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CNN Newsnight Aaron Brown
Protecting Our Children
Aired March 21, 2005 - 22:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
AARON BROWN, CNN ANCHOR: Good evening again everyone.
A few hundred miles from where Terri Schiavo's life is being debated, Jessica Lunsford's life is being mourned. Her brief life and her violent death are reminders of the dangers that sexual predators present to children but also an opportunity to look at the problem and some of the solutions that get lost in the rush of daily headlines. And we'll do that in this hour.
But we can't escape the headline tonight. Florida today charged the man accused of the 9-year-old's death with capital murder, a man the criminal justice system knew only too well, which raises its own troubling questions.
And we begin tonight with CNN's Heidi Collins.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
HEIDI COLLINS, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): From the time he was 18 years old, the jail cells John Evander Couey visited all had revolving doors.
MARK LUNSFORD, FATHER OF JESSICA LUNSFORD: He's been arrested, what did you say, 28 times?
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Twenty-three.
LUNSFORD: Twenty-three times. What in the hell is this man doing out here? It doesn't matter what crime he's committed 23 times. Why is he still available to be out here and hurt people?
COLLINS: At least 24 arrests in Florida alone and 14 of those arrests made by the Citrus County Sheriff's Office, the county where Jessica Lunsford lived.
Couey's record is laced with burglaries, DUIs, drug charges, writing bad checks, none of which carried long sentences, then, in 1987 a different type of crime, a conviction for indecent exposure, three days in jail and a fine.
Four years later, John Couey was arrested and charged with fondling a child. He pleaded guilty to a lesser charge of attempted fondling and was sentenced to the maximum five years. He served a little less than half that, which was fairly typical for felons in Florida. Florida law now requires those convicted of serious crimes to serve 75 percent of their sentence. When he became a free man again, Couey had his name and photo put on a law enforcement Web site, as required, to give the public a chance to log on and see if released sex offenders were living in their neighborhood.
Couey eventually moved to this house within sight of Jessica Lunsford's home but that's not the address he had listed on a sex offender Web site.
JOSEPH DAWSON, PETITION CREATOR: I appreciate every signature that you can get for us.
COLLINS: Now in the town where Jessica lived there is an appetite to toughen the law. A local jeweler is circulating a petition.
DAWSON: Under the system that I would present, number one the man would have got 50 years and Jessica would still be alive today.
COLLINS: But tough laws do not guarantee thorough enforcement. As Citrus County Police acknowledged in this case, they did not know John Couey's real address.
KENDALL COFFEY, LEGAL ANALYST: We are relying on the honor system, counting on the registered sexual offenders themselves to tell us when they move and to count on people who have already violated society's laws in a horrible way to, in effect, provide the enforcement is obviously a formula that's doomed to failure.
COLLINS: There are more than 30,000 people classified as sex offenders or predators in Florida. Law enforcement officials agree keeping track of them all would require many more police officers. For now, it's the honor system.
Heidi Collins, CNN, New York.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
BROWN: Among those hundreds of people who tried to find Jessica Lunsford was a retired police detective named Charles Masino (ph). This work, searching for missing children, was his professional life. It eventually became his personal calling. So, even in retirement he continues to do what he did for a generation despite the sorrow that goes with it.
Here's CNN's Deborah Feyerick.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
DEBORAH FEYERICK, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Detective Charles Masino is not the kind of guy who retires easily. Then again, when your life is about finding missing children, it's not the kind of job you just walk away from.
CHARLES MASINO, INVESTIGATOR, TEAM ADAM: It's the single most important crime that's the most difficult to solve. In other words, you can have a case of a missing child and there's no evidence. If you work homicide, you have a body.
FEYERICK: When he heard 9-year-old Jessica Lunsford had been snatched from her bedroom in the middle of the night, Masino did what he always does.
MASINO: Well, I got right on the computer and contacted the center to see if I could be of assistance.
FEYERICK: He's been searching for missing kids for more than two decades, first as a detective with the Phoenix, Arizona police department and now as part of an elite team of retired police officers and federal agents.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: But not very many law enforcement agencies have experience handling these types of cases. We want to get experienced investigators out to the scene to assist law enforcement.
FEYERICK: They work from their homes as members of Team Adam, named after the abducted son of TV host John Walsh, the co-founder of the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children. Even when there's little evidence Masino believes almost every abduction can be solved.
MASINO: Because somewhere in this folder or somewhere in the police report there's an answer.
FEYERICK: The reason boyfriends and girlfriends break up. Relationships change, like the time in Phoenix when Masino convinced a woman he'd interviewed years earlier to come clean about what her boyfriend at the time had done to a 12-year-old girl.
MASINO: I have a tape of a young lady that witnessed the murder of 12-year-old Amy and what this girl turned around and said to this woman who was in the car, the suspect was a male, she was driving and looks up at her and says, "I thought you were my friend. I loved you."
FEYERICK: That woman ultimately testified at trial as the government's star witness. For Masino it's that kind of payoff, part obsession, part crusade that keeps him searching.
MASINO: We're adults. We can figure out what's going on. Imagine a child ten years old, five years old, 12 years old being ripped out of their home or ripped off the street and then this monster, not a suspect, does something to them personally, whether it's rape or some type of sexual assault. They're still not fathoming what's happening. They're crying. And then that person kills them.
FEYERICK: The majority of children abducted by a stranger never return alive. Still at the end of the day Masino feels he's done good.
MASINO: If you do something that does return a child safely or a kind word to a parent there is no other high.
FEYERICK: Deborah Feyerick CNN, Newport Center, Vermont. (END VIDEOTAPE)
BROWN: The reverse sadly, it seems, is also true. There's no greater sorrow, no greater sense of failure than not being able to save the abducted child. The realities of child abductions are unforgiving. The predator holds all the cards. The clock seems as great an enemy as the predator himself. Victories are rare.
And another reality, regrets live on, sometimes for a lifetime; from California tonight, CNN's Miguel Marquez.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
MIGUEL MARQUEZ, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Her name was Samantha Runnion. As soon as she was abducted, Sheriff Mike Carona knew he was in a race against time.
SHERIFF MICHAEL CARONA, ORANGE COUNTY, CALIF.: If you don't find that child within the first three hours, 74 percent of the children are dead.
MARQUEZ: But this sheriff was ready, a deputy at Samantha's house just four minutes after she was taken, a sketch of the suspect widely circulated and he used what was then a new method to tell the county a child was missing, an Amber Alert.
CARONA: During the early hours we were very, very hopeful, again because we had such a quick response. Unlike a lot of other law enforcement agencies across this country, we had already run an Amber Alert.
MARQUEZ: So hopeful he made a promise to Samantha's mother.
CARONA: Where it became personal for me is the first time I had to sit down with Erin Runnion and ask her for a picture of Samantha so we could get that out to the public and telling her, much like I'm looking you in the eyes and saying "I'll bring Samantha home alive."
MARQUEZ: Carona all but begged the public for help and he got it, thousands of phone calls, tips, but soon came the call no one wanted to hear.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Oh, my God we found a dead body. Please hurry. Okay. I'm in the Ortegas, okay? Ortega Mountains I'm in Riverside County, okay?
MARQUEZ: The sheriff, a self-described by-the-book man, went into denial.
CARONA: To a person we didn't want to believe it. There was an absolute sense of denial by all of us.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: They believe they found a small child, the body of a small child here in this ravine.
MARQUEZ: The race to save Samantha had failed. Now Mike Carona's mission was a manhunt. Again, he made it personal.
CARONA: Don't sleep. Don't eat because we're coming after you. We will take every resource that's available to us to bring you to justice.
MARQUEZ: Within days the hunt was over. Alejandro Avila was arrested. Again, the sheriff didn't mince words.
CARONA: I am 100 percent certain that Mr. Avila is the man who kidnapped and murdered Samantha Runnion.
MARQUEZ: Later when thousands came to mourn the little girl and the sheriff rose to speak, something remarkable happened. First they applauded. Then they stood. Later, even the president would thank the sheriff.
GEORGE W. BUSH, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: I want to congratulate you for your good work in helping make your community as safe as possible.
MARQUEZ: The race to save Samantha was not in vain. Just days after her death, California made Amber Alerts a state law. Congress and the president soon followed. Samantha's mother, Erin, became an advocate for child safety.
ERIN RUNNION, SAMANTHA'S MOTHER: Since then there have been 40, over 40 Amber Alerts issued in the State of California and every single child has been recovered alive.
