Abuse Tracker

MISSOURI
Crime Scene KC

That's after authorities filed 11 more charges in the case on Thursday, Don Bradley reports. Today's report has more about the allegations:

The alleged abuse occurred from the mid-1980s to the mid-1990s, when the sisters ranged in age from 5 to mid-teens. The case broke when one went to police in August. Her siblings have since supported her version of events.

MISSOURI
The Pitch

By Justin Kendall in News
Fri., Nov. 20 2009

​Fox 4 reports that the mother of the alleged sexual abuse victims and a former Mormon bishop in Independence knew about the allegations of sexual abuse inside the Mohler family.

Ex-bishop Paul Tonga told Fox 4 that Burrel Mohler Jr.'s wife came to him several times and relayed fears that her husband was abusing their children.

Tonga, who was the leader of the church where Mohler Jr.'s worshiped, explained that he questioned Burrel Mohler Jr. and the children, but didn't learn anything.

WHITE PLAINS (NY)
The Journal News

By Rebecca Baker • rebaker@lohud.com • November 20, 2009

WHITE PLAINS — An Ecuadorean priest who had been visiting a Mamaroneck church pleaded guilty today to a charge that he groped a parishoner who sought marriage counseling from him in 2004.

The Rev. Richard Ordonez, a 38-year-old member of the Salesians order who had been living at St. Vito’s Roman Catholic Church, will serve no jail time after pleading to a reduced charge of forcible touching, a misdemeanor. He agreed to perform up to 500 hours of community service and to stay away from the victim.

He will be sentenced Jan. 12 to a conditional discharge, meaning he will not be supervised by probation. He remains free on $50,000 bail.

UNITED STATES
Voice from the Desert

Here is an email from my friend Paul Kendrick about Voice of the Faithful’s (VOTF) new dues policy and its role in VOTF’s February, 2010, election of officers.

Following Paul’s remarks, you’ll find a copy of a letter from the Chair of VOTF’s Board of Trustees about their new dues policy.

* * *
Subject: VOTF announces amendment — new rules that will humiliate its less fortunate members

TO: VOTF LEADERSHIP

On October 20, 2009, Voice of the Faithful announced that its members will have to pay $50 ($85 per couple) if they want to vote in VOTF’s national elections. These members will be called “Voting Members”. All others will be called “Members,” but they will not be able to vote.

As such, VOTF has created two different classes of members, the “haves” and the “have-nots.”

AUSTRALIA
The Herald

21 Nov, 2009
HUNTER-based Catholics are shunning Mass in droves, with irrelevance, abuse at the hands of clergy and disagreement with the Church's teachings on sex among the main reasons.

According to research carried out by the Australian Catholic Bishops Conference, only 10.2 per cent of Catholics in the Diocese of Maitland-Newcastle attend Mass.

The national average for Mass attendance across the Church's 28 Australian diocese was 13.8 per cent.

UNITED STATES
Catholic League

November 20, 2009

Catholic League president Bill Donohue addresses a serious issue involving gay activists in the District of Columbia:

A new homosexual website, ChurchOuting.org, is intent on publicly disclosing who the gay priests are in the Archdiocese of Washington. The goal of this outing is to intimidate gay priests, as well as heterosexual priests who may be “romantically involved,” into voicing objections to the Catholic Church’s opposition to gay marriage.

This initiative is the work of Phil Attey, self-described as “Liberal-Gay-Ardent Obama Supporter”; he was active in the Obama Pride Metro-DC campaign. According to one news report, “Attey is going to approach priests he thinks are gay, and warn them that they better stop lobbying against gay people, seeing how gay they are…or…else?”

IRELAND
BBC News

Dublin-based priest has denied sexually abusing three County Fermanagh girls more than 30 years ago.

Fr Eugene Lewis, 75, with an address at Cypress Grove House, Templeogue, was arraigned before Dungannon Crown Court on 11 charges involving three sisters.

The charges involve allegations of indecent assault on differing dates in the 1960s and 1970s.

WILMINGTON (DE)
WBAL

Friday, November 20, 2009
WBAL Radio and Associated Press

The Catholic Diocese of Wilmington, which covers the Eastern Shore, is asking a bankruptcy judge to allow it to continue paying retiree benefits to priests who committed sexual abuse.

After filing for Chapter 11 protection last month, the diocese told the judge it would not make any payments to priests accused of sexual abuse, even if the abuse had not been substantiated, without a court order.

WILMINGTON (DE)
Reuters

Nov 20 (Reuters) - The Roman Catholic Diocese of Wilmington, Delaware, has sought bankruptcy court approval to continue providing pensions and medical coverage to certain priests accused of sexually abusing children, court papers showed.

The diocese said in a filing on Thursday that it has "an obligation under Canon Law to care for retired clergy" and sought to continue providing medical coverage to the defrocked priest Francis DeLuca.

"While several priests have been dismissed from the public ministry and have laicization proceedings pending against them, for the time being they remain clergy whom the Debtor (the diocese) supports, and must continue to support," the filing said.

WILMINGTON (DE)
The Associated Press

By RANDALL CHASE (AP)

WILMINGTON, Del. — The Catholic Diocese of Wilmington says it is obligated to keep paying retirement benefits to six priests who church officials have confirmed are pedophiles.

The diocese filed for Chapter 11 protection last month. Officials had told the judge the church would not make any payments to priests accused of sexual abuse without a court order, even if the abuse had not been substantiated.

IRELAND
RTE News

Friday, 20 November 2009 17:22
A Dublin-based Catholic priest has appeared in court in Co Tyrone to face a series of sex charges.

75-year-old Fr Eugene Lewis, with an address at Cyprus Grove House in Templeogue in Dublin, was accused of 11 charges alleging indecent assault involving three sisters.

The charges date back to the years between 1963 and 1973.

CALIFORNIA
City of Angels

By Kay Ebeling

Part One: The bishop of San Diego used the words "dumping ground" in 1950 when he complained to Rome that too many problem priests were ending up in Banning, Beaumont and other towns in the developing region. By the 1960s the Franciscans had moved 26 priests from San Diego to Santa Barbara, where they then raped dozens of children. The letter to Rev. James T. Booth in Rome April 26, 1950, is Exhibit A attached to two new lawsuits filed Nov. 3, 2009, in Santa Barbara.

The Francicans continue to hide the crimes of their pedophile priests, other evidence in the Complaints shows. Now Franciscan pedophiles who were removed from the priesthood, are showing up as therapists and teachers - Working with Teenagers, Living near Children - in towns around the Northwestern United States.

There are so many new charges, so much new evidence, new stories about old pedophile priests and old stories about new ones in the pages of these two new lawsuits filed November 3 in Santa Barbara that City of Angels has to break our reporting into several different parts.

UNITED STATES
Leon J. Podles: Dialogue

Father Michael asks some good questions.

These is no psychological classification of “ephebophile.” An ephebophile is just a homosexual who likes teenage boys, just as there are many adult heterosexuals (such as Roman Polanski) who like teenage girls. The term ephebophile is a smokescreen to disguise the fact that some homosexuals have teenage victims.

I do not know whether homosexuals are more youth-oriented than heterosexuals are. There is some evidence that I cite in my book that they, but it is not overwhelming. What is firmly established is that homosexuals have far more sexual partners than heterosexuals do, and this means more victims.

Have the seminaries changed? I do not know. The bishops say they have changed, but the bishops also assured us there was no problem to begin with. I do not believe any fact that a bishop asserts until I have verified it.

UNITED STATES
Leon J. Podles: Dialogue

Very few cases of clerical abuse of minors involved true pedophilia: the sexual abuse of pre-pubertal children. Pedophiles often claim not to be homosexuals, and they may well be correct is this claim, but pedophilia is not the main problem in clerical abuse.

Most cases involved children at or above the age of puberty, and the vast majority of the reported victims were male. Decades of studies by criminologists and psychologists have shown that boys are far less likely to report abuse than girls are, because boys fear the stigma of homosexuality and because males are supposed to suffer and not complain.

The John Jay report claims that is the abusive priests had equal access to females, they would have had equal number of male and female victims. This I doubt. I won’t go into the nature of the sexual acts that priest did with boys, but let us say that they were focused on the male genitals. Many abusers seem to have been initiated into the culture of abuse by other priests, often in the seminary.

NORTHERN IRELAND
Belfast Telegraph

By Brendan McDaid
Friday, 20 November 2009

The priest who quit after falling in love with a nurse today spoke out for the first time to make it clear his partner is not pregnant.

Fr Sean McKenna — who resigned his Holy Orders over his relationship with separated mother-of-two Elaine Curran — broke his silence claiming the mounting speculation had caused “great distress” to them both.

The 51-year-old said the rumours that Ms Curran was pregnant or that she had lost custody of her children were “completely untrue”. And he called for his peace and privacy to be respected.

IRELAND
Belfast Telegraph

Friday, 20 November 2009

The Republic’s High Court has cleared the way for a damning report into the handling of clerical sex abuse in the Dublin Archdiocese — to be published next week — that “will shock us all”.

However, references to a second priest facing abuse charges are to be censored.

Last night victim support groups, who welcomed the ruling, were bracing themselves for an increase in calls to their services when the report is published, most likely within days of Tuesday's cabinet meeting.

BOTSWANA
The Voice

By Calistus Bosaletswe
The Eloyi church pastor who was jailed for 10 years for having unlawful sex with a 14- year-old girl was back in court again this week demanding bail pending his appeal at the High Court.

Members of the church had assembled in court before the priest arrived dragging leg-iron chains and sporting a clean-shaven head. The defence lawyer, Busang Manewe, a new lawyer representing 23-year-old Samuel Ntsebele told the court that the lawyer who represented Ntsebele lied when he told the court that there was penetration.

Manewe pointed out that Ntsebele had a good prospect of success in his appeal as he was not afforded a fair trial as encouraged by the constitution. He said it appeared that failure of justice transpired between the former attorney and accused as they disagreed on certain elements of the case. The defence further pointed out that they would give sworn evidence before the High Court.

PHILIPPINES
Indian Catholic

MANILA : An Irish missioner plans to target Internet service providers (ISPs) who fail to heed new anti-child pornography legislation, as the next step in his long fight against the exploitation of women and children.

"I am delighted it was signed so quickly," Columban missioner Father Shay Cullen told UCA News after the Philippine president signed the Anti-Child Pornography Act on Nov. 17.

Father Cullen is director of the People's Recovery Empowerment Development Assistance Foundation, based in Olongapo City. The foundation aims to protect women and children from exploitation and poverty.

CANADA
CBC News

Priests in the diocese of Antigonish had the opportunity to express their feelings about the child pornography charges against Bishop Raymond Lahey during a two-day counselling session in North Sydney, N.S.

Rev. Paul Abbass, the spokesman for the diocese, said nearly 50 priests attended the sessions to speak about their feelings with peers and discuss ways to intervene with parishioners.

"It just gives them an opportunity to be able to talk very openly and very frankly with one another about what they felt and I think that will bring a nice degree of early healing to this process for them because they want to continue to serve well," he said.

ITALY
euronews

[with video]

Police in Italy are following a crucial new lead in the hunt for Emanuela Orlandi, a 15-year-old girl who went missing after a flute lesson in Vatican City 26 years ago.

Detectives believe they have identified the voice of a man who called the missing girl’s family six days after she vanished.

The case has given rise to many outlandish claims over the years. Theories abound as to who is responsible for her disappearance.

IRELAND
Irish Independent

By Dearbhail McDonald, Breda Heffernan and Tim Healy

Friday November 20 2009

THE High Court yesterday cleared the way for the publication next week of a damning report into the handling of clerical sex abuse in the Dublin Archdiocese that "will shock us all".

However, references to a second priest facing abuse charges are to be censored.

Last night victim support groups, who welcomed the ruling, were bracing themselves for an increase in calls to their services when the report is published, most likely within days of Tuesday's cabinet meeting.

CANADA
The Daily Observer

Posted By TINA PEPLINSKIE TPEPLINSKIE@THEDAILYOBSERVER.CA

A Pembroke priest facing a number of sex-related charges in relation to five alleged victims will next appear in court Dec. 8.

The date for Monsignor Robert Borne was set following a prehearing Tuesday between the Crown attorney and defence counsel.

The 61-year-old Roman Catholic priest is facing 19 charges including gross indecency, sexual exploitation, indecent assault male and breach of trust, in connection with incidents that are alleged to have occurred between 1977 and 1993.

FAIRBANKS (AK)
News-Miner

by Mary Beth Smetzer / msmetzer@newsminer.com

FAIRBANKS — A settlement between the Fairbanks Catholic Diocese and a creditors committee representing nearly 300 alleged sex abuse victims might be resolved by early next week.

Robert Hannon, diocesan chancellor, said Thursday that a recently forged mediated agreement is “broad in principle” and details are being worked out by attorneys on both sides.

“I can’t give specifics, but we have come to economic terms with the committee representing claimants, and the settlement will be announced on record at a hearing scheduled at the bankruptcy court on Nov. 24,” Hannon said.

CANADA
Kelowna

WINDSOR, Ont. – A former Catholic priest charged with molesting teenage boys at the mission the Canadian founded in Haiti will remain in jail for another week while a justice of the peace decides whether to release him on bail.

John Duarte, 43, is charged with nine counts of sexual exploitation involving boys aged 12 to 17 in the Haitian capital of Port-au-Prince and the tiny fishing village of Labadie. Hearts Together for Haiti, a charity Duarte founded, operated schools, a health clinic and a sponsorship program for impoverished families.

Canadian law allows citizens to be prosecuted in Canada for sex offences against children committed elsewhere.

