Man Accused of Sexual Abuse
Man accused of sexual abuse: Wagoner man suspected of sex with 13-year-old
By Anita Reding Phoenix Staff Writer
A Wagoner man who is charged with child sexual abuse was arrested Friday.
Christopher Allen Harris, 37, is being held on $100,000 bond. Sexual Abuse
On April 11, charges were filed against Harris in Wagoner County District Court, and a bench warrant for his arrest was issued. Harris surrendered at the Wagoner Police Department about 4:30 p.m. Friday, said Police Chief Bob Haley.
Harris was booked into the Wagoner County Detention Center and is scheduled to be in Wagoner County District Court at 1:30 p.m. Monday, a jail spokesperson said.
Haley said he was “obviously glad we were able to get him in custody and going through the process.”
Harris is accused of having sexual intercourse with a 13-year-old juvenile, court documents state. He is also accused of “committing other sexual acts which constitute child sexual abuse.”
Prosecutors say the abuse occurred between Sept. 1 and Feb. 13, documents state.
Harris was interviewed by a detective with the Wagoner Police Department on Feb. 22, during which he denied any sexual contact with the juvenile. On March 18, a polygraph exam was administered, and the examiner told Wagoner Police Detective Rick Ward he found Harris “to be deceptive in the majority of the questions asked of him,” court documents state.
Following that polygraph examination, Harris admitted to having sexual contact with the juvenile. He also wrote and signed a confession, documents state.
Reach Anita Reding at (918) 684-2903 or areding@muskogeephoenix.com.
Volunteer Firefighter Accused of Arson
Volunteer firefighter accused of setting 2007 Halethorpe blaze: Federal authorities charge English Consul deputy chief
By Justin Fenton, The Baltimore Sun
When a fire broke out at a home on Myrtle Avenue in Halethorpe, members of the English Consul Volunteer Fire Department arrived to beat back the blaze. It proved too strong, destroying the structure and sending two firefighters to the hospital.
Federal authorities now say that one of the volunteers injured in the September 2007 blaze intentionally set it, one in a string of suspicious fires in the area at the time.
Documents filed in U.S. District Court last week lay out the case against Nicholas Hannigan, 27, a deputy chief with the English Consul department who told federal investigators in 2011 that he set the fire by igniting a wheelbarrow full of insulation, prosecutors say.
The alleged disclosure came as Hannigan went through a screening to become a Secret Service employee. Secret Service officials worked with Baltimore County police and, more than two years later, federal prosecutors have charged Hannigan with setting the fire.
The National Volunteer Fire Council estimates that about 100 paid or volunteer firefighters — out of 1.1 million — are arrested for arson-related crimes each year.
Researcher Matthew Hinds-Aldrich said while firefighter arsonists are typically thought to be thrill-seekers, many set fires as training opportunities or to create work to justify resources allocated to the department. It’s an emerging area of research — and intervention — for fire services, he said.
A top official with the English Consul department expressed surprise Monday when told by a reporter that a member has been accused of setting the 2007 blaze.
Bradford Thomas, the chairman of English Consul’s board, said Hannigan informed the company recently that he was facing federal indictment, and the department placed him on suspension. But Hannigan did not say why he was being charged, Thomas said.
“I guarantee you, if we had any inkling of something like this, they would be turned over to police immediately,” he said.
In court filings last week, prosecutors said Hannigan described setting the fire as a rite of passage of sorts for volunteers, saying another member told him he “should have lit a fire by now to be like everyone else.”
Asked whether he knew of members intentionally setting fires, Thomas called the claim a “ridiculous accusation.”
Hannigan could not be reached for comment, and his attorney, Patrick Kent, declined to comment citing the continuing case. He has filed a motion to have the charge dismissed.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Judson T. Mihok wrote in court papers that prior to Hannigan’s 2011 revelation, investigators had noticed a “disturbingly common trend in this area …. connecting the [English Consul Volunteer Fire Department] and suspicious fires,” but had been “unable to fix blame” for any of them.
