KARA – Kids At Risk Action | invisiblechildren.org
These are the child abuse stories that crossed my desk over the past few weeks. I collect them because the pattern only shows up when you put them side by side.
Look at how many are daycares. South St. Paul, Rochester, Prior Lake, Hastings, Duluth. Licensed providers, trusted with infants and toddlers, charged with hitting, slapping, and bruising the children in their care. In at least one of those cases there were earlier complaints on record and the person was still working.
No single one of these stays on the front page for long.
Together they are a description of how we care for children in this state.
What Childcare Workers Can Do
KARA Information Deep Dive
Five Minnesota abuse cases
South St. Paul. A daycare worker was charged after a young child was found with bruising on her ear. Charges say the worker had received other complaints about being too rough with children. (FOX 9, Bring Me The News)
Rochester. Connie Marie Keller, 54, charged with gross misdemeanor malicious punishment of a child after backhanding a toddler. (KAAL, Post Bulletin)
Prior Lake. A daycare teacher charged after surveillance video showed slapping and hitting of multiple children. The daycare turned the video over to law enforcement. (Bring Me The News,
Hastings. A daycare operator pleaded guilty to assaulting a four month old child in 2022. (KSTP)
Duluth. A daycare lost its license after St. Louis County found the provider responsible for maltreatment of a minor by abuse.
Five cases. Five licensed settings. The youngest child was four months old.
Group homes
Hennepin County case workers spent last week finding new homes for residents displaced from five group homes. (MPR News)
A Liberian government official has been running Minnesota group homes despite multiple residents dying and repeated findings of neglect. (APM Reports)
Sexual abuse and exploitation
Bemidji. Jerrold Kemmer charged with three felony counts of first degree criminal sexual conduct involving two children over multiple years. (Valley News Live)
Mankato. Alex Wall, 39, a registered sex offender, pleaded guilty to receiving child pornography and faces a 15 year minimum. Prosecutors say he coerced a teenager into producing the images and recorded the abuse. (Bring Me The News, KROC News, KIMT)
Mankato. In a separate case, a Mankato man was sentenced to 35 years for producing child sexual abuse material. (Department of Justice)
Trent Fair, 31, sentenced to 260 months in federal prison for using social media to groom and sexually abuse children across multiple states. (KIMT )
Rochester. A New Jersey man was arrested and brought to Rochester on charges of abusing a child beginning when the child was around two years old. (KROC News, Post Bulletin
Mounds View. A former high school teacher federally indicted on coercion and enticement charges. (CBS News)
Pine Island. A man pleaded guilty at the start of trial to two felony counts involving the use of minors in sexual performance. (KTTC])
AI is part of this now
A class action alleges xAI trained Grok on real abuse material and allowed users to generate abuse images of children from ordinary photographs. A Wyoming woman says her stepfather used a childhood photo of her to do it. (CyberScoop, Minnesota Lawyer, The Washington Post
Minnesota is defending its ban on AI nudification tools against a lawsuit from xAI. The state argues the law addresses the volume of child sexual abuse material these tools produce. (Reuters, MPR News
This is not a future problem. A school picture is enough.
Two new laws
Minnesota enacted a grooming law this year aimed at adults who build relationships with children online in order to abuse them.
A second law bars prosecution of children 12 and younger. Those children are now treated as in need of protection or services rather than as delinquents. (The Imprint News
Also this month
Chisholm. Paula Jo McCallister, 36, charged with child torture, assault, child neglect, and false imprisonment after allegedly holding a gun to her son’s head. (Bring Me The News)
Hopkins. A child and two adults died in an attack at a Hopkins daycare. Hundreds gathered at a vigil for the Hopkins and Burnsville victims. MPR News, Star Tribune
St. Paul. A 38 year old mother escaped a burning home, realized her toddler was still inside, went back in, and died.
Minneapolis says its inspections found gaps in securing a grain elevator before a teenager fell and was badly hurt. (Star Tribune)
What I take from this
Every one of these came after somebody noticed. A bruise on an ear. A camera in a daycare room. A county investigator following up on a report. That is the system working at the very last possible moment, after a child has already been hurt.
The question nobody asks is how many of these providers had complaints on file before the charge. In the South St. Paul case, the answer is in the charging document. In the others, we do not track it well enough to say.
In Minnesota, reports of suspected child abuse or neglect go to county child protection or to law enforcement. CornerHouse works with families through the process in the Twin Cities. (Pioneer Press)
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KIDS AT RISK ACTION/KARA / INVISIBLE CHILDREN
