2nd video might show staff ignoring sexual abuse

ssociated Press
3:03 PM CST, December 16, 2008

INDIANAPOLIS - An anti-abortion group released a video that it claims shows staff at a second Planned Parenthood clinic ignoring Indiana law on reporting sexual abuse of an underage girl.

The release of the video Tuesday by the West Coast-based group Live Action led one lawmaker to urge Attorney General Steve Carter to investigate and to ask the Family and Social Services Administration to suspend Medicaid payments and other government funding to Planned Parenthood of Indiana.

Planned Parenthood said it had suspended without pay a counselor shown in the second video while it investigates the matter.

The edited video secretly shot by a 20-year-old college student posing as a girl of 13 shows a counselor at a Planned Parenthood clinic in Indianapolis saying she didn’t care that the man who impregnated the girl was 31 years old.

“I don’t care how old he is,” said the counselor, identified only as Janet.
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Prosecutor, DNA at odds

In 3 cases, Lake County prosecutor Michael Mermel is willing to pit other evidence against genetic tests that exclude defendants.

By Steve Mills | Tribune reporter
December 15, 2008

DNA evidence has been widely embraced over the last two decades as a powerful forensic tool to prove a defendant’s guilt or innocence. But in Lake County, authorities have sometimes pressed for convictions even when the DNA doesn’t match a suspect.

Consider three active cases overseen by Michael Mermel, chief of the criminal division for the Lake County state’s attorney’s office:

When DNA evidence excluded a man convicted in the rape and battery of a 68-year-old woman, Mermel suggested the victim had consensual sex with someone else.

When DNA evidence excluded a man in the rape and murder of an 11-year-old girl, Mermel and another prosecutor suggested that the girl may have been sexually active. The DNA, he said, was a “red herring.”

And, just recently, when lawyers for the man charged in the killing of his 8-year-old daughter and her 9-year-old friend said in court that DNA evidence from semen excluded him as the perpetrator, the Lake prosecutor had another explanation.

Mermel said DNA may have gotten inside the 8-year-old’s body as she played in the woods at what became the crime scene—a place where Mermel said some couples go to have sex. The girl was found fully clothed.
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Sex offender takes plea deal

A convicted sex offender who went to a Round Lake Park school looking for his daughter pleaded guilty to a reduced charge Friday.

Gillermo Contreras, 45, was placed on probation for one year after pleading guilty to misdemeanor unlawful presence on school property.

Contreras, of 408 Kenwood Drive, Round Lake Park, was arrested Nov. 6 when he went to Murphy Elementary School because he said he believed his daughter missed the bus.

He is not allowed to be at any school because he was convicted in 2001 of aggravated criminal sexual abuse of a child.

His daughter, who does not live with Contreras, attends a different school and had not missed her bus on the day her father went looking for her.

Contreras was originally charged with a felony violation of the state sex offender registration law, but Lake County Assistant State’s Attorney Ari Fisz agreed to reduce the charge in exchange for the guilty plea.

DNA test results suggest that Jerry Hobbs’s confession is false

New evidence, suggests that Hobbs’s confession is false and that police tunnelvision may have let the true killer or killers go free. DNA testing has found semen on swabs taken from Laura Hobbs’s body cavities as well as fabric on her jean skirt. The semen is not from Hobbs. Hobbs is moving for a new bond and to have the DNA loaded into state and national databases to see if a match can be made to another perpetrator. When called by Chicago Tribune reporter Steve Mills, Lake County prosecutor Mike Mermel disputed the results, claiming that none of the semen was found in Laura’s body, and downplayed their significance: “None of the sperm was found in a significant place.”

Lake Co. board candidate says state’s attorney enables pedophiles

A Lake County Board candidate on Friday said State’s Attorney Michael Waller and his staff enable pedophiles to attack children.

Local prosecutors do not seek long enough prison sentences for such criminals, Democratic board hopeful Denise Rotheimer said during a news conference in Waukegan. That allows convicted sex offenders to go free and molest more children, she argued.

Rotheimer’s comments were supported at the media event by attorney Michael Jacobs, Waller’s Democratic opponent in the race for the state’s attorney job.

“When you’re not seeking maximum penalties for child sex offenders, it enables them to get back out on the street,” said Jacobs, an assistant state’s attorney in Cook County’s civil division who also serves on the Gurnee village board.

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