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Sex Assault Suspect Killed

12-27-2007 South Carolina:

A West Ashley High School teacher accused of raping a woman drove his car into a tree and died this morning, Charleston County Sheriff's Major John Clark said.

A suicide note was found in 38-year-old Scott Knight’s car.

Knight was free on a $20,000 bond after being arrested for criminal sexual conduct and assault and battery of a high and aggravated nature. Knight was accused of forcing a woman to have sex with him at his home in Concord West of the Ashley on 45 Sycamore Ave.

He had been on administrative leave from West Ashley High School since November, when he was arrested and charged with harassing two students.

Knight taught computer tech and was employed at the high school for four years. ..more.. by LIve 5 News


Teacher Arrested Second Time, Faces Two New Charges
12-24-2007 South Carolina

A West Ashley High School teacher, first accused of harassing a student, now faces serious new charges.

Scott Knight charged with Criminal Sexual Conduct and Assault and Battery of a High and Aggravated Nature.

The September incident happened in Knight’s bedroom, deputies said.

The woman told detectives Knight lured her into his bedroom, after he claimed he had gifts for her.

Instead, police say, he closed and locked the bedroom door and then pushed her down on his bed.

Reports show the woman tried to convince Knight to let her leave the room.

Instead, the arrest affidavit says knight pinned the woman down to the bed, then sexually assaulted her.

Investigators are still trying to figure out the connection between the two and how this woman ended up in Knight's apartment.

The 38-year old is out on a 20-thousand dollar bond...and on paid administrative leave.

No word on whether the new charges will change his status at the school district.

Mary Runyon, principal at West Ashley High School, by phone told Live 5 News it’s unfortunate any time something like this happens especially when it’s a teacher.

Runyon considers Knight a good teacher. ..more.. by Hatzel Vela,




Bond Set For West Ashley Teacher Accused Of Harassing Student
11-15-2007 South Carolina:

A West Ashley High School teacher is expected to get out of jail Thursday after he was arrested, accused of harassing a student.

Scott Knight, 38, was arrested Wednesday. He's being held at the Charleston County Detention Center.

A student complained Knight had been harassing her for the last month and a half.

She says he made vulgar sexual advances and continually insulted her boyfriend, saying he wasn't good enough for her. ..more.. by Hatzel Vela,

Police recall previous complaint against molester

3-3-2005 California:

A social worker who police say confessed in his suicide note that he molested a 14-year-old client of Tahoe Turning Point had been previously accused of molesting another boy from the same facility, police said this week.

The accusation last March from a 16-year-old boy, which police were unable to substantiate, came six months before 50-year-old Al Bonadonna was arrested on suspicion of molesting a 14-year-old boy from Tahoe Turning Point whom he transported to Williams, Calif., for a court hearing.

Tahoe Turning Point is a long-term residential rehabilitation center in South Lake Tahoe for adolescent boys with substance abuse or mental problems.

After making $25,000 bail in Colusa County on Nov. 25 and being fired from his job, Bonadonna disappeared.

His body was found Feb. 20 in his motor home on the outskirts of Dayton by a pair of all-terrain riders. A brief suicide note was also discovered.

Written on a piece of spiral notebook paper, Bonadonna shouldered the blame for the November molestation of a 14-year-old boy and stated he was guilty, said Lyon County sheriff's Detective Rob Hall.

Alleged child molester commits suicide in Macomb

1-31-1997 Illinois:

Released on bond from Knox County Jail, Ralph E. Frakes ended any future court action against him with a self-inflicted .12 gauge shotgun blast to the head in the parking lot of McDonough District Hospital. Frakes, 68, of Williamsfield, Ill., left a suicide note.

"No witnesses; no one heard it," Larry Jameson, McDonough County Coroner, said in a phone interview Wednesday. "A clergyman found him."

According to Knox County State's Attorney Paul Manageri, three counts of aggravated criminal sexual abuse were filed against Frakes on Jan. 7. According to the Knox County Circuit Clerk's Office, Frakes was arrested on Jan. 10 after a warrant for his arrest was issued the previous day. Frakes posted $5,000 bond for his $50,000 bail.

"It's a tragic event for all individuals involved," Manageri said.

