, but if you look at it as part of the big picture, the son of a bitch is just doing what pedophiles do. But these bastards killed Nia Glassie because it was fun. Think about that for a second. These less than humans didn’t get pleasure from causing pain, like a sadist would, they got a good laugh. These deviant little shits tortured a three year old girl to death because they thought it was FUNNY. I was so mad the first time I read this story I snapped my damn Sharpie in half. How do you punish people like this, or maybe a better question would be, how do you create people like this? Garbage like this wasn’t born, it wasn’t even hatched. It was excreted from the mother-thing like some kind of human fecal matter, its stench befouling anyone and anything that dared to approach. And the only way to deal with it is to do what we always do with such things….Flush’em!
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“Allusive male seeks female from broken home in low-income neighborhood, with young kids, preferably daughters. Hideous-looking, smelly, ill-tempered, lazy, cowardly, chronic, and a complete liar seeks a woman who has no idea of who she is or where she wants to go in life.”

Ivan Hancock, 46, faces murder charges in the separate killings of his girlfriends’ daughters in Colton in 2004 and San Bernardino in 2006. The two 15-month-old girls were both badly beaten; found two years apart in broken homes in low-income neighborhoods.

In 2004, lover boy Hancock was romancing Iyesha Marie Lightcsy, 27, who lived with her 15 month old daughter, Amber Russell, at Colton’s Four Seasons apartments, in Colton CA. On August 4, 2004, little Amber was found covered with bruises, with cuts on her throat and a cigarette burn on her chest, authorities said at the time. Colton police always suspected the couple and had arrested Hancock, but couldn’t obtain charges.

In late 2006, Don-Juan Hancock had started dating Talonia Henderson, 37, who had an adorable 15-month-old daughter, Talonia Kaye Johnson-Boutee.

Detectives arrested the mother on suspicion of child endangerment, however Henderson was not charged.Talonia Kaye Johnson-Boutee was found with blunt force trauma to her body. She died two days later at Loma Linda University Medical Center.

After Hancock became a suspect in the December 2006 beating death of another 15-month-old girl in San Bernardino, Colton authorities gained more evidence. San Bernardino County Deputy District Attorney Vicki Hightower, a recently hired specialist in prosecuting crimes against children, issued the complaint in both cases.

“We’re pleased,” said Colton police Detective Jack Morenberg. “It’s just a shame that another child had to die in the meantime. But we can only do what we can do and stay within the parameter of the law.” Authorities did not provide many details on what caused the charges to be filed this month —
more than four years after Amber’s death and nearly two years since little Talonia died. Morenberg said San Bernardino’s investigation helped Colton’s, and San Bernardino detectives said that theirs simply took a thorough review. “It was a very technical case that involved a lot of work,” said San Bernardino police Lt. Scott Paterson. “The DA’s office took its time, since the suspects were in custody and there was no public danger.

Hancock currently is serving a three-year state prison sentence violating his parole last January on a 2005 conviction of possessing cocaine base for sale, Henderson was later convicted of burglary and forgery, and is serving a state prison sentence, and Lightcsy’s status is unknown.

On November 12, 2008, Iyesha Lightcsy was arraigned in court, pleading not guilty to the charge of fatally beating her 15-month-old daughter, Amber Russell along with our friend Ivan.
Lightcsy was booked into Central Detention Center and her bail is set at $1 million bail. She will appear in court on November 20, 2008. San Bernardino County district attorney’s office, Vicki Hightower, reopened the case in September and filed the criminal complaint November. Hightower combined this case with a similar child beating from New Year’s Eve 2006 in San Bernardino where Hancock also is a suspect.

Talonia Kaye Johnson-Boutee, also 15-months, died from injuries nearly identical to those Amber suffered, investigators have said. Hancock and Talonia’s mother, Talonia Henderson, 37, are charged with murder, assault on a child causing death and child abuse in that case.
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Baby P’s life began in a small council flat in Haringey, North London. His neglect was gradual, with his mother, Tracey Connolly, 25, leaving him unattended in his cot for hours on end.