MARQUEZ: But almost two years later the case that grabbed Mike Carona's heart still doesn't let go. He gave his word to Samantha's mother and he failed to keep it.
CARONA: I did make a commitment to her mother and I failed in that original commitment and that part that's the one that you just grapple with and sticks with you I mean the rest of your life, probably will the rest of my life.
MARQUEZ: This sheriff will always remember the little girl he never met.
Miguel Marquez, CNN.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
BROWN: The trial of Samantha Runnion's alleged killer began today. If convicted, Alejandro Avila could get the death penalty. If he does, it will be the exception to the rule. The vast majority of predators don't kill. Most eventually get out of prison, which raises two questions. What kind of monitoring and treatment do they receive and does any of it work?
As to the second, CNN's Jason Carroll asked a sex offender.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE) JASON CARROLL, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): In 1999, Stephen Simmons was convicted of sexually molesting a teenage boy he met on the Internet, Samuel Mansy (ph). Mansy was 14 at the time. Simmons says his contact with Mansy lasted about a year. After several years in prison, he has accepted some responsibility for what he did.
STEPHEN SIMMONS, CONVICTED CHILD MOLESTER: Whatever the law is, as long as you put that child in a position where they can be hurt, you're hurting that child and you are wrong.
CARROLL: Before his arrest, Simmons had two prior convictions involving sexual activities with minors but he says he received little treatment during or after his previous incarceration.
One comprehensive study shows slightly more than 17 percent of sex offenders who were not treated after being released were re- arrested for sex crimes. Counselors, like Will Ford, have had the most success with low level offenders but says the most serious cases he sees don't respond to therapy or medication.
WILL FORD, COUNSELOR: I believe that there are some people who just won't make it on the street. There are some folks who cannot control their behavior and, in those situations, if you can't keep them incarcerated, you have to look at another avenue of managing these individuals.
CARROLL: Lawmakers in more than a dozen states have found another avenue. It's called civil commitment. It allows courts to keep offenders, like Simmons, who has already served his maximum sentence, in treatment centers like this one. Simmons says it's nothing more than an extended prison sentence.
SIMMONS: Because you just can't take a person and throw their life away.
CARROLL: Simmons has been here more than two years and continues undergoing treatment until a court determines he's well enough to be let out. Some legal experts say tougher sentencing is the answer not civil commitment.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: What states really should do, though, is recognize that these are criminals and not patients and change the sentencing laws.
CARROLL: Simmons says the treatment he's received since being civilly committed has made him well enough to be released but he wouldn't say cured.
SIMMONS: I'd be lying if I sat here and said I'm no threat, I'll never be a threat again, there's no chance of it ever happening, because there's always, even if it's a little chance.
CARROLL: A chance many are not willing to take.
Jason Carroll CNN, Carney, New Jersey.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
BROWN: That's what the offender says, which brings us to Dr. Sanjay Gupta, who joins us tonight.
Incurable is about as strong as we could come up with. Are they incurable?
DR. SANJAY GUPTA, CNN MEDICAL CORRESPONDENT: That's probably an accurate term. You heard it from the mouth of a molester himself there. Listen, you know, lots of different psychiatric diseases out there when it comes to child molestation it actually has a clinical diagnosis, pedophilia.
And within that, Aaron, it connotes that it's a diagnosis and there are potentially treatments but no one has taken that second step in saying there is a cure for this.
BROWN: Do we know what -- I mean we know, for example, with depression we know that there are certain things that go on in the brain. There are certain chemicals that are or aren't there. Do we know in this case what is or isn't working?
GUPTA: Well, there's not a specific sort of chemical that they know, for example, changes in people who have pedophilia. What they do know is more recently they've tried treating people who have pedophilia with certain drugs, including some of the same drugs that are used to treat depression, Serotonin, re-uptake inhibitors, a lot of people -- Prozac is one of them.
A lot of people know these medications. More recently they've been used to try and treat pedophilia as well. The typical sequence is that someone starts with behavioral therapy. We've talked to some people who treat sex offenders regularly. They say behavioral therapy is the first line of treatment 80 percent of the time.
An additional 15 to 20 percent of the time they're also going to add these medications as antidepressants and then, as you heard in the piece just earlier, you could potentially use something known as chemical castration as well. They're not talking about surgical castration but just giving medications to try and reduce the amount of testosterone.
The obvious reason is to try and block, stop and eliminate any of these sexual cravings and urgings towards children and then as part of behavioral therapy, to try and re-associate adults with adults.
BROWN: And does chemical castration work?
GUPTA: Well, again, you know, it's a question of how do you define that? That's very difficult.
BROWN: I define it by they don't attack children anymore.
GUPTA: Well, what's the recidivism rate? There's actual numbers on this sort of thing to try and determine how likely are they to actually do it and be caught again and that's the only way you can really tell.
And the reason I'm pursing my words, Aaron, it's an important point because there are probably a lot of sexual offenders who are offending regularly who are never caught and, therefore, you just don't know for sure did it work or not unless you actually catch them in the process.
So, we went to the Department of Justice actually and what we find is that if you take all criminal pediatric sexual offenders, you know, offending children, about 13 percent recidivism rate in terms of reconviction, so 13 percent.
But that doesn't give us a sense of how many are actually out there molesting children. If they go into treatment programs, you can reduce that number by about eight to ten percent.
BROWN: Sanjay, good to have you with us again tonight, Sanjay Gupta with us.
GUPTA: Thank you.
BROWN: Much more ahead on this special edition of NEWSNIGHT, starting with people who pose the biggest danger to your children, people they know.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: They're either family, friends, teachers, soccer coaches, bus drivers. They are in positions to be around children.
BROWN (voice-over): How to keep your child safe from predators close to home.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I felt sick to my stomach. I think that's everybody's worst fear or nightmare to know that there is a predator that lives that close to you in your proximity where you have small children.
BROWN: What she and her neighbors did when they learned a sex offender was living near the local school.
Danger on the playing field, can background checks on coaches keep predators away?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: If you're out donating your time with all these kids, and the parents are trusting you, you know that's a good thing for the parents.
BROWN: Do you know enough about your child's coach?
From New York and around the world this is a NEWSNIGHT special.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
(COMMERCIAL BREAK) BROWN: In a moment, how to protect your children without terrifying them, not an easy task that.
First, we're a little late, a little past quarter past the hour. We got to Atlanta to Erica Hill to check on some of the other stories making news tonight -- Erica.
(NEWSBREAK)
BROWN: Erica, thank you. We'll see you in half an hour.
Horror stories, there are plenty of them, rarely tell the entire story. They are pieces of a complicated puzzle and other pieces are missing and some don't fit where you'd expect them to. Such is the case with those who prey on children. By and large, they rarely make news and they rarely are who you may think they are.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
BROWN (voice-over): When you're talking about those who prey on children, you're rarely talking about the stranger slithering in the bedroom window and almost always talking about a friend, a relative, a caregiver, someone with easy access.
ERNIE ALLEN, NATL. CTRT. FOR MISSING & EXPLOITED CHILDREN: The vast majority of those who prey upon children are not pure strangers in the eye and the mind of the child. Most of them seek legitimate access to children, try to literally seduce children, break down their inhibitions and then victimize them.
BROWN: But for all the attention these cases get, the tracking of sexual predators is often uneven at best, sloppy and mismanaged at worst that according to the people who deal with the issue on a day-in day-out basis.
ALISON FEIGH, JACOB WETTERLING FOUNDATION: There is a lack of funding. There is sometimes a lack of follow through. There isn't necessarily a national group that's maintaining to make sure each state is doing it the same way, so there's frustration.
BROWN: California has long required convicted sexual offenders to register with police but, according to the latest numbers, more than 20,000 convicted predators in California are unaccounted for. Nationally, there are an estimated 400,000 sex offenders on the books but 20 percent of those are said to be missing as well.
ALLEN: Our whole system of supervision of offenders in this country is overwhelmed already, so this is a problem that is one of resources and we also think it's a problem that is a result of uneven inconsistent law and lack of uniformity and consistency between the 50 states.
BROWN: Every state now has a version of the so-called Megan's Law where sex offenders are supposed to check in periodically with authorities after their release from prison but only 23 states make it a felony for the offender not to do so. ALLEN: Registration is not very meaningful if it's not enforced, if it's not complied with, if there aren't periodic rechecks.
