Crime

A multi award winning country megastar has been accused of sexual assault and battery in a lawsuit filed by a former employee. Garth Brooks, 62, who is married to fellow country music icon Trisha Yearwood, is alleged to have raped a hairstylist during a work trip in 2019.

An anonymous "Jane Roe" filed the complaint in a California court, where she claimed that the assault happened after she began working with him in 2017 - 18 years after working with his wife Trisha.

She alleged that in two separate incidents, he inappropriately touched her with force — once at his home and another in a hotel room during a trip for a Grammy tribute performance, according to court documents obtained by The Mirror US.

The Grammy winner is facing allegations of assault, battery, and sexual battery. Additionally, he was accused of violating the Bane Act, Ralph Act, and committing gender based violence.

The complaint states: “Usually there were others on Brooks’ private jet but this time, Ms. Roe and Brooks were the only two passengers. Once in Los Angeles at the hotel, Ms. Roe could not believe that Brooks had booked a hotel suite with one bedroom and she did not have a separate room.”

Prior to the filing, Brooks filed a request to a Mississippi court in an effort to label the sexual assault accusers allegations as not true before she even filed the suit. At the time of his filing, he reportedly entered the request anonymously under the name "John Doe," but his identity was later revealed to The Mirror.

Prosecutors in Los Angeles are reviewing new evidence in the case of Erik and Lyle Menendez to determine whether they should be serving life sentences for killing their parents in their Beverly Hills mansion more than 35 years ago, the city’s district attorney said Thursday.

Los Angeles County District Attorney George Gascón said during a news conference that attorneys for Erik Menendez, 53, and his 56-year-old brother, Lyle Menendez, have asked a court to vacate their conviction.

Gascón said there is no question the brothers committed the murders, but that his office will be reviewing new evidence and will make a decision on whether it warrants a resentencing. A hearing was scheduled for Nov. 29.

“We have not decided on an outcome. We are reviewing information,” Gascón said.

The new evidence presented in a petition includes a letter written by Erik Menendez that his attorneys say corroborates the allegations that he was sexually abused by his father. Gascón said he believes that the topic of sexual assault would have been treated with more sensitivity if the case had happened today.

South Korean lawmakers on Thursday passed a bill that criminalizes possessing or watching sexually explicit deepfake images and videos, with penalties set to include prison terms and fines.

There has been an outcry in South Korea over Telegram group chats where sexually explicit and illegal deepfakes were created and widely shared, prompting calls for tougher punishment.

Anyone purchasing, saving or watching such material could face up to three years in jail or be fined up to 30 million won ($22,600), according to the bill.

Currently, making sexually explicit deepfakes with the intention of distributing them is punishable by five years in prison or a fine of 50 million won ($37,900) under the Sexual Violence Prevention and Victims Protection Act.

When the new law takes effect, the maximum sentence for such crimes will also increase to seven years regardless of the intention.

The bill will now need the approval of President Yoon Suk Yeol in order to be enacted.

South Korean police have so far handled more than 800 deepfake sex crime cases this year, the Yonhap news agency reported on Thursday.

That compares with 156 for all of 2021, when data was first collated. Most victims and perpetrators are teenagers, police say.

Earlier this month, police launched an investigation into Telegram that will look at whether the encrypted messaging app has been complicit in the distribution of sexually explicit deepfake content.

An Alabama man who owns a plumbing company is accused of trying to hire someone to murder his estranged wife and six adult children amid a contentious divorce, federal prosecutors said.

Mohammad A.H. Mohammad, 63, who owns American Plumbing Service LLC in the Birmingham suburb of Homewood, is charged with use of interstate commerce facilities in the commission of murder-for-hire, according to court documents.

The Justice Department said Mohammad offered an undercover FBI employee posing as a hitman $20,000 to kill his wife and $5,000 for each one of his six children.

"Six kids, and the mom. You pick and choose who you gunna take out, and get paid," he allegedly told the FBI employee, per court documents.