She split with Baby P’s father when he was three months old. When her lover, Steven Barker, 31, moved in with them, Baby P’s suffering increased dramatically. While his mother was busy in online chat rooms, Barker was busy beating the boy, often swinging him around by the neck or legs and pinching him hard enough to leave bruises on his baby skin.

Barker forced Baby P to obey commands like a dog. He would click his fingers and the boy would have to sit with his head between his legs. Sometime later, Barker would again click his fingers, signaling to the child that he could sit upright again. Jason Owen, who stayed with the couple, also subjected the child to similar abuse. Owen is the creep in the photo next to Baby P. In addition to swinging the boy around he would also often sit him on a stool and spin him around until he fell to the floor.

After concerns were first voiced about Baby P’s welfare in October 2006, his mother, in the first of many lies and false reassurances, insisted that he was not abused, rather he “just bruised easily.” She claimed that Baby P was “a head banger” fond of “rough and tumble play.”

Barker claims that he wanted to, “toughen the boy up.”

The council flat where they lived was visited and was found to be dirty and smelling of urine. Baby P was removed from the home and placed with family members for a short time.

In January 2007, with no charges having been laid, Baby P was sent back to suffer even more abuse at the hands of Barker, Owen and Connolly. Baby P went without a decent meal more often than not and was often seen scrounging biscuits and food from other children and was even seen eating dirt in the garden.

The abuse escalated even more with the child being seen by medical professionals for numerous black eyes, swellings and bruising, “scalps rash,” and “ear discharge.”
Four days before his death, Maria Ward, his case worker visited the home of Baby P and says she was content to leave him with his mother as she was very cooperative and seemed to have a lot of support.

Days later, Baby P was examined at St Ann’s Hospital by Dr Sabah Al-Zayyat, a pediatrician. Somehow he failed to notice that the boy had a broken back, which is consistent with being slammed down over a bent knee or a banister, eight broken ribs and the more than 50 other horrific injuries that had been dealt to him over his short life. Some of these included, missing fingertips and nails and bite marks on his head. Two days later, sweet Baby P was dead after receiving a fatal blow to his mouth, knocking out one of his milk teeth.

After 17 moths of pure agony, Baby P could endure no more. He died alone in his blood spattered cot.

While searching for some pictures of Steven, I stumbled upon these gems. I was already on edge from researching and editing this story, and Amy had done such a great job getting across the horror of Baby P’s death, that when I saw these God damned things It took all my self control to keep from bawling like a child. I’d felt as if I was set up.

And yes, those stains are blood.

The two men, Jason Owen, 35 and Steven Barker, 31 were found guilty of Causing or Allowing the Death of a Child in August 2007, with the toddlers mother Tracey Connolly, 25 also convicted of the same charge.

All three are due to be sentenced in December. They face up to fourteen years in prison. Somehow fourteen years seems pathetic at the very least.

Those who should have, but failed to pick up on his abuse, namely, Maria Ward and Dr Sabah Al-Zayyat are in my opinion also hell worthy. I hope that one day soon I will be able to disclose Baby P’s name and he can finally rest in peace

UPDATE: While I was Googling Baby P in the process of editing and fact checking Amy’s story, I ran across this story in The News Of The World. Now correct me if I’m wrong all you folks across the pond. but isn’t this “newspaper” to the UK what The National Enquirer is to the United States? Well, I started reading a story about Baby P written by Carole Malone, and the more I read, the more outraged I became. Amy had made it clear in here original story how Child Services dropped the ball, and that Dr Sabah Al-Zayyat has earned herself more than an honorable mention on the roles of hell, but Ms Malone’s article got into the nitty gritty of the disaster that was Baby P’s Case File. To give you just a a little taste, the person in charge, Sharon Shoesmith, spent 6 months trying to cover the entire incident up. No harm, No foul I guess - to the Agency, that is. So here’s an excerpt from that article, along with pictures of all the principles:

Baby P: They’re ALL guilty
By Carole Malone, 11/16/2008
News Of The World

…But of all the people who failed this gorgeous boy—apart from the monsters who actually killed him—the most negligent, the most self-serving, is head of Haringey’s Child Services Sharon Shoesmith.