Manageri also said the state's attorney's office was prepared to assert two additional charges of aggravated criminal sexual abuse Wednesday had he not taken his life. The recently dismissed charges related to two separate females, both of whom are minors, Manageri said.

Macomb police said they have deemed Frakes' death a suicide.

"I think our investigation is concluded. As far as we're concerned, that's what it is," Detective Robert Canavit, a Macomb police investigator, said Thursday.

Jameson said Frakes arranged his funeral services at the Clugston-Tibbitts Funeral Home in Macomb barely an hour before he committed suicide. Frakes had been at Clugston-Tibbitts at 2 p.m. before being found dead at approximately 3 p.m.

"He had gone to some of the local funeral homes, set up a service and then he went to the hospital," Jameson said.

According to Manageri, each count of aggravated criminal sexual abuse, a class 2 felony, carries a prison sentence of 3 to 7 years. With the three counts, if Frakes was found guilty, he could have been placed in prison for 21 years.

According to Frakes' obituary in The Macomb Journal yesterday, Frakes was a World War II veteran and worked as a brick mason and farmer until his retirement in 1989. ..more.. by Joseph Poulos

Sex man kills self

12-25-2007 Fijii:

AN elderly man accused of molesting a seven-year-old girl is dead after what police believe was a suicide.

The 79-year-old was arrested by police on Saturday night for his own safety after tensions mounted in his home village of Kasavu, in Naitasiri, when word got out that he was a suspect in the sex assault case.

The man was found hanging in his bedroom at noon on Sunday.

Police spokesman Suliano Tevita said the death occurred before their own investigations could begin into the sex assault.

"We had interviewed the suspect on Saturday and taken his statement down before releasing him," he said yesterday.

"The suspect was not charged after the interview and further investigation was to take place but his body was found on Sunday at about 12pm."

Cpl Tevita said he understood that tensions were high in the village but there was no report of the villagers confronting the suspect.

A post mortem examination completed late yesterday confirmed that the elderly man committed suicide and died as a result of asphyxiation.

Asked why the man was released when he was initially arrested for his own safety, Cpl Tevita said they had insufficient evidence to lay charges.

He said the suspect had been accused of molesting the girl in his home while her parents were watching DVDs in a separate room.

The girl had accompanied her parents to the suspect's home to watch films and later that evening the child told her father about the suspect who reported the matter to police. Police said the case would now be closed because the main suspect had died, the procedure in such cases. ..more.. by HAROLD KOI

Gloucester man facing child porn trial kills himself in jail

12-18-2007 Virginia:

GLOUCESTER - A Gloucester man facing state and federal charges of child pornography and child molestation killed himself in jail this weekend, days before his case was scheduled to go to trial in Gloucester County Circuit Court, according to Gloucester Commonwealth's Attorney Robert D. Hicks.

John P. Monahan, 43, was to go to trial today on nine counts of aggravated sexual assault of a child, one count of forcible sodomy of a child and one count of sexual penetration of a child. Monahan, who worked at Eastern State Hospital in Williamsburg, is accused of molesting three different children between 2005 and August of this year.

Monahan was first arrested in August after investigators found images of child pornography on his computer.

A Gloucester grand jury indicted Monahan on molestation charges Sept. 4, after an investigation conducted by the Gloucester Sheriff's Department and the FBI. On Oct. 11, a federal grand jury indicted Monahan on charges of producing and receiving child pornography.

If convicted of the federal charges, Monahan had faced a mandatory life sentence.

Monahan, of Hayes, was being held at Western Tidewater Regional Jail when he committed suicide, according to Mr. Hicks. He said the commonwealth's attorney's office dropped its charges against Monahan on Monday. ..more.. by NICOLAS ZIMMERMAN

Arkansas inmate suicide rate highest since ’01

12-10-2007 Arkansas:

As they struggled with a bedsheet knotted into a noose, correctional officers noted Scott D. Walls’ pale face. Blood spotted his white prison jumpsuit.

The 46-year-old Garland County man, convicted in 2001 of a sex crime, was the first prison suicide of the year.

Four more men would follow suit by Thanksgiving, giving the Arkansas prison system the dubious distinction of having a suicide rate so far this year of more than twice the national average.

An off icer found Walls hanging from his cell bars just minutes after making a security check midafternoon on Jan. 3, according to an Arkansas State Police report.

