Local & State Headlines

Police looking into alleged child molestation

• A young girl tells her mother that a sitter threatened to tell lies if she didn’t perform sex acts, police reports show.

J.D. Sumner

ALBANY — Police are investigating whether a 7-year-old Albany girl was forced to perform sex acts on boys as young as 3 while she was being babysat by a longtime family friend last weekend, police officials say.

According to police reports, the mother of the girl told police some “disturbing news” her daughter told her about an incident that was believed to have occurred Saturday while a friend of the family was babysitting the girl at a home on West Whitney Avenue.

In the report, the mother tells police that her daughter told her that while she was over at the sitter’s home, the sitter forced her to perform oral sex on the sitter’s two sons, who were between 3 and 7 years old.

The mother also told police that her daughter said that the two boys didn’t want to participate, but were also forced into the act, according to the report.

On Thursday, police were still investigating the case and no arrests had been made, Albany Police Department spokesperson Phyllis Banks said.

“They’re still in the process of conducting interviews and collecting evidence,” Banks said. “Any charges would depend on the results of the investigation.”

Police officials redacted the name of the sitter on public police documents because no formal charges had been filed.

Just before 7:30 p.m. Thursday, the sitter was taken to the law enforcement center by police to be interviewed in connection with the case.

The girl reportedly told her mother that the sitter threatened to tell lies about her to her mother if she didn’t go through with her demands and even grabbed her head during the acts, the reports say.

The girl also told her mom about a second woman, believed to be a friend of the sitter, who was there when the incident occurred and who also forced the girl to perform acts, the reports show.

The girl’s mother told police that she had noticed a change in behavior in her daughter over the past couple of days, noting that she had become withdrawn and quiet and had stopped doing her homework from her second-grade class, all of which she described as “unusual” behavior, according to the report.

The woman also tells police in the report that her daughter struggled to verbalize the alleged incident, only managing to say a few words about it before covering her own ears so that she wouldn’t have to hear what she was telling her about the incident.