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Soccer referee allegedly sought sex act with boy
    ALBANY — A 53-year-old Clifton Park soccer referee was arrested and charged with attempting to induce a 14-year-old soccer referee into a sex act, authorities said.
    Thomas Gorsin was arrested Tuesday at a Colonie McDonald’s, where he allegedly expected to meet the boy. Instead, authorities were there to meet him, according to papers filed in federal court.
    Gorsin allegedly contacted the boy by e-mail in early July, saying he was a fellow referee. The e-mail went to an account controlled by the boy’s parents. Concerned about its content, they contacted police.
    Authorities then stepped in. Gorsin allegedly e-mailed repeatedly, often with sexual comments.
    Gorsin also allegedly said he met the boy at the North Colonie Empire Cup tournament in June. The tournament was prior to the beginning of the e-mails.
    Authorities said Gorsin was arrested just before 1 p.m. at the McDonald’s.

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Police say teens beat homeless Ohio man to death

Fri Jun 27, 2008

A group of teenagers beat a homeless man to death as passers-by slowed to watch the attack, some of which was caught on videotape, police said.

Anthony Waters, 42, suffered a lacerated spleen and broken ribs during the attack Wednesday night and died at a hospital, police said.

"The pack mentality going on in the city of Cleveland must end," police Commander Calvin Williams said Thursday at a news conference where he urged the attackers to come forward.

Portions of the attack were caught on a surveillance camera outside a towing company on the city's east side. Police said the videotape shows passing cars slowing to watch three teens attack Waters until he staggered into the parking lot, where he was assisted by employees of the towing company.

"It was just horrifying the way he looked," said Marlo Massey, Waters' sister, who saw her brother's body after the attack. "They beat him to death and I just can't stop thinking what was on his mind while it was happening."

Waters suffered from blunt abdominal trauma, a head injury and damaged internal organs, the Cuyahoga County coroner said.

The attackers, who appeared to be between the ages of 14 to 17, robbed Waters of a music player and headphones, police said. No arrests have been made.

Waters was a welder by trade but had been staying at a Cleveland-area homeless shelter, said Paul Eadeh, a friend.

"He's a good guy, a hardworking person," Eadeh said. "He was just trying to make some money to eat and to live."

Eadeh said Waters worked odd jobs for him at a beverage store.

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Teen 'pregnancy pact' shocks Massachusetts city
Jason Szep,  Reuters
Published: Friday, June 20, 2008

BOSTON -- A Massachusetts city is investigating an apparent teenage "pregnancy pact" that has at least 17 high-school girls expecting babies, four times more than last year, including many aged 16 or younger.

A high school health clinic in the city of Gloucester became suspicious after seeing a surge in girls seeking pregnancy tests. Local officials said on Thursday nearly half of those who became pregnant appear to have entered into a pact to have their babies together over the year.

"Some girls seemed more upset when they weren't pregnant than when they were," Gloucester High School principal Joseph Sullivan told Time magazine, which broke news of the pact on its Web site.

Mr. Sullivan was not immediately available to comment. But local officials said at least some of the men involved in the pregnancies were in their mid-20s, including one man who appeared to be homeless. Others were boys in the school.

Carolyn Kirk, mayor of the port city 30 miles northeast of Boston, said authorities are looking at whether to pursue statutory rape charges. "We're at the very early stages of wrestling with the complexities of this problem," she said.

"But we also have to think about the boys. Some of these boys could have their lives changed. They could be in serious, serious trouble even if it was consensual because of their age -- not from what the city could do but from what the girls' families could do," she told Reuters.

Under Massachusetts law, it is a crime to have sex with anyone under the age of 16.

"At the very least these men should be held responsible for financial support, if not put in jail for statutory rape as the mayor has suggested," Greg Verga, chairman of the Gloucester School Committee, told Reuters in a telephone interview.