By the time 19-year-old Patrick Collins hung himself on Thanksgiving Day, the Department of Correction had its highest suicide total in six years.

Prison officials call this year’s suicides, like the six in 2001, aberrations — unexplainable spikes that need to be compared against only nine suicides in the five intervening years. Since 1988, they say, the state inmate suicide rate is closer to the nationwide average.

If inmates want to kill themselves, they will, prison officials say.

“I don’t think if someone is determined to kill themselves, we can come up with a way to prevent it,” said Wendy Kelley, the department’s deputy director for health and correctional services.

That thought is echoed by at least two other state prison officials.

But experts say that Arkansas is ignoring national trends toward revamping isolation units to provide more mental health care and reduce the risk of suicide.

Since 2000, 23 Arkansas inmates have committed suicide — 35 percent higher than the national prison rate of 14 per 100, 000.

And, during the past seven years, Arkansas inmates killed themselves at about double the rate of the general population.

Nationally, prison suicides have declined by more than half since 1980, when the rate was similar to Arkansas’ 2007 rate of about 35 per 100, 000.

That drop, which has narrowed the gap between suicides in prison and the general population to negligible levels, is the result of decades of change and closer attention paid to suicide risk among inmates, said Lindsey Hayes, project director for the National Center on Institutions and Alternatives, who has tracked prison suicides since 1980.

Every prison official interviewed said he mourns every inmate suicide and each death deals a serious blow to inmate and staff morale.

Still, the argument that convicts killing themselves isn’t a cause for much concern has its proponents outside prison walls. For that, Hayes offers moral and legal justifications for why it’s important to care about inmate suicide.

“We should care because it’s a human life. Simply that. They’ve been convicted of a crime, but the state still has a moral responsibility for their safety. And the state, by the way, is required by various federal laws to provide adequate medical and mental health care to those inmates, and that includes suicide prevention,” Hayes said.

All five inmates who killed themselves this year did so while being held in some kind of isolation. But prison officials say no immediate changes are planned in the department’s isolation policies.

An authority on inmate suicides, Hayes, who helped make changes at Massachusetts’ troubled prisons earlier this year after 10 suicides in 2005-06, said sentiments like those expressed by Correction Department officials need an adjustment. “If the systemic attitude is that if an inmate wants to kill himself, [he ] will, that [attitude ] is starting off on the wrong foot. It’s impeding your prevention efforts,” Hayes said. The state needs to aggressively confront any possible gaps in its procedures that have allowed this rate to climb so high, Hayes said.

DYING ALONE Walls committed suicide just four days after being placed in an isolation cell at the Varner Supermax Unit for failing to obey an order and indecent exposure on Christmas Day. Stephen Partin, the next inmate to commit suicide, had been in isolation at the East Arkansas Regional Unit at Brickeys for about a month when he hanged himself just five days after Walls.

Mitchell Gustafson hurled himself from a third-story tier to the concrete floor below at the Diagnostic Unit in Pine Bluff on Sept. 14.

Gustafson, a career criminal, had just returned to prison to serve a 222-year sentence and was being held in a single cell, as all inmates are during intake, their preliminary evaluation upon arriving in prison.

He had been deemed suicidal and placed under watch before his death, according to a state police report.

On Nov. 3, Andre T. Washington hanged himself in an isolation cell at Brickeys.

Less than three weeks later, Collins did the same at Varner.

An officer in the isolation wing at Varner noticed that Collins had “been looking strange all day” when she went to get him some toilet paper. When she returned, he had hanged himself and was dead.

The investigations into Walls’, Gustafson’s and Collins ’ deaths have been closed by state police. Partin’s and Washington’s cases remain open with the investigative files exempt from public disclosure.

Prison officials don’t see a connection that all died in isolation. And only two of the five inmates who killed themselves had been previously treated for mental illness, they said.

“There hasn’t been anything that struck me as a pattern,” said Kelley, whose duties include suicide prevention.

The inmates who ended up in isolation, with the exception of Gustafson, did so for breaking prison rules — fighting, disobeying orders and otherwise misbehaving. Those inmates are more likely to be impulsive and emotional, said Dina Tyler, the department’s spokesman.

“They end up in isolation because they have adjustment issues,” she said. “This is a troubled population, and they’re in a situation that they don’t like.” Hayes, the prison suicide expert, agreed, saying that most isolation suicides happen within days or weeks of an inmate being placed there.