MISSOURI
KOMU

COLUMBIA - The church where three Mohler men accused of sexual abuse were once lay ministers denies it ever heard reports of the alleged abuse.

Investigators have said the victims told their mother about the abuse. The mother then reported the matter to Community of Christ church leaders, investigators say. But the church denies the claim.

"We found no reports of sexual abuse of children (were) given to any Community of Christ leaders about the three lay ministers, suspended November 11," the church said in a statement. The three men are Burrell Mohler, Sr. and two sons, David and Jared Mohler.

MISSOURI
United Press International

DARLINGTON, Mo., Nov. 19 (UPI) -- New child molestation charges were filed Thursday against a Missouri grandfather and his four sons, and investigators said they seized more videotapes.

Burrell Mohler Sr., 77, of Independence; Burrell Mohler Jr., 53, of Columbia; Jared Mohler, 48, of Columbia; David Mohler, 52, of Lamoni, Iowa; and Roland Mohler, 47, of Bates City, Mo.; are all in jail in Lexington, Mo. Another member of the family, the elder Mohler's brother, is under arrest in Florida.

Investigators say Jared Mohler's daughters told their mother years ago they were being molested, the Kansas City Star reported. Instead of going to police, she allegedly told her church about the allegations.

MISSOURI
The Examiner

By Jeff Martin - jeff.martin@examiner.net
The Examiner
Posted Nov 19, 2009

Lafayette County, MO — .Lafayette County prosecutors filed 18 new charges in the growing Mohler case Thursday afternoon, raising the total to 49 against a family accused of carrying out sexual assaults spanning almost two decades.

According to probable cause statements, another witness told police Wednesday of incidents that began when she was 5 years old and continued until she was 12. Acts that she was forced to perform include mock weddings, bestiality, and sex with the men.

The new charges were filed against three of the family members allegedly involved.

MISSOURI
The Kansas City Star

By DONALD BRADLEY
The Kansas City Star

Prosecutors filed 11 new charges in the Mohler case this afternoon, raising the total to 42 against men accused of carrying out years of sexual assaults against young children in the extended family.

Also, acting on allegations that some of the assaults were used for pornography, investigators have recovered 65 video tapes from an uncle’s home in Columbia, Mo. Earlier, investigators found incest pornography, video tapes and recording equipment at the Independence home of the victims’ grandfather.

Lafayette County Prosecutor Kellie Ritchie said she did not know what was on the tapes.

MISSOURI
The Kansas City Star

By DONALD BRADLEY
The Kansas City Star

For the young sisters in the Mohler family, summers were the worst because that’s when they had to go to their grandfather’s farm.

That’s what the sisters, now grown women, have told authorities who on Thursday filed 11 more charges in a child sex abuse case that has shocked the country.

In court documents to support the latest charges, the sisters told of bestiality, mock weddings, sex in a church and being made to have sexual contact with each other while their father, grandfather and uncles watched and laughed.

MISSOURI
CNN

By Emanuella Grinberg, CNN
November 20, 2009

(CNN) -- Graphic details of bestiality, child rape and sodomy emerged in court documents filed Thursday in the case of a Missouri family accused of horrific crimes against their relatives.

One of the alleged victims was about 7 years old when she and her sisters attempted to run away in 1988, after enduring years of sexual abuse at the hands of her male relatives, a complaint filed in Lafayette County Circuit Court states.

Before she left, she wrote down the alleged sex acts, put them in a jar and buried it, the complaint says.

MISSOURI
Fox 4

[with video]

INDEPENDENCE, MO - Among the many startling revelations released on Thursday about the Mohler child sex case was that the wife of one of the accused men told their church about the alleged sexual abuse while it was happening, but that the church leader never reported the allegations to police.

FOX 4's Dave Dunn asked the former Mormon bishop about what he was told by the wife of Burrell Mohler, Jr., and is Working for You with the report.

MINNESOTA
You Tube

[Part 2]

[Part 3]

[Part 4]

Part 1
Tim Caroline, a public school superintendent, held a press conference Nov. 16, 2009 to discuss his filing of a civil lawsuit against the Christian Brothers of the Midwest Province. The event was held in the law offices of Jeff Anderson & Associates, St. Paul.

FARGO (ND)
WDAY

By: WDAY Staff Reports, WDAY

(WDAY TV) - Another victim comes forward saying he was sexually abused by a former Shanley high school teacher. This is now the 8th case against Raimond Rose in North Dakota and Minnesota.

The victim will remain anonymous, but the complaint says he was 16 or 17 years old when Raimond Rose molested him while he was sleeping during a football trip in Jamestown.

FARGO (ND)
Inforum

By: Forum staff reports, INFORUM

A second North Dakota lawsuit was filed Thursday in Cass County District Court accusing a former Fargo Shanley High School teacher of sexual abuse.

The lawsuit filed by an anonymous victim, identified in the court record as John Doe 135, alleges that in about 1976, on a trip to a high school football game in Jamestown, N.D., the victim was sexually assaulted by Brother Raimond Rose while he was sleeping in a hotel.

The victim said the abuse came when he was either 16 or 17 years old, when Rose taught at Shanley.

CANADA
Windsor Star

WINDSOR, Ont. -- A former local Catholic priest charged with molesting teenage boys at the mission he founded in Haiti will remain in jail for another week while a justice of the peace decides whether to release him on bail.

John Duarte, 43, is charged with nine counts of sexual exploitation involving boys aged 12 to 17 in the Haitian capital of Port-au-Prince and the tiny fishing village of Labadie. Hearts Together for Haiti, a charity Duarte founded, operated schools, a health clinic and a sponsorship program for impoverished families. Canadian law allows citizens to be prosecuted in Canada for sex offences against children committed elsewhere.

Duarte was arrested Oct. 20 in the Dominican Republic where he had been living. Canadian authorities picked him up there Oct. 26. He has been held at Windsor jail throughout his bail hearing, which was held Nov. 13 and adjourned to Thursday.

AUSTRALIA
Care Leavers Australia Network

The University of Melbourne strongly supports the Prime Minister’s apology to the "Forgotten Australians", and associated government measures to redress wrongs suffered by many people who were in institutional care early in their lives.

This recognition of injustice is long overdue.

It is also appropriate the University - a community that aspires to serve the public good in every field of knowledge including medical research - takes this occasion to express its deep regret for the part played by researchers linked to its community in vaccination research trials conducted after World War II using children in orphanages as ‘subjects.’

AUSTRALIA
The Melbourne Newsroom

17 Nov 2009 The University of Melbourne's Vice-Chancellor Professor Glyn Davis has written to all staff and students, supporting the Prime Minister's apology to the "Forgotten Australians".

"The University of Melbourne strongly supports the Prime Minister’s apology to the "Forgotten Australians", and associated government measures to redress wrongs suffered by many people who were in institutional care early in their lives.

This recognition of injustice is long overdue.

IRELAND
The Irish Times

THE HIGH Court has cleared the way for publication of most of the report on the the handling by Catholic Church and State authorities of child sex abuse allegations against clerics in the Dublin archdiocese.

Mr Justice Paul Gilligan yesterday said publication could go ahead, except for reference in two chapters to specific persons, and all references to the same persons in the rest of the report.

Their identification might prejudice criminal proceedings, he said.

WILMINGTON (DE)
CBS 3

RANDALL CHASE, Associated Press Writer
WILMINGTON, Del. (AP) ― An Episcopal priest who was relieved of his duties because of alleged misconduct with a female parishioner has been offered a state government job.

The Rev. Robert Broesler, pastor of St. Barnabas Episcopal Church in Wilmington, is scheduled to start working Monday for the Department of Health and Social Services.

FLORIDA
Palm Beach Post

By Lona O'connor Palm Beach Post Staff Writer

DELRAY BEACH — During the three years from his arrest to his conviction for stealing from his parish, there was a complete lockdown on personal information about the Rev. John Skehan.

Now that he has been moved from the rectory of St. Vincent Ferrer parish in Delray Beach to the lockup at the Martin Correctional Institution in Indiantown, friend and foe alike can find out what Skehan, 82, is thinking, reading, praying about and eating, thanks to a Web site set up by his supporters.

The Web site is written by his friend Michelle Donahue, a former head of the St. Vincent parent organization, who visits him almost every weekend, bearing good tidings from the blog and from friends in Delray Beach.

IRELAND
Kilkenny Advertiser

By Kate O’neill

Father Martin Ryan of Muckalee is launching his book this Sunday which is entitled From Muckalee to Mindanao and back, a Missionary Journey.

After over 50 years in the Philippines as a missionary priest, Fr Ryan has modern and unconventional views about the priesthood in today’s society. ...

Speaking with The Kilkenny Advertiser this week, it is obvious that Fr Martin is very modern in his views on the priesthood. He commended Father Sean McKenna, who this week announced that he was to leave the priesthood to get married.

“Sean was a very popular priest in Derry. More and more priests are leaving the priesthood because they want to marry, I think it’s close to 130,000. The remaining priests now have a huge work load. I have written a letter to the Pope where I ask that a third general council, Vatican 3, be called so we can address this issue. I believe that there should be optional celibacy for priests.”

MICHIGAN
Chicago Tribune

LUDINGTON, Mich. - A Catholic priest who served churches in western Michigan has been sentenced to six months in jail for sexual misconduct.

The Rev. Johnson Jeyabel Pappusamy (pap-uh-SAH-me), former pastor of St. Mary Catholic Church in Custer and St. Jerome Catholic Church in Scottville, pleaded guilty Oct. 21 to fourth-degree criminal sexual conduct.

IRELAND
RTE News

Thursday, 19 November 2009
The High Court has cleared the way for the publication of the report of the Commission of Investigation into sexual abuse allegations in the Dublin Archdiocese but references which identify another person must be removed.

Last month, Mr Justice Paul Gilligan ruled that the report could be published but that a specified chapter might prejudice court proceedings.

He directed that chapter 19 and all references to the person who is the subject of that chapter could not be published until directed by the court.

Washington City Paper

Posted by Amanda Hess on Nov. 19, 2009, at 9:49 am

A new Web site hopes to use the oldest trick in the book to combat the Catholic Church’s opposition to same-sex marriage: A good, old-fashioned forced outing!

At ChurchOuting.org, you’re invited to scroll through a list of every Achbishop, Bishop, and Reverend in the Archdiocese of Washington, zero in on one you know is gay, and then submit your “detailed account of how you know the priest in question is being hypocritical through his silence.” (Alternately, get at them via Twitter or Facebook).

ChurchOuting.Org is the brainchild of self-described “netroots organizing pioneer” Phil Attey. To Attey, publicly detailing your homosexual tryst with a priest is practically a charitable contribution: “Thank you for helping to liberate a closeted gay or romantically involved heterosexual priest from the oppressive anti-marriage equality agenda,” the Web site reads. Wait a minute: Since when was a homosexual witchhunt meant to free people from their political agendas?

CHICAGO (IL)
Chicago Breaking News

November 19, 2009
Attorneys for a former priest convicted of sexually abusing five boys at his West Side parish are expected to file a motion today fighting efforts by the state to label him a sexually violent person.

In September, when Daniel McCormack was paroled after serving more than two years of a five-year prison term for sexually abusing five boys in the rectory of St. Agatha Roman Catholic Church, the state's attorney and attorney general filed a joint petition to have McCormack confined to a state treatment facility under the Sexually Violent Persons Commitment Act.

Illinois law allows prosecutors to seek continued incarceration if a psychological exam leads them to believe another sex crime is likely if the inmate goes free. In September, a forensic psychiatrist diagnosed McCormack with pedophilia and recommended civil commitment.

IRELAND
The Press Association

Survivors of clerical abuse have demanded a damning report on child sex abuse in the Dublin Archdiocese be published within the next week.

A High Court judge gave the go-ahead for its release, but ruled any reference to a priest who is facing criminal charges be removed amid fears it may prejudice a case.

The Village Voice

By Michael Musto

​And there's a lot of them to out, honey!

Yes, churchouting.org sets out to expose the hypocrisy of Archdiocese of Washington priests who go along with the church's routine emotional assault on gays while living lives of quiet desperation that involve them having gay sex themselves. (Or even straight sex--the site wants to find ANY priest who's always on his knees for ANYTHING other than praying.)

And they say their mission is not to drag these guys out of the closet per se, but to get them to work with the site in battling the church's hierarchical antigay stance and to fight for gay marriage equality.

IRELAND
Ireland Online

The High Court has further restricted publication of the Commission's report into sexual abuse by priests in the Dublin Archdiocese.

Mr Justice Paul Gilligan has ordered the removal of 41 references to a priest and his brother in the report because it could jeopardise criminal proceedings.

The report was commissioned to look at the Catholic hierarchy's handling of abuse allegations in the Dublin archdiocese between 1975 and 2004.

SOUTH BEND (IN)
South Bend Tribune

By JEFF PARROTT
Tribune Staff Writer

SOUTH BEND — A judge today postponed an extradition hearing for an Irish priest charged with sexually abusing a minor, giving his attorney more time to research Irish law.

The Irish government wants to extradite the Rev. Francis Markey, 81, of South Bend, on charges that he twice raped a boy in 1968 in his native Ireland.

A fact-finding hearing on the extradition request had been set for 10 a.m. today, but U.S. Magistrate Judge Christopher Neuchterlein ordered the hearing continued until Dec. 10, on a motion from Markey's attorney, Robert Truitt.

NEW YORK
The JC

By Ellen Tumposky, November 19, 2009

A report that a Brooklyn man who committed suicide two days after his wedding was a victim of sex abuse has riled the Orthodox community.

Mordechai (Motty) Borger, 24, jumped from the seventh-floor terrace of his hotel on November 5. His bride, Mali Gutman, whom he married on Nov 3 after they met through a matchmaker, was asleep in the room.