BROWN: Over the last decade or so, some states have found ways to keep offenders locked up after their sentences have been served if they believe the person still presents a danger. They use civil commitment laws.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: If we can show that he has the requisite mental disorder, usually pedophilia, and has a propensity to commit sex offenses, then it is possible for us to commit that person to the Department of Corrections.
BROWN: But laws deal with crimes committed and the challenges to teach children how to avoid being a victim in the first place, be it a stranger or friend.
FEIGH: So we teach them instead to look at behavior of any adults, you know. If any adult you know, whether they're related to you or not, gives you money check first with your parents. If any adult, you know, attempts to touch you in a way that's uncomfortable or in a sexual manner, talk to your parents right away.
BROWN: We should strive to make children wise without terrifying them. We should make them safe without imprisoning them. And, as adults, we should not forget how vulnerable they can be.
ALLEN: The reality is that two-thirds of the reported sexual assault cases in the United States involve child victims. The vast majority of the victims of America's sex offenders are kids. The majority of the nation's rape victims are kids and somehow America has missed it.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
BROWN: Unlike many Americans, Dr. Eli Newberger is well aware of the dangers facing children. He's a pediatrician and the founder of the Child Protection Team at Children's Hospital in Boston. We're pleased to see him tonight.
I want to talk about how parents should and can talk to their kids about this. But I want to ask one thing first. You said to us earlier that these people have in your view an addiction and that they see themselves in some respects as the one being seduced.
DR. ELI NEWBERGER, AUTHOR, "CHILD ABUSE": Absolutely, there's no question but that very many people who offend against children have distorted perceptions of their relationship to the victim and feel that a child wants sexual contact with them. This derives, Aaron, in no small part from their own experiences as victims in childhood and the way they come to terms both with sexual impulses and with power imperatives.
BROWN: Yes. Let's talk about parents for a bit. I think that my concern as a parent, particularly when my kid was young, is on the one hand you want her to be aware and, on the other hand, you don't want to create undue anxiety, so how do we balance?
NEWBERGER: Well, the most important thing that parents need to keep in mind in my view is the priority that attaches to sustaining a relationship of trust with you. So, it's important for parents to assure children that they'll do all possible to protect them.
And, at the same time, give them tools in order to understand which touches are bad, what to do if someone tells you that he wants you to keep something secret, what to do if someone tries to give you gifts that don't seem right, and then how you as a parent can act on your own gut impressions that things may not be right.
BROWN: Do you think -- this may sound crazy but do you think having a young boy as a babysitter for a young girl child is a crazy thing to do?
NEWBERGER: Frankly because the great number of predators are males and because it's in a setting of babysitting relationships that a lot of offenses take place, I'd be extremely cautious in not having a boy baby sit whom you really didn't know and even then to be alert to any possible perturbations of your child's behavior or signs of trouble.
BROWN: It's a very -- they can be very manipulative people and often put themselves in situations, be it the coach of an athletic team, leader of a troop, in some cases the spouse of someone with children.
NEWBERGER: Exactly and, in fact there are very many people who are quite intelligent who are so motivated to get access to children and to have intimate access to children that people train for years in specialized disciplines.
In my own profession in pediatrics there are pedophiles. Obviously there are other pillars of the community, Boy Scout leaders, church leaders who spend a great deal of time preparing themselves and (UNINTELLIGIBLE) themselves into children's lives.
BROWN: Doc, we've been familiar with your work for a while and it's good work and we appreciate it and your time tonight. Thank you.
NEWBERGER: Thank you.
BROWN: Thank you.
In a moment an example of people doing all the right things, a community united to face down a sex offender.
And what the FBI is learning about catching predators, learning from children.
A special edition of NEWSNIGHT, Protecting our Children, continues after the break.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK) BROWN: It's easy to assume that, once a predator has a child in his hands, the odds of that child escaping are small. And, statistically, that's probably true. But this story is proof that teaching children to fight back may help them beat the odds. Candy McBride did.
Here's CNN's Ed Lavandera.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
ED LAVANDERA, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Candy McBride is 9 years old, 4'8'' all and is stuck at 79 pounds. But don't let cute fool you.
(on camera): For all the other fourth-graders who might see this out there, how would you describe yourself?
CANDY MCBRIDE, FOURTH GRADE STUDENT: Athletic, funny. I can kick butt.
LAVANDERA (voice-over): That's the strong-willed attitude her family says helped Candy put 26-year-old Jimmy Guard in jail. The 5'10'', 185-pound man is awaiting trial for attempted kidnapping. He's accused of trying to abduct Candy last November and has pled not guilty.
CHARLOTTE CARR, MOTHER OF CANDY: She come like up through the grass, or what have you, and she was cutting across here. And so it happened just like right here.
LAVANDERA: Candy had just got off her school bus when police say Guard jumped from behind a tree.
CARR: When he grabbed her, he put his hands over her mouth, and he had her arms up behind her head.
LAVANDERA (on camera): The attack happened about 100 yards away from Candy's home and also just a few feet away from a busy roadway. It was 4:00 in the afternoon. Cars were driving by. Other kids were walking home from school. But, still, no one was close enough to help.
(voice-over): Candy was alone, but hardly helpless. In an instant, this little fourth-grader got mad enough to unleash her fury.
MCBRIDE: He came behind me and put my hands like that. And then I turned. I kicked him like that. I turned around. I punched him. Then he punched me back. Then I slapped him. He slapped me back. And then I hit him one more time in the stomach. Then I ran home.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: No. No.
LAVANDERA: Candy developed the confidence to fight back in a self-defense training course called radKIDS.
ALLISON LAWSON, RADKIDS INSTRUCTOR: RadKIDS stance. Yell, stay back.
CHILDREN: Stay back. You're not my mom.
LAVANDERA: RAD stands for Resist Aggression Defensively. She took the class as a second-grader, but the lessons stuck.
MCBRIDE: Whoever hits me, believe me, they're going to get something back.
LAWSON: No. And then maybe they'll let go. What do we do? We run away and go tell somebody, right?
LAVANDERA: Allison Lawson is the instructor who taught Candy. She says the course doesn't just tell kids how to be safe. It shows them what to do to protect themselves, like how to elude and escape an attacker's grip.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Come with me, kid.
MCBRIDE: No.
LAWSON: One of the kids that I think radKIDS did for her was to help give her the mind-set, so that, when it really happens, they're able to kind of take control of that situation and instead of kind of freaking out for a minute and trying to decide what to do, there's a little bit of, oh, I know. There's a little bit of control there.
LAVANDERA: Not only did Candy get away. Police say she got a good enough look at the attacker that the next day she instantly picked Jimmy Guard out of a photo lineup. Candy's mother credits the radKIDS course for helping her daughter stay cool under pressure.
(on camera): Were you ever scared?
MCBRIDE: Never.
LAVANDERA: Never?
MCBRIDE: I'm not scared, not of anything but my mom.
(LAUGHTER)
LAVANDERA (voice-over): Candy has a message for every young child who thinks they're too small and weak to get away from a strong attacker. Confidence, she says, is key.
MCBRIDE: They can be 2 feet, for all I care. They can do it.
LAVANDERA: Almost five months after Candy McBride's escape, she's tired of talking about what happened. But her mom says there's a twinkle in Candy's eye because she knows she stared down a bad man and won.
Ed Lavandera, CNN, Provo, Utah.
(END VIDEOTAPE) BROWN: That's a great kid.
In a moment, the sex offender next door and what neighbors did about it. We'll take a break first.
This is a special edition of NEWSNIGHT, "Protecting Your Children."
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
BROWN: One of the most terrifying realities parents face is this. Unless you're at your child's side 24/7, how can you be sure that a predator won't cross their path? Even worse, what if you discover that a convicted sex offender is a neighbor? When parents in one Georgia neighborhood learned just that, they did something about it.
Here's CNN's David Mattingly.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
DAVID MATTINGLY, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): At first glance, it looks like so many other safe, well-to-do neighborhoods in a suburban sprawl north of Atlanta. But all it took to shatter the peace was one anonymous parent who visited a sexual offenders registry on a Web site run by the Georgia Bureau of Investigation.
Listed under the zip code, they found the name and picture of a new neighbor who had just moved from South Carolina and who had been convicted in 1997 of committing a lewd act upon a child under the age of 14.
CHRISTA KUGELMAN, FINDLEY CHASE RESIDENT: Panic, sick. I mean, I felt sick to my stomach.
MATTINGLY: There are more than 9,500 sexual offenders registered in Georgia, including two others in that same zip code, one convicted of sexual assault, the other of statutory rape. But this one case was different. Parents found a way to make the offender move.
