A FIVE-year-old girl Russian who was shut away with dogs and cats is adapting to normal life after being rescued and transferred to a clinic, doctors said.

The girl had apparently not been allowed outside the filthy apartment in Eastern Siberia where she had been found living with the animals, sparking comparisons with the character Mowgli from the Jungle Book.

“Everything is fine. Other medical tests will be carried out but she is in good health,” the director of the rehabilitation centre Tatyana Missnik said.

“The one problem is that at five years old she doesn’t speak. We don’t know why.”

Television pictures showed the dilapidated apartment where the girl, identified only as Natasha, lived on the outskirts of the Siberian city of Chita.

The battered door of the flat had a sign reading “Warning: She Bites”, presumably referring to one of the dogs.

Police announced on Wednesday that child protection officers had taken the girl into care at the “Nadezhda” (Hope) children’s rehabilitation centre.

Doctors said the girl pushed aside a spoon offered for eating, preferring instead to lap up food.

Interfax news agency quoted a source at the centre as saying she was already adapting to a normal environment.

“She only behaves like a cat or dog from time to time. She can show how to put a pan on a stove and turn on the gas. You shouldn’t call her ‘Mowgli’,” the source said.

Meanwhile police said her father - with whom Natasha had lived - had been briefly detained and could face a criminal investigation.

“The father was detained, questioned and released. It is now being decided whether to open a criminal investigation for neglecting duties in the bringing up of a child,” a police source said.

Police had heard different versions of events from the father and the mother, who went to the authorities herself on Wednesday, the source added.

“The mother says that the father stole the girl from her. The father said that the grandmother of his wife suggested he bring up the girl himself, which he did.”

Police dubbed the girl “Mowgli” on Wednesday, after the character who grew up among wolves in the children’s book by the Anglo-Indian writer Rudyard Kipling.

In March, President Dmitry Medvedev urged action on child abuse, saying 760,000 children were living in “socially hazardous conditions”.

via Herald.

A Bakersfield father is accused of biting out one of the eyes of his small child and similarly mutilating the other eye, leaving the child blind.

After attacking the child, 34-year-old Angel Vidal Mendoza Sr. quickly left his apartment in a wheelchair, entered a backyard of a nearby vacant home and attacked his own legs with an ax, severely injuring himself, Bakersfield police reported.

The child, 4-year-old Angelo Mendoza Jr., later told police, “My daddy ate my eyes.”

Doctors at Mercy Hospital said it is unknown whether the child will regain vision in his right eye.

Child Protective Services cannot discuss the case, CPS program director Brian Parnell said. But in cases of serious abuse, the child is taken into protective custody, he said.

Some foster homes have specialized medical training, but more such people are needed, he said.

The boy’s mother, Desirae Marie Bermudez, 23, was not present during the incident. There is a $15,000 warrant for her arrest for failing to complete a drug treatment program in late 2008, court documents say.

A search warrant report said the father “was displaying symptoms of being under the influence of PCP.”

Both he and Bermudez were charged with being under the influence of PCP in a 2006 criminal case. Both pleaded no contest to child endangerment charges in that case, records say.

So why was the boy still living with the father?

CPS officials say there has to pretty much be serious physical abuse — major bruises or broken bones — before a child is taken away from his parents automatically.

In cases where parents are using drugs, CPS will definitely check on the child, Parnell said. But they won’t necessarily remove the child. That all depends on the extent of the drug abuse or the availability of other care — relatives or neighbors — for the children, he said.

The incident happened in the early evening of April 28 at the apartment the father and son share at 422 Ohio Drive near Terrace Way and Madison Street in southeast Bakersfield.

Police and search warrant reports say:

On the morning of April 28, Mendoza asked neighbor Elizabeth Rodriguez, 36, for a ride to a work-related appointment later in the day.

At 6 p.m., she sent her 12-year-old son to get Mendoza. The boy said Mendoza opened his door slightly and looked nervous, but didn’t let him in. Mendoza said he would be right out.

But a few minutes later, Rodriguez saw Mendoza rolling his wheelchair quickly away.

The 12-year-old boy and another neighbor went to Mendoza’s apartment and discovered the child on the floor.

Meanwhile, witnesses told police a man was yelling and screaming in a wheelchair from the backyard and hitting his legs with an ax.

Mendoza, who remains in custody in lieu of $1 million bail, is charged with mayhem, torture, child cruelty and inflicting an injury to a child.

He’s scheduled for a May 20 hearing.

His criminal history dates back to 1998 and includes convictions for drugs, battery, check forgery and a misdemeanor child endangerment.

via Bakersfield.Com.