A spokeswoman for the NYC medical examiner’s office said the death has been ruled a suicide.

OREGON
The Garden of Roses: Stories of Abuse and Healing

Sharon Burke wears her grey blond hair short….. glasses, loose fitting, comfortable dresses … and gets around her house with a cane or on the arm of her supportive husband, Brad. Multiple Sclerosis short-circuited her career as a teacher twenty years ago. The disease makes life difficult enough that leaving home is a struggle. Sharon faithfully attends Mass at Madeleine Catholic Church in Portland, Oregon, that is she attends every Sunday she is well enough to do so.

After retiring from teaching, Sharon never gave up trying to create new meaning in her life. She mastered needlework skills and makes layettes for premature babies and Rosaries and undergarments for homeless and at risk women. She feels that helping others is an important part of her own healing process.

And Sharon has much to give even if her health limits what she can do.

Through The Rosary of Compassion retreat Sharon is able to give one of the few ways she can. The retreat will be held at Ascension Catholic Church at 7507 SE Yamhill Street in Portland, Oregon, on Saturday, December 5, 2009, from 12:30 to 4 PM. The purpose of the retreat is to pray for the people of the Church and the community wounded by all forms of abuse --physical, emotional, domestic, sexual and clergy abuse -- through meditating on the Mysteries of the Rosary. Sharon wrote the meditations for the retreat along with another Catholic parishioner, Ann Czuba, who will co-lead the retreat with Elizabeth Goeke, a clergy abuse survivor.

NEW CAANAN (CT)
Darien Times

Written by Susan Shultz
Thursday, 19 November 2009

A New Canaan man has threatened to file both civil and criminal lawsuits against Darien over the police department’s response to his attempt to announce news at the end of a Mass at his parish, St. Thomas More Roman Catholic Church.

Last month, the parishioner, Michael Nowacki, attempted to take to the church lectern to tell Mass attendees about a priest who has presided over Mass and other events at St. Thomas More. The priest, the Rev. Paul Carrier, has also solicited funds from parishioners for a now-suspended Haitian charity tied to a criminal investigation. Nowacki refused to stop addressing the parishioners until police were called.

The former director of the Project Pierre Toussaint, Douglas Perlitz, is currently facing charges of child abuse.

MISSOURI
The Kansas City Star

By DONALD BRADLEY
The Kansas City Star

The patriarch at the center of the Mohler child sex case has lived in his basement ever since his wife found his trove of incest pornography, new documents say.

When investigators showed up recently with a search warrant, she gave them a key to a locked file cabinet. That’s where they found magazines with names such as Family Taboo and Best of Family Secrets.

Also taken in the search of Burrell Mohler Sr.’s house in Independence were sex toys, video recording equipment and homemade VHS tapes.

MISSOURI
CBS News

LEXINGTON, Mo. (CBS/AP) Three alleged victims of what police call a horrible series of familial Missouri sex crimes, say one of the attackers forced them to help stab a man to death and bury him, according to court documents.

A search warrant, filed Nov. 9, but released to The Associated Press on Tuesday, stated three of the alleged child victims observed "several murders" and were forced to help kill and bury a man in April 1988.

The warrant said one of the accused, Burrell E. Mohler Jr., and the children followed a large man from a shopping center in Independence, Mo., 20 minutes outside of Kansas City, to his home. They parked outside, and then the children lured the man over to their car by telling him that their father was having a heart attack. When the man leaned over to help, Mohler Jr. allegedly "wrapped his arms around the victim's neck" and subdued him, the warrant said.

STATEN ISLAND (NY)
New York Post

By ALEX GINSBERG

A Staten Island priest who admitted swiping $84,000 from his church to fund plastic surgeries and Botox treatments was sentenced yesterday to five years' probation -- and the threat of jail if he doesn't pay it back

William Blasingame, 66, a former pastor at St. Paul's Memorial Episcopal Church, said nothing before Judge Alan Meyer handed down the negotiated sentence for second-degree grand larceny

His lawyer, James Hasson, said Blasingame never meant to steal the church's money, but irresponsibly mixed his own funds with those of the church in a church account -- then spent it

HONG KING
Monsters and Critics

Hong Kong - A Hong Kong student nicknamed the Chinese Warren Buffet has been accused of blackmailing a Catholic priest with intimate images, a court report said Thursday.

Economics student Cheung Ka-wo, 27, appeared in court facing charges of attempting to extort 6.3 million Hong Kong dollars (813,000 US dollars) from the priest by threatening to reveal intimate photographs showing their past relationship.

Cheung, 27, was nicknamed after the successful American investor Buffet by the local press after he made more than 1 million Hong Kong dollars (129,000 US dollars) in two days of derivatives trading.

HONG KONG
Indian Catholic

HONG KONG : A 27-year-old man has appeared in court charged with attempting to blackmail a priest by threatening to release a video that suggests the pair had an intimate relationship.

The video allegedly shows the man, Cheung Ka-wo, and the priest naked, according to media reports.

Cheung, a doctoral student, was accused of conspiring with Li Dora Kay, a laywoman, to extort HK$6.3 million (US$826,000) from the priest and a layperson that the priest had sought help from. The identity of the priest and the layperson were not revealed.

UNITED KINGDOM
The Press Association

A wealthy rabbi financed a drug dealing business and offered cocaine to girls in exchange for sex, a court has been told.

Rabbi Baruch Chalomish, 54, of Salford, rented an apartment where he could "relax and have a party", Manchester Crown Court heard.

The rabbi, of Upper Park Road, Salford, admits two counts of possession of cocaine but denies intent to supply.

GEORGIA
Stop Baptist Predators

The Georgia Baptist Convention has disfellowshipped the First Baptist Church of Decatur, Georgia.

Why?

Because the church has a woman serving as pastor. Her name is Julie Pennington-Russell. (That's her in the photo.)

Apparently the Southern Baptist principle of local church autonomy just goes out the window when a church indulges the “sin” of having a woman in the pulpit.

It’s only for “lesser sins” . . . like indulging clergy child molesters and cover-uppers . . . that local church autonomy really matters. Then it’s all up to the local church and whatever they do or don’t do is just fine.

NORTHERN IRELAND
Belfast Telegraph

Thursday, 19 November 2009
The former husband of the Derry woman who has taken up with a local priest has refused to comment on his ex’s new relationship.

Liam Curran has remained in Derry while the whereabouts of his former partner Elaine Curran and Fr Sean McKenna last night remained a mystery.

Fr McKenna and his lover have gone to ground since he declared to a stunned Mass congregation in Derry on Saturday night that he was hanging up his robes after finding love.

WASHINGTON
The Spokesman Review

Kevin Graman The Spokesman-Review

Morning Star Boys’ Ranch has moved the bulk of its assets, including securities and real estate worth millions of dollars, to a nonprofit foundation in advance of the first trial over sexual abuse lawsuits against it.

In 2007, the ranch transferred more than $12 million in securities and other assets to the Morning Star Boys’ Ranch Foundation, an organization that supports youth sports and other charities, according to federal tax documents.

On April 2, the ranch deeded to the foundation 25 parcels of Spokane County real estate with a total assessed value of nearly $3.5 million. The signature appearing on those deed transfers as both grantor and grantee was that of Joe Pickert, a foundation board member who at the time was executive director of both the foundation and the ranch.

UNITED STATES
Opposing Views

By Dignity USA

During their annual meeting this week in Baltimore, the US Catholic Bishops reviewed a preliminary version of a study they commissioned on the reasons for clergy sexual abuse. The study by John Jay College of Criminal Justice researchers found that being gay had no correlation to the sex abuse scandal that has rocked the U.S. Catholic Church for decades.

“This report confirms many other studies that demonstrate that sexual orientation has nothing to do with the pattern of child abuse by Catholic priests,” said Marianne Duddy-Burke, Executive Director of DignityUSA. “We hope that the hierarchy of the Catholic Church will finally accept this finding, since it has been borne out through their own study.

"We urge the bishops to provide support and compensation to the victims/survivors of sexual abuse by clergy, identify perpetrators, press charges, and permanently remove them from contact with children. It is vital that the hierarchy atone for their own role in multiplying the abuse by moving known abusers from place to place.

CHICAGO (IL)
Chicago Public Radio

[with audio]

An advocacy group for victims abused by priests is criticizing a recent study.

The study that's underway is trying to determine why there was more priest sexual abuse in the 60s and 70s, and why it fell after 1985. It's being done for the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops.

Barbara Blaine thinks the study is "illogical." She heads the Chicago-based SNAP, the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests.

CANADA
Now Toronto

Giller pick
By Susan G. Cole
Reporters on The Bishop’s Man’s Giller triumph have described the book as straightforward storytelling, but that’s not quite right. The story goes back and forth in time to track a man’s growing disillusionment with his role as priest, shedding a powerful light on what goes on behind the scenes in the culture of the Catholic clergy.

Father Duncan is the bishop’s fixer, the guy called on to root out corrupt priests. For years he’s made sure sexual abusers get moved around with no public scandal or personal accountability. When he’s sent to his hometown in Nova Scotia to deal with a growing crisis there, it looks like his personal doubts – he has his own secrets – might threaten his professional duties.

Veteran CBC journalist Linden MacIntyre expertly conveys the sickening logic of abusers and the Church’s determination to do nothing about the growing influence of that thinking. And although the narrative takes a dip while Duncan checks into rehab, MacIntyre grabs it right back and maintains a breathtaking tension through to the end.

BALTIMORE
The Georgia Bulletin

BALTIMORE (CNS) -- An ongoing study of the causes and contexts of sexual abuse by priests delves into a broad assortment of factors, including societal trends, treatment approaches over the decades and the character of seminaries in different generations. An interim report on the "Causes and Context Study" presented to the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops Nov. 17 during their fall general assembly outlines a complex, multidimensional project. The full study, commissioned by the USCCB in 2002 in response to the sexual abuse crisis, is expected to be completed by late 2010.

INDEPENDENCE (MO)
The Kansas City Star

By DONALD BRADLEY
The Kansas City Star

A search of the Independence home of the man at the center of Mohler child sex case turned up incest pornography, recording equipment and old tapes with hand-written titles.

Magazines with titles of “Family Taboo,” “Best of Family Secrets” and “Best of Family Touch” were found in a locked file cabinet in the home in the 1300 block of South Dodgion during a Nov. 11 search.

Burrell Mohler Sr., 77, is in jail in Lexington, Mo., after his arrest last week on allegations of a family child sex case that included rape, sodomy and bestiality. His four sons were also charged for a torrent of alleged sexual assaults in which the family victims were allegedly as young as 5 years old.

INDIA
The Star

Compiled by ZANI SALLEH, BEH YUEN HUI and A. RAMAN

A 36-YEAR-OLD temple priest has sex with a few women in the temple premise in Kanchipuram, Tamil Nadu. To make things worse, he had also recorded his activities on his mobile phone, Makkal Osai reported.

The priest, identified as Deva­nathan, surrendered to a magistrate after being on the run for two months.

The daily said that the father of two had applied for bail but it was rejected by the Madras High Court.

BALTIMORE (MD)
Beliefnet

BALTIMORE (RNS) Gay Catholics and victims of clergy sexual abuse are hailing preliminary results of a study commissioned by U.S. Catholic bishops that says gay priests are no more likely than straight clergy to sexually abuse minors.

Still, some bishops gathered here for the final day of their semi-annual meeting said it is premature to say whether the church leaders who had asserted such a link were wrong.

Researchers from New York's John Jay College of Criminal Justice on Tuesday (Nov. 17) presented initial findings from their multi-year study of the clergy sexual abuse scandal, which has resulted in some 14,000 claims of abuse and cost the U.S. Catholic Church about $2.6 billion in settlements since 1950.

HONG KONG
The Standard

Patsy Moy

Thursday, November 19, 2009

The Catholic Church is facing a new sex scandal after a Chinese University PhD student appeared in court yesterday accused of blackmailing a priest.

Economics student Cheung Ka-wo, 27, is accused of attempting to extort HK$6.3 million from a Catholic priest identified as "X" by threatening to reveal "intimate images" from their past association.

Cheung is also charged with conspiracy to blackmail a Catholic churchgoer identified as "Y."

ARKANSAS
The Associated Press

By JON GAMBRELL (AP)

LITTLE ROCK, Ark. — The Arkansas Court of Appeals has ruled that state child welfare officials properly seized children from the Tony Alamo Christian Ministries after a police raid.

The appeals court issued three opinions Wednesday dealing with the children taken by welfare officials after a September 2008 raid at Alamo's compound.

UNITED STATES
United Press International

WASHINGTON, Nov. 18 (UPI) -- U.S. researchers said initial results of their study on clergy sex abuse shows a decline in such cases in the United States after 1985.

John Jay College of Criminal Justice researchers said in an interim report while sexual abuse cases involving clergy and minors increased during the late 1960s and 1970s, a steep decline began after 1985, the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops said in a release Tuesday.

The bishops group commissioned the $1.8 million study and partially funded the research along with other organizations such as the National Institute of Justice.

NEW YORK
Inrondequoit Post

By Linda Quinlan, staff writer
Irondequoit Post

Irondequoit, N.Y. — .Sexual abuse allegations against a former priest at Irondequoit’s St. Salome’s and St. Cecilia’s parish have been determined credible by the Roman Catholic Diocese of Rochester.

According to Messenger Post newspartner News 10NBC, an allegation concerning sexual abuse of a minor dating back to the mid-1970s against the Rev. Conrad Sundholm has been and is being investigated.