During a conversation with a witness who was asked to find someone to "take care" of his family, Mohammad allegedly said he was willing to "die for self-dignity" and "die for pride." The witness connected Mohammad with the undercover FBI employee, prosecutors said.

Mohammad and his wife were married in March 2021, but the union was filled with violent attacks, according to the criminal complaint. During a Sept. 20 meeting between him and the supposed hitman, Mohammad said that his family had turned against him.

He then allegedly gave instructions on how to commit the slayings.

"Start with one," Mohammad said. "Take your time."

The discord in the marriage was nothing new to local law enforcement. In 2021, Mohammad was arrested for allegedly assaulting one of his daughters. The charges were eventually dismissed.

That same year, his wife obtained three protection from abuse orders from him, saying she feared for her life.

"Mohammad has hurt me and my kids and used weapons against us,’’ she wrote. "Mohammad said he wanted to shoot my daughter between the eyes."

She also said her husband threatened to lock his family in a basement and kill them, court documents state.

"He always threatens me and my children with violence," she said. "He has put his hands on my kids and sent them to the emergency room. He has put a gun and knife against my kids heads and throats. He has shot guns at us."

In April 2022, Mohammad was charged with felony first-degree stalking. Prosecutors accused him of placing GPS tracking devices on cars belonging to his wife and other family members, a violation of their protection orders against him.

An antiques dealer and her husband have been fined £3,000 after they called police to report a migrant who had snuck into their vehicle at the French border.

Ed Masters discovered the young man when he returned to the UK after borrowing a van to assist his wife, Jane Cave, on a trip to buy antiques.

Despite calling Suffolk Constabulary himself, Mr Masters was told he was responsible for failing to properly secure his vehicle.

Ms Cave, an antiques dealer who features on BBC’s The Bidding Room, and her husband said they had been held up in lengthy delays at Calais caused by post-Brexit customs regulations when returning home on Nov 23 last year.

Mr Masters had been completing the necessary paperwork inside his van, which was unlocked, when he heard a noise and spotted a man attempting to climb in the back of the vehicle.

“I shouted, ‘Get out,’ which he duly did and ambled towards the rest of the car park,” Mr Masters said.

He and his wife then got back in the van and continued their journey towards customs.

A man convicted of sending his 17-year-old son into a restaurant to rob and kill rapper PnB Rock was sentenced Monday to 31 years to life in prison.

Judge Connie Quinones handed down the sentence to Freddie Trone, 42, in Los Angeles County Superior Court. A jury on Aug. 7 found Trone guilty of one count of murder, two counts of robbery and one count of conspiracy to commit robbery.

Both sides at Trone's trial agreed that the teen walked into Roscoe’s Chicken & Waffles in South Los Angeles in September 2022 and shot the Philadelphia hip-hop star, whose legal name is Rakim Allen, while robbing him of his jewelry as he ate with the mother of his 4-year-old daughter.

The prosecution said he was acting on his father’s orders, while the defense, which plans to appeal, said Trone was only an accessory after the fact.

“I want to extend my deepest condolences to the family, friends, and fans of Rakim Allen,” District Attorney George Gascón said in a statement. “His life was cut short by an act of violence that no family should have to endure.”

NORTH HAVERHILL, N.H. (AP) — A man who pleaded guilty as a teenager to the 2001 stabbing deaths of two married Dartmouth College professors is challenging his life-without-parole sentence, saying that the New Hampshire Constitution prohibits it.

Robert Tulloch was 17 when he killed Half Zantop and Susanne Zantop in Hanover as part of a conspiracy he and his best friend concocted to rob and kill people before fleeing to Australia with their ill-gotten gains.

A hearing was held Wednesday in Grafton County Superior Court to consider legal issues raised in Tulloch’s case. Tulloch, 41, chose not to attend.

His attorney, Richard Guerriero, said that a child defendant should have the opportunity to at least be considered for parole.

