Spanish couple charged with lethal drugging of adopted daughter

Oct. 20, 2013 | 8:23 PM | 0 comments

SANTIAGO DE COMPOSTELA, Spain, Oct. 20 (UPI) -- A Spanish couple have been charged with killing the daughter they adopted from China 12 years ago by drugging her with sleeping pills.
Asunta Yong Fang Basterra Porto was found dead in September in a wooded area near a luxury villa inherited by her mother from her parents, ThinkSpain reported Sunday.

Her parents were charged with homicide, the Spanish equivalent of manslaughter, but that was recently upped to murder charges. Investigators said the 12-year-old girl had been given a lethal dose of sleeping pills shortly before her death.

Tests on her hair allegedly show she also received doses of drugs in July were large enough to knock her out.

Rosario Porto, who had worked as a lawyer, and her husband, Antonio Basterra, were separated at the time of Asunta's death but were living in houses next door to each other in Santiago de Compostela.

Charges against Spanish parents of China-born girl upped to murder
(AFP) – 3 days ago

Madrid — A Spanish judge on Friday upgraded charges relating to the death of the Chinese-born, 12-year-old adopted daughter of a couple from homicide to murder in a case that has gripped Spain.

Rosario Porto, a 44-year-old lawyer, and her ex-husband, 49-year-old journalist Alfonso Basterra, were charged last month with "homicide, possible murder" and imprisoned without bail while awaiting the results of toxicological tests on their daughter's body.

But after questioning the two suspects again on Friday, the judge leading the investigation raised the charges against them to murder because of "the aggravating circumstances of treachery and kinship", the High Court of Galicia said in a written statement.

Homicide is the legal term for killing without premeditation while murder charges apply in the case of a planned homicide.

A one-on-one interview with a biological mother of two, Francis Arriaga Thursday night.

Arriaga tells us that her kids were fostered for a year and a half, and then adopted by the Dixons for four years before their arrest.

She says that she had an abusive relationship with their dad which is my Child Protective Services got involved in the first place.

Arriaga says she is grateful for what they did then, but now she is raising serious questions about CPS.

When the Dixons were in the adoption process, she tells us that she fought hard to get her kids back.

She says she even speculated abuse back then and reported this.

The Dixons were arrested October 2nd for injury to a child.

Officials say they had 10 adopted kids, and now all 10 kids have been removed from the home.

Her frustration is that if they would have listened then, all of this could have been prevented.

By Suzette Brewer

A family court judge in South Carolina has scheduled a hearing on October 25 to finalize of the adoption of Baby Deseray, despite an Oklahoma court ruling last month that granted custody to the Absentee Shawnee Tribe, and ordered her return to that state. The infant, who was removed from Oklahoma shortly after her birth in May by Bobby and Diane Bixler of Irmo, South Carolina, has been the subject of a second heated interstate custody battle between an Oklahoma Indian tribe and the state of South Carolina. The Bixlers are represented by Raymond Godwin, attorney for Nightlight Christian Adoptions of Greenville, South Carolina, and Paul Swain, a Tulsa, Oklahoma attorney. Both lawyers also represented Matt and Melanie Capobianco in their adoption of Veronica, which was finalized in September after a bitter four-year custody battle with the girl's biological father, Dusten Brown.

Former Cape attorney charged with sexually exploiting a child
October 16, 2013
By TIFFANY REPECKI (trepecki@breezenewspapers.com) , Cape Coral Daily Breeze

A former Cape Coral attorney is accused of sexually exploiting two boys between 2009 and 2011.

John Rex Powell, 41, has been charged with one count of conspiracy to sexually exploit a child and five counts of sexual exploitation of a child by the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Southern District of Indiana. He is scheduled for a jury trial Oct. 28 before U.S. District Court Judge Sara Evans Barker.

Assistant U.S. Attorneys Steven DeBrota and Brant Cook are handling the case.

Attorneys Kathleen Sweeney and Charles Hayes, in Indianapolis, are representing Powell.

Neither Sweeney nor Hayes returned a message Tuesday seeking comment on the case.