Sundholm, 80, who is retired, now lives in Florida. He was pastor at St. Salome’s on Culver Road — in the Sea Breeze area of Irondequoit — when the abuse allegedly occurred. He may not perform public ministry.

UNITED STATES
Cliffview Pilot

Monday, 16 November 2009 20:13 Vicki Polin

SPECIAL REPORT: As a licensed mental health professional who has been advocating for survivors of sexual violence for the last 25 years, I have watched many victims struggling with what they need to do to heal. It can take years just to tell another person you've been victimized, let alone notifying the police. It happened to me. I am still in a state of shock, but for the first time I am speaking out publicly about the fact that I was assaulted this past July.

Because my case is currently in litigation, I am not at liberty to go into some of the details of the assault. The reason I am speaking out now is because I feel it is important to share the fact that it took me 33 days to make a police report.

The offender was a relative of a dear and trusted friend, a relative of someone whom I looked up to and respected and someone who has been like a father to me. I don’t know what I was thinking, yet I didn’t do what I would have expected of me... I was confused by my own hesitation to make an immediate call to the police. Instead I found myself taking care of the offender's family instead of taking care of my own personal needs.

UNITED STATES
Examiner

November 16, 4:57 PM

Jerry DeMarco

In a shocking, heartfelt declaration, Vicki Polin, who has worked in the field of sexual trauma and is the founder and director of the Awareness Center, established to help assault victims, tells her story publicly for the first time of being assaulted herself this past summer.

"As a licensed mental health professional who has been advocating for survivors of sexual violence for the last 25 years, I have watched many victims struggling with what they need to do to heal. It can take years just to tell another person you've been victimized, let alone notifying the police.

"It happened to me," Polin says, in a special report published today on CLIFFVIEWPILOT.COM.

CHICAGO (IL)
Chicago Tribune

Manya Brachear

Lest there be confusion about where the Roman Catholic church stands on marriage, reproductive technology and treating chronically ill and dying patients, the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops released guidelines for their flock about all three issues this week. In doing so, they seemed to be following the guidance given by their president, Cardinal Francis George earlier this week.

In his opening address to American bishops meeting this week in Baltimore, George urged his brother bishops not to let the sexual abuse crisis and other past mistakes detract from their moral responsibility and ministry.

But some are urging George to turn his attention back to the sexual abuse crisis and the related drama unfolding at home.

UNITED STATES
Voice from the Desert

Statement by Barbara Dorris, SNAP outreach director, 314 503 0003

Now that the obvious has been re-affirmed (that pedophile priests molest girls and boys), let’s hope researchers start to focus on the real question: why do thousands of current and former church employees stay silent about clergy sex crimes and cover ups? That’s what really needs to be addressed.

We have serious doubts about the John Jay project but this conclusion - that the sexual orientation of child molesting clerics isn’t significant - doesn’t surprise us. Roughly half of our 9,000 members are women who were molested as girls by priests, brothers, nuns, bishops and seminarians. We’ve long seen that courts and media tend to minimize the harm done to females who are assaulted by clergy.

2) Statement by Barbara Blaine, SNAP founder and president, 312 399 4747

The gender orientation of predator priests is irrelevant. What matters, though, is the church’s deeply-rooted culture of sexual secrecy that stems from most priests’ forbidden sexual activity.

When all sex by priests is wrong - dating, masturbation, porn, everything - then most priests will have sexual secrets. And they will be very reluctant to ‘rat out’ their brother priests who are known or suspected pedophiles.

3) Statement by Peter Isely, SNAP Midwest Director 414 429 7259

Since 2004, since John Jay College began tabulating numbers for the American bishops on priests that have committed sex crimes against children, nearly 1,000 newly identified priests have been reported to dioceses around the country as child molesters, averaging nearly 200 year. In fact, last year a record number of priests were reported to have molested children, a staggering 311 newly identified priest offenders. The grand total of priests who have assaulted children in the United States over the past several decades is now nearing a staggering total of 6,000.

NORTHERN IRELAND
Derry Journal

By Staff reporter
A well known County Fermanagh priest says the issue of compulsory celibacy for Catholic priests needs to be examined.

Father Brian D’Arcy made his comments following the shock resignation of Derry priest Father Sean McKenna who announced to his congregation on Saturday night that he had fallen in love with a woman.

“The mandatory or compulsory celibacy, I think, is not only a contradiction in terms but has outlived its use by about 1,000 years and it should be changed,” said Father D’Arcy.

IRELAND
Fermanagh Herald

A CATHOLIC priest, who served in the diocese of Clogher, has been accused of raping a child on Lough Derg. Fr Francis Markey, who appeared in court in the United States this week, is facing extradition from the US to answer a number of rape charges, one relating to an alleged incident at the place of pilgrimage on the Donegal/Femanagh border.

Markey (81) is accused of raping a 15-year-old boy on two separate occasions in 1968, according to the complaint filed in a US District Court in Indiana.

The Republic's government has requested that he be sent back to his home country for trial.

CHICAGO (IL)
WGN

[with video]

Parishioners at Saint Mark's Catholic Church on the west side rallied in support of a former pastor, who's accused of sexually abusing two boys about 25-years ago when they were in junior high school.

The Reverend Edward Maloney was removed from ministry after Cardinal Francis George and an archdiocesan review board determined there was credible evidence supporting the allegations.

Mirian Dabila, a supporter of Maloney who turned out for the rally, said he married many of the parishioners at Saint Mark's, taught religion to many of them, and said the allegations cannot be true.

UNITED KINGDOM
Irish Post

BY ROBERT MULHERN

SURVIVORS groups in Britain finally have a voice.

That’s the conclusion that has been drawn by those in Britain who travelled to Ireland to meet with Minister for Children Barry Andrews.

The group, including Sally Mulready and Phyllis Morgan from the Women’s Survivor Network, Francis Murphy from Survivors South East and Councillor Mary Murphy from Manchester, met with Andrews and representatives of Batt O’Keefe in Dublin to discuss the recommendations of the Ryan Report.

Speaking about the meeting, Mulready said: “It was an absolute eye-opener for them to hear from us — it was a powerful message. We’ve finally had the voice of survivors in Britain heard, and our experiences as immigrant survivors and our hopes and aspirations were listened to. Now we have to make sure promises are followed through.”

NEW ZEALAND
Manawatu Standard

By JESSICA SUTTON - Manawatu Standard

Lice, scabies, starving and a mother in prison.

England was no paradise for British child immigrant Veronica "Roni" Fitzmaurice, a Palmerston North community identity and local body politician.

Her life began when she arrived in New Zealand as an 18-year-old, and she does not need an apology from the New Zealand Government.

This week, post-World War II British child immigrants received an apology from Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd for their mistreatment, which included physical, sexual and mental abuse at state institutions, church facilities and in family homes.

MISSOURI
KSHB

[with video]

[search warrant documents]

LAFAYETTE COUNTY, Mo. – Court documents reviewed by NBC Action News Tuesday unveil details about accusations against a 77-year-old man and his four sons, who are all charged in a child sex crimes case in Lafayette County.

A search warrant filed for the search of the property once owned by the Mohler family says investigators were combing the farm, just south of Bates City, for evidence that could help them in the investigation into the alleged sex crimes, but also evidence connected to an alleged homicide and a body buried on the property.

Detectives say they found an unidentified bone, eyeglasses, broken glass jars, half a credit card and the sole of a shoe or a boot.

MISSOURI
CNN

[with video]

(CNN) -- Three alleged victims of years-ago child sex abuse within a Missouri family told authorities they were forced by one of the accused to kill a man after he was kidnapped, according to new court documents filed in the case.

In addition, another alleged victim told police that she was held captive in the basement of a home and abused by five of the suspects, and that the suspects buried her baby in the basement after she became pregnant the first of two times, the documents say.

Six family members are in custody on various charges related to the abuse allegations. The alleged victims -- all now adults -- came to police with stories of sexual performances, mock weddings, rape with various objects and a forced abortion during their childhoods, according to court documents obtained by CNN affiliate KSHB in Kansas City. CNN does not identify alleged sexual assault victims.

AUSTRALIA
The Irish Times

ANALYSIS: Many of the children abused in Australia, prompting this week's apology by the prime minister there, came originally from Ireland, writes MARY RAFTERY

THERE IS always one story that haunts you, so graphic and disturbing it is almost too terrible to contemplate.

In over a decade of researching the experiences of people all over the world whose childhoods were destroyed by state-sponsored abuse, one of the worst I came across was that of a small, blue-eyed boy at Tardun, an orphanage in western Australia. He was one of the tens of thousands apologised to on Monday by Australian prime minister Kevin Rudd, as that country at last faces up to the savage abuses suffered by so many taken as children into state-funded care.

BATES CITY (MO)
The New York Times

By SUSAN SAULNY
Published: November 17, 2009
BATES CITY, Mo. — On a dead-end dirt road, through frosted crops and bales of hay in this sleepy town about a half-hour east of Kansas City, state investigators spent much of last week excavating the yard around a farmhouse, looking for decades-old evidence of sex crimes against children.

Their search was prompted, law enforcement officials say, by a 26-year-old woman who went to the police in nearby Independence, Mo., in August and accused her grandfather, father and three uncles of sexually abusing her and her siblings as children, beginning in the winter of 1988 and continuing for seven years.

According to criminal complaints and other court papers, the woman said she had recovered suppressed memories of mock weddings, sexual acts involving children, rape and a sex act involving an animal that took place in and around the secluded old Bates City farmhouse, a wooded 55-acre property formerly owned by her grandfather, Burrell E. Mohler Sr.

BALTIMORE (MD)
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

Wednesday, November 18, 2009
By Ann Rodgers, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
BALTIMORE -- Researchers at New York's John Jay College of Criminal Justice, reporting initial findings in their look into causes of the Catholic church's 2002 sexual-abuse scandal, yesterday said they can't attribute it to gay priests or seminaries for teenagers.

"We do not have data to support ... those assertions," said Karen Terry, lead researcher for the $1.8 million study commissioned by the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, which is meeting this week in Baltimore.

Dr. Terry presented her interim report on the same day that the bishops conference also adopted a pastoral letter on marriage and a statement on reproductive technologies and approved the final part of a new translation of the Mass.

AUSTRALIA
ninemsn

By ninemsn staff

Two men will stand trial in NSW after allegedly posing as spiritual leaders and sexually assaulting a young woman during "prayer sessions".

Arthur Psichogios, 39, and Tony Golossian, 62, lured the victim to motels on the promise they could cure her family's black magic curse, the Daily Telegraph reports.

The two men committed more than 100 sex offences against the woman, who was just 23 years old when the alleged assaults began in 2001, as well as a second woman, police say.

CALIFORNIA
WSBT

TWENTYNINE PALMS, Calif. (AP) — Two days before shipping off to war, Marine Pfc. Jesse Sheets sat inside a trailer in the Mojave Desert, his gaze fixed on a computer that flashed a rhythmic pulse of contrasting images.

A doctor tracked his stress levels and counted the number of times he blinked. Electrode wires dangled from his left eye and right pinky finger.

Sheets is part of a military experiment to try to predict who's most at risk for post-traumatic stress disorder. Understanding underlying triggers might help reduce the burden of those who return psychologically wounded — if they can get early help. ...

Studies on veterans and civilians point to some clues. Childhood abuse, history of mental illness and severity of trauma seem to raise a person's risk. Having a social net and a coping strategy appear to offer some protection.

PROVIDENCE (RI)
Providence Journal

By Tracy Breton
Journal Staff Writer

PROVIDENCE –– The Judicial Nominating Commission on Tuesday night chose two Superior Court judges and three lawyers to recommend to Governor Carcieri for consideration to be an associate justice on the Rhode Island Supreme Court, a seat that became open when Paul A. Suttell became chief justice in July.

After two rounds of voting, Commission Chairman Herbert J. Brennan announced that the names of five of the six candidates interviewed would be sent to the governor: Superior Court Judges Judith Colenback Savage and Gilbert V. Indeglia and lawyers John A. “Terry” MacFadyen III, Samuel D. Zurier and Sandra A. Lanni. Family Court Judge Laureen D’Ambra did not make the cut. ...

The only negative comment came from a survivor of clergy sexual abuse, Mary Ryan, who said that while she commended D’Ambra for the service she’s performed for the state, she questioned her ties to the Catholic Church in Rhode Island. D’Ambra has served on the Diocesan Finance Council since 2006 and, for the past seven years, on the Diocese of Providence Bishop’s Review Board for Child Protection, according to her resumé. “My concern for her is that I think she’d have difficulty separating herself from her religious views,” Ryan said.

WISCONSIN
Kenosha News

BY DENEEN SMITH
dsmith@kenoshanews.com
and THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

Local Catholics are hopeful the new archbishop of the Milwaukee diocese will be a good match for the region.

The Vatican named Bishop Jerome Listecki, a retired military man who has been outspoken in promoting Catholic issues in political arenas, as the new archbishop Saturday. ...

The archdiocese launched a $105 million fundraising campaign several years ago and expects to hit its target in the spring. But it also faces 14 lawsuits related to clergy sexual-abuse allegations, which could force it into bankruptcy.

Through June 30, the archdiocese said it paid out $28 million to settle charges related to clergy sexual abuse.

NEW YORK
The Democrat and Chronicle

Local News – November 18, 2009
Allegations of sexual abuse of a minor by a priest who has served in several Rochester-area churches in the past five decades have been deemed credible, according to the Roman Catholic Diocese of Rochester.

“An allegation concerning sexual abuse of a minor dating back to the mid-1970s against the Rev. Conrad Sundholm, a retired priest now living in Florida, has been determined to be credible,” Diocese spokesman Doug Mandelaro said in a printed statement.