By Holly Williams

Two years ago, I interviewed a woman named Zhang Huanzhi. Plump, chatty and in her mid 50s, on the face of it she was an ordinary Chinese housewife.

But what she told me touched a nerve, and I find myself thinking about it more often than I would like.

Her son, a young man named Nie Shubin, had been accused of raping and murdering a woman. To say that the evidence against him was thin would be a colossal understatement.

The police arrested him because Nie owned a blue bicycle - the same colour as one that some local children said they’d seen in the area on the day of the crime.

After the police had dragged Nie away Mrs Zhang made frequent visits to the prison where he was held, taking food that she hoped guards would pass along to him.

Neither she nor any other family member was allowed to see him.

One day, the guards told her to stop coming. Nie had already been executed, they said, so there was really no point.

He was 21 years old when he died. In a photo taken just before he was arrested he stands proudly beside the motorbike he has just bought with his new job as an electrician, a young man on the brink of adulthood.

Nie Shubin would have been executed in the prescribed manner - cuffed at the ankles and wrists and forced to kneel on the ground while a single executioner approached him from behind and shot a bullet into the back of his neck.

He was killed by the Chinese state after a closed trial that lasted just two hours, and in which the key evidence was his confession to the crime - a confession that is widely believed to have been extracted through torture, which is illegal but routinely practised by police here.

But perhaps the worst part of Mrs Zhang’s story is that it is not isolated.

I’ve spent nearly 10 years living in China, and have heard similar horror stories in every corner of the country.

I’ve met a survivor of Death Row - a man who explained to me in a whisper how he’d been tortured into confessing crimes he knew nothing about.

In Sichuan Province, I ran across a man who had once worked as an executioner, and who told me he still spent sleepless nights thinking about one of his victims - a farmer given the death penalty for stealing some of his neighbour’s pigs.

And I’ve visited hospitals where doctors openly admitted that they used organs extracted from executed prisoners, selling them on to foreign transplant patients for the highest price.

Today’s figures from Amnesty International - that show China executing more people than the rest of the world in 2008, and nearly three quarters of the world’s total - bear testament to Beijing’s continuing and enthusiastic use of the death penalty.

The government says it’s an effective way of preventing crime. Officials here sometimes justify the number of executions carried out in China by quoting a traditional saying: “Kill the chicken to scare the rooster.”

Interestingly, though, crime rates continue to rise in China, despite the fact that its citizens can now be executed for over 60 different crimes - everything from tax evasion to damaging electrical facilities and even killing a panda.

The government is, however, sensitive to outside criticism. In 2006, following widespread media coverage, it banned the sale of executed prisoners’ organs for transplant.

Since 2007, all death penalties must also be approved by the Supreme People’s Court in Beijing, a reform designed to prevent abuses by local courts.

Would it have been enough to save Nie Shubin’s young life? Perhaps. But his family will never know.

And, according to Amnesty International’s statistics, more than 1,700 other Chinese families also lost their loved ones last year - many for crimes that wouldn’t even merit a jail term in other countries.

via Sky News.

An 11-year-old boy who died when a car mounted a pavement and hit a group of pedestrians had been on his way home from a church service at the time.

A white Ford Focus crashed into Sam Riddall in Eastfield Road, Westbury-on-Trym, Bristol, on Friday evening.

Police said that Sam became trapped underneath the vehicle, which was driven by a woman in her 30s who then fled the scene.

A man was treated for minor injuries while some other children were unhurt.

The driver has been described as white with long blonde hair and in her mid-30s. No-one else was in the vehicle at the time of the crash.

Witnesses have said the car hit other vehicles parked on the road.

They said skid marks along the road and pavement showed where the car screeched across the kerb, towards a wall, and then veered back on to the road.

Insp Rob Pearson said Sam’s parents Martin and Rachel and his three brothers attended church on Sunday morning.

Insp Pearson said officers tried to track the movements of the woman after the accident.

A police dog and its handler were brought in to pick up her trail however it was soon lost.

He said: “We are not giving out information at this time as to how the car was being driven and we will be looking at a range of potential offences.”

Police urged anyone who may know the whereabouts of the driver to contact them.

‘Friendliest and loveliest’

Floral tributes have been laid at the scene.

One bunch of flowers was signed “Chris” from the Alberts Place Church Youth Club, of which Sam - whose family moved to Bristol from Birmingham several years ago - was a member.

It contained a card which read: “Dear Sammie, thank you for being one of the most friendliest and loveliest boys at Alberts Place.

“You were a fantastic footballer and will be greatly missed.

“God bless you now with love and prayers.”

People who lived near the scene said they were shocked.