Nationwide, teen pregnancies are showing signs of rising after steadily declining from 1991 to 2005. This trend was highlighted on Thursday when Britney Spears' 17-year-old sister Jamie Lynn, star of Nickelodeon's popular TV show "Zoey 101," gave birth to a baby girl, according to People magazine.

"The data seem to be indicating that the declines that we had seen through the 1990s are coming to a close," said David Landry, a researcher at the Guttmacher Institute, a New York-based nonprofit group focusing on reproductive issues.

Birth rates for teenagers aged 15 to 17 rose by 3 percent in 2006, the first increase since 1991, according to preliminary data released in December by the National Center for Health Statistics.

Mr. Landry cautioned against attributing the trend to Hollywood following the recent hit movie "Juno," in which a teenager gets pregnant and decides to have the baby, and "Knocked Up," a comedy about a one-night stand.

"The trend emerged before those movies," he said.

In Gloucester, the 1,200-student school administered 150 pregnancy tests to students in the past academic year. The school forbids the distribution of condoms and other contraception without parental consent -- a rule that prompted the school's doctor and nurse to resign in protest in May.

"But even if we had contraceptives, that pact shows that if they wanted to get pregnant, they will get pregnant. Whether we distribute contraceptives is irrelevant," said Mr. Verga.

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Judge rules teacher punishment too light
BY SAMUEL MAULL The Associated Press

    NEW YORK — A 90-day unpaid suspension is too light a punishment for a high school teacher who admitted online that she sought to seduce a 15-year-old male student, a judge has ruled.
    An arbitrator had recommended the penalty for 39-year-old Colleen McGraham, a tenured teacher at Staten Island’s New Dorp High School, who wondered in her blog in June 2005, “Will I ever get over this? Do I want to? I just love him so much.”
    State Supreme Court Justice Sheila Abdus-Salaam said the arbitrator’s recommendation of a 90-day unpaid suspension was “irrational” and “violates a strong public policy” to protect children.
    The judge sent the case back for a new penalty.
    There was no physical relationship between McGraham and the student. Prosecutors said Mc-Graham, who was 36 during the encounters in 2005, sent the 11th grader e-mails, called him and spoke to him in an attempt to seduce him. But the student instead reported McGraham to another teacher, who then told education officials.
    The Department of Education will seek to have McGraham fired during an upcoming hearing, said spokeswoman Margie Feinberg. Meanwhile, she has been assigned to an administrative office and has no contact with students, Feinberg said.
    Abdus-Salaam said the arbitrator seemed motivated by the fact that there was never a physical relationship between McGraham and the student, and the boy had gone to college and “moved on with his life.”
    But the fact a relationship didn’t develop, despite the feelings Mc-Graham expressed in her e-mails and blog entries, “may say more about the student’s maturity that the teacher’s ability to conduct herself appropriately,” the judge said.
    The arbitrator had said McGraham was unlikely to repeat the behavior, but the judge disagreed, saying she “continued her inappropriate contacts with (the student) even while acknowledging remorse about her feelings.”
    Abdus-Salaam also said McGraham did not seek emotional therapy until after her actions were reported by the student and an investigation started.
    McGraham, who represented herself at previous hearings, has an unlisted telephone number on Staten Island and could not be reached for comment.

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Schoharie school maintenance worker charged with sex abuse
Thursday, May 29, 2008
By Edward Munger Jr. (Contact)
Gazette Reporter

James D. Bouck Jr., a maintenance worker for the Schoharie Central School District, is accused by state police of having sexual activity with a child under age 11.


SCHOHARIE — A maintenance worker for the Schoharie Central School District is facing a felony sex charge following a state police investigation.
Troopers said James D. Bouck Jr., 33, of Bull Hill Road, Conesville, had sexual activity with a child under age 11. Further details on the case were not immediately available late today.
Bouck was charged with first-degree course of sexual conduct against a child and predatory sexual assault against a child, according to state police. He was arraigned in Cobleskill Town Court and sent to the Schoharie County jail without bail.
Police said no other victims were identified, but are asking anyone with information to contact the state police investigators in Princetown at 630-1700.