Because while the rest of the country was reeling from what happened to Baby P, this arrogant woman called a press conference and waved graphs in our faces about how well her department had performed.

Incompetence

Did this apology for a boss really believe that if she put on a sad face for the TV cameras she’d get away with this? Did she believe those graphs would be enough to satisfy an angry, repulsed nation and detract from her mind- boggling incompetence?

Time and again she was given the chance to apologise but she didn’t. Haringey council did (finally) but not Sharon Shoesmith. Because she knows an admission of guilt would require her resignation—and nothing is worth that, is it Mrs Shoesmith?

Not with her cushy little number—with a £110,000 salary, posh days out at the races (paid for by grateful business contacts) and her power.

Maria Ward

This is the power that allowed her to refuse a review into Haringey’s social services department six months after Baby P’s death. The same power that allowed her to rule there had been no negligence by the council or its social workers. And I’m sick to death of people saying it wasn’t the social workers who killed Baby P, it was the degenerates who lived with him in that rat-infested hole. Yes, they kicked the last breath out of him but they’re scum—retards incapable of feeling guilt, love or compassion.
Abuse

But those social workers were supposed to be better than that, professionals who were trained to spot the early signs of abuse. It was their job, their human duty to protect vulnerable children.

We presumed (wrongly) that they were more intelligent than Baby P’s killers, which is why we expected Maria Ward on one of the 60 times Baby P was visited to insist his mother washed chocolate off his face so she could inspect him for bruises.

And why, knowing the history, didn’t she demand to check his body for injuries? She knows full well that scumbags like these killers routinely lie and cheat. But more sickening is that these social workers and executives did a better job at covering their own miserable backsides than did at saving a little boy’s life.

Which is why they ARE ultimately responsible for his death. They didn’t strike the blow that killed him—but they stood by and did nothing while those three vicious bastards awaiting sentence did.

And forget all this guff about how social workers can be duped by wily parents. ANYONE with half as brain could have walked into that house and seen Baby P was in danger.

I don’t give a toss how low their wages are, how hard their job is or how understaffed they are. A vulnerable baby’s life was in danger and they left him to die out of stupidity, ignorance or because they just didn’t care enough.

And if these social workers and their bosses can’t spot a child four days from death then they’re not just in the wrong job—they’re dangerous as well.

Maybe Maria Ward, Sharon Shoesmith and Gillie Christou, the idiot in charge of the council’s child protection register, just don’t put saving babies’ lives high enough up their agenda. And maybe Dr Sabah Al Zayyat, who missed the fact this little lad had a broken spine and multiple injuries, had also written him off—though I suspect she was just a lazy cow.

ALL of these people should be sacked. Because anyone who decides to go into social work either as a worker or a boss MUST assume the responsibilities of the job.

You don’t brandish graphs. You don’t hide behind the “stress of form-filling”.

Part of the job is looking after defenceless kids, and if you’re not prepared to do that then shove off and go stack shelves in Tesco.

And forget the excuse that there are procedures to be followed before a child is removed from its family.

Sub-human

We all know kids aren’t taken away when they should be—because it’s cheaper to leave them where they are.

Dr Sabah Al Zayyat

Moreover social services know full well that some families are simply sub-human dross who shouldn’t be allowed near kids.

And that’s what we have to address now—this underclass, this group of deviants who’ve been allowed to take root in this country and who kill, maim and torture without guilt.

These are people who have sponged off the welfare state their whole lives and who believe nothing is their responsibility, their fault or their problem.

For too long we’ve tap-danced around these people because of political correctness. The problem was too sensitive to talk about—let alone handle. But handle it we must, because if we don’t this underclass will become even more savage, more feral—and more innocents will die.

Baby P’s mother is so unaware of the gravity of what she’s done she’s telling people she’ll be home for Christmas with the baby she gave birth to in prison.

Which is why all three responsible for killing Baby P MUST get the maximum of 14 years. Because if they don’t, as a society we’re saying his suffering and his death were for nothing.

And Ed Balls needs to stick his inquiry where the sun don’t shine because four ministers in his government knew about the situation that led to Baby Ps death two years ago, and they did nothing.

