New Jersey
Cops: Sexual encounter spurred women to start house fire
WOODBURY, N.J. (AP) - Authorities say a woman set fire to the home where her boyfriend lives several hours after they had a consensual sexual encounter there with another woman.
Woodbury police say Tasia Young told them she had been "going through a lot" and was angry her boyfriend had her take a cab home after the encounter while the other woman remained at the residence in Woodbury.
No injuries were reported in Sunday night's fire. But Young's boyfriend and six other people who live in apartments at the home were displaced by the blaze.
Authorities say the 33-year-old Woodbury woman came to police headquarters Tuesday and confessed to setting the fire.
Young is charged with arson, aggravated assault, criminal mischief and multiple counts of endangerment. It's not known if she's retained an attorney.
Maryland
School finds evidence faculty abused students
OWINGS MILLS, Md. (AP) - A private boarding school in Maryland says it has found evidence that five former faculty members sexually assaulted more than 20 students over several decades.
The Baltimore Sun reports the McDonogh School in Owings Mills sent families a letter about the findings Tuesday. The letter says the allegations don't involve current faculty or students. It says an investigation was launched in 2016 when a former student from the 1980s told officials he had been sexually assaulted by Alvin J. Levy and Robert E. Creed.
Levy was indicted on a sexual abuse charge by a school graduate in 1992 but died before his scheduled court date. Creed pleaded guilty in 1985 to sexual offense and abuse of a minor and has since died.
The school notified police and hired a firm to conduct an external investigation, which found Levy and Creed may have assaulted 19 male students over four decades. It also found that three other former faculty members may have assaulted five female students during the 1970s and 80s. The letter did not identify those faculty members, but did say police have been notified.
County State's Attorney Scott Shellenberger says the victims have been contacted. He says one of the former female students was willing to testify in court. However, Shellenberger said he did not have the evidence required to build a case because the incident occurred in the 1980s, when state law required the encounter to be forced or for the victim to be younger than she was.
The investigation also found that some of the allegations were previously reported to school officials who failed to take appropriate action. Head of School David Farace apologized in the letter.
The Sun reported that the investigation by New York-based T&M Protection Resources comes after county police confirmed in 2018 an investigation into a separate incident of alleged sexual assault between students in the boys' dormitory.
California
Trump administration appeals court ruling over asylum policy
SAN FRANCISCO (AP) - The Trump administration on Wednesday appealed a judge's ruling that would block the government from returning asylum seekers to Mexico to await court hearings.
The one-sentence appeal filed in the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals did not immediately ask to stop the lower court ruling from going into effect Friday.
Judge Richard Seeborg has given the government until the end of the week to ask for a stay of Monday's ruling, in which he granted a request by civil liberties groups to halt the practice while their lawsuit moves forward.
The administration's policy violated U.S. law by failing to adequately evaluate dangers migrants face in Mexico, Seeborg said. He said a law cited by government officials did not apply to the 11 asylum seekers who sued.
The U.S. took the unprecedented action at the nation's busiest border crossing - in San Diego - in response to growing numbers of families fleeing poverty and gang violence in Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador.
About 1,000 migrants have been sent back to Mexico since the policy went into effect in January and was later expanded across the California border and to West Texas.
Families seeking asylum that typically would have been released in the U.S. with notices to appear in court were instead sent back to Mexico to await their hearings.
The administration had hoped the move would discourage weak asylum claims and help reduce an immigration court backlog of more than 800,000 cases.
Under the new policy, asylum seekers were not guaranteed interpreters or lawyers and couldn't argue to a judge that they face the potential of persecution or torture in Mexico, the American Civil Liberties Union argued.
The San Francisco ruling came up Wednesday at a case in El Paso, Texas, where lawyers for a Salvadoran man who said he had been threatened in Mexico asked for permission to stay in the U.S. while his case proceeds.
A Homeland Security attorney assured the judge that the man would not be sent back to Mexico, even though the California court decision doesn't take effect until Friday.
President Donald Trump had criticized the ruling as unfair. His administration has said it's trying to cope with a crisis at the southern border.
While Border Patrol arrests, the most widely used gauge of illegal crossings, have risen sharply over the last year, they are relatively low in historical terms after hitting a 46-year low in 2017.
Oregon
Man gets 5 years for sexually exploiting 7 girls online
PORTLAND, Ore. (AP) - A federal judge has sentenced a 50-year-old Tigard man to 15 years in prison followed by a lifetime of supervised release for contacting, grooming and sexually exploiting girls via social media.
The Oregonian/OregonLive reports David Otto was sentenced Wednesday.
An investigation began after the mother of one of Otto's victims reported to Sonora Police Department in California in November 2016 that her 15-year-old daughter had been having inappropriate communications with an unknown man on Instagram.
Prosecutors say she had engaged in sexual conversations with Otto and, when prompted, sent him nude photos of herself.
Investigators linked the Instagram account to Otto using the IP address.
The FBI took over the case after discovering Otto had engaged in similar online conversations with six other teenage girls who lived around the country.
Otto pleaded guilty in February 2018 to one count of producing child pornography.
Published: Fri, Apr 12, 2019