Sundholm was pastor at St. Salome’s Church in Irondequoit when the abuse allegedly occurred. He served there from 1974 to 1982.

BALTIMORE (MD)
Politics Daily

BALTIMORE -- For much of the past decade it has been an article of faith for many, bolstered by the testimony of thousands of victims, that the Catholic priesthood is a haven for child molesters and that the Catholic bishops have been particularly guilty of covering up for those abusers.

But preliminary results from a sweeping study of sexual abuse in the priesthood show that the Catholic Church has been much like the rest of society in terms of the incidence of abuse and the response by its institutional leaders.

The data, which was presented to the U.S. hierarchy on the second day of their annual meeting here, also appears to contradict the widely held view that homosexuals in the priesthood were largely responsible for the abuse.

AUSTRALIA
Bay Post

BY COURTNEY TRENWITH
18 Nov, 2009
A retired Batemans Bay Catholic priest has pleaded guilty to repeatedly sexually assaulting an altar boy 40 years ago.

Kelvin Gerald Sharkey, 80, now of Fairy Meadow, was too frail to enter the dock or stand on Monday when Wollongong District Court Judge Paul Conlon asked how he pleaded to two counts of indecently assaulting a male and one of buggery.

Sharkey threatened the victim, telling him he would go to hell if he told his parents about the assaults.

“... it’s okay, this is what we do,” he told the boy.

NORTHERN IRELAND
The Irish Times

PATSY McGARRY, Religious Affairs Correspondent

A PETITION calling for justice for former residents of institutions run by Catholic religious congregations in Northern Ireland is to be presented to the De La Salle Brothers in Dublin today.

It will be received by Brother Pius McCarthy at the congregation's provincialate this morning.

A former resident of one of the institutions, Margaret McGuckin, told The Irish Times yesterday that the petition consisted of approximately 6,000 names collected on the Lower Falls Road in Belfast.

BALTIMORE (MD)
Zenit

BALTIMORE, Maryland, NOV. 17, 2009 (Zenit.org).- In response to a report on child abuse cases by clergy, Bishop Blase Cupich of Rapid City, South Dakota, notes that no other organization is doing as much as the Church to keep children safe.

The prelate, the chairman of the U.S. bishops' conference Committee for the Protection of Children and Young People, affirmed this today in Baltimore, where the conference is holding its fall general assembly.

Today's session included an interim report by researchers from the John Jay College of Criminal Justice on a Causes and Context Study regarding sexual abuse of minors by clergy.

BALTIMORE (MD)
USA Today

By Daniel Burke, Religion News Service
BALTIMORE — Responding to scientific advances and widespread "confusion" among their flocks, U.S. Catholic bishops today issued detailed guidelines on marriage, reproductive technologies and health care for severely brain-damaged patients.

The bishops gathered here for their semi-annual meeting also heard a preliminary report on the "causes and contexts" of the clergy sexual abuse scandal that resulted in some 14,000 abuse claims and cost the church $2.6 billion since 1950.

Researchers from New York's John Jay College of Criminal Justice told the nearly 300 members of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops that homosexual orientation should not be linked to the sexual abuse, even as some church leaders have sought to make a link between gay priests and sexual abuse.

NORTHERN IRELAND
Irish Central

By DONAL THORNTON, IrishCentral.Com Staff Writer

A popular Irish Catholic priest has quit the priesthood to spend his life with a woman.

Fr. Sean McKenna, 51, received a standing ovation from his local parishioners in Ballymagroarty in Derry when he made the announcement.

The congregation wept and cheered when McKenna said he was leaving the priesthood, having embarked on a "loving, beautiful and life-giving relationship."

BALTIMORE (MD)
The Associated Press

By RACHEL ZOLL (AP)

BALTIMORE — A preliminary report commissioned by the nation's Roman Catholic bishops to investigate the clergy sex abuse scandal has found no evidence that gay priests are more likely than heterosexual clergy to molest children, the lead authors of the study said Tuesday.

The full report by researchers at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice won't be completed until the end of next year. But the authors said their evidence to date found no data indicating that homosexuality was a predictor of abuse.

"What we are suggesting is that the idea of sexual identity be separated from the problem of sexual abuse," said Margaret Smith of John Jay College, in a speech to the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops. "At this point, we do not find a connection between homosexual identity and the increased likelihood of subsequent abuse from the data that we have right now."

NEW YORK
WSYR

Rochester (WSYR-TV) A Rochester-area priest who once served in Auburn has been accused of sexual abuse of a minor when he was pastor at an Irondequoit parish.

Sundholm served at .St. Mary in Auburn from 1965-1972 and Holy Family/St. Aloysius in Auburn from 1982 until his retirement in 1999.

The Rochester Diocese says that the alleged sexual abuse charge against the Rev. Conrad Sundholm, occurred when he was at St. Salome Church in Irondequoit. Sundholm served there from 1974-1982.

NEW YORK
Catholic Courier

(Publication Date: 11-17-2009)

According to a Nov. 17 statement by the Diocese of Rochester, Father Conrad Sundholm, a retired priest currently residing in Florida, has been accused of sexually abusing a minor during the mid-1970s.

The statement said that the allegation has been deemed "credible," and that the abuse allegedly occurred while Father Sundholm was pastor at St. Salome Parish in Irondequoit.

Bishop Matthew H. Clark has withdrawn Father Sundholm's priestly faculties, meaning he no longer is allowed to exercise public ministry.

BALTIMORE (MD)
United States Conference of Catholic Bishops

BALTIMORE—The United States Conference of Catholic Bishop (USCCB), meeting for their Fall General Assembly, elected by simple majority the chairmen-elect of five committees.

Archbishop Robert Carlson of St. Louis was elected Chairman of the Committee on Clergy, Consecrated Life and Vocation in a 118-114 vote over Bishop Michael Burbidge of Raleigh, N.C.

BALTIMORE (MD)
United States Conference of Catholic Bishops

WASHINGTON—Researchers from the John Jay College of Criminal Justice presented an Interim Report on the Causes and Context Study on sexual abuse of minors by clergy at the November assembly of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB). The bishops called for the Study as part of their response to the sexual abuse crisis when they adopted the Charter for the Protection of Children and Young People in 2002.

The Causes and Context research seeks to explain the rise in incidence of sexual abuse by priests in the late 1960s and 1970s and its subsequent decline after 1985. Karen Terry, PhD, the principal researcher on the Study, reported on the synthesis of information from several independent data sources that confirmed the explanation for this variation that was previously reported to the bishops. The Study involves gathering and analyzing archival research and collecting data from priests, psychologists, sociologists, and the U.S. bishops. Funding was provided by the USCCB, the National Institute of Justice, and several foundations.

The Causes and Context Study was pursued by the bishops in order to understand more fully the problem of clergy sexual abuse and what needs to be done to keep children safe in the Church’s care.

BALTIMORE (MD)
Catholic News Agency

Baltimore, Md., Nov 17, 2009 / 03:43 pm (CNA).- Researchers investigating the sexual abuse of minors by clergy presented their interim report at the November assembly of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops on Tuesday. They said new reports of sexual abuse do not alter the pattern of clerical sexual abuse, which peaked in the late 1960s and 1970s before declining in the 1980s.

The Interim Report on the Cases and Context Study, written by researchers from the John Jay College of Criminal Justice, aims to explain the increase of sexual abuse by priests in the late 1960s and 1970s and its decline after 1985. Researchers gathered and analyzed archives and also collected data from priest, psychologists, sociologists and the U.S. bishops.

According to a USCCB press release, the Interim Report found that cases of abuse reported after 2002 showed the same pattern of a rise of sexual abuse in the 1960s and decline in the 1980s. The researchers do not believe that unreported cases will be brought forward that change the time frame of the abuse.

BALTIMORE (MD)
Fox News

Tuesday, November 17, 2009

BALTIMORE — A preliminary report commissioned by U.S. Roman Catholic bishops finds no evidence that gay priests are more likely to abuse children.

Researcher Margaret Smith from John Jay College of Criminal Justice said the study so far has found no connection between being gay and an increased likelihood of abuse.

Spirit Daily

When a bishop consecrates a church, he pours chrism oil on the altar and then proceeds around the building making the Sign of the Cross with that oil at various places on the interior walls, often on columns, if a church has columns; afterward, a Cross is etched or placed designating the spot and often a candle is also set there.

From then on, a church is a holy place -- not just in word, by in a way that is palpable.

That's Catholicism: real power that transcends any human, a power that lasts, despite human error.

BALTIMORE (MD)
Zenit

BALTIMORE, Maryland, NOV. 16, 2009 (Zenit.org).- The U.S. bishops' conference president is urging his fellow prelates to move beyond the clergy abuse scandals of the past, and look to build unity within the Church.

Cardinal Francis George, archbishop of Chicago, affirmed this in his presidential address in Baltimore, where the conference's annual fall general assembly began today.

He highlighted the necessary role of priests, who together with bishops exercise authority in Christ's name over the people. Without priests, he pointed out, the people would be left only to the authority of the civil and secular government.

NEW YORK
WHEC

An allegation concerning sexual abuse of a minor dating back to the mid-1970s against a former Rochester priest, has been determined to be credible.

Reverend Conrad Sundholm, a retired priest who now lives Florida, was pastor at St. Salome's Church in Irondequoit when the abuse allegedly occurred. Rev. Sundholm is now 80-years-old.

Rev. Sundholm's priestly faculties have been withdrawn. He cannot exercise public ministry.

NEW YORK
WHAM

Rochester, N.Y. – The Diocese of Rochester says that allegations of sexual abuse of a minor against a former Irondequoit pastor are credible.

According to the diocese, the abuse allegations against Rev. Conrad Sundholm date back to the mid-1970s at St. Salome’s Church in Irondequoit where he served from 1974-1982.

Sundholm is now 80, retired, and living in Florida. The diocese says he can no longer exercise public ministry.

INDEPENDENT (MO)
The Kansas City Star

A public prayer vigil has been scheduled for tonight by the Community of Christ church in response to arrests last week in the Lafayette County child abuse investigation.

The vigil is from 7 to 9 p.m. at the Community of Christ Temple, 201 S. River Blvd., Independence.

MISSOURI
The Kansas City Star

By DONALD BRADLEY
The Kansas City Star

With a new accuser alleging more sexual atrocities were committed against the children of the Mohler family, 15 additional counts were filed Monday against five of the six men already in jail.

Lafayette County authorities last week charged six men in the family on 16 counts, alleging a torrent of rape, sodomy and bestiality against children.

The latest filings include allegations that the new accuser was induced to have sexual contact with another minor. Some of the abuses allegedly occurred in a vacant house near the family’s property south of Bates City, Mo., as well as in the home.

NEW YORK
The Democrat and Chronicle

Victoria E. Freile – Staff writer
Local News – November 17, 2009

Allegations of sexual abuse of a minor by a priest who has served in several Rochester-area churches over the past five decades have been deemed credible, according to the Roman Catholic Diocese of Rochester.

“An allegation concerning sexual abuse of a minor dating back to the mid-1970s against the Rev. Conrad Sundholm, a retired priest now living in Florida, has been determined to be credible,” diocesan spokesman Doug Mandelaro said in a printed statement.

Sundholm was pastor at St. Salome Church in Irondequoit when the abuse allegedly occurred. He served there from 1974 to 1982.

QUINCY (IL)
Herald-Whig

The story of the Rev. Henry Willenborg, a priest who spent a decade at Our Lady of Angels Seminary in Quincy, and the son he had with a woman who came here 26 years ago to a Roman Catholic retreat to try to mend a trouble marriage aired last week on CNN. Their son, Nathan Halbach, now 22, is dying of cancer.

See the report here.

The story first gained national attention with a front page New York Times article last month. CNN reporter Gary Tuchman was in Quincy filming part of the report, with footage of St. Peter Catholic Church.

HOLLYWOOD (CA)
Surviving Therapist Abuse

SNAP (The Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests) is holding a sidewalk news conference in Hollywood today regarding Jack Michael Loo, a Presbyterian pastor and therapist who allegedly manipulated and exploited a female patient and congregant for many years. Loo is being sued for exploitation and faces charges of clergy sexual misconduct. The victim, Carol Ann Carlson, is speaking publicly for the first time.

The story is another shocking example of horrific abuses of power by people in positions of authority and trust.

I’m posting the media advisory for today’s news conference below. I realize that most of you will be reading this after the fact, but I believe it’s important that victims be given the opportunity to give voice to their stories in as many ways possible. I wish Ms. Carlson all the best in her suit and in her recovery.

UNITED STATES
Catholic Sensibility

David Gibson clarifies the context of Cardinal George’s remark I blogged yesterday. From Politics Daily:

“There are some who would like to trap the church in historical events of ages long past, and there are others who would keep the bishops permanently imprisoned in the clerical sexual abuse scandal of recent years,” George said. “The proper response to a crisis of governance, however, is not no governance but effective governance.”

George noted that the “clerical ranks have been purged of priests and bishops known to have abused children” and said that whatever the sins of those abusers, they “cannot be allowed to discredit the truth of Catholic teaching.”

Sad. The cardinal still doesn’t get it. Will someone explain to him that we Catholics have known about abusive clergy for decades. Heck, they still make jokes about nuns going all corporal punishment on kid knuckles and all. 2002 wasn’t news to most people as far as clergy sex abuse was concerned. (If the USCCB had been paying attention to Tom Doyle in the 80’s, it wouldn’t have been news to them, either.) It was the bishops’ crisis (George’s words) of governance. A very ineffective governance. A scandal, if I may borrow a word from the Catholic Right. I don’t think the term misses the mark.