“There is a high degree of anxiety, a high degree of anger for [their perception of ] being unduly punished, their sentence perhaps extended or parole considerations removed. Their previous housing has been lost,” he said, adding that’s precisely why more attention needs to be paid to prevent them taking their own life.

More mental health resources need to be directed away from intake and toward isolation wings, Hayes said. Massachusetts responded to its increase in suicides by creating mental health units designed to house inmates that need to be separated from the general population, largely to keep a close eye on those most likely to harm themselves. One 60-bed unit is scheduled to open in about a month, said Diane Wiffin, spokesman for the Massachusetts Department of Correction. Wiffin said she could not estimate the cost of that unit or two more in the planning stages. But doing a thorough pre-isolation mental health examination is crucial, Hayes said, as is making sure adequate follow-up services are provided.

CHANGES MADE When the last spike in Arkansas prison suicides occurred in 2001, some changes were made in the state’s prisons. The top of some cells have been blocked off so a noose can’t be looped through the bars. Cameras have been put in some isolation cells at the Grimes Unit in Newport. And prison mental health workers now visit each isolation cell three times a week.

More needs to be done, Hayes said.

“It’s not just making rounds three times a week and saying, ‘How are you feeling today ?’” Hayes said. “It has to be every day.” Suicide prevention is taught to all security staff members while they are in the training academy and again in annual continuing education courses. Hayes is now scheduled to teach one of those courses this spring, Tyler said.

And discussions among the Board of Corrections and prison administrators about how to prevent suicides is under way. Nothing has been decided yet, and the substance of the talks is secret, officials said.

“I’m not at liberty to discuss what we might change,” Kelley said.

Board of Corrections member Mary Parker, a University of Arkansas at Little Rock criminologist, said the state is open to successful models from other states, like Massachusetts, but what works in one state might not be successful in another.

“Something that Massachusetts is doing might be a better match for the population they have,” Parker said.

And preventing many suicides, Parker said, ultimately comes down to factors outside of the state’s control.

“We can’t control who comes to us,” Parker said. “Some years [suicides are ] low. Some years [they are ] high.... When someone wants to commit suicide, there’s not a flashing sign on their forehead saying, ‘ I want to kill myself.’” Margaret Winter considers that kind of statement to be its own kind of warning.

Winter was the lead attorney in an American Civil Liberties Union lawsuit that challenged conditions in Mississippi’s Parchman Farm prison, winning a settlement this year that promises wide-reaching changes in that state’s isolation procedures.

Winter said that, generally, when state officials say inmates who want to kill themselves will find a way to do so, it raises troubling questions.

“To me, what it suggests is that when there is such a high rate of suicides and they say there was no reason to believe they were in jeopardy, there’s something wrong with that picture. If meaningful screening is going on, people like that should be identified.” Kelley said she believes that while there might be room for improvement, Arkansas has a good suicide prevention system already in place.

No one apparently noticed Walls’ torment until investigators searched his nearly bare isolation cell at the Supermax and found two notes that presented a grim portrait.

He wrote to his victim, whom he began having sex with when she was 16, begging her to tell the truth and report to authorities that the two had a consensual relationship.

Another note decried his exclusion from a sexual offender class needed for parole.

“I am so sick sick to actually believe in truth + honor,” read the unaddressed note. “Help me get rid of these sick concepts so I can be normal like you.” ..more.. by CHARLIE FRAGO

Inmate found hanging from bunk

12-1-2007 Florida:


ORANGE COUNTY - -An Orange County Jail inmate committed suicide early Friday while awaiting transfer to prison, a jail spokesman said.

Robert Lee Stafford II, 50, was found at about 1:20 a.m., hanged with a bedsheet tied to his bunk, jail spokesman Allen Moore said. Corrections officers dialed 911 and tried to revive him, but he was pronounced dead at the hospital.

The Orange County Sheriff's Office and jail officials are investigating. Moore said workers saw no signs Stafford would try to kill himself.

Stafford was in protective custody because he was arrested on child-molestation charges. He was the sole person assigned to his cell. He pleaded guilty Wednesday in Orange County Circuit Court to one count of lewd or lascivious battery and was sentenced to eight years in prison and seven years of sex-offender probation.

