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Click for Brief History of Alabama People-Good Hard Working People The kind We Need to Defend The Children. Please Help
Foster Parents Arrested For AbuseWed, May 27, 2009 - A
Conecuh County couple is behind bars after investigators say they severely beat a 2 year old boy in their care.
Joyce
Sims, 41 and her husband, Lonnell Sims, 51, were arrested last week and charged with attempted murder and aggravated child
abuse.
The District Attorney's office tells News Five earlier this month police responded to the couple's
Evergreen home where they found the child barely breathing.
The young boy suffered permanent brain damage as a
result of blunt force trauma, according to District Attorney Tommy Chapman. A doctor treating the child told investigators
the boy also had bruising on his body.
Joyce and Lonnell Sims are foster parents, who previously had as many as
eight foster children living in their mobile home. At the time of their arrest, there were four children in their care.
Barry Spears, a spokesperson for the Alabama Department of Human Resources, confirmed the state agency is investigating
the Conecuh County foster care program.
Spears says as a rule, only six foster children are allowed to live in
one home, but he says exceptions can be made. DHR officials would not comment specifically on this case.
Birmingham
mom, friend charged in toddler scalding BIRMINGHAM, Ala. (AP) - Police have arrested and charged a Birmingham
woman and her boyfriend with child abuse after authorities said the woman’s 2-year-old daughter was intentionally
scalded with water from the waist down.
Police Sgt. Scott Thurmond said 26-year-old Tony Russell and 24-year-old
Antonia Bridges were arrested Tuesday night,
The toddler had surgery at Children’s Hospital for burns. She
was admitted Feb. 18. Hospital officials refused to disclose her condition.
Russell claimed the girl was accidentally
burned in a bath, but authorities pointed to inconsistencies in that claim.
Russell remained in the Jefferson County
Jail on Wednesday, charged with aggravated child abuse. Bridges, charged with child abuse, was released on bond.
__________________________________________________ Man arrested for severely burning a 7-month-old girl
April 23, 2009 A
Dothan man is behind bars after police charged him with severely burning a 7-month-old girl. According
to the complaint filed at the Houston County Courthouse, police investigators charged Jamie Alan Abrams, 29, with felony aggravated
child abuse. A Dothan police statement said investigators charged Abrams with the crime after he allegedly placed the
girl in hot water, which caused second-degree burns to over 50 percent of her body. The complaint filed against Abrams showed
he was either the parent, step-parent or legal guardian of the child when she was reportedly burned on Saturday. According
to the police statement and court records, police responded to the 2300 block of Denton Road, which is also Abrams’
home of record, to a report of an infant with severe burns. She was taken to a local hospital and later airlifted to a Birmingham
hospital. Police arrested Abrams on Wednesday in Geneva County, and charged him with the felony crime. Abrams was being
held in the Houston County Jail on a $200,000 bond, which was set by Circuit Court Judge Ed Jackson. Police said the Geneva
County Sheriff’s Office assisted in Abrams’ arrest. Houston County District Attorney Doug Valeska called
aggravated child abuse a class B felony crime, which he said carries a possible punishment of two to 20 years in prison and
up to a $30,000 fine. According to court records, Abrams previously lived in Geneva County in the Hartford area where
he was arrested in 2007, and charged with felony first-degree domestic violence. According to court records,
he pleaded guilty last year to a lesser misdemeanor third-degree assault
______________________________________________-
Athens man charged with child abuse in whipping of 4-year-oldPosted
by Keith Clines March 19, 2009 James
Thorne ATHENS, AL - A man who police said whipped a 4-year-old boy, leaving marks
on the child was arrested Wednesday on a charge of aggravated child abuse, police Lt. Floyd Johnson said. James Thorne, 39, of Swan Drive was arrested late Wednesday afternoon, Johnson said. Athens police and the
Limestone County Department of Human Resources investigated the case.
Johnson said that Thorne physically abused the child with a belt that left marks in various locationon the
boy's body. The boy is the son of Thorne's girlfriend, he said. Thorne
was in Limestone County Jail with bond set at $10,000.
__________________________________________
Tragic Victims of Child
Abuse in Alabama
| Rest In Peace |
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| Danny; Lindsey; Hannah; Ryan Phan, |
Father sentenced to death for throwing
4 children off Alabama bridgeLast Updated: Thursday, April
30, 2009 A man who killed four young children, three of them his own offspring, by throwing them
off a bridge in Alabama was sentenced to death Thursday.Alabama Circuit
Judge Charles Graddick sentenced Lam Luong on Thursday in Mobile. The unemployed shrimp fisherman
was convicted in March of killing Danny Luong, 4 months, Lindsey Luong, 1, Hannah Luong, 2, and Ryan Phan, 3, in January 2008. After his conviction, the jury recommended the death sentence. Prosecutors said Luong,
38, broke down and confessed to driving the children to the two-lane Dauphin Island Bridge and throwing them into the water
following an argument with his wife. The Vietnamese refugee later recanted, claiming two Asian
women took the children and never returned them. The bodies of three of the children were found
within days of their deaths, while the body of the fourth child was found a couple of weeks later. The
bridge connects Alabama to Dauphin Island about five kilometres south of Mobile Bay in the Gulf of Mexico. The bridge is as
high as 24 metres in places.Search For 4 Kids Thrown Off Ala. Bridge Jan.
10, 2008
Lam Luong, 37, was charged with four counts of capital murder in the death of the children,
who range in age from 4 months to 3 years, after he confessed, that he threw all four children of the 80 ft Dauphin
Island bridge. District Judge Charles McKnight denied bond describing the allegations as "heinous."