UNITED STATES
Washington Post

Susan Jacoby

Q: U.S. Catholic bishops are defending their direct involvement in congressional deliberations over health-care reform, saying that church leaders have a duty to raise moral concerns on any issue, including abortion rights and health care for the poor. Do you agree? What role should religious leaders have -- or not have -- in government policymaking?

Of course the Roman Catholic Church, like every other institution, has a right to uphold and fight for its moral beliefs in the public life of this nation. What the church is doing, however, is attempting to hold Americans who do not agree with its views hostage. The archbishops have made it quite clear that they are going to try to torpedo any health care reform bill that does not severely limit access fo abortion. The church has not been successful at this kind of political blackmail since the 1930s and 1940s, when it fought a long, highly successful battle against birth control at both the state and national level--a battle that, like the current battle over abortion, left well-off women free to do what they wanted and denied reproductive choice to the poor. And when anyone criticizes the church hierarchy for its actions on this or any other political front, the bishops cry "anti-Catholic." ...

The church levels charges of "anti-Catholicism" whenever the media air any ecclesiastical dirty linen. The most recent example was New York Archbishop Timothy Dolan's response to a piece by the New York Times op-ed columnist Marueen Dowd on the church's second-class treatment of women and nuns. On his blog, Dolan wrote, "In a diatribe that rightly never would have passed muster with the editors had it so criticized an Islamic, Jewish, or African-American religious issue, she [Dowd] digs deep into the nativist handbook to use every anti-Catholic caricature possible, from the Inquisition to the Holocaust, condoms, obsession with sex, pedophile priests, and oppression of women...." I guess the church had nothing to do with the Inquisition; Pope Pius XII was a courageous fighter against the Nazi extermination of Jews; the present pope and his predecessor have not campaigned agaiast condoms throughout Africa, and the pedophile priest scandal is the result not of a systematic coverup by the church hierarchy but was caused by the sins of a few "bad apples."

NEW YORK
The Citizen

By: The Citizen staff report

Tuesday, November 17, 2009
A former Auburn priest has been accused of sexually abusing a minor in the mid-1970s while working in Monroe County, officials with the Roman Catholic Diocese of Rochester said Tuesday.

The Rev. Conrad Sundholm, a retired priest now living in Florida, is accused of abusing the child while working at St. Salome's Church in Irondequoit, the diocese said.

An investigation has deemed the allegations against Sundholm credible and he has been barred from exercising any public ministries or priestly faculties, the diocese said.

BALTIMORE
National Catholic Reporter

Nov. 17, 2009
By Jerry Filteau

BALTIMORE

Cardinal Francis E. George of Chicago, president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, said Nov. 16 that Catholic publications, universities or other organizations that insist on complete independence from their bishops are “sectarian, less than fully Catholic.”

In his presidential address at the opening session of the fall USCCB general assembly in Baltimore, George announced that the bishops “have recently begun discussions on how we might strengthen our relationship to Catholic universities, to media claiming to be a voice in the church, and to organizations that direct various works under Catholic auspices.”

ALASKA
Second Rape: The Diocese of Fairbanks and Sexual Abuse

How did the Diocese of Fairbanks let child rape thrive? The answer is simple: the racist, molesting priests.

I found a cherry clip illustrating the whole process in a few simple words.

About the clip:

Fr. Henry Hargreaves, SJ, spent most of his 50-year career as a priest in Alaska Native villages in the Diocese of Fairbanks. According to the Alaskana Catholica, he supervised many of the perpetrators who were stationed across the tundra. I use the term “supervised” loosely – he has also been accused of sexual abuse by at least two children and an adult woman.

In a taped 2004 deposition, Hargreaves was asked about the 1960 letter about Poole (Click here to read). The letter (in Latin, of course) discussed how Poole kept Alaska Native girls in his room late at night, kept them in the confessional for a half hour at a time, and visited the girls dorms and bedrooms at night.

INDIA
Express Buzz

Dennis Selvan

KANCHEEPURAM: The priest of Machcheshwara Peruman temple, Devanathan, who had been on the run for about two mon­ths, surrendered before the Judicial Magistrate-I, Kan­cheepuram, on Monday and was remanded in judicial custody till November 30.

The Siva Kanchi police got the whiff of his impersonation after his sexual escapades with a few women on the temple premises that were recorded by himself on his mobile phone, became public. A case was register­ed against him but he fled Kanchee­pu­ram along with his wife Ganga and two teenage dau­ghters.

Inspector Pattabhiraman of the Kanchi police told Express on Monday that they would file a petition before the magistrate on Tuesday, seeking custody of the accused for further inquiry.

INDIA
India today

M.C. Rajan
Chennai, November 17, 2009

A sex scandal involving a temple priest in the famed pilgrim town of Kancheepuram has shocked devotees.

The public is aghast that his sexual escapades took place in the sanctum sanctorum of the Machaesa Perumal temple, a Vaishnavite shrine.

What's even more scandalous is that the 36-year-old priest, Devanathan, used to engage in sexual acts even as unsuspecting devotees waited outside to perform puja.

INDIA
Press Trust of India

STAFF WRITER
Kancheepuram (TN), Nov 17 (PTI) A priest, allegedly involved in immoral activities with women in the precincts of a temple here, has surrendered before a magistrate after evading the police dragnet for nearly a month.

Devanathan (39), the priest of Maheswarar temple, surrendered before Judicial Magistrate I V Sudha yesterday. He was remanded in judicial custody for 15 days.

He had allegedly recorded his "immoral acts" on his mobile phone.

UNITED STATES
Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests

Once again, instead of really addressing the church's on-going clergy sex abuse and cover up crisis, the head of America's bishops sidestepped. Instead of reaching out to victims, he patted his brother bishops on the back, effectively rubbing salt into already deep and still fresh wounds.

Cardinal George is right that US bishops have launched an "unprecedented effort." Unfortunately, that effort is largely smoke and mirrors rather than genuine and effective reforms.

George spoke of bishops "trapped" in the church's sex abuse scandal. What keeps America's bishops "trapped" in the church's on-going clergy sex abuse and cover up crisis is their own refusal to deal with the root causes.

SOUTH BEND (IN)
Journal Gazette

Over the last quarter-century, Bishop John D’Arcy was the authoritative, sometimes controversial leader of one of the nation’s key Catholic dioceses. His retirement and the appointment of Bishop Kevin Rhoades as his replacement mark a changing of the guard in one of the most important community positions in northeast Indiana.

D’Arcy will be remembered for being accessible and clear in confronting significant issues facing the church, earning wide admiration for forcefully addressing child molestation scandals and generating controversy over his reaction to social issues and challenges to academic freedom.

Rather than hide or transfer priests known to molest children, D’Arcy insisted they be released from the priesthood. In a remarkable admission, D’Arcy announced in 2003 that since 1950, 17 priests in the diocese had molested an estimated 33 people.

INDIA
Ganpati News

Kancheepuram devotees got shocked by the exposure of temple priest’s indulgence in sexual activities. The surprising element is the fact that offender Devanathan, 36-year-old priest used to indulge in sexual acts at the time when devotees were waiting outside to do puja ceremony. He was running from the custody for a month, now he surrendered before the police on 16th Nov. & his bail got rejected.

The priest was not only indulged in immoral behavior but he even captured the whole scenario on his mobile phone. A mobile phone mechanic disclosed the mms& the priests’ scandalized deed, when he was about to repair priest’s mobile phone.

SOUTH BEND (IN)
South Bend Tribune

By JEFF PARROTT
Tribune Staff Writer

SOUTH BEND — In a brief hearing Monday, the U.S. government reversed its position and agreed not to object to an Irish priest's release from jail on bond, pending the resolution of his extradition proceedings.

Francis Markey, 81, was arrested last week at his home on Miller Court in South Bend and is facing possible extradition to Ireland on charges that he raped a teenage boy there in 1968.

At the Irish government's request, the U.S. attorney had filed a memo opposing Markey's release on bail and was prepared to argue that position at Monday's hearing. But an assistant U.S. attorney for the northern Indiana district, Kenneth Hays, told Magistrate Judge Christopher Nuechterlein that the Office of International Affairs, a division of the U.S. Department of Justice, had subsequently contacted him and asked him to stop opposing bail.

INDIA
Breaking News 24/7

Kanchipuram: The Kanchipuram priest scandal acts as another eye opener for the hypocrisies that lie behind the faade of celibacy and piety in the places of worship. A priest in Kanchipuram was arrested for indulging in sexual activities in the temple precincts and capturing them live on video. What makes the whole scenario even worse is that all this would take place even while unsuspecting devotees would be outside the temple, waiting to pay their respects and perform puja.

The culprit, who has been identified as Devanathan in the police records, was the priest at the Manchaesa Perumal temple, a well known shrine at the village of Kanchipuram, a place that attracts millions of pilgrims throughout the year. The activities used to take place in the sanctum sanctoram, the part of a temple where the idol is placed. He used to record the activities in his mobile phone, which finally led to his undoing. A local mechanic whom Devanathan had entrusted to repair the phone, discovered the Kanchipuram priest scandal and began circulating them. The CDs were discovered by the police while they were being sold. Devanathan escaped along with his family, but surrendered four days later. He has not been granted bail.

AUBURN (NY)
The Post-Standard

By Charley Hannagan / The Post-Standard
November 17, 2009

Auburn, NY -- Catholic churches in Auburn this weekend reached out to possible victims of a priest, whose alleged sexual abuse of a minor was found to be "credible" by a church investigation.

"An allegation concerning sexual abuse of a minor dating back to the mid-1970s against Rev. Conrad Sundholm, a retired priest now living in Florida, has been determined to be credible," reads the statement from the Roman Catholic Diocese of Rochester.

The announcement was made this weekend by pastors from the pulpits of churches where Sundholm had served.

NEW YORK
Rant Rave

Written by
Rudi Stettner

It should have been a joyous occasion. But for one young man, the night of his wedding brought back haunting memories of being molested as a young student. The orthodox Jewish world was reeling from reports that a young newlywed committed suicide by jumping off a hotel balcony two days after his wedding in the early morning hours. No one could come up with a plausible reason why a man with a winning personality and a promising future would take his own life. Surveillance videos were a crack in the idyllic picture, as were troubling phrases in police communications such as "emotionally disturbed". It was getting harder with time to dismiss the tragic occurrence as an accidental fall.

Now it turns out that Motty Borger may have been tormented by memories as molestation that haunted him as he started out life as a married man. The New York Post reported as follows yesterday on the troubling case.

AUSTRALIA
Brisbane Times

PETER HARDWICK
November 17, 2009.

A Toowoomba Catholic primary school principal, charged with failing to report a student’s complaint that she was sexually assaulted by a teacher, claimed yesterday he had followed the instructions of his superiors.

The principal, who has pleaded not guilty, cannot be named so as to protect the identity of the complainant children.

He told Toowoomba Magistrates Court he had sought the advice of his immediate superiors in the Catholic Education Office when told of the Year 4 student’s allegations in September, 2007.

BALTIMORE (MD)
Politics Daily

David Gibson

BALTIMORE -- The leader of the Catholic hierarchy in the United States on Monday launched a new effort to rein in Catholic debates and dissidents and to remind the flock that the bishops will be the arbiters of what it means to be a Catholic.

In remarks at the opening of the hierarchy's annual meeting in Baltimore, Chicago Cardinal Francis George made it clear that after years of repeated questions about the bishops' credibility, it was time for the bishops to clarify just who can and cannot speak for the church. He also confirmed that he had set up three committees of bishops to develop guidelines for determining what will be considered legitimate Catholic entities. ...

There are some who would like to trap the church in historical events of ages long past, and there are others who would keep the bishops permanently imprisoned in the clerical sexual abuse scandal of recent years," George said. "The proper response to a crisis of governance, however, is not no governance but effective governance."

SAN FRANCISCO (CA)
KCBS

SAN FRANCISCO (KCBS) -- A suit filed in San Francisco Superior Court accuses the Mormon Church and the Boy Scouts of America of covering up sexual abuse. The three men filing the suit are coming forward after three decades of silence.

The suit claims the three brothers were children when they told the Mormon church that they had been abused hundreds of times by church official, Eugene Bill Knox, who was also their Boy Scout leader. Kelly Clark is their attorney.

"Most child abuse survivors shove this away and it becomes a secret," he said.

AUSTRALIA
The Irish Times

THERE is a ghastly familiarity to the stories of the “forgotten Australians”, the half a million children, many from abroad, condemned to live in state and church-run orphanages, foster homes and institutions between 1930 and 1970. As in Ireland’s residential institutions, neglect, brutality, humiliation, and, for many, sexual abuse, were routine.

Many children were wrongly told their parents were dead and siblings were separated when they arrived in Australia. To its shame, like Ireland, Australia ignored or repressed the terrible truth for several generations.

Since 1997, six reports to government have called for an apology, culminating in a 2004 senate inquiry. It unearthed hundreds of stories of abuse of children placed in care because of family breakdown, because their mothers were unmarried, or because they were considered uncontrollable. And yesterday prime minister Kevin Rudd apologised in the presence of 900 of the victims for the “absolute tragedy of childhoods lost”, echoing his historic 2008 statement to Australias Aborigines. It was a moving and clearly heartfelt speech, well-received, and an important healing step for victims.

SAN FRANCISCO (CA)
San Francisco Appeal

Three former Sunnyvale residents announced today they have sued the Mormon church, the Boy Scouts of America and their stepfather in San Francisco Superior Court for alleged childhood sexual abuse.

The three men, who are brothers now aged 39, 41 and 43, claim that William E. Knox, 65, a Mormon church and Boy Scouts leader, molested them repeatedly in Sunnyvale between 1977 and 1987.