‘Through these doors’
At the English Consul firehouse, which is nestled in the middle of a residential block on Michigan Avenue, signs above the door leading to the truck garage read “Through These Doors Pass the World’s Best Firemen,” and “This Could Be The Night.”
Started in 1944, the department has deep roots in the community — a hallway is decorated with old pictures and certificates. It is one of 35 companies that make up the Baltimore County Volunteer Firemen’s Association.
Hannigan joined the department about 2006. Three months after the September 2007 blaze, he was part of a team that responded to a fire that claimed the life of another member’s grandmother, according to a news report at the time.
He remained active with the department even after allegedly telling federal authorities of his role in setting the Myrtle Avenue fire. He is quoted in a January 2012 news article, commenting on a federal grant to help volunteer firefighters pay for life-saving equipment. Monday, he was listed as a deputy chief on English Consul’s web page.
The home at the center of the federal investigation was owned by George Corbett, a 73-year-old truck driver who purchased it with the intention of renovating and renting it in order to supplement his retirement income, prosecutors wrote in court documents.
Between July 2007 and the time of the fire, Corbett financed “extensive” renovations, spending $20,000 on a new kitchen floor and removal of plaster and wallboard. The home was unoccupied at the time of the fire.
Corbett was semi-retired at the time, and the blaze forced him back into full-time work, prosecutors said. Corbett could not be reached for comment Monday.
The cause of the fire was unknown when Hannigan applied for a job with the Secret Service in 2011, requiring a screening exam during which he was asked about involvement in criminal activity, Mihok wrote in court filings.
The interviewing officer reported that Hannigan grew noticeably nervous when asked specifically about arson, and proceeded to explain his role in the Myrtle Avenue fire, according to the records.
Passed a Polygraph on The Way to Freedom
Taste of freedom for man at last as his triple murder conviction is vacated after 22 years
By Denis Hamill NEW YORK DAILY NEWS
Anthony Yarbough Picture by Jesse Ward NEW YORK DAILY NEWS
Anthony Yarbough walked the Brooklyn streets as a free man after a judged tossed the verdict in the 1992 triple murder of Yarbough’s mother, step-sister and her friend.
The judge vacated his triple-murder conviction, the guards unlocked his hand and foot shackles, the courtroom broke into tears and applause. And for the first time in nearly 22 years Tony Yarbough was a free man.
One week before his 40th birthday, he hugged his aunt Sandra Vivas and cousin Sylvia Vivas and walked with stunted steps like he was still shackled out into the hallway of the 19th-floor Kings County Supreme Court building. He staggered into a storm of cameras and turned into a lawyer-client conference room with Phil Smallman and Zach Margulis-Ohuma, who worked four tenacious years to spring him.
He plopped in a chair in an crazy daze of freedom. I asked him what he missed most.
“My mom and my little sister,” he said on Thursday. “I did 22 years for killing them and my little niece, which I never did. And now that I’m free, I still miss them. I always, always will. I don’t even know where they’re buried.”
He dropped his head in his arms and sobbed softly and then excused himself as he knelt and rested his head in his hands on his chair and said a prayer as his big body rattled with the electrified emotions of liberty and exoneration.
“Forgive me,” he said. “I said a prayer to my mom. Asked her to watch over me as I try to make the best of the rest of my life. My mother was a lady with problems like we all have. But she had a wonderful heart.”
On the morning of June 18, 1992, Yarbough came home from a night of partying in Manhattan with his friend Sharrif Wilson to find the bodies of his mother, Annie Yarbough, 40, her daughter, Chavonn Barnes, and Latasha Knox, both 12, stabbed and strangled with electrical wires.
He was arrested for those crimes although there were no witnesses, physical evidence or real motive connecting him to the crimes. Wilson, a scared boy of 15, would eventually confess to committing the murders with Yarbough. But in 1999, while both were still in prison, another woman was murdered in Brooklyn in similar fashion.