(on camera): In accordance with the law, the offender notified the county sheriff's department of his move to Georgia. But unknown to those same authorities, he was living in violation of the terms of his parole, within 1,000 feet of the local elementary school.
(voice-over): Parents reported the zone violation to the county sheriff, and the offender was given two weeks to move.
JINNY CARTER, FINDLEY CHASE RESIDENT: The fact that we do live in a neighborhood where it is next to a school, it does give us a little bit more comfort, knowing that we know he cannot or a sex offender cannot move into our neighborhood.
MATTINGLY: But the failure of law enforcement to check for school proximity, according to critics, shows the system's limitations. MARC KLAAS, KLAAS KIDS FOUNDATION: Law enforcement budgets are being cut all over this country, as are a lot of other budgets, and it takes some form of resource to send a cop to an offender's address to ensure that he's there.
MATTINGLY: Marc Klaas's daughter Polly was kidnapped from a slumber party at their California home and murdered in 1993. Today, he is an activist for child safety and argues that more public vigilance would be more effective than expecting local police to be the watchdogs.
KLAAS: It's a big deal. The reality is, there are half a million of these guys. There's probably one in everybody's neighborhood. So, pushing them into somebody else's neighborhood is certainly not going to be the answer. The answer then is going to be, what do you do with information that you can use to protect your children?
MATTINGLY: Seven-point-two million hits to the sexual offender registry made it one of Georgia's most popular state Web sites in 2004. And parents in this case considered it a valuable resource, because there is now one sexual offender who is about to become some other neighborhood's worry.
David Mattingly, CNN, Atlanta.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
BROWN: Ahead on the program tonight, stalking child predators in cyberspace, how teenagers are helping the FBI do its job.
We take a break first. This is a special edition of NEWSNIGHT on CNN.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
BROWN: On the Internet, it's said you can be anything. So, the 13-year-old you're chatting with may not be 13 years old at all. He may be 30 years old with a good line and bad intentions. So, just as adults are trying to teach kids to be more careful, so too are kids trying to teach adults a thing or two. In this case, the adults are FBI agents. And, in this story, some of the language is graphic. Be warned.
Here's our justice correspondent Kelli Arena.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
KELLI ARENA, CNN JUSTICE CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Stacey Bradley has some images burned into her memory she will never be able to erase.
STACEY BRADLEY, FBI INNOCENT IMAGES TASK FORCE: I've seen a video where a child is being raped anally and, you know, bleeding. There's obviously some serious damage being done to a child. There's been -- I've seen images of a little boy's penis being cut with a pair of scissors.
ARENA: Bradley is a supervisory agent for the FBI's Innocent Images Task Force, which uses the Internet in two ways. It tracks down people who prey on children over the Internet and those who use the Web to showcase the horror.
A former fugitive hunter, she came up with the idea of publicizing pictures of suspected predators on "America's Most Wanted." The task force is still looking for these two John Does. In just over a year, 33 children have been rescued and four molesters caught.
BRADLEY: It's not the easiest thing in the work. It's not -- you know, I don't want to look at this stuff, any more than anybody else does. But when I go home and I hug my children, that's why we keep doing it, because it's about them. It's about protecting them.
ARENA: Because some predators pose as young kids on the net to lure victims, agents must know how to play the same game. Mary and Karen are both 15 and have been teaching FBI agents how to think and talk like teenagers for more than two years.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Some are cocky about it. They're like, we know this, but they don't.
ARENA: They give advice on music.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Like, some people don't even know who Jessica Simpson is.
ARENA: Fashion.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Like Birkenstocks.
ARENA: And how to chat online.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: And then DOS and MOS, which is, like, dad over shoulder and then mom over shoulder.
ARENA: These two know the possible dangers, but many of their peers and their parents do not.
BRADLEY: I don't know how many times I've given -- you know, I go to a PTA or I go to a school and the kids are looking at me like there's really -- this really does happen? You know, they're shocked. Or I have a parent that comes up to me and says, really? There really are? This is really that out there? Because, I thought, you know, it's just once in a blue moon thing.
There are individuals out there that are looking to hurt your children.
ARENA: The Justice Department says one out of every five kids who goes online is solicited for sex. Bradley says the age-old guidance for children still applies. Don't talk to strangers, especially over the Internet. Kelli Arena, CNN, Calverton, Maryland.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
BROWN: Still ahead tonight, we'll check the other news of the day, morning papers coming along, too.
This is a special edition of NEWSNIGHT from New York.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
BROWN: Moving up towards the top of the hour, we go to Atlanta and Erica Hill for some of the other news of the day -- Erica.
HILL: Hello again, Aaron.
Ten people are dead in northern Minnesota tonight after a shooting rampage there. Officials say a high school student shot and killed his grandparents at their home on the Red Lake Indian Reservation. He then went to his school, where he opened fire, killing five students, a teacher, and a security guard before turning the gun on himself. As many as 13 other people were hurt. Officials believe the gunman was acting alone and say it's too early at this hour to speculate on a possible motive.
Both sides in the Terri Schiavo case are now waiting to hear from a federal judge in Florida. The judge is considering a request from Schiavo's parents to reinsert her feeding tube.
A dramatic rescue, meantime, in rough seas off the coast of California, where 20 people aboard a large sailing ship were stranded when it went aground off Oxnard. Now, some of them, as you saw there, started jumping overboard as the waves rocked the ship and pushed it toward the rocks. Rescuers on small watercraft were able to pull the sailors to safety.
I'm Erica hill.
NEWSNIGHT WITH AARON BROWN returns in just a moment.
But, first, in our anniversary series "Then and Now," we profile the woman who held the post of U.S. attorney general during the Clinton administration.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
JANET RENO, ATTORNEY GENERAL: I made the decision. I'm accountable. The buck stops with me.
PAULA ZAHN, CNN ANCHOR (voice-over): Plainspoken and tough, Janet Reno became the first woman U.S. attorney general. A star of the Clinton cabinet, she had the president's confidence. And ultimately took responsibility and heat for the Elian Gonzalez case and the Branch Davidian standoff in Waco, Texas.
She was attorney general for eight years, earning a spot in pop culture by being impersonated on "Saturday Night Live." Reno even made a guest appearance when she left office.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP, "SATURDAY NIGHT LIVE")
RENO: I just dance. Now hit it!
(END VIDEO CLIP)
ZAHN: Reno is now 66 years old and living in Miami. She's currently working on various legal issues and supports Everglades conservation. Despite dealing with Parkinson's Disease, she hasn't slowed down or lost her sense of humor.
RENO: You just get used to the phantom wing shaking.
ZAHN: Reno ran for Florida governor in 2002. She doesn't plan on running for public office again. She enjoys spending time with her nieces and nephews, and is an avid kayaker.
RENO: Time to smell the roses, to appreciate kayaking, to listen to a symphony, to spend time with the people I love. And it's a good way to live.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
(ROOSTER CROWING)
BROWN: Okeydoke, time to check morning papers from around the country, kind of a quick whip through them. I haven't said whip on the program in a long time, have I?
"The Rocky Mountain." Two stories pretty much dominate the papers. "School Rampage. "The Rocky Mountain News." "Student Gunman Kills Grandparents at home, Then Seven" -- actually, now I think eight -- "on Minnesota Campus," northern Minnesota. This would resonate particularly I guess in the Denver area. Also, the president was there. "Whistle-stop for Social Security," one of those town hall meetings where everyone comes and agrees with the president. Go figure that.
"The Washington Times" plays the Terri Schiavo -- this is the other big story of the day -- prominently. "Schiavo Still Without Feeding Tube. Judge Hears Arguments, Refuses to Issue Ruling." And then a sidebar story. They kind of go after the husband and "Husband's Motives in Question" is their second story on that.
The story I like best on the Schiavo case -- is there a sadder story out there? Whoa. "The Cincinnati Enquirer." I suspect other local newspapers have done this, too. "Local Families Face Similar Decisions Nearly Every Day." It's been good, in a sad circumstance, to have a national conversation about this sort of thing, even as unpleasant as it is.
"Christian Science Monitor." "The Politics of Life in the Balance" takes a look at Washington. And just so you don't think it's all crazy, "Camilla Will Be Queen Unless M.P.s change law." That's "The Times of London." Won't be my queen.
The weather tomorrow in Chicago is "heartless."
Good to see you all again. We'll see you again tomorrow. Good night for all of us.
TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com
Aired March 21, 2005 - 22:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
AARON BROWN, CNN ANCHOR: Good evening again everyone.
A few hundred miles from where Terri Schiavo's life is being debated, Jessica Lunsford's life is being mourned. Her brief life and her violent death are reminders of the dangers that sexual predators present to children but also an opportunity to look at the problem and some of the solutions that get lost in the rush of daily headlines. And we'll do that in this hour.
But we can't escape the headline tonight. Florida today charged the man accused of the 9-year-old's death with capital murder, a man the criminal justice system knew only too well, which raises its own troubling questions.
And we begin tonight with CNN's Heidi Collins.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
HEIDI COLLINS, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): From the time he was 18 years old, the jail cells John Evander Couey visited all had revolving doors.
MARK LUNSFORD, FATHER OF JESSICA LUNSFORD: He's been arrested, what did you say, 28 times?
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Twenty-three.
LUNSFORD: Twenty-three times. What in the hell is this man doing out here? It doesn't matter what crime he's committed 23 times. Why is he still available to be out here and hurt people?
COLLINS: At least 24 arrests in Florida alone and 14 of those arrests made by the Citrus County Sheriff's Office, the county where Jessica Lunsford lived.
Couey's record is laced with burglaries, DUIs, drug charges, writing bad checks, none of which carried long sentences, then, in 1987 a different type of crime, a conviction for indecent exposure, three days in jail and a fine.
Four years later, John Couey was arrested and charged with fondling a child. He pleaded guilty to a lesser charge of attempted fondling and was sentenced to the maximum five years. He served a little less than half that, which was fairly typical for felons in Florida. Florida law now requires those convicted of serious crimes to serve 75 percent of their sentence. When he became a free man again, Couey had his name and photo put on a law enforcement Web site, as required, to give the public a chance to log on and see if released sex offenders were living in their neighborhood.
Couey eventually moved to this house within sight of Jessica Lunsford's home but that's not the address he had listed on a sex offender Web site.
JOSEPH DAWSON, PETITION CREATOR: I appreciate every signature that you can get for us.
COLLINS: Now in the town where Jessica lived there is an appetite to toughen the law. A local jeweler is circulating a petition.
DAWSON: Under the system that I would present, number one the man would have got 50 years and Jessica would still be alive today.
COLLINS: But tough laws do not guarantee thorough enforcement. As Citrus County Police acknowledged in this case, they did not know John Couey's real address.
KENDALL COFFEY, LEGAL ANALYST: We are relying on the honor system, counting on the registered sexual offenders themselves to tell us when they move and to count on people who have already violated society's laws in a horrible way to, in effect, provide the enforcement is obviously a formula that's doomed to failure.
COLLINS: There are more than 30,000 people classified as sex offenders or predators in Florida. Law enforcement officials agree keeping track of them all would require many more police officers. For now, it's the honor system.
Heidi Collins, CNN, New York.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
BROWN: Among those hundreds of people who tried to find Jessica Lunsford was a retired police detective named Charles Masino (ph). This work, searching for missing children, was his professional life. It eventually became his personal calling. So, even in retirement he continues to do what he did for a generation despite the sorrow that goes with it.
Here's CNN's Deborah Feyerick.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
DEBORAH FEYERICK, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Detective Charles Masino is not the kind of guy who retires easily. Then again, when your life is about finding missing children, it's not the kind of job you just walk away from.
CHARLES MASINO, INVESTIGATOR, TEAM ADAM: It's the single most important crime that's the most difficult to solve. In other words, you can have a case of a missing child and there's no evidence. If you work homicide, you have a body.
FEYERICK: When he heard 9-year-old Jessica Lunsford had been snatched from her bedroom in the middle of the night, Masino did what he always does.
MASINO: Well, I got right on the computer and contacted the center to see if I could be of assistance.
FEYERICK: He's been searching for missing kids for more than two decades, first as a detective with the Phoenix, Arizona police department and now as part of an elite team of retired police officers and federal agents.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: But not very many law enforcement agencies have experience handling these types of cases. We want to get experienced investigators out to the scene to assist law enforcement.
FEYERICK: They work from their homes as members of Team Adam, named after the abducted son of TV host John Walsh, the co-founder of the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children. Even when there's little evidence Masino believes almost every abduction can be solved.
MASINO: Because somewhere in this folder or somewhere in the police report there's an answer.
FEYERICK: The reason boyfriends and girlfriends break up. Relationships change, like the time in Phoenix when Masino convinced a woman he'd interviewed years earlier to come clean about what her boyfriend at the time had done to a 12-year-old girl.
MASINO: I have a tape of a young lady that witnessed the murder of 12-year-old Amy and what this girl turned around and said to this woman who was in the car, the suspect was a male, she was driving and looks up at her and says, "I thought you were my friend. I loved you."
FEYERICK: That woman ultimately testified at trial as the government's star witness. For Masino it's that kind of payoff, part obsession, part crusade that keeps him searching.
MASINO: We're adults. We can figure out what's going on. Imagine a child ten years old, five years old, 12 years old being ripped out of their home or ripped off the street and then this monster, not a suspect, does something to them personally, whether it's rape or some type of sexual assault. They're still not fathoming what's happening. They're crying. And then that person kills them.
FEYERICK: The majority of children abducted by a stranger never return alive. Still at the end of the day Masino feels he's done good.
MASINO: If you do something that does return a child safely or a kind word to a parent there is no other high.
FEYERICK: Deborah Feyerick CNN, Newport Center, Vermont. (END VIDEOTAPE)
BROWN: The reverse sadly, it seems, is also true. There's no greater sorrow, no greater sense of failure than not being able to save the abducted child. The realities of child abductions are unforgiving. The predator holds all the cards. The clock seems as great an enemy as the predator himself. Victories are rare.
And another reality, regrets live on, sometimes for a lifetime; from California tonight, CNN's Miguel Marquez.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
MIGUEL MARQUEZ, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Her name was Samantha Runnion. As soon as she was abducted, Sheriff Mike Carona knew he was in a race against time.
SHERIFF MICHAEL CARONA, ORANGE COUNTY, CALIF.: If you don't find that child within the first three hours, 74 percent of the children are dead.
MARQUEZ: But this sheriff was ready, a deputy at Samantha's house just four minutes after she was taken, a sketch of the suspect widely circulated and he used what was then a new method to tell the county a child was missing, an Amber Alert.
CARONA: During the early hours we were very, very hopeful, again because we had such a quick response. Unlike a lot of other law enforcement agencies across this country, we had already run an Amber Alert.
MARQUEZ: So hopeful he made a promise to Samantha's mother.
CARONA: Where it became personal for me is the first time I had to sit down with Erin Runnion and ask her for a picture of Samantha so we could get that out to the public and telling her, much like I'm looking you in the eyes and saying "I'll bring Samantha home alive."
MARQUEZ: Carona all but begged the public for help and he got it, thousands of phone calls, tips, but soon came the call no one wanted to hear.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Oh, my God we found a dead body. Please hurry. Okay. I'm in the Ortegas, okay? Ortega Mountains I'm in Riverside County, okay?
MARQUEZ: The sheriff, a self-described by-the-book man, went into denial.
CARONA: To a person we didn't want to believe it. There was an absolute sense of denial by all of us.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: They believe they found a small child, the body of a small child here in this ravine.
MARQUEZ: The race to save Samantha had failed. Now Mike Carona's mission was a manhunt. Again, he made it personal.
CARONA: Don't sleep. Don't eat because we're coming after you. We will take every resource that's available to us to bring you to justice.
MARQUEZ: Within days the hunt was over. Alejandro Avila was arrested. Again, the sheriff didn't mince words.
CARONA: I am 100 percent certain that Mr. Avila is the man who kidnapped and murdered Samantha Runnion.
MARQUEZ: Later when thousands came to mourn the little girl and the sheriff rose to speak, something remarkable happened. First they applauded. Then they stood. Later, even the president would thank the sheriff.
GEORGE W. BUSH, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: I want to congratulate you for your good work in helping make your community as safe as possible.
MARQUEZ: The race to save Samantha was not in vain. Just days after her death, California made Amber Alerts a state law. Congress and the president soon followed. Samantha's mother, Erin, became an advocate for child safety.
ERIN RUNNION, SAMANTHA'S MOTHER: Since then there have been 40, over 40 Amber Alerts issued in the State of California and every single child has been recovered alive.