A brother identified as John Doe 2, who now lives in Georgia, said, "I'm a victim and a survivor of childhood sexual abuse. It was devastating to me. I've been abused hundreds of times over several years."

SAN FRANCISCO
KGO

[with video]

By Wayne Freedman

SAN FRANCISCO (KGO) -- Three brothers filed a lawsuit in San Francisco containing allegations against both the Mormon Church and the boy scouts. They claim they were victims of sexual abuse in the 1970's and 80's that the church knew about and ignored.

Attorneys also filed similar lawsuits in Washington and Oregon, representing other plaintiffs against the Mormon Church and the Boy Scouts.

The men in the San Francisco case moved away from the South Bay many years ago, but filed here because they claim the crimes happened in Northern California.

MINNESOTA
Star Tribune

By JEFF STRICKLER, Star Tribune

Tim Caroline taught what he called the most difficult lesson of his 30-year career Monday when he went public in announcing that he was sexually abused in junior high.

Caroline, 53, the superintendent of the Moose Lake Public Schools, filed a suit alleging that he was molested by Christian Brother Anthony (Raimond) Rose while on a church-sponsored retreat at Dunrovin Retreat Center in Marine on the St. Croix in 1970 or 1971.

This is the seventh suit filed against Rose since February. He also faces suits alleging abuse while teaching at DeLaSalle High School in Minneapolis and Cretin High School in St. Paul in the late 1960s and early '70s, as well as a suit concerning a North Dakota student.

AUSTRALIA
CathNews

A Toowoomba Catholic primary school principal charged with failing to report a student's complaint of sexual assault by a teacher claimed he had followed the instructions of his superiors.

The principal, who cannot be named so as to protect the identity of the school and complainant children, told Toowoomba Magistrates Court he had sought the advice of his immediate superiors when told of the Year 4 student's allegations in September 2007, according to the Toowoomba Chronicle.

He told a packed courtroom that it was his understanding under the legislation that he was obliged to inform his employer of any such allegation and that is what he had done. He had followed their advice on how to proceed, he said.

MASSACHUSETTS
Boston Globe

By Jonathan Saltzman
Globe Staff / November 17, 2009

It was a cold day in Dorchester when Martha Coakley’s ambition slammed head-on into political reality.

She was running in a special election for state representative, an entry-level job in the world of elective office, with an eye toward eventually becoming Suffolk district attorney. She had outdebated her four male opponents. She certainly proved she knew more about fighting crime.

But on that March day in 1997, Coakley, a single, 43-year-old career prosecutor without children and a Dorchester resident of 14 years, could not overcome the stigma of being an unusual outsider in the close-knit district of working-class families. She came in fourth out of five candidates. ...

As district attorney for eight years, Coakley oversaw high-profile prosecutions of Thomas Junta, the Reading father who fatally beat another father at their sons’ hockey practice, and Paul R. Shanley, a defrocked priest accused of sexual abuse. Shanley has challenged his conviction to the state’s highest court, arguing that an alleged abuse victim’s “repressed memory’’ was junk science.

CHICAGO (IL)
Chicago Tribune

By Manya A. Brachear
Tribune reporter

November 17, 2009

The sexual-abuse case against the Rev. Edward Maloney hinged on the case against another Roman Catholic priest.

That priest, the Rev. Robert Stepek, sued two brothers for slander in November 2006 after they said he molested them.

Nearly a year later, a former parishioner at St. Mark Catholic Church in Chicago's Humboldt Park neighborhood contacted the Chicago Archdiocese with an allegation of abuse against Maloney, the parish's pastor emeritus.

MALTA
The Times of Malta

When Alfred, Joe, Maria, Rita, Anthony and Frances Cilia were sent to Australia in 1958, their parents thought they were heading to a better life. Instead the six siblings were in for years of heartbreak and abuse.

"It was like a concentration camp," Alfred Cilia, who was just 13 when he left his home in Vittoriosa, told Australia's SBS Radio.

The siblings recounted the years of abuse as Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd yesterday apologised to the 500,000 "forgotten Australians" for the abuse and pain they suffered in his country.

READING (PA)
WFMZ

[with video]

The priest of a church in Reading has been removed from his duties, according to officials with the Allentown Diocese. Father Luis Bonilla Margarito, 40, was suspended after he acknowledged having an "inappropriate relationship" with an 18-year-old woman.

Church officials said the head of the diocese, Bishop John Barres, told St. Joesph's church members about the matter during a Mass on Saturday.

Church officials said Sunday that Father Margarito would be going to treatment facility for clergy outside the diocese, and will not be allowed to serve publicly as a priest.

ST. PAUL (MN)
Minnesota Public Radio

by Toni Randolph, Minnesota Public Radio
November 16, 2009

St. Paul, Minn. — A Minnesota school superintendent has filed a fraud suit against a religious order in the Roman Catholic Church, known as the Christian Brothers of the Midwest.

In the suit, Tim Caroline says he was sexually abused by Brother Raimond Rose back in the early '70s while he was visiting a Christian Brothers retreat center in Marine on St. Croix.

The suit claims that the Christian Brothers knew that Rose had sexually abused children in the 1960s, but took no action.

AUSTRALIA
Broken Rites

By a Broken Rites researcher

When did the Catholic Church first discover that Australian priest Kelvin Gerald Sharkey was committing child-abuse? Did the church take steps to find out if any children in his parishes needed help?

On 16 November 2009, Sharley appeared in the New South Wales District Court at Wollongong, south of Sydney, and admitted raping an altar boy 40 years ago. Sharkey pleaded guilty to one incident of buggery and two of indecent assault ("indecent assault" involves indecent touching).

These were not the only incidents between the priest and the boy. These were merely the three incidents on which the judge will sentence Sharkey.

John Paul II Millstone

John Paul II is the first member of the ‘Catholic Hall of Shame' because he covered-up, for 26 years, the priest-pedophilia in the USA, Ireland, and around the world.

John Paul II defended the unborn from abortion, but, he never defended the living 12,000 American victims from priest-pedophilia.

If Catholics are proud to name the John Paul II Generation of Youth and Priests, it also just to call the more than 6,000 American pedophile priests as the John Paul II Pedophile Priests Army see lists in www.jp2army.blogspot.com and http://www.bishop-accountability.org/

SAN FRANCISCO (CA)
Legal News

SAN FRANCISCO — Three brothers who claim they were sexually molested by their Boy Scout and Mormon youth leader in the 1970s and 1980s have sued both organizations.

The suit filed in San Francisco Superior Court alleges that church officials in Sunnyvale ignored complaints of abuse from the three boys and failed to notify law enforcement.

The plaintiffs, identified in the suit only as John Does, say they were molested hundreds of times by the man.

AUSTRALIA
Illawarra Mercury

BY COURTNEY TRENWITH
17 Nov, 2009
Wollongong Catholic Bishop Peter Ingham has apologised for the sexual abuse suffered by a former altar boy 40 years ago.

Retired priest Kelvin Gerald Sharkey, 80, who was parish priest at St John Vianney's Church, Fairy Meadow, yesterday pleaded guilty in Wollongong District Court to two charges of indecently assaulting the boy and one charge of buggery, dating back to 1969 and the early 1970s.

Much of the abuse occurred inside the church, as well as at Sharkey's home in Batemans Bay, where he was transferred in 1971.

SOUTH BEND (IN)
South Bend Tribune

By JEFF PARROTT
Tribune Staff Writer

SOUTH BEND — In a brief hearing today, the U.S. government reversed its position and agreed not to object to an Irish priest's release from jail on bond, pending the resolution of his extradition proceedings.

Francis Markey, 81, was arrested last week at his home on Miller Court in South Bend and is facing possible extradition to Ireland on charges that he raped a teenage boy there in 1968.

At the Irish government's request, the U.S. attorney had filed a memo opposing Markey's release on bail and was prepared to argue that position at today's hearing. But an assistant U.S. attorney for the northern Indiana district, Kenneth Hays, told Magistrate Judge Christopher Nuechterlein that the Office of International Affairs, a division of the U.S. Department of Justice, had subsequently contacted him and asked him to stop opposing bail.

SOUTH BEND (IN)
RTE News (Ireland)

Monday, 16 November 2009 20:50
The American-based Irish priest who the authorities here are trying to extradite to face charges of raping a boy four decades ago is to be released on bail.

81-year-old Father Francis Markey was arrested last Monday in South Bend, Indiana and was remanded in custody at the request of our Director of Public Prosecutions.

But the South Bend Tribune newspaper has reported that at a brief hearing this evening, the US government agreed to the priest's release on bail which was set at $10,000 pending the resolution of Father Markey's extradition proceedings.

UNITED STATES
City of Angels

What other organization could have had five thousand active and aggressive pedophiles identified among its employees since 2002, and still have influence in American politics? These bishops should be being prosecuted right now, not welcomed into Nancy Pelosi's office to write United States law.

How did an organization that has proven to aid and abet pedophile priests' crimes in almost every archdiocese in America still even be in operation?

It says a lot, about control of the message from the top, that after the story of pedophile priests broke in city after city across the country the past decade, the average American still does not know the true extent of these crimes.

ST. LOUIS (MO)
Fox 2

ST. LOUIS (AP) — The St. Louis Archdiocese has released financial figures showing it spent $352,000 last fiscal year on payments to victims of predator priests, but more than twice that amount on lawyers.

Numbers released by the archdiocese late last week show more was paid in legal fees than to victims for five of the last 10 fiscal years.

NORTHERN IRELAND
UTV

Monday, 16 November 2009

Father Sean McKenna who has been a member of the clergy for 24 years announced his resignation during Mass at Holy Family Church in Ballymagroarty.

He told those attending Holy Family Church that he faced an agonising decision.

He had to choose between his priesthood and his relationship.

At the weekend Fr Sean McKenna read a statement to mass-goers explaining his reasons.

WILMINGTON (DE)
Daily Times

WILMINGTON, Del. (AP) — An attorney for a man who says he was abused as a boy by a priest says the accused pedophile had no business being around school children.

Attorney Thomas Neuberger said Monday that the Rev. Francis Norris was a suicidal, out-of-control alcoholic, and that the Oblates of St. Francis de Sales were grossly negligent in allowing him to teach at Salesianum School in Wilmington.

AUSTRALIA
Illawarra Mercury

BY COURTNEY TRENWITH
17 Nov, 2009
A retired Fairy Meadow Catholic priest has pleaded guilty to repeatedly sexually assaulting an altar boy 40 years ago.

Kelvin Gerald Sharkey, 80, was too frail to enter the dock or stand yesterday when Wollongong District Court Judge Paul Conlon asked how he pleaded to two counts of indecently assaulting a male and one of buggery.

Sharkey threatened the victim, telling him he would go to hell if he told his parents about the assaults.

READING (PA)
Reading Eagle

Berks County, PA - A priest at a Reading church who also was chaplain at Central Catholic High School has been removed from both positions by the Allentown Diocese after he acknowledged he had an inappropriate relationship with an 18-year old woman, the diocese said.

The removal of the Rev. Luis A. Bonilla Margarito, 40, was announced to his parish at Saturday’s Mass at St. Joseph’s Roman Catholic Church, officials said.

Margarito had been pastor at the church, 1018 N. Eighth St., since 2006 and chaplain at the high school since 2008.

UNITED STATES
NPR

by Katha Pollitt

You know what I don't want to hear right now about the Stupak-Pitts amendment banning abortion coverage from federally subsidized health insurance policies? That it's the price of reform, and prochoice women should shut up and take one for the team. "If you want to rebuild the American welfare state," Peter Beinart writes in the Daily Beast, "there is no alternative" than for Democrats to abandon "cultural" issues like gender and racial equality. Hey, Peter, Representative Stupak and your sixty-four Democratic supporters, Jim Wallis and other antichoice "progressive" Christians, men: why don't you take one for the team for a change and see how you like it? ...

For example, budget hawks in Congress say they'll vote against the bill because it's too expensive. Maybe you could win them over if you volunteered to cut out funding for male-exclusive stuff, like prostate cancer, Viagra, male infertility, vasectomies, growth-hormone shots for short little boys, long-term care for macho guys who won't wear motorcycle helmets and, I dunno, psychotherapy for pedophile priests. Men could always pay in advance for an insurance policy rider, as women are blithely told they can do if Stupak becomes part of the final bill.

IRELAND
Galway News

November 16, 2009
An Irish priest facing extradition to Ireland over the alleged rape of a 15 year old boy here over 40 years ago is due in court in the US today.

ST. LOUIS (MO)
Archdiocese of St. Louis

In June of this year, Archbishop Richard Malone of Portland, ME, sent a letter to all United States bishops asking for financial support.

Archbishop Robert J. Carlson approved a donation for $10,000 which was charged to the Special Needs fund. This fund has traditionally been the Archbishop's to be used for discretionary spending--not for normal operations--and is funded by private gifts. Archbishops of St. Louis have made donations in the past to help other dioceses around the world for various causes which the Church regards as moral issues, ranging from disaster relief to pro-life issues.

ST. LOUIS (MO)
Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests

Figures just released by the St. Louis Catholic archdiocese show that the church here spent $352,000 last year on payments to victims of predator priests, but more than twice that amount on its own lawyers.

This is the third time in the last four years that the archdiocese gave more money to its lawyers than to abuse victims.

The figures cover the last fiscal year and were provided in the latest issue of the archdiocesan weekly newspaper, The St. Louis Review.