Last year, the medical examiner’s office discovered that the DNA found in the woman murdered in 1999 matched the DNA found under Yarbough’s mother’s fingernails in 1992.
The two lawyers who had been working on the case for four years appealed to the court and the Brooklyn district attorney’s office to free both men. Wilson recanted his false confession before the DNA match and passed a polygraph requested by the Brooklyn DA.
On Thursday — 7,903 days after Tony Yarbough was incarcerated — Justice Raymond Guzman vacated the conviction with the blessing of the new Brooklyn DA, Kenneth Thompson.
“I cannot thank my two lawyers enough,” Yarbough said. “They believed in me, stuck by me, fought for me.”
He took a deep breath and said, “If there had been a death penalty in New York I would be dead by now. But instead I have lived long enough to get my freedom and be exonerated.”
He walked from the room and spoke to the press and rode the elevator down stairs and stepped out onto frigid Jay St. where he gulped the free winter air of Brooklyn. “I want the person who did this to my family to be caught and have to live through the hell I went through for 22 years,” he said. “I want to start my life with a clean slate.”
Yarbough will reside in a Fortune Society residence until he can find employment. The group helps former inmates adjust to life on the outside.
Someone dialed a cell phone, something he’d never used, and he spoke to his grandmother who still lives in the Coney Island Houses where the murders occurred.
“Grandma, it’s Tony,” he said. “I’m out. I’m free. I love you. And I will be seeing you soon.”
Then Tony Yarbough walked through the streets of downtown Brooklyn to Junior’s on Flatbush Ave. to eat his first meal as a free man.
“God is good,” he said. “It just feels so weird walking on the streets of Brooklyn again as a free man.”
Welcome home.
Child Abuse Charge After Polygraph Test
Deputies: Mother admits to “twisting” child’s leg during polygraph test
By John Cominsky LINCOLN COUNTY, NC (WBTV) –
A Lincoln County woman was charged Tuesday on a felony child abuse charge after taking a polygraph test about how her two-year-old son was injured, according to the Lincoln County Sheriff’s Office.
On October 21, deputies responded to Carolinas Medical Center-Lincoln after a child with a broken femur was brought to the emergency room.
The parents told deputies the child was running around in the house and fell in the hallway, hurting his leg. The X-ray at the hospital revealed a spiral mid-shaft fracture of the right femur, the official report states.
Deputies said that because of differences in the parents’ versions of the incident, both agreed to take a polygraph examination on Monday.
The child’s mother, Amanda Leighan Josey, 23, of Denver was taking her polygraph test when she admitted to twisting the 2-year- old child’s leg because he would not lie still while she changed his diaper.
The Department of Social Services then placed the child in the custody of the grandparents, who live in Catawba County.
Josey was charged with one count of felony child abuse. She was taken before a Lincoln County magistrate and placed under a $10,000 unsecured bond.
Copyright 2013 WBTV. All rights reserved.
Corruption of Minor Charge After Polygraph Test
Bucks man allegedly taught 8-year-old how to look up porn
By Brian Dzenis, The Trentonian News
BENSALEM, Pa. — A Bensalem man finds himself back in trouble with the law after he allegedly saw fit to teach an 8-year-old girl how to access pornography on her iPad.
According to a probable cause affidavit, the victim was brought to Bensalem police headquarters for a well-being check on Aug. 15, where she told police that her neighbor, Robert Girmscheid, 31, had told her to search for “Red Tube,” a pornographic site, on her iPad earlier in the month. She told police the same story five days later in a forensic interview with the department’s Special Victim’s Unit.
On Aug. 22, Girmscheid went to Bensalem police headquarters and took a polygraph test. While hooked up to the lie-detector test, he allegedly confessed to showing the girl how to look up “Red Tube.” He was arrested and charged on Friday with corruption of minors. Girmschield was previously arrested on simple assault and terroristic threats in January of this year, according to Pennsylvania court records. He’s had five other arrests in both Philadelphia and Bucks County going back to 2001, with the charges ranging from drug offenses to theft.