Luong' has a court appointed attorney, Joe Kulakowski,
Luong confessed he threw the children
from the bridge after an argument with his wife. Luong had a crack cocaine possession charge pending in Georgia, and
his wife's brother-in-law described Luong as a drug addict.
Luong came to the United States from Vietnam in
1984 and was employed as a shrimpboat fisherman. He and his wife lived with their children and a grandmother in a brick home
near Bayou La Batre, a fishing village 20 miles southwest of Mobile, with a large Southeast Asian community.
Presumed
dead are: 4-month-old Danny; 1-year-old Lindsey; 2-year-old Hannah; and 3-year-old Ryan Phan, who was raised from infancy
by Luong but is not his biological child.
Phengsisomboun, who is from Thailand, said Luong had quickly spent
money from an insurance settlement after an automobile accident. He said he initially feared Luong had traded the children
for drugs.
Luong was arrested Oct. 10 in Hinesville, Ga., on a charge accusing him of possessing crack. Luong
called police and "requested an officer at his residence because he had used narcotics and wanted to turn himself in,"
according to a report by Officer Jeffrey Liu.
Luong was giving his children a bath when Liu arrived, the report
states. He eventually emerged from the bathroom and pulled from a shirt pocket a pipe and "a whitish yellow rock that
appeared to be crack cocaine," Liu wrote.
An evangelical preacher killed his wife several years ago and stuffed
her body in a freezer after she caught him abusing their daughter, according to police and court documents.
Anthony Hopkins, 37, was arrested at the Inspirational Tabernacle Church of God in Christ in Jackson, Alabama, just after
he had delivered a sermon to a congregation that included his seven other children, officials said.
He faces
charges including murder, rape, sodomy, sexual abuse and incest. The daughter, now 19, went to the Mobile
Police Department's Child Advocacy Center and reported that she had been sexually abused by Hopkins since she was 11 years old, according to an affidavit filed in support of a search warrant of the preacher's
home in Mobile.
The affidavit related the daughter's story as follows:
Her mother,
Arletha Hopkins, 36, caught her father abusing her in a bathroom in November 2004. Afterward, her parents argued, and her
mother locked her father out of the house.
The father came to the daughter's window and asked her to
let him in, and she did so.
The next morning, her father asked her to help him hide her mother's body in the freezer
in the laundry room of the home.
The girl said she moved out of the home about two weeks ago and was living
with a neighbor. She told police that her mother's body was still in the freezer.
When authorities went
to the home, no one was there, as Hopkins and the other children were at the church. A body was found in the freezer, the
affidavit says.
Mobile Police Chief Phillip Garrett had said that an identification and autopsy results would
take a few days: "obviously, the body was in a freezer."
He said he was not sure of the body's
condition or whether it was intact, as upon seeing the body, authorities immediately sealed the chest-type freezer. The body
had been covered in the unit, he said, and the entire appliance was taken to the state Department of Forensic Science.
At the Inspirational Tabernacle Church of God in Christ, Hopkins was preaching at a revival, pastor Beverly Jackson told
CNN affiliate WKRG. His message, she said, was about forgiveness and not passing judgment -- and at one point, he turned to
his seven children and asked them to forgive him his past, present and future.
Police allowed Hopkins to finish
his sermon before arresting him, Jackson said. She said she asked police why they were arresting him and was told, "he
murdered his wife."
She said Hopkins had told her his wife died four years ago while giving birth to their youngest
son.
Authorities moved quickly on the daughter's accusations to make sure the children still in the household
were OK, Garrett said. They were placed in the custody of child welfare authorities. The next-oldest child is a 17-year-old
female, he said.
All eight were the children of Arletha Hopkins, and Anthony Hopkins fathered six of them,
he said.
An investigation has not found any record of Arletha Hopkins' existence since 2004,
according to the affidavit. Asked how long police think the body had been in the freezer, Garrett said, "I'm thinking
that she's probably been there for a number of years."
He said Anthony Hopkins did not have a regular
church but apparently preached in various areas around the South.
"Part of the mystery here is that,
apparently, none of these children were in school" but were being home-schooled, Mobile County District Attorney John
Tyson said. "Home schooling, under this situation, removes almost any chances of us catching up with these kinds of things
until there is a catastrophe."
Pastor Jerry Porter said he used to preach with Hopkins at his church,
the Williams Street Holiness Church, and knew the family.
Arletha Hopkins "was very quiet," he told
Mobile television station and CNN affiliate WPMI. "She was kind of secluded. She'd talk, but not much."
Anthony Hopkins, he said, made statements that led him to believe all was not well at home. "He always used to tell
me ... 'You're blessed in the fact that you have a wife that supports you and what you're trying to do for God,'
" Porter said.
He said Arletha Hopkins disappeared shortly after the couple's youngest child was
born. As rumors swirled, Porter said, he confronted Hopkins and asked whether his wife was dead. Hopkins "wouldn't
give me an answer," he said.
After that, Porter said, he banned him from the church but remained on good
terms with him.
He said he visited the family a few years ago, and their home was clean and well-kept.
"It
was the ideal family. I mean, the children were so respectful, just so easygoing," Porter said. "Didn't seem
to be no stress at all. Never got that impression, never."
The children, he said, "loved their dad.
They were very close to him."
Of Hopkins' preaching ability, Porter said, "he was a bulls-eye prophet.
If he told you something, you could pretty much bank on it."
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