One man, who did not want to be named, said: “It is absolutely horrific.

“You can see the narrative of events by the skid marks, you can see the point at which the car hit the kerb and then it must have dragged along the pavement and crashed.”

via BBC News.

A STEROID addict who raped a TV presenter and then got acid thrown in her face in act of “pure calculated and deliberate evil” was jailed for life today.

Daniel Lynch’s 25-year-old victim — an aspiring model and presenter — suffered horrific injuries in the attack.

She is now partially blind in one eye, has to be fed through a tube in her stomach and has endured more than 30 operations.

Lynch, 33, was sentenced to life at London’s Wood Green Crown Court today.

Stefan Sylvestre, 20, who threw the acid, was also given a life sentence.

Passing sentence, Judge Nicholas Browne QC said: “(The victim) had a face of pure beauty. You, Danny Lynch and Stefan Sylvestre, represent the face of pure evil.

“The facts of this case are chilling and shocking. You planned and then executed an act of pure, calculated and deliberate evil.

“You decided to wreck the victim’s life by thrusting a full container of sulphuric acid straight into her face from point- blank range.”

The court heard how martial arts expert Lynch had beaten up and raped the woman, who can not be named for legal reasons, in a hotel room last year.

It happened just weeks after the pair met on Facebook.

Several days after the attack he got Sylvestre to throw acid in her face as she walked down a North London high street.

A victim impact statement was read to the court in which the woman said the attacks had destroyed her life.

So far she has had more than 30 operations for her injuries and faces a further two years of surgery.

The statement read: “There are not enough words descriptive enough in the English language to describe how I felt after both of the evil attacks upon me.

“I am aware that there is a crime greater than that which has been afflicted upon me and that is murder. From my perspective as the victim of these monstrous attacks my personal suffering is in fact worse.

“I have lost my future, my career, my spirit, my body, my looks, my dignity, the list goes on. All I am left with is an empty shell.

“A part of me has died and that will never return. This is worse than death.

“Being beaten, raped and mutilated with acid has left me feeling like a living corpse.

“Being raped had a devastating affect on me, it left me numb and empty, it made me loathe myself with feelings of disgust and humiliation.”

She added: “The ongoing mental and physical torture I have been put through has crushed me and left me a broken woman.

“Before the attacks I was affectionate, outgoing, happy and confident.

“I am now an empty shell of myself and the very thought of intimacy now makes me feel physically sick and unable to cope with displays of affection from my own family.

“It’s an awful feeling to be unable to hug your own parents without breaking down in fits of extreme emotion and uncontrolled flashbacks of the horrific violation I suffered.”

A jury at the court found Lynch guilty of rape in March. Lynch, of Shepherds Bush, West London, admitted actual bodily harm and was found guilty of grievous bodily harm at previous hearings.

Sylvestre, of Shepherds Bush, pleaded guilty to grievous bodily harm for the attack at an earlier hearing.

via The Sun.

The boyfriend of Baby P’s mother was found guilty on Friday of raping a two-year-old girl.

The girl, like 17-month-old Baby P, had been on the child protection register of Haringey Council in north London.

Baby P, whose first name can now be reported as Peter, died in August 2007 at the hands of his mother, the boyfriend and their lodger.
The toddler’s death led to a nationwide review of child protection which recommended that overstretched children’s social workers should be given extra training to address problems in the system.

The girl gave evidence at the trial at the Old Bailey, becoming the youngest ever witness at the court, the Press Association reported.

The court was shown a 30-minute video of police interviewing her when she was three, in which she said the man had hurt her.
She was then cross-examined by defence lawyers and told them what she had said in the video was the truth.

The mother, who like her boyfriend cannot be named, was found not guilty of cruelty to the girl.
The mother and boyfriend were tried under false names to ensure a fair trial.

In November, the boyfriend and lodger Jason Owen were found guilty of causing or allowing Baby P’s death. His mother had pleaded guilty to the charge.
Judge Stephen Kramer told the couple it was likely there would be “very substantial sentences” in both cases.

“There is no doubt that Peter and this young girl suffered terribly at the hands of these people,” said Detective Chief Inspector Graham Grant after the verdict.

Police discovered the sexual abuse against the girl after they began their investigations into Baby P’s death, Grant said.
“It is telling that this man denied rape and in doing so forced a very young and vulnerable child to endure a daunting criminal process at the Old Bailey,” Grant added.

Baby P had suffered a broken back and over 40 horrific injuries during a campaign of domestic violence despite having been seen more than 60 times by police, doctors and social workers.

Sharon Shoesmith, head of Haringey’s children services, was sacked without compensation in December.

via Reuters.