MARQUEZ: But almost two years later the case that grabbed Mike Carona's heart still doesn't let go. He gave his word to Samantha's mother and he failed to keep it.
CARONA: I did make a commitment to her mother and I failed in that original commitment and that part that's the one that you just grapple with and sticks with you I mean the rest of your life, probably will the rest of my life.
MARQUEZ: This sheriff will always remember the little girl he never met.
Miguel Marquez, CNN.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
BROWN: The trial of Samantha Runnion's alleged killer began today. If convicted, Alejandro Avila could get the death penalty. If he does, it will be the exception to the rule. The vast majority of predators don't kill. Most eventually get out of prison, which raises two questions. What kind of monitoring and treatment do they receive and does any of it work?
As to the second, CNN's Jason Carroll asked a sex offender.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE) JASON CARROLL, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): In 1999, Stephen Simmons was convicted of sexually molesting a teenage boy he met on the Internet, Samuel Mansy (ph). Mansy was 14 at the time. Simmons says his contact with Mansy lasted about a year. After several years in prison, he has accepted some responsibility for what he did.
STEPHEN SIMMONS, CONVICTED CHILD MOLESTER: Whatever the law is, as long as you put that child in a position where they can be hurt, you're hurting that child and you are wrong.
CARROLL: Before his arrest, Simmons had two prior convictions involving sexual activities with minors but he says he received little treatment during or after his previous incarceration.
One comprehensive study shows slightly more than 17 percent of sex offenders who were not treated after being released were re- arrested for sex crimes. Counselors, like Will Ford, have had the most success with low level offenders but says the most serious cases he sees don't respond to therapy or medication.
WILL FORD, COUNSELOR: I believe that there are some people who just won't make it on the street. There are some folks who cannot control their behavior and, in those situations, if you can't keep them incarcerated, you have to look at another avenue of managing these individuals.
CARROLL: Lawmakers in more than a dozen states have found another avenue. It's called civil commitment. It allows courts to keep offenders, like Simmons, who has already served his maximum sentence, in treatment centers like this one. Simmons says it's nothing more than an extended prison sentence.
SIMMONS: Because you just can't take a person and throw their life away.
CARROLL: Simmons has been here more than two years and continues undergoing treatment until a court determines he's well enough to be let out. Some legal experts say tougher sentencing is the answer not civil commitment.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: What states really should do, though, is recognize that these are criminals and not patients and change the sentencing laws.
CARROLL: Simmons says the treatment he's received since being civilly committed has made him well enough to be released but he wouldn't say cured.
SIMMONS: I'd be lying if I sat here and said I'm no threat, I'll never be a threat again, there's no chance of it ever happening, because there's always, even if it's a little chance.
CARROLL: A chance many are not willing to take.
Jason Carroll CNN, Carney, New Jersey.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
BROWN: That's what the offender says, which brings us to Dr. Sanjay Gupta, who joins us tonight.
Incurable is about as strong as we could come up with. Are they incurable?
DR. SANJAY GUPTA, CNN MEDICAL CORRESPONDENT: That's probably an accurate term. You heard it from the mouth of a molester himself there. Listen, you know, lots of different psychiatric diseases out there when it comes to child molestation it actually has a clinical diagnosis, pedophilia.
And within that, Aaron, it connotes that it's a diagnosis and there are potentially treatments but no one has taken that second step in saying there is a cure for this.
BROWN: Do we know what -- I mean we know, for example, with depression we know that there are certain things that go on in the brain. There are certain chemicals that are or aren't there. Do we know in this case what is or isn't working?
GUPTA: Well, there's not a specific sort of chemical that they know, for example, changes in people who have pedophilia. What they do know is more recently they've tried treating people who have pedophilia with certain drugs, including some of the same drugs that are used to treat depression, Serotonin, re-uptake inhibitors, a lot of people -- Prozac is one of them.
A lot of people know these medications. More recently they've been used to try and treat pedophilia as well. The typical sequence is that someone starts with behavioral therapy. We've talked to some people who treat sex offenders regularly. They say behavioral therapy is the first line of treatment 80 percent of the time.
An additional 15 to 20 percent of the time they're also going to add these medications as antidepressants and then, as you heard in the piece just earlier, you could potentially use something known as chemical castration as well. They're not talking about surgical castration but just giving medications to try and reduce the amount of testosterone.
The obvious reason is to try and block, stop and eliminate any of these sexual cravings and urgings towards children and then as part of behavioral therapy, to try and re-associate adults with adults.
BROWN: And does chemical castration work?
GUPTA: Well, again, you know, it's a question of how do you define that? That's very difficult.
BROWN: I define it by they don't attack children anymore.
GUPTA: Well, what's the recidivism rate? There's actual numbers on this sort of thing to try and determine how likely are they to actually do it and be caught again and that's the only way you can really tell.
And the reason I'm pursing my words, Aaron, it's an important point because there are probably a lot of sexual offenders who are offending regularly who are never caught and, therefore, you just don't know for sure did it work or not unless you actually catch them in the process.
So, we went to the Department of Justice actually and what we find is that if you take all criminal pediatric sexual offenders, you know, offending children, about 13 percent recidivism rate in terms of reconviction, so 13 percent.
But that doesn't give us a sense of how many are actually out there molesting children. If they go into treatment programs, you can reduce that number by about eight to ten percent.
BROWN: Sanjay, good to have you with us again tonight, Sanjay Gupta with us.
GUPTA: Thank you.
BROWN: Much more ahead on this special edition of NEWSNIGHT, starting with people who pose the biggest danger to your children, people they know.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: They're either family, friends, teachers, soccer coaches, bus drivers. They are in positions to be around children.
BROWN (voice-over): How to keep your child safe from predators close to home.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I felt sick to my stomach. I think that's everybody's worst fear or nightmare to know that there is a predator that lives that close to you in your proximity where you have small children.
BROWN: What she and her neighbors did when they learned a sex offender was living near the local school.
Danger on the playing field, can background checks on coaches keep predators away?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: If you're out donating your time with all these kids, and the parents are trusting you, you know that's a good thing for the parents.
BROWN: Do you know enough about your child's coach?
From New York and around the world this is a NEWSNIGHT special.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
(COMMERCIAL BREAK) BROWN: In a moment, how to protect your children without terrifying them, not an easy task that.
First, we're a little late, a little past quarter past the hour. We got to Atlanta to Erica Hill to check on some of the other stories making news tonight -- Erica.
(NEWSBREAK)
BROWN: Erica, thank you. We'll see you in half an hour.
Horror stories, there are plenty of them, rarely tell the entire story. They are pieces of a complicated puzzle and other pieces are missing and some don't fit where you'd expect them to. Such is the case with those who prey on children. By and large, they rarely make news and they rarely are who you may think they are.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
BROWN (voice-over): When you're talking about those who prey on children, you're rarely talking about the stranger slithering in the bedroom window and almost always talking about a friend, a relative, a caregiver, someone with easy access.
ERNIE ALLEN, NATL. CTRT. FOR MISSING & EXPLOITED CHILDREN: The vast majority of those who prey upon children are not pure strangers in the eye and the mind of the child. Most of them seek legitimate access to children, try to literally seduce children, break down their inhibitions and then victimize them.
BROWN: But for all the attention these cases get, the tracking of sexual predators is often uneven at best, sloppy and mismanaged at worst that according to the people who deal with the issue on a day-in day-out basis.
ALISON FEIGH, JACOB WETTERLING FOUNDATION: There is a lack of funding. There is sometimes a lack of follow through. There isn't necessarily a national group that's maintaining to make sure each state is doing it the same way, so there's frustration.
BROWN: California has long required convicted sexual offenders to register with police but, according to the latest numbers, more than 20,000 convicted predators in California are unaccounted for. Nationally, there are an estimated 400,000 sex offenders on the books but 20 percent of those are said to be missing as well.
ALLEN: Our whole system of supervision of offenders in this country is overwhelmed already, so this is a problem that is one of resources and we also think it's a problem that is a result of uneven inconsistent law and lack of uniformity and consistency between the 50 states.
BROWN: Every state now has a version of the so-called Megan's Law where sex offenders are supposed to check in periodically with authorities after their release from prison but only 23 states make it a felony for the offender not to do so. ALLEN: Registration is not very meaningful if it's not enforced, if it's not complied with, if there aren't periodic rechecks.
