School killer's sex abuse admission

12 April 2012

A gunman who killed five girls at a rural Amish school in the US told his wife before the shooting that he had molested two young members of his family 20 years ago, police said.

Charles Roberts made the claim during a phone call just before he started shooting the girls and police now say it is possible the attack was sexually motivated.

Roberts had sexual lubricant and flex-tie plastic handcuffs with him when he took the students hostage and also had the weapons and supplies for a long stand-off, State Police Commissioner Jeffrey Miller said.

Roberts lined up a group of girls against a blackboard, chained them together and shot them before killing himself in the third fatal school shooting in America in a week.

Police officers investigating the attack in Pennsylvania, in which five others were wounded, said the 32-year-old father-of-three appeared to be tormented by "dreams" of molesting again.

"He states in his suicide note that he had dreams about doing what he did 20 years ago again," Mr Miller said.

Roberts' family members say they knew nothing of the molestation - which would have happened when he was young himself - and police have also been unable to confirm the claims. The two latest victims, aged seven and nine, died from their injuries in hospitals in Delaware and Pennsylvania.

Four girls aged between six and 12 are in critical condition and a 13-year-old is in a serious condition in hospital, officials said. Mr Miller said suicide notes left by Roberts for his family, and the phone call to his wife during the siege, showed that he had become "angry with his life, angry with God".

But the gunman had no prior criminal record and has left the community not only distraught but in the dark as to why he massacred the youngsters in the one-room West Nickel Mines Amish School in Lancaster County.

His victims were Amish, a religious group which emphasises piety, modesty and community derived from a literal reading of the Bible, and who shun many modern conveniences. Roberts was not Amish, but came from Lancaster County and lived just a mile from the school in Bart Township.

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