“We’re not asking you to find that you can never sentence a juvenile to life in prison," Guerriero told Judge Lawrence MacLeod Jr. ”We’re not asking you to find that a person who commits a homicide before the age of 17 is guaranteed to have to be released from prison.”

Tulloch awaits resentencing at a later date, following a 2012 U.S. Supreme Court decision that said mandatory life sentences without parole for juveniles amounts to “cruel and unusual" punishment. Another opinion made that decision retroactive, giving hundreds of juvenile lifers a shot at freedom. In 2021, the court found that a minor did not have to be found incapable of being rehabilitated before being sentenced to life without parole.

At least 28 states have banned such sentences for crimes committed when the defendant is a child. But efforts to pass similar legislation in New Hampshire have not succeeded.

New York City Mayor Eric Adams has been indicted by a federal grand jury, sources familiar with the matter told ABC News.

In a speech addressed to New Yorkers on Wednesday, Adams vowed to fight what he called the "entirely false" indictment with "every ounce of my strength and my spirit."

"I always knew that If I stood my ground for all of you that I would be a target -- and a target I became," Adams said.

Adams is the city's first sitting mayor to be indicted.

The exact charges remain sealed as of Wednesday night, but the initial investigation expanded from campaign finance to bid-rigging and more, sources said.

A Japanese court ruled Thursday that an 88-year-old former boxer was not guilty in a retrial for a 1966 quadruple murder, reversing an earlier wrongful conviction after decades on death row, Japanese broadcaster NHK reported.

Iwao Hakamada’s acquittal by the Shizuoka District Court makes him the fifth death-row convict to be found not guilty in a retrial in postwar Japanese criminal justice. The court’s presiding judge, Koshi Kunii, said the court acknowledged a multiple fabrications of evidence and that Hakamada was not the culprit, NHK said.

He was convicted of murder in the 1966 killing of a company manager and three of his family members, and setting a fire to their central Japan home. He was sentenced to death in 1968, but was not executed due to lengthy appeals and the retrial process.

It took 27 years for the top court to deny his first appeal for retrial. His second appeal for a retrial was filed in 2008 by his sister Hideko Hakamada, now 91, and the court finally ruled in his favor in 2023, paving the way for the latest retrial that began in October.

Hakamada was released from prison in 2014 when a court ordered a retrial based on new evidence suggesting his conviction may have been based on fabricated accusations by investigators, but was not cleared of the conviction.

Swiss police have arrested several people after a controversial futuristic-looking capsule designed to allow its occupant to kill themself was used for the first time, authorities said on Tuesday.

Police in the northern canton of Schaffhausen bordering Germany said the so-called “Sarco” capsule had been deployed in a wood in the municipality of Merishausen on Monday.

Prosecutors in Schaffhausen have opened criminal proceedings against several people for “inducing and aiding and abetting suicide,” a police statement said, adding several people were detained, without giving details about them or the deceased.

A spokesperson for the group behind the capsule, The Last Resort, said the deceased was a 64-year-old American woman who had been suffering from a severely compromised immune system.

Florian Willet, co-president of The Last Resort, was among the four detainees, along with a Dutch journalist and two Swiss people, the spokesperson said. Willet was the only other person present when the woman ended her life, the spokesperson said.

In a statement issued by The Last Resort, Willet had described the death as “peaceful, fast and dignified.”

A small, tight-knit southeast Kentucky community has been reeling after their sheriff was arrested for the killing of a prominent district judge in his chambers Thursday – spurring residents to wonder what could have triggered the shooting and prompting calls for better courthouse security.

Letcher County Sheriff Shawn M. Stines, 43 - a man whose role made him responsible for judges’ personal security - gunned down District Judge Kevin Mullins, 54, at the Letcher County courthouse in Whitesburg, according to Kentucky State Police.

Stines turned himself in after the shooting and was arrested at the scene without incident, authorities said. He is now facing a first-degree murder charge, state police said.

The killing sent shockwaves through the tiny town of Whitesburg – with a population of 1,711 people.