Woman, 27, subjected to a decade of abuse by cruel adoptive mother speaks of her shocking ordeal

Lita Morgan was forced to drink bleach from a cloth during years of abuse
Adoptive mother also held her head under water until she couldn't breathe
Miss Morgan has now spoken out after Christine Morgan was convicted
She said she never wants 'a child to suffer in the way I did'

By KELLY STRANGE

A woman subjected to a decade of abuse at the hands of her cruel adoptive mother has spoken of her ordeal for the first time.

Christine Morgan forced her adoptive daughter to drink bleach from a cloth used to clean toilets during her ten-year reign of terror.

The violence also included holding the child’s head under the bath water until she couldn’t breathe and threatening to kill her.

Lita Morgan, who was adopted when she was two-years-old, has now spoken out after her mother was convicted of cruelty against her.

Miss Morgan, 27, reported the crimes to police after suffering post-traumatic stress, caused by the abuse, as an adult.

October 12, 2013
Christensen guilty of manslaughter in Beverly slaying
Christensen faces up to 20 years when he's sentenced for manslaughter

BY JULIE MANGANIS
STAFF WRITER

BEVERLY — A young Beverly man could face up to 20 years in prison when he is sentenced later this month for the manslaughter conviction a Salem Superior Court jury handed down yesterday afternoon.

Sajan “Sage” Christensen, 20, who had been facing a first-degree murder charge, was found guilty of the lesser offense of voluntary manslaughter in the March 17, 2011 stabbing death of James “J.P.” Vernazzaro.

Christensen, who showed no visible reaction to the verdict, will be sentenced Oct. 21. His lawyer, Raymond Buso, gave him a pat on the back as the verdict was announced.

Vernazzaro’s brother and sister were visibly upset and crying as they left the courthouse.

Christensen, who was 18 at the time of the killing, and a second teen, Adam Martin, then 17, went to Balch Park on the night of March 17, 2011 to meet Vernazzaro, 26.

Who would give up an adopted child?
By Tina Traster
October 12, 2013 | 10:19pm

It had been three years since Beth and Tom Remboldt had adopted Galina, a little girl from Russia.

Abused as a child, the 9-year-old was nearly impossible to handle. She screamed, she hit, she would stand stone-still and refuse to move when things didn’t go her way. If we just loved her a little more, Beth thought, we’ll survive this.

Then one day, Beth was unpacking the dishwasher with Galina. She left the room for a moment and when she returned, there were feces on the clean dishes. Beth asked her daughter why she’d done that. “I want you to eat my poop and die,” she said.

Love, it seemed, was not enough.

“At this point I started fearing for my safety and for my family’s safety,” Beth said. “Did she really want us to die?”

The Remboldts considered the unthinkable, something that went against all they believed in as adoptive parents.
They would have to give Galina up.

‘EXACTLY WHAT WE WERE LOOKING FOR’

October 11, 2013
Jury deliberates in Beverly slaying
BY JULIE MANGANIS
STAFF WRITER

BEVERLY — It’s a case about “what was gong on in this young man’s mind,” said Sajan “Sage” Christensen’s attorney in his closing argument to jurors yesterday.

But just what was going on in Christensen’s head when he stabbed James “J.P.” Vernazzaro, 26, to death on a Beverly playground on St. Patrick’s Day, 2011?

Was he a traumatized teenager lashing out in fear of the older, larger Vernazzaro?

Or was he someone, enraged over being “dissed” and told by others that he could never win a fight with the victim, plotted with co-defendant Adam Martin an “ambush?”

That’s one of the questions jurors are now mulling as they decide whether Christensen, 20, who has admitted to the stabbing in court, is guilty of premeditated murder or manslaughter, or not guilty of any crime.

Local attorney charged in world wide pedophile ring
By Dave Culbreth
CREATED OCT. 11, 2013 - UPDATED: OCT. 12, 2013

CAPE CORAL, Fla. - Investigators from several places around the world say former Cape Coral attorney Rex Powell was the leader of a ring which had a chat room called BoyLover.net which had 70,000 members until it was shut down. The investigation started five years ago but until they arrested all 184 men the court documents were sealed, until Friday.

"He's a man I knew! A lawyer in this city, in this town," says Stuart Pepper, who himself is an attorney in Cape Coral.

Powell was a lawyer based in Southwest Florida from 2007 until he was arrested in late 2011. "He was well respected, had a good clientle, appeared to be an up and coming lawyer," added Pepper.