BROWN: Over the last decade or so, some states have found ways to keep offenders locked up after their sentences have been served if they believe the person still presents a danger. They use civil commitment laws.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: If we can show that he has the requisite mental disorder, usually pedophilia, and has a propensity to commit sex offenses, then it is possible for us to commit that person to the Department of Corrections.
BROWN: But laws deal with crimes committed and the challenges to teach children how to avoid being a victim in the first place, be it a stranger or friend.
FEIGH: So we teach them instead to look at behavior of any adults, you know. If any adult you know, whether they're related to you or not, gives you money check first with your parents. If any adult, you know, attempts to touch you in a way that's uncomfortable or in a sexual manner, talk to your parents right away.
BROWN: We should strive to make children wise without terrifying them. We should make them safe without imprisoning them. And, as adults, we should not forget how vulnerable they can be.
ALLEN: The reality is that two-thirds of the reported sexual assault cases in the United States involve child victims. The vast majority of the victims of America's sex offenders are kids. The majority of the nation's rape victims are kids and somehow America has missed it.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
BROWN: Unlike many Americans, Dr. Eli Newberger is well aware of the dangers facing children. He's a pediatrician and the founder of the Child Protection Team at Children's Hospital in Boston. We're pleased to see him tonight.
I want to talk about how parents should and can talk to their kids about this. But I want to ask one thing first. You said to us earlier that these people have in your view an addiction and that they see themselves in some respects as the one being seduced.
DR. ELI NEWBERGER, AUTHOR, "CHILD ABUSE": Absolutely, there's no question but that very many people who offend against children have distorted perceptions of their relationship to the victim and feel that a child wants sexual contact with them. This derives, Aaron, in no small part from their own experiences as victims in childhood and the way they come to terms both with sexual impulses and with power imperatives.
BROWN: Yes. Let's talk about parents for a bit. I think that my concern as a parent, particularly when my kid was young, is on the one hand you want her to be aware and, on the other hand, you don't want to create undue anxiety, so how do we balance?
NEWBERGER: Well, the most important thing that parents need to keep in mind in my view is the priority that attaches to sustaining a relationship of trust with you. So, it's important for parents to assure children that they'll do all possible to protect them.
And, at the same time, give them tools in order to understand which touches are bad, what to do if someone tells you that he wants you to keep something secret, what to do if someone tries to give you gifts that don't seem right, and then how you as a parent can act on your own gut impressions that things may not be right.
BROWN: Do you think -- this may sound crazy but do you think having a young boy as a babysitter for a young girl child is a crazy thing to do?
NEWBERGER: Frankly because the great number of predators are males and because it's in a setting of babysitting relationships that a lot of offenses take place, I'd be extremely cautious in not having a boy baby sit whom you really didn't know and even then to be alert to any possible perturbations of your child's behavior or signs of trouble.
BROWN: It's a very -- they can be very manipulative people and often put themselves in situations, be it the coach of an athletic team, leader of a troop, in some cases the spouse of someone with children.
NEWBERGER: Exactly and, in fact there are very many people who are quite intelligent who are so motivated to get access to children and to have intimate access to children that people train for years in specialized disciplines.
In my own profession in pediatrics there are pedophiles. Obviously there are other pillars of the community, Boy Scout leaders, church leaders who spend a great deal of time preparing themselves and (UNINTELLIGIBLE) themselves into children's lives.
BROWN: Doc, we've been familiar with your work for a while and it's good work and we appreciate it and your time tonight. Thank you.
NEWBERGER: Thank you.
BROWN: Thank you.
In a moment an example of people doing all the right things, a community united to face down a sex offender.
And what the FBI is learning about catching predators, learning from children.
A special edition of NEWSNIGHT, Protecting our Children, continues after the break.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK) BROWN: It's easy to assume that, once a predator has a child in his hands, the odds of that child escaping are small. And, statistically, that's probably true. But this story is proof that teaching children to fight back may help them beat the odds. Candy McBride did.
Here's CNN's Ed Lavandera.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
ED LAVANDERA, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Candy McBride is 9 years old, 4'8'' all and is stuck at 79 pounds. But don't let cute fool you.
(on camera): For all the other fourth-graders who might see this out there, how would you describe yourself?
CANDY MCBRIDE, FOURTH GRADE STUDENT: Athletic, funny. I can kick butt.
LAVANDERA (voice-over): That's the strong-willed attitude her family says helped Candy put 26-year-old Jimmy Guard in jail. The 5'10'', 185-pound man is awaiting trial for attempted kidnapping. He's accused of trying to abduct Candy last November and has pled not guilty.
CHARLOTTE CARR, MOTHER OF CANDY: She come like up through the grass, or what have you, and she was cutting across here. And so it happened just like right here.
LAVANDERA: Candy had just got off her school bus when police say Guard jumped from behind a tree.
CARR: When he grabbed her, he put his hands over her mouth, and he had her arms up behind her head.
LAVANDERA (on camera): The attack happened about 100 yards away from Candy's home and also just a few feet away from a busy roadway. It was 4:00 in the afternoon. Cars were driving by. Other kids were walking home from school. But, still, no one was close enough to help.
(voice-over): Candy was alone, but hardly helpless. In an instant, this little fourth-grader got mad enough to unleash her fury.
MCBRIDE: He came behind me and put my hands like that. And then I turned. I kicked him like that. I turned around. I punched him. Then he punched me back. Then I slapped him. He slapped me back. And then I hit him one more time in the stomach. Then I ran home.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: No. No.
LAVANDERA: Candy developed the confidence to fight back in a self-defense training course called radKIDS.
ALLISON LAWSON, RADKIDS INSTRUCTOR: RadKIDS stance. Yell, stay back.
CHILDREN: Stay back. You're not my mom.
LAVANDERA: RAD stands for Resist Aggression Defensively. She took the class as a second-grader, but the lessons stuck.
MCBRIDE: Whoever hits me, believe me, they're going to get something back.
LAWSON: No. And then maybe they'll let go. What do we do? We run away and go tell somebody, right?
LAVANDERA: Allison Lawson is the instructor who taught Candy. She says the course doesn't just tell kids how to be safe. It shows them what to do to protect themselves, like how to elude and escape an attacker's grip.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Come with me, kid.
MCBRIDE: No.
LAWSON: One of the kids that I think radKIDS did for her was to help give her the mind-set, so that, when it really happens, they're able to kind of take control of that situation and instead of kind of freaking out for a minute and trying to decide what to do, there's a little bit of, oh, I know. There's a little bit of control there.
LAVANDERA: Not only did Candy get away. Police say she got a good enough look at the attacker that the next day she instantly picked Jimmy Guard out of a photo lineup. Candy's mother credits the radKIDS course for helping her daughter stay cool under pressure.
(on camera): Were you ever scared?
MCBRIDE: Never.
LAVANDERA: Never?
MCBRIDE: I'm not scared, not of anything but my mom.
(LAUGHTER)
LAVANDERA (voice-over): Candy has a message for every young child who thinks they're too small and weak to get away from a strong attacker. Confidence, she says, is key.
MCBRIDE: They can be 2 feet, for all I care. They can do it.
LAVANDERA: Almost five months after Candy McBride's escape, she's tired of talking about what happened. But her mom says there's a twinkle in Candy's eye because she knows she stared down a bad man and won.
Ed Lavandera, CNN, Provo, Utah.
(END VIDEOTAPE) BROWN: That's a great kid.
In a moment, the sex offender next door and what neighbors did about it. We'll take a break first.
This is a special edition of NEWSNIGHT, "Protecting Your Children."
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
BROWN: One of the most terrifying realities parents face is this. Unless you're at your child's side 24/7, how can you be sure that a predator won't cross their path? Even worse, what if you discover that a convicted sex offender is a neighbor? When parents in one Georgia neighborhood learned just that, they did something about it.
Here's CNN's David Mattingly.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
DAVID MATTINGLY, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): At first glance, it looks like so many other safe, well-to-do neighborhoods in a suburban sprawl north of Atlanta. But all it took to shatter the peace was one anonymous parent who visited a sexual offenders registry on a Web site run by the Georgia Bureau of Investigation.
Listed under the zip code, they found the name and picture of a new neighbor who had just moved from South Carolina and who had been convicted in 1997 of committing a lewd act upon a child under the age of 14.
CHRISTA KUGELMAN, FINDLEY CHASE RESIDENT: Panic, sick. I mean, I felt sick to my stomach.
MATTINGLY: There are more than 9,500 sexual offenders registered in Georgia, including two others in that same zip code, one convicted of sexual assault, the other of statutory rape. But this one case was different. Parents found a way to make the offender move.
