Accused Los Angeles child kidnapper-rapist arrested in Mexico

By Steve Gorman

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - A convicted felon suspected in the kidnapping and rape of a 10- year-old California girl who was snatched from her bedroom last month was arrested early on Wednesday in Mexico and returned to Los Angeles, FBI officials said.

Tobias Dustin Summers, also a reputed member of a white supremacist street gang in the San Fernando Valley area of Los Angeles, was wanted on 37 criminal counts stemming from the March 27 kidnapping, the FBI said.

The girl was abducted from her home in the middle of the night, driven to various locations in two vehicles and raped before being dropped off near a hospital, according to police.

A passerby who saw her wandering barefoot with cuts and bruises outside a coffee shop watched over her until police were summoned.

Authorities did not provide details of the location and circumstances of Summers' capture, but FBI spokeswoman Lourdes Arocho in Los Angeles confirmed he had been taken into custody in Baja California by Mexican national police.

At an afternoon news conference, Los Angeles Police Chief Charlie Beck credited a $50,000 reward that was "highly publicized south of the border" with leading to a telephone tip that helped authorities pinpoint Summers' whereabouts.

The fugitive's identity was initially confirmed by his tattoos, which the FBI said included the Superman logo on his upper chest, police said.

FBI special agent Tim Delaney, who oversees the criminal division of the FBI field office in Los Angeles, said Summers was returned to Los Angeles after his arrest. Beck said he would be held in lieu of $19 million bond.

Police and the FBI declined to comment on media reports that the suspect was found at a Mexican drug rehabilitation center south of Tijuana. Beck had said about three weeks ago that Summers was seen in surveillance video images crossing a foot bridge into Mexico.

Summers, 32, was indicted earlier this month on one count each of kidnapping a minor, kidnapping to commit another crime and first-degree burglary, plus 34 counts of various sex offenses. He faces multiple life prison terms if convicted, according to the District Attorney's Office.

His accused accomplice, 29-year-old Daniel Martinez, who was charged with one count each of kidnapping and burglary, was arrested on March 31.

Police have said Summers has a lengthy criminal history and had served prison terms for robbery, kidnapping, explosives possession and theft. He was most recently released from state custody in July 2012 under a program designed to ease prison overcrowding in California.

(Reporting by Steve Gorman; Editing by Cynthia Johnston, Eric Walsh and Cynthia Osterman)

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African sentenced to 11 years in child labor case

DETROIT (AP) — A former tennis pro accused of fraudulently bringing four children from the African nation of Togo to the U.S. and forcing them to work as slaves in his Michigan home was sentenced Monday to more than 11 years in federal prison.

Jean-Claude Toviave, who didn't apologize when provided the opportunity to speak at his sentencing hearing in Detroit, also was ordered to pay two of the children $60,000 each.

Prosecutors asked U.S. District Judge Arthur Tarnow to sentence Toviave to the maximum sentence within the guidelines, and he did, handing down a 135-month sentence, with credit for about two years of time served.

"I can't get a read on you," Tarnow told Toviave. "I can't tell if you understand what you did was really wrong."

The four children emigrated from Togo in 2006 with fraudulent immigration paperwork that listed them as being Toviave's biological children, which they are not. He enrolled some of them in middle school when they arrived. They now range in age from teenagers to young adults.

The victims said Toviave beat them with toilet plungers, broomsticks and electrical cords and starved them if they didn't follow his orders. They were forced to vacuum, iron, cook, clean and shine shoes at the home in Ypsilanti, near Ann Arbor, for nearly five years until January 2011.

In a court filing, prosecutors said the 6-foot-3, 230-pound Toviave, who was a tennis pro in Togo until 1990, "savagely" beat the children if their chores weren't finished or completed to his satisfaction.

One victim said he suffered permanent damage to his vision and persistent headaches tied to an episode in which Toviave kicked him and punched him in the face.

Two of the victims were in the courtroom during sentencing, but declined to speak.

Victim statements were entered into the record, however, and one was read aloud by a representative.

"The physical torture, beating me and starving me, you inflicted was so painful that I prayed at night that God would either help me to be free or allow your assaults to kill me," wrote the unnamed victim. "The pain is something I will never forget. In the midst of your verbal and physical assaults, you worked the four of us to death."