According to documents obtained by FOX4 from Federal Court in Indianapolis investigators, "recovered videos and stills depicting a boy who was between 22 months old and 5 years old engaged in sex acts with John Rex Powell."

Wednesday, October 9, 2013

A Painful Decision To Give Up Two Adopted Children

Writer Joyce Maynard has been very open with her readers about her life. When she adopted two girls from Ethiopia in 2010, she wrote about it in More magazine.

But two years later, she decided to give up the girls to another family. She speaks to Here & Now about that decision.

Interview Highlights: Joyce Maynard

On deciding to adopt two children

“At the age of 55, with you can say either huge idealism or ignorance, I believed that I care for and make life okay for any child. And I missed doing that. My children were long gone and so I sought out an easily found two sisters who were of an age that was not going to make adoption easy for them. And I went to Ethiopia and I brought them home. And certainly did so with an utter, absolute resolution that I would be their mother forever.”

On the decision to give them up

CARTHAGE, Missouri — The Missouri Court of Appeals has upheld a lower court ruling that allowed a southwest Missouri couple to adopt a boy over the objections of his biological mother from Guatemala, whose parental rights were terminated after she was arrested in an immigration raid at a poultry processing plant.

In a unanimous decision handed down Monday, the court found in favor of the adoptive parents, Seth and Melinda Moser of Carthage, who have raised the 6-year-old child since he was a year old, The Joplin Globe reported (http://bit.ly/19zsxgX ).

The boy's biological mother, Encarnacion Romero, had challenged a July 2012 decision that found she had abandoned and neglected the child after she was arrested on immigration violations when the child was 11 months old.

Many of Bail Romero's supporters, including the American Civil Liberties Union of Missouri, have contended that her parental rights were severed because she was in the country illegally.

October 9, 2013
Cook children to remain in foster care
Parents' criminal trial set for December

By Matt Smith/msmith@trcle.com

Visiting Judge Keith Dean on Thursday ordered that the seven children of David and Angel Cook are to remain in foster homes and under the supervision of the Texas Department of Family and Protective Services.

Officials removed the Cleburne couple’s children, who range in age from 1 to 13, after the March 22 death of Buddy Cook, their 4-year-old adopted son.

The Cooks have both been charged with injury to a child by omission in connection with Buddy’s death. Their trial date on those charges has been set for Dec. 9.

Patrick Barkman, attorney for the David and Angel Cook, argued during a September custody hearing in the 413th District Court that it would be in the remaining seven children’s best interest to be placed with Bonnie Taylor, a family friend.

October 8, 2013
Doctor says teen was depressed, suffered PTSD

BY JULIE MANGANIS STAFF WRITER

BEVERLY — The Brookline psychiatrist who treated Sajan “Sage” Christensen for more than three years, until just months before Christensen was charged in the stabbing death of a Beverly man, told jurors yesterday that Christensen suffered from depression, post-traumatic stress disorder and reactive attachment disorder.

But Dr. Steven Nickman was barred from testifying about the sources of those conditions, after the judge presiding over Christensen’s trial agreed with prosecutors that such testimony would be hearsay.

Instead, Christensen’s attorney, Ray Buso, will have to call other witnesses, including Christensen himself, to describe the abuse, neglect and turmoil during his childhood that, the defense argues, led to his decision to arm himself for a fight with James “J.P.” Vernazzaro.

Christensen, now 20, was 18 when he and a second teen, Adam Martin, then 17, agreed to a fight with Vernazzaro, 26.

Inquest into Jeffrey Baldwin’s death hears children’s aid involved with grandma
Dead boy's mother says children's aid worker was passed off as friend of the family while checking up.

By: Allison Jones The Canadian Press, Published on Tue Oct 08 2013

The mother of a five-year-old boy who starved to death at the hands of his grandparents says she had no idea her parents had a sordid history of child abuse when she consented to placing her kids in their care.

Yvonne Kidman testified Tuesday at a coroner’s inquest into the death of Jeffrey Baldwin, who weighed just 21 pounds when he died, about the same as he did on his first birthday.

“If I would have known all this stuff about my parents I wouldn’t put my kids in that spot,” she said.

But despite Norman Kidman and Elva Bottineau’s history of child abuse, the Catholic Children’s Aid Society not only placed Jeffrey and his siblings under their care, they had sent foster children to the couple years earlier, the inquest heard.