“This community is small in nature, and we’re all shook,” Kentucky State Police Trooper Matt Gayheart said at a Thursday evening news conference.

It all happened after an argument between the two men inside the judge’s chambers on Thursday afternoon, a preliminary investigation revealed.

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The court was left without its district judge of 15 years after Mullins was found with multiple gunshot wounds and pronounced dead, Kentucky State Police said.

Letcher County was also left without its sheriff of eight years after Stines was arrested at the courthouse on Thursday, and it’s unclear who will take his place, authorities said. He is being jailed in Leslie County and his first court appearance is scheduled for September 25 before a judge in Carter County, said Jackie Steele, the Commonwealth’s Attorney assigned to the case. CNN is trying to determine whether Stines has an attorney.

As residents wait for details about the argument that led up to the shots, the motive remains under investigation, Gayheart said, adding the incident was “isolated.” But this is the first time a tragedy “of this magnitude” has afflicted the county, he said.

Ben Gish, the editor of Mountain Eagle, a local weekly newspaper, told CNN “none of us could imagine anything like this happening in this day and time.”

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Circuit Clerk Mike Watts said Mullins and Stines had lunch on the day of the shooting.

“The judge and Sheriff had ate lunch together … I saw them earlier,” Watts said in an interview with CNN affiliate WKYT.

“Our community has suffered an act of violence that appears to be between two men that I have worked with for seventeen years and loved like brothers,” Butler said.

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Earlier this week, Stines was deposed in an ongoing federal lawsuit involving a former deputy who coerced a woman to have sex with him in Mullins’ chambers in 2021.

Sabrina Adkins and Jennifer Hill filed the suit against Stines and deputy Ben Fields in 2022, claiming the deputy said he would keep Adkins out of jail and on home release, while avoiding paying the fees associated with an ankle monitor, in exchange for sex.

Fields was charged with multiple felonies and a misdemeanor – including rape and tampering with a monitoring device – and was given a suspended jail sentence as part of a plea deal earlier this year, according to the Mountain Eagle newspaper.

Hill has since died and criminal charges against Fields related to her were dropped, but her estate is continuing to pursue the lawsuit against Field and Stines, court records show.

The lawsuit alleges the sexual allegations against Fields “were not appropriately investigated by Sheriff Stines.”

Stines fired Fields in 2022, after the lawsuit was filed, for “conduct unbecoming,” according to a disciplinary letter obtained by the Louisville Courier-Journal newspaper.

A six-year-old boy who was abducted from a California park in 1951 has miraculously been found alive more than 70 years later and reunited with his family, who never gave up hope.

It was February 21, 1951, when a woman lured little Luis Armando Albino away from his older brother, Roger, at a West Oakland park by offering him candy, CBS News reported.

The woman, whom Roger said wore a bandana and spoke Spanish to his Puerto Rican-born brother, then flew Luis to the East Coast, where a couple raised him as their son.

Luis’s niece, 63-year-old Alida Alequin, told the Mercury News that the family always held the missing child in their hearts and had photos of him hanging up in their homes. His mother passed away in 2005 “but never gave up hope that her son was alive,” the CBS article said.

Shortly after the abduction, Oakland Tribune articles that the outlet obtained showed that police, soldiers from a local U.S. Army base, members of the U.S. Coast Guard, and other local officials conducted an extensive search of the Bay Area and its waterways.

Roger was interrogated “several times” and always maintained that his younger brother was kidnapped.

Everything began to change when Alequin did a DNA test in 2020 “just for fun” and unexpectedly found a man who was a 22-percent match. She did not receive any response from the man when she reached out, so the search did not immediately continue.

In 2024, Alequin and her daughters again picked up the search by viewing Oakland Tribune articles on microfilm at the local public library. One had a picture of her two uncles, Roger and Luis. This re-ignited her quest to find her missing relative, so she went to the Oakland Police Department with the information that she had found a DNA connection.

