National Roundup

California
Mom arrested in death of her 3 kids was in custody dispute
LOS ANGELES (AP) — The woman arrested on suspicion of killing her three young children at her Los Angeles apartment had been involved in a custody dispute with their father, according to a newspaper report Sunday.

Liliana Carrillo, 30, was arrested Saturday in Tulare County after fleeing the gruesome scene and leading law enforcement officers on a long-distance chase, authorities said.

The Los Angeles Times cites family court documents that show Eric Denton sought custody of the children — ages 3, 2 and 6 months — on March 1.

Denton requested a temporary emergency visitation order from the court on March 4 and petitioned for a mental health evaluation of Carrillo, according to the newspaper. Orders were drawn up at a March 26 hearing. Another hearing in the case was scheduled for April 14.

In response, Carrillo sought a temporary domestic violence restraining order against Denton on March 12 in Los Angeles County Superior Court, documents show.

In a brief interview with the Times, Denton confirmed he was the father of the three children — two girls and a boy — and said he’d been in a custody battle with Carrillo after she began acting mentally unstable.

Denton said he tried to get local authorities to intervene, but “in L.A. they wouldn’t help. The LAPD would not get involved.” He said Carrillo was supposed to turn over the kids to him on Sunday.

The children’s grandmother returned home from work Saturday morning and found the bodies and the mother missing, Los Angeles police Lt. Raul Jovel said.

Police said initial reports suggested the children had been stabbed to death, but no official cause of death has been released.

Los Angeles police initially received reports Carrillo was driving her car and heading north on Interstate 5 when she got in an altercation in the Bakersfield area. She abandoned her car and carjacked another vehicle, Jovel said.

Massachusetts
Ex-Boston officer stayed on force despite abuse allegation
BOSTON (AP) — A former Boston police officer and union chief, charged with molesting multiple children, first faced child abuse allegations in the mid-1990s, according to a published report.

Patrick Rose Sr., 66, a retired officer and the one-time president of the Boston Police Patrolmen’s Association, was initially charged last August when a father and his teenage daughter reported that the girl had been repeatedly molested by Rose from age 7 through 12.

Within weeks, five more people came forward to accuse Rose of molesting them as children.

The Boston Police Department in 1995 filed a criminal complaint against Rose for sexual assault on a 12-year-old child, The Boston Globe reported Sunday.

The criminal complaint was eventually dropped, but an internal investigation concluded that Rose likely committed a crime. He was allowed to stay on the force, and was often sent to respond to cases involving children.

Boston police have refused to release records pertaining to the 1995 case and it remains unclear what, if any, disciplinary action was taken against Rose at that time.

Rose pleaded not guilty to 33 total charges involving six alleged victims and is being held on $200,000 cash bail.

“My client maintains his innocence to all of the charges that have been brought against him and he maintains his innocence to what was alleged to have transpired back in 1995,” his attorney, William J. Keefe, said.

The Boston Police Department in a statement said it was legally prohibited from commenting “on the facts and circumstances of the 1995 investigation of these horrific allegations.”

Suffolk District Attorney Rachael Rollins said in a statement she found it troubling that Boston police did not properly discipline Rose or restrict his access to children.

“The allegations from decades ago are an example of how systems can fail people,” Rollins said.

Acting Mayor Kim Janey is promising more transparency.

“It is appalling that there was a documented history of alleged child sexual abuse, yet this individual was able to serve out his career as an officer and eventually become the head of the patrolmen’s union for several years,” she said in a statement. “Under no circumstance will crimes of this nature be tolerated under my administration, and we will not turn a blind eye to injustices as they arise.”

Boston’s police department has a history of protecting officers from accountability, particularly if they are white, like Rose, said retired deputy superintendent Willie Bradley.

“The police department’s refusal to actually deal with this issue is a direct contributor to what happened,” Bradley, who is Black and now a lecturer and professor at multiple area colleges, told The Boston Globe. “It would have been out there and people would have been aware of it, but they hid it.”

Indiana
School district wants public barred from molestation case
JEFFERSONVILLE, Ind. (AP) — A southern Indiana school district wants to bar the public from the civil trial of a man sentenced to 120 years in prison for molesting 20 children while working at a YMCA and an elementary school.

Attorneys for the Greater Clark County School Corporation filed a motion last week seeking to exclude the public from the civil case against Michael Begin. That suit, filed by one of his molesting victims, alleges the school district was negligent in its duties to protect students from abuse.

The motion asks that the public be prevented from accessing the court’s transcript.

Allowing such public access would mean “details related to the minor will be available to the public at large and will remain that way in perpetuity into their adulthood because there is no way to ‘claw’ something back once it is publicly disseminated,” the motion states, the News and Tribune reported.

A second motion filed by the district’s attorney seeks to prevent the plaintiff, family or attorney from disclosing information to the news media.

A hearing on the motions has not been conducted, but a final pretrial conference is scheduled for April 21 in Clark County Circuit No. 1, with a jury trial set for May 17.

Begin, 21, pleaded guilty in January 2019 to 20 counts of child molestation and was sentenced by a Clark County judge to the maximum 120-year sentence, with the final 20 years to be served on probation.

The Jeffersonville man faces more than 10 civil lawsuits stemming from his abuse of children prosecutors said ranged in age from 3 to 8. Most of those cases include the school district and the YMCA as defendants.

The plaintiff in the case set for trial May 17 has reached a resolution with the YMCA.