(on camera): In accordance with the law, the offender notified the county sheriff's department of his move to Georgia. But unknown to those same authorities, he was living in violation of the terms of his parole, within 1,000 feet of the local elementary school.
(voice-over): Parents reported the zone violation to the county sheriff, and the offender was given two weeks to move.
JINNY CARTER, FINDLEY CHASE RESIDENT: The fact that we do live in a neighborhood where it is next to a school, it does give us a little bit more comfort, knowing that we know he cannot or a sex offender cannot move into our neighborhood.
MATTINGLY: But the failure of law enforcement to check for school proximity, according to critics, shows the system's limitations. MARC KLAAS, KLAAS KIDS FOUNDATION: Law enforcement budgets are being cut all over this country, as are a lot of other budgets, and it takes some form of resource to send a cop to an offender's address to ensure that he's there.
MATTINGLY: Marc Klaas's daughter Polly was kidnapped from a slumber party at their California home and murdered in 1993. Today, he is an activist for child safety and argues that more public vigilance would be more effective than expecting local police to be the watchdogs.
KLAAS: It's a big deal. The reality is, there are half a million of these guys. There's probably one in everybody's neighborhood. So, pushing them into somebody else's neighborhood is certainly not going to be the answer. The answer then is going to be, what do you do with information that you can use to protect your children?
MATTINGLY: Seven-point-two million hits to the sexual offender registry made it one of Georgia's most popular state Web sites in 2004. And parents in this case considered it a valuable resource, because there is now one sexual offender who is about to become some other neighborhood's worry.
David Mattingly, CNN, Atlanta.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
BROWN: Ahead on the program tonight, stalking child predators in cyberspace, how teenagers are helping the FBI do its job.
We take a break first. This is a special edition of NEWSNIGHT on CNN.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
BROWN: On the Internet, it's said you can be anything. So, the 13-year-old you're chatting with may not be 13 years old at all. He may be 30 years old with a good line and bad intentions. So, just as adults are trying to teach kids to be more careful, so too are kids trying to teach adults a thing or two. In this case, the adults are FBI agents. And, in this story, some of the language is graphic. Be warned.
Here's our justice correspondent Kelli Arena.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
KELLI ARENA, CNN JUSTICE CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Stacey Bradley has some images burned into her memory she will never be able to erase.
STACEY BRADLEY, FBI INNOCENT IMAGES TASK FORCE: I've seen a video where a child is being raped anally and, you know, bleeding. There's obviously some serious damage being done to a child. There's been -- I've seen images of a little boy's penis being cut with a pair of scissors.
ARENA: Bradley is a supervisory agent for the FBI's Innocent Images Task Force, which uses the Internet in two ways. It tracks down people who prey on children over the Internet and those who use the Web to showcase the horror.
A former fugitive hunter, she came up with the idea of publicizing pictures of suspected predators on "America's Most Wanted." The task force is still looking for these two John Does. In just over a year, 33 children have been rescued and four molesters caught.
BRADLEY: It's not the easiest thing in the work. It's not -- you know, I don't want to look at this stuff, any more than anybody else does. But when I go home and I hug my children, that's why we keep doing it, because it's about them. It's about protecting them.
ARENA: Because some predators pose as young kids on the net to lure victims, agents must know how to play the same game. Mary and Karen are both 15 and have been teaching FBI agents how to think and talk like teenagers for more than two years.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Some are cocky about it. They're like, we know this, but they don't.
ARENA: They give advice on music.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Like, some people don't even know who Jessica Simpson is.
ARENA: Fashion.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Like Birkenstocks.
ARENA: And how to chat online.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: And then DOS and MOS, which is, like, dad over shoulder and then mom over shoulder.
ARENA: These two know the possible dangers, but many of their peers and their parents do not.
BRADLEY: I don't know how many times I've given -- you know, I go to a PTA or I go to a school and the kids are looking at me like there's really -- this really does happen? You know, they're shocked. Or I have a parent that comes up to me and says, really? There really are? This is really that out there? Because, I thought, you know, it's just once in a blue moon thing.
There are individuals out there that are looking to hurt your children.
ARENA: The Justice Department says one out of every five kids who goes online is solicited for sex. Bradley says the age-old guidance for children still applies. Don't talk to strangers, especially over the Internet. Kelli Arena, CNN, Calverton, Maryland.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
BROWN: Still ahead tonight, we'll check the other news of the day, morning papers coming along, too.
This is a special edition of NEWSNIGHT from New York.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
BROWN: Moving up towards the top of the hour, we go to Atlanta and Erica Hill for some of the other news of the day -- Erica.
HILL: Hello again, Aaron.
Ten people are dead in northern Minnesota tonight after a shooting rampage there. Officials say a high school student shot and killed his grandparents at their home on the Red Lake Indian Reservation. He then went to his school, where he opened fire, killing five students, a teacher, and a security guard before turning the gun on himself. As many as 13 other people were hurt. Officials believe the gunman was acting alone and say it's too early at this hour to speculate on a possible motive.
Both sides in the Terri Schiavo case are now waiting to hear from a federal judge in Florida. The judge is considering a request from Schiavo's parents to reinsert her feeding tube.
A dramatic rescue, meantime, in rough seas off the coast of California, where 20 people aboard a large sailing ship were stranded when it went aground off Oxnard. Now, some of them, as you saw there, started jumping overboard as the waves rocked the ship and pushed it toward the rocks. Rescuers on small watercraft were able to pull the sailors to safety.
I'm Erica hill.
NEWSNIGHT WITH AARON BROWN returns in just a moment.
But, first, in our anniversary series "Then and Now," we profile the woman who held the post of U.S. attorney general during the Clinton administration.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
JANET RENO, ATTORNEY GENERAL: I made the decision. I'm accountable. The buck stops with me.
PAULA ZAHN, CNN ANCHOR (voice-over): Plainspoken and tough, Janet Reno became the first woman U.S. attorney general. A star of the Clinton cabinet, she had the president's confidence. And ultimately took responsibility and heat for the Elian Gonzalez case and the Branch Davidian standoff in Waco, Texas.
She was attorney general for eight years, earning a spot in pop culture by being impersonated on "Saturday Night Live." Reno even made a guest appearance when she left office.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP, "SATURDAY NIGHT LIVE")
RENO: I just dance. Now hit it!
(END VIDEO CLIP)
ZAHN: Reno is now 66 years old and living in Miami. She's currently working on various legal issues and supports Everglades conservation. Despite dealing with Parkinson's Disease, she hasn't slowed down or lost her sense of humor.
RENO: You just get used to the phantom wing shaking.
ZAHN: Reno ran for Florida governor in 2002. She doesn't plan on running for public office again. She enjoys spending time with her nieces and nephews, and is an avid kayaker.
RENO: Time to smell the roses, to appreciate kayaking, to listen to a symphony, to spend time with the people I love. And it's a good way to live.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
(ROOSTER CROWING)
BROWN: Okeydoke, time to check morning papers from around the country, kind of a quick whip through them. I haven't said whip on the program in a long time, have I?
"The Rocky Mountain." Two stories pretty much dominate the papers. "School Rampage. "The Rocky Mountain News." "Student Gunman Kills Grandparents at home, Then Seven" -- actually, now I think eight -- "on Minnesota Campus," northern Minnesota. This would resonate particularly I guess in the Denver area. Also, the president was there. "Whistle-stop for Social Security," one of those town hall meetings where everyone comes and agrees with the president. Go figure that.
"The Washington Times" plays the Terri Schiavo -- this is the other big story of the day -- prominently. "Schiavo Still Without Feeding Tube. Judge Hears Arguments, Refuses to Issue Ruling." And then a sidebar story. They kind of go after the husband and "Husband's Motives in Question" is their second story on that.
The story I like best on the Schiavo case -- is there a sadder story out there? Whoa. "The Cincinnati Enquirer." I suspect other local newspapers have done this, too. "Local Families Face Similar Decisions Nearly Every Day." It's been good, in a sad circumstance, to have a national conversation about this sort of thing, even as unpleasant as it is.
"Christian Science Monitor." "The Politics of Life in the Balance" takes a look at Washington. And just so you don't think it's all crazy, "Camilla Will Be Queen Unless M.P.s change law." That's "The Times of London." Won't be my queen.
The weather tomorrow in Chicago is "heartless."
Good to see you all again. We'll see you again tomorrow. Good night for all of us.
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