“Investigators eventually agreed the new lead was substantial, and a new missing persons case was opened,” reported CBS.

Investigators found the man who tested as a 22 percent match to Alequin on the East Coast, and he provided a DNA sample.

Alequin’s mother provided one, as well.

They turned out to be siblings.

Investigators told Alequin and her mother that Luis had been found on June 20.

“In my heart, I knew it was him, and, when I got the confirmation, I let out a big ‘YES!'” the niece recalled.

“We didn’t start crying until after the investigators left,” she added. “I grabbed my mom’s hands and said, ‘We found him.’ I was ecstatic.”

Luis fought in Vietnam with the U.S. Marine Corps, became a father and grandfather, and served as a firefighter during his life.

Just four days later, the FBI assisted Luis in coming out to California with his family to meet with the ones he lost seven decades ago. He met with Alequin, his sister, and other relatives in Oakland on the first day before seeing his older brother, Roger, at his Stanislaus County home the next day.

Alequin told the Mercury News that her long-lost uncle “hugged me and said, ‘Thank you for finding me’ and gave me a kiss on the cheek.”

An Oklahoma couple was arrested this month after their two small boys were found covered in feces in a home so horrid that authorities were forced to wear hazmat suits when they entered, according to police.

Three children under the age of five were saved from the revolting home on Sept. 12 and Dakota Dodd, 24, and Aubrianna Freeman, 22, were taken into custody on child neglect charges.

Oklahoma City police said officers arrived at the home after a concerned neighbor called in a tip. Police were led to a bedroom by Dodd where the boys, ages 3 and 4, were reportedly found with dried feces on them.

“Feces on the walls, feces on the kids. It was a completely disgusting scene,” Oklahoma City police Master Sgt. Gary Knight told KOCO.

“When they went inside, the officers described almost becoming overcome by the smell of feces and urine inside the residence.”

The young victims had “feces caked into their fingernail beds, palms of their hands, feet, legs, and faces,” according to a police report obtained by Law and Crime.

The report detailed the horrid conditions of the entire home, including “piles of what appeared to be human feces” on the second floor and a bedroom floor “covered in multiple piles of smeared and flattened human feces,” according to the outlet.

Because the conditions were so stomach-turning, investigators later wore hazmat suits when probing the crime scene, KOCO reported.

Dodd, who is reportedly the boys’ stepfather, allegedly admitted to police to locking the children in the dirty room for more than 12 hours daily so Freeman, their mother, could sleep and to “keep the kids safe due to the neighborhood,” News 9 reported, citing the police report.

A drug dealer is expected to be charged in the case of three Kansas City Chiefs fans who died in freezing conditions after taking fentanyl at a friend’s house earlier this year, according to a lawyer familiar with the case.

Clayton McGeeney, 37, Ricky Johnson, 38, and David Harrington, 36, were found dead outside their pal Jordan Willis’ Kansas City rental home on Jan. 9 — but prosecutors aren’t planning to hold Willis responsible, his attorney John Picerno told Fox Digital.

“I can say with confidence that my client will not be charged in that regard,” Picerno said. “My client will not be charged in any manner with having to do with the untimely death of his friends.”

Asked who will be charged, he said: “The criminal liability could be for a felony murder charge if somebody provided those young men with drugs.”

Picerno said someone would likely be arrested in “the next few weeks” based on “internal conversations” with prosecutors.

The football fans had been watching the Chiefs play the LA Chargers on Jan. 7 and were discovered dead by McGeeney’s fiancée, April Mahoney, two days later.

A deadly cocktail of fentanyl, cocaine and marijuana were found in their systems, according to preliminary autopsy results.

Willis was wearing underwear and holding a wine glass when police arrived. He claimed he’d been sleeping for nearly two days, and had no clue his friends were dead outside.

Relatives of the deceased men’s families have previously insisted that Willis was involved in their deaths, and threatened to file civil suits against him.

At least four people have been killed and 18 injured in a mass shooting in Birmingham, Alabama, police say.

