Sexually Abusing

A Manchester man, accused of sexually abusing his daughter for almost three years, pleaded guilty to one count of second-degree sexual offense yesterday in Carroll County Circuit Court.In exchange, prosecutors agreed to drop charges of second-degree rape, child abuse, incest, perverted practice and two other lesser charges of sexual offense.Also, Judge Raymond E. Beck Sr. agreed to give the 64-year-old man no more than five years of jail time when he is sentenced Sept. 19.While reading a statement of the facts in the case, Assistant State's Attorney Jerry Joyce said the child -- then 7 -- was found performing a sexual act on her friends in October 1993.

A former volunteer firefighter who worked with youths at the Lansdowne department pleaded guilty Monday to sexually abusing a teenage boy he mentored in a training program at the station. Anthony Maurice Cottle, 23, who appeared Monday in Baltimore County Circuit Court, also faces federal charges. Cottle, a resident of Owings Mills, was also a paid firefighter with the Baltimore County Fire Department. He has been suspended without pay from that department since being charged in October.

A Carroll Circuit judge convicted a 33-year-old Taneytown man yesterday of sexually abusing his 14-year-old stepdaughter beginning with her sixth birthday.Judge Luke K. Burns Jr. said the case was one of credibility and that he, for the most part, believed the victim when she told him that her stepfather fondled her in her bedroom on many occasions from 1985 to 1989.The judge also said he believed her testimony that the man exposed himself and made a sexually suggestive remark to her while she was playing a video game April 2, 1993.

A Jarrettsville man was sentenced to 80 years in prison last week for his role in the sexual abuse of a child. Jeremy Shane Cochran, 32, of the 4100 block of Federal Hill Road, was found guilty in December by a Harford County Circuit Court jury of three counts involving the sexual abuse of a minor girl, according to court records. The jury found Cochran guilty of sexual abuse of a minor - continuing course of conduct, sexual abuse of a minor and conspiracy to commit sexual abuse of a minor, according to the case file.

A 26-year-old New Windsor man accused of sexually abusing three girls was ordered yesterday to stand trial for the three cases July 16 in Carroll County Circuit Court.The alleged offenses are said to have occurred between Jan. 1 and Dec. 31, 1994, while the girls -- then 7, 8 and 11 years old -- were living at his home, court records showed. He is accused of raping one girl and faces multiple counts of sexually abusing all three.Bail was set at $50,000 for each case, and the defendant is being held at the Frederick County Detention Center on unrelated charges, court records showed.

An Ellicott City dance instructor was convicted yesterday of sexually abusing one of his young students during more than two years of private ballet lessons at his dance studio. A Howard County jury of six men and six women deliberated for slightly less than five hours yesterday before returning guilty verdicts against Jose Anibal Macedo, 42, on charges of attempted rape, child abuse and related sexual offenses. The verdict was reached one month after a trial in which a jury deadlocked on all charges.

The husband of a former Westminster day care provider was convicted yesterday of sexually abusing one of the children in his wife's care.Circuit Judge Raymond E. Beck Sr. deliberated for 45 minutes before finding Robert Oliver Braman Jr., 38, of the 100 block of Leisters Church Road, guilty of four of the six charges after two days of testimony.The 5-year-old victim had testified during the trial about sexual acts Braman engaged in with her. Among them, she told the court, was showing her an adult magazine in which people were doing "what he did to me."

A 26-year-old New Windsor man was sentenced to 10 years in prison yesterday after pleading guilty in Carroll County Circuit Court to sexually abusing three girls in 1994.The man, who is not being identified to protect the victims' privacy, was a friend of the girls' families. The offenses occurred while the girls, then ages 7, 8 and 11, were living in the same house as the defendant, prosecutors said.As part of a plea agreement, Judge Raymond E. Beck Sr. sentenced the man to 15 years but suspended five years on one count of a second-degree sexual offense.

Baltimore County authorities today announced the arrest of a 27-year-old policeman accused of sexually abusing a 13-year-old male student at Dundalk Middle School, where the suspect was a resource officer. According to police, Officer James Mark Blankenship faces three felony counts and one misdemeanor charge after the boy told investigators that what started as a friendship between April and May escalated to sexual contact this spring. Authorities said Blankenship denies the allegations.