Stafford was to be transferred to the state Department of Corrections' Central Florida Reception Center to be assigned to a state prison. He had been in jail for a year. ..more.. by Robyn Shelton, Bianca Prieto, Katie Fretland, Sarah Langbein, Ludmilla Lelis, Denise-Marie Balona and Willoughby Mariano of the Sentinel staff contributed to this report.

Sex Offender Misses Sentencing, Found Dead

12-1-2007 Connecticut:

A man who sexually assaulted four underage girls was found dead after missing his sentencing hearing Friday, according to television news reports.

WTIC-TV, Fox 61, and WFSB-TV, Channel 3, reported Friday that Brian J. Woolf, attorney for Aaron Whitney, told them that when authorities went to re-arrest Whitney after his failure to appear in Superior Court in Middletown, they found his bedroom door locked. When authorities forced their way inside, they found that Whitney apparently had hanged himself with bedsheets, Fox 61 reported.

The station reported that the body had been taken to the state medical examiner's office for an autopsy, but neither that office nor state police would confirm the details late Friday.

Had he shown up in court Friday, Whitney would have been sentenced for having sex with four underage girls he met on the Internet.

But while the judge and lawyers involved in the case were waiting for him, the 28-year-old Chaplin resident was holed up in his bedroom, refusing his father's requests to come out.

Woolf, who had spoken to Whitney's father by phone earlier Friday morning, told the judge: "Aaron has taken an excessive amount of prescribed medications and locked himself in his room. I suggested that he be taken to the hospital, but he refuses to go to the hospital and he refuses to come to court."

The plan was to re-arrest Whitney, who pleaded guilty in September to four counts of second-degree sexual assault and four counts of risk of injury to a minor, to hold him on $1.2 million bail once he was taken into custody. Whitney had also faced a jury trial for similar charges involving other underage girls; the trial would have begun in Superior Court in Rockville on Dec. 12. He pleaded not guilty to those charges.

After explaining his client's whereabouts Friday, Woolf mentioned the upcoming proceedings in Rockville as a possible reason for Whitney's absence, but Judge Frank Iannotti had little patience with Whitney's actions.

"To be honest, we have continued this case many times. I have given you fair opportunity to work out the other matter in Rockville," said Iannotti who ordered a warrant for Whitney's arrest. "Apparently, he did something and it's clear that it's his intention not to be here. He knew he had to be here, and he did something not to be here."

The sexual assault and risk of injury charges involve four underage girls Whitney met and conversed with on MySpace.com in 2005 or 2006. In each instance, Whitney arranged to meet the girl and then brought her to either his Chaplin home or, in one case, a Portland motel, where he plied her with alcohol and prescription painkillers before having sex with her. Second-degree sexual assault carries a maximum sentence of 10 years in prison and a $10,000 fine, while first-degree risk of injury to a minor carries a maximum of 20 years. Whitney would have had to register as a sex offender and undergo sexual assault evaluation treatment.

Outside the courtroom Friday and before reports surfaced of Whitney's death, Woolf said he was not sure whether he would continue to represent Whitney.

"I don't know if I can, because I was a witness to his failure to appear," Woolf said. "Based upon the charges which he pled to here, as well as what he is facing in Rockville, which is much more serious, I believe that put him over the edge." ..more.. by Melissa Pionzio at mpionzio@courant.com.

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Offender's Death Ruled A Suicide

12-2-2007 Connecticut:

Aaron Whitney, a Chaplin man scheduled to be sentenced Friday for sexually assaulting underage girls, committed suicide, according to the office of the chief medical examiner.

Whitney, 28, died of asphyxia as a result of hanging, according to the medical examiner's office.

When Whitney failed to show up for his sentencing in Superior Court in Middletown on Friday, Whitney's lawyer, Brian J. Woolf, told Judge Frank Iannotti that Whitney had taken an "excessive amount" of prescribed medication and locked himself in his room, refusing to go to the hospital or to court.

Whitney pleaded guilty in September to four counts of second-degree sexual assault and four counts of risk of injury to a minor. He was accused of finding the girls on MySpace.com and then meeting them, plying them with alcohol and prescription painkillers, and having sex with them.

He also faced a jury trial in Rockville for similar charges involving other underage girls. ..more.. by The Hartford Courant