“Multiple shooters fired multiple shots on a group of people” late on Saturday in the Five Points South area of the city, Birmingham Police officer Truman Fitzgerald said.

Officers found the bodies of two men and one woman at the scene, while a third man later died of bullet wounds in hospital, Birmingham Police said

The culprits are believed to have approached the scene in a vehicle before getting out and opening fire. No suspects have been arrested.

Mr Fitzgerald added that they believed the shooting was "not random and stemmed from an isolated incident where multiple victims were caught in the crossfire".

The shooting may have been a result of a murder-for-hire plot, Police Chief Scott Thurmond was quoted as saying by local news outlet Al.com.

The intended target was among those killed, Mr Thurmond said at a news conference on Sunday.

“It wasn’t the location, it was the person, so wherever the person was was where it was going to take place, wherever they can catch that individual,’’ Mr Thurmond said. "That’s just where they happened to catch them.”

The other victims - all of whom were standing outside - are so far believed to have been caught in the gunfire.

Four of the injured suffered life-threatening wounds, according to Mr Fitzgerald.

The BBC has contacted the Birmingham Police Department for comment.

Authorities are also pressing to find the shooters.

A 10-year-old boy attending a Japanese school in southern China has died after being stabbed on his way to class on Wednesday, according to Tokyo’s foreign minister, in the second knife attack near a Japanese school in the country in recent months.

The boy was attacked by a man about 200 meters (650 feet) from the gates of the Japanese school in Shenzhen, a tech-hub metropolis home to many Japanese businesses, according to China’s foreign ministry.

A 44-year-old suspect was apprehended at the scene and taken into custody, police in the city said in a statement.

Japanese and Chinese authorities did not specify the nationality of the victim. But Japanese nationality is required for enrollment at the Shenzhen Japanese School, according to its website.

“The fact that such a despicable act was committed against a child on his way to school is truly regrettable,” Japan’s Foreign Minister Yoko Kamikawa told reporters Thursday.

“We take this incident extremely seriously, and we have once again requested that the Chinese side ensure the safety of Japanese nationals.”

Iranian hackers sent unsolicited information they stole from Donald Trump’s presidential campaign to people who were affiliated with Joe Biden’s campaign over the summer, federal law enforcement officials said Wednesday.

The Office of the Director of National Intelligence, the FBI and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency said in a joint statement that in late June and early July, Iranian malicious cyber actors “sent unsolicited emails to individuals then associated with President Biden’s campaign that contained an excerpt taken from stolen, non-public material from former President Trump’s campaign as text in the emails.”

There is no indication that Biden’s staff ever replied, the statement says.

A spokesperson for Vice President Kamala Harris’ campaign said that “a few individuals were targeted on their personal emails.”

“We have cooperated with the appropriate law enforcement authorities since we were made aware that individuals associated with the then-Biden campaign were among the intended victims of this foreign influence operation,” said Morgan Finkelstein, national security spokesperson for the Harris campaign.

Police on Monday continued to search for a suspect who they said fatally shot a teenage Waffle House employee in North Carolina.

Family said the teen, identified by police as Burlie Dawson Locklear, had recently graduated from high school.

The shooting took place Friday at one of the restaurant chain's locations in Laurinburg, a city in Scotland County near the South Carolina state line.

Just before 12:45 a.m., Laurinburg Police Department officers responded to a shots fired call at the store specializing in waffles and other breakfast foods.

The shooting suspect, police said in a news release, had fled the scene by the time officers arrived.

Inside the restaurant, officers found an 18-year-old Waffle House employee, later identified as Locklear, suffering from a gunshot wound.

Locklear was taken to a hospital where he later died, police said.

Former BBC news presenter Huw Edwards has been sentenced to six months’ imprisonment suspended for two years by a London court for having indecent images of children, according to PA Media.

The suspended sentence comes with requirements including the completion of a sex offender treatment program and 25 rehabilitation sessions.