Three people indicted Thursday by a Carroll County grand jury included a Chestertown teen-ager accused of selling drugs at Western Maryland College.Peyton T. Beachy, 18, was arrested at the college campus Jan. 12 on charges of possession with intent to distribute psilocybin, a mushroom-based hallucinogen.Two men accused of child abuse are not identified to protect the privacy of the alleged victims.The first man, from Westminster, is accused of sexually abusing a girl, now 14, between Jan. 1, 1993, and Dec. 31, 1994.

Following a string of recent cases in which coaches used their positions to sexually abuse children, the Cal Ripken Sr. Foundation says it is trying to help sports organizations better screen people who work with young athletes. The foundation has created an online resource that offers training for employees and volunteers. The site also directs sports organization leaders to a legal research website where they can search potential staff members' criminal histories at a minimal cost.

The 1994 Violence Against Women Act has done tremendous good in stepping up prosecution of domestic violence, aiding victims and increasing awareness of a too-often silent threat to our society. But the act was allowed to lapse in 2011 amid partisan bickering. On Tuesday, the Senate sent a strong signal by voting to reauthorize the law by an overwhelming 78-22 vote, but its survival in the Republican-controlled House of Representatives is, sadly, far from certain. VAWA, as the law is called, aids in the investigation and prosecution of violent crimes against women and allows for civil redress in cases that prosecutors choose to leave unprosecuted.

A Baltimore private school teacher and coach was arrested last week after an investigation by the Baltimore County Police Department's Crimes Against Children Unit, police said Monday. Foye C. Minton Jr., 33, of Cockeysville, was charged with second-degree child abuse, police said, and is being held at the Baltimore County Detention Center on $250,000 bond. Police said a victim, now 20, came forward in December alleging that the abuse started in 2009 when she was a student at Shoshana S. Cardin School in Baltimore.

An aide at the Maryland School for the Deaf was charged Thursday with molesting three girls when they were students at the school between 2008 and 2010, Howard County police said. One of the three girls – now ages 15 and 16 and no longer at the Columbia school – recently reported her allegation to a teacher, after learning that she might not have been the only student repeatedly inappropriately touched, police said. That led to the investigation, and detectives are exploring the possibility that there may be more victims, according to police.

The case of John Merzbacher, the former South Baltimore Catholic middle school teacher who turned out to be a serial child sexual abuser, represents a terrible tragedy of child abuse fostered by too many others willing to turn a blind eye. But if his case is extreme, it is not unique, and it's particularly galling to hear of cases like that involving Mr. Merzbacher, whose behavior went unreported for decades, or Penn State's Jerry Sandusky, where...

Two men told Anne Arundel County police that they were sexually abused as children by a man from their Edgewater community, John Charles Villers-Farrow, police said. Villers-Farrow, 66, surrendered to police Wednesday night. An Anne Arundel County judge reduced his bail, which was initially $800,000, to $250,000 Thursday morning. He is facing 14 counts that include sexual abuse of a minor, perverted practice and child abuse that cover the years between 2000 and 2008 when the two men were between the ages of eight and their early teens, according to the statement of charges.

A judge denied yesterday a request by a priest's attorney to order a psychological examination of the man who accused the cleric of sexually abusing him. Baltimore Circuit Judge John M. Glynn said a psychological evaluation by a doctor selected by the defense could be hard to explain to the jury. Glynn said he thought the evaluation would be "contrary to the interests of justice." The Rev. Maurice Blackwell, 58, is accused of sexually abusing Dontee Stokes, 28, who shot Blackwell about a decade after the time the abuse is alleged to have occurred.

It is coming up on one year since the Jerry Sandusky sexual abuse story broke and just about a week since his sentencing, and I am pondering what we have learned from it and where we are in relation to more open dialogue about sexual abuse. Here is what I know for sure. Jerry Sandusky, former assistant football coach at Penn State University, is a serial pedophile, and he abused children of various ages for extended periods of time. Eight brave survivors of abuse came forward for the trial, but many more have not come forward for various individual, personal reasons.

The veil was lifted Thursday on decades of confidential sexual-abuse allegations in the ranks of the Boy Scouts of America with the court-ordered release of more than 1,200 of the organization's "perversion files. " The files offer the public an unprecedented look at how suspected molestations were handled by one of the nation's leading youth organizations from the early 1960s through 1985, a time when awareness of sexual abuse was evolving rapidly. The files are from all over the country, including Baltimore and across Maryland.