Free Republic

A 3-year-old boy was "severely" beaten and abused -- including being burned with scalding water -- by six adults, in a consistent and coordinated form of punishment, New Jersey officials said. Patricia Gamarra, 62, Mary Buchan, 55, Patricia Buchan, 28, Bridget Buchan, 23, Natacha Smith, 43, and Homer Searcy, 39, were arrested and charged with aggravated assault and endangering the welfare of the toddler, Essex County Prosecutor’s Office said in a statement Wednesday. Smith is the 3-year-old boy’s mother, though it’s unclear if the five others have any relation to the child. The six people were living in the home...

)—An Army National Guard member and his cousin have been arrested in Illinois for allegedly conspiring to provide material support to the terrorist organization ISIS, federal prosecutors said Thursday. The alleged plot included a plan to attack a U.S. military installation in Illinois. In the past 18 months, the Justice Department's National Security Division has prosecuted or is prosecuting 32 cases of people attempting to travel abroad to join or providing support to terrorist groups. Of those cases, 18 allegedly involve support to ISIS.

Animal sex abuse is on the rise in Germany, with bestiality brothels being set up across the country, according to a state animal protection officer demanding stronger laws to protect mankind's furry and feathered friends. Madeleine Martin, the animal protection official for Hessian state government, said the law needed to be changed to make sex abuse of animals – known as zoophilia – a crime. “It is punishable to distribute animal pornography, but the act itself is not,” she told the Frankfurter Rundschau daily paper on Friday. “There are even animal brothels in Germany,” she said. Sex with animals was...

WILKES-BARRE, Pa. – For years, the juvenile court system in Wilkes-Barre operated like a conveyor belt: Youngsters were brought before judges without a lawyer, given hearings that lasted only a minute or two, and then sent off to juvenile prison for months for minor offenses. The explanation, prosecutors say, was corruption on the bench. In one of the most shocking cases of courtroom graft on record, two Pennsylvania judges have been charged with taking millions of dollars in kickbacks to send teenagers to two privately run youth detention centers. "I've never encountered, and I don't think that we will in...