Edwards, who was the BBC’s highest-paid journalist, pleaded guilty in July to having 41 indecent images of children.

A Lincoln man was sentenced Wednesday for posing as a high schooler, then committing multiple sex crimes against female students.

Zachary Scheich, 27, got 85 to 120 in prison for five felonies, including two counts of first-degree sexual assault and one count each of child enticement via electronic device and visual depiction of sexual conduct involving a minor.

Judge Darla Ideus gave Scheich credit for more than a year already spent in jail.

He will be eligible for parole in about 41 years.

In 2023, Scheich used a fake name, Zak Hess, to enroll in Lincoln Northwest and Lincoln Southeast high schools.

He provided a fraudulent birth certificate and immunization records, according to police.

Scheich also had help from a woman who pretended to be his mother, Angela Navarro, court documents allege.

Navarro, who is four years younger than Scheich, has pleaded not guilty. She is scheduled to appear in court on Thursday.

Once he was in the schools, he sent sexual messages to female students and asked one for “pornographic material,” according to an arrest affidavit.

Scheich will also be required to register as a sex offender.

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Police investigating the alleged abortion of a 36-week-old fetus have found it was not the head of an obstetrics hospital but an outside doctor that performed the abortion and booked him on murder charges, officials said Thursday.

The investigation began after a vlog video surfaced in June in which a YouTuber claimed she had an abortion in the 36th week of her pregnancy. Police have since booked the woman and the head of the hospital, who was believed to be the operating surgeon, on murder charges.

But police later found the hospital's head was not the one who performed the abortion.

"After analyzing seized evidence and statements from medical staff, we confirmed the doctor who actually led the operation and booked him on murder charges late last month," a Seoul Metropolitan Police Agency official said, adding that hospital officials had initially made false statements.

It was unclear why the doctor, an obstetrician specialist at a different hospital, was brought in to perform the abortion.

The doctor has since been questioned by police and admitted he performed the abortion. He has also been banned from leaving the country, officials said.

Police identified six medical staff who took part in the abortion, including the head of the hospital, three medical staff, and the operating surgeon and anesthesiologist, who were outsourced for the operation.

A 61-year-old Austrian man was arrested last month for having sex in a shrine in Japan with a Japanese woman in her 40s, local police told CNN on Wednesday.

The couple were caught having sex on August 22 while in the grounds of a shrine in Kesennuma –- a small coastal town about 500 kilometers (310 miles) north of Tokyo –- and faced charges of disrespecting a place of worship.

Police told CNN that they arrested the man, fearing he could be a flight risk, but did not arrest the woman after concluding there was no risk of her fleeing.

The man has since been released from custody, but the police said they could not disclose details of his punishment and did not clarify whether he was a tourist or a resident. These cases don’t always end in forced repatriation, the police added, and can result in a fine.

Although such a case is rare, there have been other instances of people being arrested for disrespecting Japanese shrines.

Malaysian authorities on Wednesday rescued 402 children and arrested 171 suspects after raiding 20 welfare homes linked to an Islamic business group, in which children were exploited and sexually abused, the national police chief said.

Inspector-General of Police Razarudin Husain said the raids were conducted after investigations into allegations of child abandonment, deviant teachings and sexual assault at the homes, run by the Global Ikhwan Services and Business Holdings.

Some 201 boys and 201 girls, aged between 1 to 17 years, were rescued from 18 homes in central Selangor state and two in southern Negeri Sembilan state, he said. The 171 suspects — 66 men and 105 women — included religious teachers and caretakers, he said.

Children were sexually abused not only by the caretakers but were also forced to do the same to each other at the facilities, Razarudin said in a televised news conference.

“Those who were sick were not allowed to seek medical attention until their condition became critical,” he said. Some young children were also burnt with a hot spoon when they made mistakes, and caretakers had touched the children’s bodies as if to conduct medical checks, he said.

Police believed that Global Ikhwan exploited the children and used religious sentiments to collect donations, he said.