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The Woods Run prison guard who masterminded the abuse of child sex offenders serving time will spend five years on probation, an Allegheny County judge ordered on Thursday. Harry Nicoletti, 61, of Coraopolis, a former guard at State Correctional Institution Pittsburgh, will spend six months on house arrest. Prosecutors said Nicoletti led a group of guards who targeted inmates convicted of sex crimes involving minors.

That's what Craig Strizzi, a veteran correction officer at the Albany County jail, allegedly told two inmates Wednesday afternoon just before he enlisted them to join him in beating another inmate in the jail's recreation yard. Statements from Strizzi (PDF), the victim and the two inmates charged Monday in the beating shed light on the alleged plot, the lengths Strizzi is accused of going to in an effort to cover up the attack and how it unfolded. "We both talked about how we hated child molesters," Matthew Cahn, one of the inmates charged in the beating, said in his statement to investigators. Strizzi, Cahn and Lauterio Santos are accused of attacking [name withheld], a 20-year-old Albany man held at the jail on charges he raped an 8-year-old boy in Albany's Lincoln Park. "I told Strizzi I would like to get a shot at getting [name withheld] if I could do it without getting into trouble."

Protesters hurling firebombs stormed a local police station unit in southern Ukraine after authorities refused to detain one of two police officers implicated in the brutal gang-rape of a young woman. Residents of Vradiyevka, some 330 kilometers (200 miles) south of Kiev, continued to rally outside the station Tuesday, booing the local governor and vowing to continue their vigil until the officer is arrested. During the storming late Monday, protesters smashed windows, broke doors and set fire to the building, while police fought back with tear gas.