Inquiries don’t save children’s lives. Direct action just might. So every executive, every social worker involved in this tragedy must not just pay but must be prevented from ever being responsible for children ever again.

These social workers and executives at Haringey behaved the way they did because they believed there’d be no consequences for their negligence, and they assumed this government didn’t have the guts to take them on.

Well, that has to change. And in order to enforce that change, Sharon Shoesmith has to go. Gillie Christou has to go. Maria Ward has to go. As have those idiot Ofsted inspectors who gave Shoesmith a glowing report just weeks after Baby P’s death.

As for that excuse for a doctor—Sabah Al Zayatt—she needs to be struck off immediately before any more kids die.
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After a quick shower, Sanchez went into the Bedroom to lie down on the bed. A few minutes later his girlfriend came into the room and placed the baby down next to him and left for a few minutes. 15 minutes later she returned and saw the baby lying in a pool of blood in the middle of the bed. She began screaming, “My Baby! My Baby! Sanchez Jumped up and split the apartment like his ass was on fire.

The mother took the baby to Columbia Memorial Hospital. Dr. Susan Heineck was treating another patient in the emergency room, but because of the baby’s piercing cry came immediately over to treat her.

This next part is very painful and difficult read if you care at all for small children, animals, or any other kind of helpless creature. Don’t say you weren’t warned.

Ken Jones, a criminalist with the Portland Police, was in the operating room to photograph the injuries to the child. He said the child’s tongue was ripped loose from the base of the mouth clear back to her tonsils, and partially torn. Her lower jawbone was showing through an open wound on the inside of her mouth. The sides of her mouth were torn open like somebody had forced something too large inside.

Jones said the outward-direction of the injuries looked as if somebody had stuck their hand inside the child’s mouth, grabbed her lower jaw and forcefully yanked it down. Surgeons described the injuries to the baby as “horrendous.” The tissue was so torn, in some places there wasn’t material for stitches, she said.

In other word, Jose tried to jam his man-size fist into his two month old daughter’s tiny mouth in order to (for reasons known only to Jose’) tear her tongue out of her mouth.

José Gutierrez Sanchez turned himself in after being on the run for 4 days and he was immediately charged with First Degree Assault.

Trial Began in Tuesday, October 21st, 2008. Sanchez’s attorney, John Orr, of Astoria, argued in closing arguments that the injuries occurred when Sanchez twitched in his sleep, accidentally ramming the baby’s pacifier into her mouth with his elbow and knocking her off the bed onto a pile of shoes on the floor. Orr argued that the hard edges of the pacifier cut the baby’s mouth.

Any you thought Lawyers didn’t have a sense of humor. You gotta admit, that’s a ridiculously funny load of crap in the previous paragraph, don’t you think?

The baby endured two surgeries. Dr. Carol MacArther, a specialist in head and neck surgeries, performed one. Dr. Anna Kuang, who specializes in plastic and reconstructive surgeries, performed the other. For three weeks, the baby had a steel restraints attached through her cheeks.

The surgeons described the injuries to the baby as “horrendous.” The tissue was so torn, in some places there wasn’t material for stitches, she said.

On Friday, October 27th, 2008 the Clatsop County jury convicted José Gutierrez Sanchez, and finally, on Tuesday, October 28th, Circuit Court Judge Philip Nelson sentenced Sanchez to 7 1/2 years in prison for the horrendous First Degree assault of his 2 month old daughter.

“I can’t imagine how anybody could cause on any child that kind of injury,” Judge Nelson said. “If I could give you a longer sentence, I would.”

I‘m with you judge, I’m with you buddy.

There’s no knowing if the baby will make a full recovery or not. Doctors predict there’s a good chance for residual numbness and nerve damage to her face and mouth

I have no clue why this son of a bitch did this to his own flesh and blood. Why would he jam his huge fist into that poor little baby’s tiny mouth, for no other reason than what appears to be to rip her tongue out. Is it just pure evil that possessed this man’s mind, or was it something as stupid as him being a little drunk and wanting to get to sleep? I guess only MR Sanchez can tell us, and what are the odds he tells the truth? So the search goes on……

Thanks To Taz For The Original Idea For The Story
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