By Clare Jerrom, Nicola Barry and Alex Dobson.
£100 on the spot fines to fight yob culture
Council officers and private security guards are among those to be given special powers to issue penalty fines of up to £100 under legislation to curb anti-social behaviour announced yesterday.
Local "community justice" mini courts will enforce the new powers for police and local authorities to deal with anti social neighbours, graffiti, truanting and to curb "yob culture".
The measures are contained in the government’s white paper ‘Respect and Responsibility Taking a Stand Against Anti-social Behaviour’ announced yesterday by David Blunkett.
Source:- The Guardian Thursday 13 March page 11
Fast track truancy court fails to bring parents to book
A new quick system to deal with parents who allow their children to play truant faced further setbacks yesterday when three out of five cases were not dealt with.
Education chiefs at Essex admitted last month that they were disappointed when only four out of eight families representing 10 children turned up at Grays magistrates court and every case was adjourned.
The court prepared to hear five cases yesterday, but one father telephoned to say he had the wrong date and two other cases were adjourned.
The first of two parents successfully prosecuted under the scheme said she was happy to escape a fine. The 39-year-old mother was told to "try a lot harder" to get her two daughters to attend school, and was given a two-year conditional discharge.
A 43-year-old mother was also given a six-month conditional discharge.
Both were ordered to pay £80 costs.
Source:- The Times Thursday 13 March page 4
Choirboy ‘abuse’
A choirmaster at a top Roman Catholic boys school abused a pupil for four years, Blackfriars crown court was told yesterday.
Denis Cochrane denies assaulting the boy from the age of 12 after giving him gifts and alcohol.
Source:- The Times Thursday 13 March page 4
Lottery fund gives £800,000 more to refugee charities
The lottery fund that sparked controversy last year by giving money to groups supporting asylum seekers has defied its critics further by awarding a further £800,000 to organisations working in the same field.
The Community Fund, soon to be merged with another lottery body, said yesterday that it was awarding £200,000 to Asylum Aid and £328,620 to the Medical Foundation for the Care of Victims of Torture. The fund’s eastern region has given a further £290,000 to a project helping refugees in Norfolk.
The fund’s chairperson Lady Diana Brittan said the grants fell within the fund’s criteria of helping the most disadvantaged people in society.
The move follows controversy last year when the fund announced it would be giving £340,000 to the National Coalition of Anti Deportation Campaigns.
Source:- The Times Thursday 13 March page 11
Met arrests 43 in net child porn swoop
Forty three people were arrested by police in London yesterday as part of a worldwide investigation into internet child pornography.
Scotland Yard confirmed 350 officers carried out raids on 50 addresses across the capital, and officers seized a large amount of computer equipment.
A spokesperson said the 43 had been arrested on suspicion of downloading and distributing images of children via the internet.
Some arrests were linked to Operation Ore, one of the largest investigations into child pornography ever carried out in the UK.
Source:- The Guardian Thursday 13 March page 7
Mother faces jail over truant son
A 46-year-old woman was told yesterday she faces jail for failing to send her son to school.
Pauline Wheaton of Cambridge admitted the charge before Peterborough magistrates court.
Source:- The Guardian Thursday 13 March page 8
Ministers hold out lifeline to special schools
A strong statement of support from the government means special schools threatened with closure may be reprieved.
Many of the proposed closures throughout the country are due to a misunderstanding of the government’s inclusion agenda, according to Lady Ashton, the education minister with responsibility for special needs.
"I am very worried that somehow people believe the government’s agenda is to close special schools when it absolutely isn’t," she said.
"I absolutely believe there is a very important role for special schools which should be included in overall education provision rather than left to do their work in isolation," she said.
She was speaking in advance of today’s publication of the report of the working party she set up to advise the government on the future of schools that cater exclusively for children with special needs.
Source:- Daily Telegraph Thursday 13 March page 6
Boy sent to Downside by TV show faces expulsion
The inner city schoolboy offered a fresh start in life by Downside School near Bath faced expulsion yesterday for allegedly stealing a mobile phone.
Ryan Bell, aged 16, who was sent to the £15,000-a-year independent school by a television company making a documentary about him, has been suspended with another pupil for taking the phone from a boy’s room.
The school’s headmaster Dom Antony Sutch said he could not rule out expulsion.
Source:- Daily Telegraph Thursday 13 March page 10
Study casts doubt on ‘shaken baby syndrome’
Injuries to a baby’s brain, which some medical experts claim could only be caused by deliberate violent shaking by a parent, might have an innocent explanation, according to research.
The findings cast doubt on the validity of shaken baby syndrome, which has become widely accepted in Britain and the United States as proof of child abuse.
The new research suggests dural and retinal bleeding could be "secondary" to the brain swelling as a result of being starved of blood or oxygen resulting from other non-traumatic conditions such as infections, asphyxia, metabolic conditions or choking.
Source:- Daily Telegraph Thursday 13 March page 13
Scottish newspapers
Probe as killer dad is jailed
A senior lawyer will investigate the death of a baby who was on the child protection register when his father killed him.
Caleb Ness, who was 11 weeks-old, was on the ‘at risk’ register of Edinburgh and Lothians child protection committee because his father, Alexander Ness, had a history of violence and his mother, Shirley Malcolm, was a drug addict.
After yesterday’s verdict when Ness was sentenced to 11 years, Edinburgh council announced that Susan O’ Brien QC would chair the review.
Source:- Scottish Daily Express Thursday 13 March page 14
Woman injured baby girl
A frustrated woman seriously injured a baby girl because the child would not go to sleep.
Ann Mortimer, from Banff, Aberdeenshire, admitted shaking the 10-week-old youngster after she kept her awake.
The high court in Aberdeen heard the assault left the baby with eyesight and hearing problems requiring specialist treatment.
Sentence was deferred until 23 April.
Source:- Scottish Daily Express Thursday 13 March page 19
OAP killed by mental patient
A psychiatric patient killed a 93-year-old retired solicitor, just yards from his home.
Roy Mackay punched his victim, George Williamson, and threw him to the ground. He died in hospital a week later.
Mackay was charged with murder last year, but yesterday, at the high court in Edinburgh, his guilty plea to a reduced charge of culpable homicide was accepted.
Three days after the attack, Mackay handed himself into the Royal Edinburgh psychiatric hospital. He is now being held in Carstairs state hospital while his condition is assessed.
Source:- Scottish Daily Express Thursday 13 March page 19
Welsh newspapers
Vicar tells of abuse
A vicar yesterday told a court how he was ‘groomed’ by a senior priest who sexually abused him as a boy.
The vicar said that Canon Lawrence Davies of Cardiff had forced him to commit sex acts in the vicarage, and that he had been only 12-years-old when the alleged abuse began.
Davies is charged with eight indecent assaults and five serious sexual assaults and with committing an act intending to pervert the course of justice.
The trial continues.
Source:- Western Mail Thursday 13 March page 8
Tenant discount cut by £8,000
Council house tenants may have to pay more to buy their homes after it was announced yesterday that the maximum discount is to be cut.
Tenants can currently get a discount of up to £24,000 when buying their homes, but from April 2 that will be cut to only £16,000.
More than 110,000 people in Wales have been taken advantage of the right to buy scheme. Welsh assembly finance minister Edwina Hart announcing the change, said that she was aware that there were concerns over affordable housing in the principality, but that there had also been a reduction in the number of homes available to rent.
Source:- Western Mail Thursday 13 March page 9