The victim wrote that although Toviave's actions made it so that he "can no longer trust anyone" and he wakes "from nightmares on a regular basis that involve me being back under your care," he participates in several sports at his school, is president of the student council and has vowed to become a doctor one day.

"My future is very exciting," the victim wrote.

When given the chance to speak before sentencing, Toviave recounted traveling to Ghana in 2007 to visit his sick mother. After the hearing had ended, Toviave asked Tarnow if he could say something else. Tarnow said OK, but Toviave then decided against it.

A jury convicted Toviave of four counts of forced labor in October. He previously pleaded guilty to fraud and misuse of visas, mail fraud and harboring aliens.

Along with restitution, Tarnow ordered Toviave to pay $7,200 to two victims to be used toward counseling, but both the judge and defense lawyer Randall Roberts, who called his client "penniless," said it seemed unlikely Toviave would be able to come up with the money.

Roberts, who asked Tarnow to sentence Toviave to four years, said the judge's sentence "was as tough as it comes."

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Ohio adoptive father sentenced in child rape case

DAYTON, Ohio (AP) — A judge who called the crimes "despicable" sentenced an adoptive father Tuesday to 50 years to life in prison, the second lengthy sentence for the 40-year-old western Ohio man who admitted raping three boys in his care and allowing two other men to rape one of his adopted sons.

The sentence here will run at the same time with one of 60 years to life in another case, virtually ensuring that he will spend the rest of his life in prison. In both cases, he pleaded guilty after reaching agreements with prosecutors.

Montgomery County Common Pleas Judge Mary Katherine Huffman followed the agreed-to sentence for his guilty plea to one count of child rape and one count of complicity to child rape. She told the man he had cooperated fully with investigators, but she called his crime "the despicable abuse of your own child, and you allowed others to do the same to this child.

"Your conduct demonstrated your willingness to violate the most important relationship that we possibly can have in life — between a parent and a child," she said, telling the man he destroyed the boy's trust him in. "His future and his life are irreparably damaged."

Asked if he wanted to make a statement in court, the man replied: "No, ma'am."

The sentencing wraps up child rape cases against the man and two other men he allegedly arranged to let rape an adopted son who was 10 at the time. A Dayton area man earlier pleaded guilty to child rape counts in Montgomery County; the other case was in the adoptive father's home county of Miami, where another man pleaded no contest to child rape. The adoptive father had agreed to testify against both men if their cases went to trial.

"He really wanted to make sure that these children didn't have to testify, and that was at the end of the day the most important thing," Nick Gounaris, attorney for the adoptive father, said after sentencing.

Montgomery County Prosecutor Mat Heck Jr. said the state's hope and expectation with the deal is that "this individual will die in the penitentiary." He called the case "incredible and disturbing" and urged that people be vigilant against child abuse.

"I think it also points out how important it is, as a community, that we really work together to stop child abuse," Heck told reporters.

The adoptive father was arrested a year ago Sunday after an investigation that began with an undercover detective looking into an online posting about what was called "taboo" sex.

The adoptive father pleaded guilty Nov. 2 to six counts of raping the three young boys in his care in Miami County. If he were ever released from prison, he would have restrictions including registering with law enforcement and regularly reporting his whereabouts as a sex offender.

A longtime foster parent and former youth basketball coach, the man had adopted two boys and the sister of one of the boys, and had been in the process of adopting a fourth child, another boy. They had all been placed with him from Texas foster care through a private adoption agency. The children were put in the care of county children's services in the aftermath of his arrest.

The Associated Press isn't naming the adoptive father to protect the identities of the three boys and one girl in his care. The children were age 9-12 when he was arrested a year ago.

The man told The Associated Press in interviews late last year that he loved the children and was sorry for the pain he had caused, and that he wanted to spare them having to testify in a trial.

Patrick Rieder, 32, pleaded guilty in Dayton earlier this month to charges including rape of a child under 13. He was sentenced to life in prison with the possibility of parole after 25 years. In Miami County, Jason Zwick, 30, of the Dayton suburb of Beavercreek, pleaded no contest Jan. 8 to one count of child rape in that case and was sentenced to 10 years to life in prison.

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