MINNESOTA
Voice from the Desert

WHAT
At a news conference, a Minnesota school superintendent who was molested as a boy by a cleric will
Speak publicly for the first time about the crimes he suffered as a youngster,
Announce and discuss the new clergy sex abuse and cover up lawsuit he’s filing,
Ask why Christian Brother officials are now endangering kids by letting a known predator live near them

WHEN
Monday, November 16, 11:30 AM

WHERE
At the law offices of Jeff Anderson & Associates PA, 366 Jackson Street (corner of 5th) in St. Paul, MN

NEW YORK
New York Post

By LIZ SADLER and KIRSTEN FLEMING

A newlywed groom on his honeymoon yesterday plunged to his death from a Brooklyn hotel in an apparent suicide -- as his bride slept, unaware of the tragedy, sources said.

Motty Borger, 24, died at Lutheran Medical Center after the seven-story plunge from The Avenue Plaza Hotel in Borough Park -- just two days after marrying his love, Mali, in a lavish ceremony, according two sources.

Borger's bride was sleeping in the room when her husband, who worked with his videographer dad, opened a window, stepped onto the balcony and jumped at 6:45 a.m.

NEW YORK
New York Post

By REBECCA ROSENBERG

Friends and loved ones bid a tearful farewell yesterday to the groom who jumped from a Brooklyn hotel room window just two days after his wedding

"You know what it is for a father to be at his son's wedding and then to be here," said Shmuel Borger, the father of 24-year-old suicide victim Motty Borger. "This wedding was not in vain. It was not in vain. From sadness will come happiness."

Motty's widow, Mali, arrived on her mother's arm for the ceremony at the Shomrei Hachomos funeral home in Brooklyn.

NEW YORK
New York Post

A Brooklyn newlywed who jumped to his death from a hotel balcony the night after his wedding was tormented by memories of being sexually molested as a Jewish student, sources say

After joyfully singing and dancing at their lavish celebration in Williamsburg on Nov. 3, Motty Borger, 24, bared his secret anguish to his bride, Mali Gutman, the next day -- and the revelation caused a strain, a source close to the family told The Post

"That entire day he discussed it with her. He told her the story of his life, how he felt so awful and he couldn't go near her," the source said. The couple had met just last July, after a matchmaker set them up.

VATICAN CITY
Vatican Information Service

- Appointed Bishop Kevin C. Rhoades of Harrisburg, U.S.A., as bishop of Fort Wayne-South Bend (area 15,200, population 1,262,788, Catholics 158,899, priests 276, permanent deacons 12, religious 869), U.S.A. He succeeds Bishop John M. D'Arcy, whose resignation from the pastoral care of the same diocese the Holy Father accepted, upon having reached the age limit. ...

- Appointed Bishop Jerome E. Listecki of La Crosse, U.S.A., as metropolitan archbishop of Milwaukee (area 12,323, population 2,287,185, Catholics 681,781, priests 663, permanent deacons 164, religious 2,165), U.S.A. The archbishop- elect was born in Chicago, U.S.A. in 1949, he was ordained a priest in 1975 and consecrated a bishop in 2001.

ALLENTOWN (PA)
The Morning Call

Kathy Lauer-Williams
OF THE MORNING CALL

November 16, 2009

A priest who served in Emmaus until 2006 has been removed from his current assignments in Reading after admitting an inappropriate relationship with an 18 year-old woman, the Diocese of Allentown said in a statement Sunday.

The Rev. Luis A. Bonilla Margarito, 40, was removed as pastor of St. Joseph Church in Reading, where he served for three years, and as chaplain of Reading's Central Catholic High School, where he was assigned in June 2008.

The bishop of the Diocese of Allentown, the Rev. John O. Barres, announced Margarito's removal to St. Joseph's parish at the 4 p.m. Saturday Mass.

NORTHERN IRELAND
Belfast Telegraph

A priest in Londonderry has sent shockwaves through the Catholic Church by resigning after he became involved in a relationship with a woman.

Fr Sean McKenna, parish priest at the Holy Family Church in Ballymagroarty, told his stunned congregation during Mass services at the weekend that he had fallen in love.

The 51-year-old priest, who has been a popular member of the local Catholic clergy for over 20 years, said he had taken the decision to leave after embarking on a “loving” and “beautiful” relationship”.

WILMINGTON (DE)
CBS 3

WILMINGTON (AP) -

The first priest sex abuse lawsuit filed under a Delaware law allowing alleged victims to pursue claims for abuse that happened decades ago is set for trial.

Opening arguments were scheduled Monday in a lawsuit filed against the Oblates of St. Francis de Sales by 63-year-old James Sheehan, who claims he was sexually abused as a boy by one of the order's priests.

TEXAS
Stop Baptist Predators

The Baptist General Convention of Texas is convening its annual hoopla November 16-17 in Houston. The theme is “Texas Hope 2010” as they focus on how “to bring hope to the people of Texas” next year.

For the sake of truth-in-advertising, I feel as though they really ought to add some fine print: “Texas Hope 2010 (but not applicable for Baptist clergy abuse survivors).”

Dee Miller saw the hopelessness of the Baptist General Convention of Texas a long time ago.

CANADA
Amherst Daily

The Canadian Press

SYDNEY, N.S. — Roman Catholic priests in the Sydney area have authorized a new council that will give laypeople more responsibility in various ministries.

Pat Bates, a layperson and member of the organizing committee, said the Deanery Pastoral Council will also increase the role of women in the church by including a policy that half the council members must be female.

Bates says the laypeople in the parish “want equality for women.”

He says the idea of forming a council for non-ordained church members was spurred by concerns within the Roman Catholic Diocese of Antigonish, including child pornography charges against Bishop Raymond Lahey.

NORTHERN IRELAND
BBC News

A priest in Londonderry has resigned after telling a congregation that he has been involved in a relationship with a woman.

Father Sean McKenna made the announcement during mass at Holy Family Church in Ballymagroarty.

Father Michael Canny, the spokesman for the Derry Diocese, said he and Bishop Hegarty were shocked to hear the news.

AUSTRALIA
Brisbane Times

[with video]

DAN HARRISON
November 16, 2009

THE Government will set up a national service to help the forgotten Australians find their families and launch projects to record and preserve their stories, the Prime Minister said.

Kevin Rudd announced the plan yesterday as he apologised to more than 500,000 Australians who were raised in church or state care.

He said a ''find and connect service'' would help people locate their personal and family history files, through a searchable national database that would collate and index existing state records.

AUSTRALIA
Brisbane Times

[with video]

Emotions ran high in the Great Hall as the people of Australia said sorry to abused and neglected children, writes Kelsey Munro.

THERE were tears and heckles, standing ovations and hugs. But one sentiment was voiced by many of the so-called forgotten Australians and former child migrants who came to Parliament House to hear the Prime Minister apologise for the abuse and neglect they suffered in state care.

The apology was important because their stories were finally believed and their suffering was recognised.

AUSTRALIA
Brisbane Times

[with video]

PHILLIP COOREY CHIEF POLITICAL CORRESPONDENT
November 16, 2009

ALL too infrequently, dignity descends on the Parliament. It did so yesterday as Kevin Rudd and Malcolm Turnbull apologised to the forgotten Australians.

Rudd was supposed to speak for 20 minutes but he went for twice that long.

Nobody minded. He wrote his own speech, doing the bulk of the work through the night on his way home from Singapore. Perhaps that explained the delivery. It was a little flat.

AUSTRALIA
Telegraph (United Kingdom)

Kevin Rudd, the Australian prime minister, has issued an apology to the 7,000 former child migrants who were taken from Britain and put into state-run homes in Australia where they suffered abuse and neglect. Here is his speech in full:

Today, the Government of Australia will move the following motion of apology in the Parliament of Australia.

We come together today to deal with an ugly chapter in our nation's history.

To say to you, the Forgotten Australians, and those who were sent to our shores as children without your consent, that we are sorry.

UNITED KINGDOM
Cambridge News

john.downing@cambridge-news.co.uk

A CONVICTED paedophile has admitted sexually assaulting two more youngsters.

Martyn Conway, 49, was jailed for seven years in September last year after being found guilty of the rape and attempted rape of a boy.

Now Conway, formerly of Princess Court, Hills Road, Cambridge, has pleaded guilty to six charges of assaulting another male victim, aged under 14, from August 1982 to May 1986. ...

During Conway's trial last year, the court was told that he acted as a father figure to his victim while a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of the Latter Day Saints, in Cherry Hinton Road, Cambridge.

AUSTRALIA
Times LIVE

Nov 16, 2009 9:01 AM | By AFP

Prime Minister Kevin Rudd made an emotional apology to half-a-million "Forgotten Australians" who faced sexual abuse, violence and forced labour in childcare homes over a period of decades.

Victims among the 1,000 people who packed Parliament House for the address burst into tears as Rudd detailed heart-rending cases of neglect in Australia's orphanages and institutions from 1930 to 1970.

“We come together today to offer our nation's apology. To say to you, the Forgotten Australians, and those who were sent to our shores as children without their consent, that we are sorry,” he said.

PORTLAND (OR)
The News Tribune

The Associated Press
Published: 11/16/09

PORTLAND – A former Shelton man will file a lawsuit against the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, also known as the Mormon Church, today concerning childhood sexual abuse, according to a news release from his attorney Kelly Clark.

The news release stated that the case will be filed in King County Circuit Court in Seattle, and stems from the alleged abuse by a Mormon Church-sponsored Boy Scout leader in the town of Shelton.

AUSTRALIA
Stuff

As young children, they had their faces rubbed until the blood flowed for wetting the bed.

On other occasions, they had their feet placed in boiling water as punishment.

Sometimes when they were locked under the stairs, they had food thrown to them like they were animals.

Then there was the unspeakable sexual abuse and teen pregnancies, leading to another generation of suffering.

For them, a national apology was a chance for them to be believed, a chance to finally feel like they were Australians.

UNITED STATES
The Times-Picayune

By Robert Travis Scott, The Times-Picayune
November 16, 2009

Although he has arrested more than 400 people in connection with child-sex crimes in Louisiana, veteran investigator Toby Aguillard is still flabbergasted by the behaviors he finds in these criminals.

There was the Hammond man he helped convict for possession of about 7,700 images and videos depicting sexual victimization of children. While recovering evidence from the home, Aguillard found several novels with themes of juvenile abduction and rape, clips from teen magazines and pictures of the young pop star Miley Cyrus tucked into portfolios of sexually graphic material. There also were extensive research materials on the JonBenet Ramsey case and an exotic knife collection, including a glove with hidden razor blades.

The man talked so openly about his desires that his co-workers knew he was sexually attracted to pre-teens, and he admitted he fantasized about abducting and raping a little girl, said Aguillard, a detective with the Tangipahoa Sheriff's Office and former chief of Louisiana's task force on crimes against children.

UNITED KINGDOM
South London Press

A RESPECTED member of South London’s Pentecostal church community is behind bars after being convicted of molesting six underage girls.

Jason Hoyte, 37, who claims to have performed with Take That and Boyzone, sexually abused children as young as four.

The paedophile, a director of an events company and a former Lambeth council youth worker, began targeting victims in the 1980s.

AUSTRALIA
Christian Today

By: Jenna Lyle
Monday, 16 November 2009

The Australian Prime Minister has apologised to thousands of British children who were sent to Australia where they suffered abuse at the hands of their carers.

From the 1930s to 1970s, around 7,000 impoverished British children were shipped to Australia by churches and charities as part of the Child Migrants Programme. The children, some as young as three, were sent to Australia with the promise of a “better life” and to supply the country with "good white stock" but many ended up suffering physical, psychological and sexual abuse in state institutions or on farms.

Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd delivered an emotional apology to around 1,000 victims at Parliament House in Canberra on Monday, at one point embracing a tearful victim.

CHICAGO (IL)
Chicago Breaking News

November 15, 2009
Parishioners at St. Mark Catholic Church today expressed disbelief over allegations that a former priest sexually abused two children.

Mirta Arroyo has attended the West Side church since 1964. She has known Rev. Edward Maloney just as long.

"He's not a priest -- he's my father," said the 62-year-old who now lives in Alsip but travels north every week for mass.

IRELAND
The Irish Times

PATSY McGARRY, Religious Affairs Correspondent

DUBLIN’S CATHOLIC archdiocese will soon have barely enough priests to serve its 199 parishes, Archbishop Diarmuid Martin has said.

“We have 46 priests over 80 and only two less than 35 years of age. In a very short time we will just have the bare number of priests required to have one active priest for each of our 199 parishes,” he said in Dublin’s pro-cathedral at the weekend.

AUSTRALIA
BBC News

By Nick Bryant
BBC News, Australia

The story of the British child migrants sent to Australia has been described as a history of lies, deceit, cruelty and official disinterest and neglect.

Before being shipped out to Britain's distant dominion, many of the children were told their parents were dead, and that a more abundant life awaited them in Australia.

Most were deported without the consent of their parents, and commonly, mothers and fathers were led to believe that their children had been adopted somewhere in Britain.

PHILADELPHIA (PA)
Philadelphia Magazine

Father Charles Newman, once head of the largest Catholic high school in Philadelphia, sits in jail after stealing nearly a million dollars. But as one family knows, he committed acts of evil far more chilling than that

By Richard Rys

Father Charles, from the Archbishop Ryan yearbook.WHILE THE FAITHFUL and holy gather in the Cathedral Basilica of Saints Peter and Paul, Art Baselice stands outside, bearing witness in his own way. He isn’t interested in prayers for Bishop Joseph Cistone, who is leaving Philadelphia to run a diocese in Michigan. He isn’t hoping to shake hands with the cardinal and all of the archbishops, who have come together on this summer afternoon for Cistone’s farewell benediction.

Surrounded by a handful of priest abuse victims and their advocates, he holds a sandwich-board sign bearing photos of his son, Arthur Baselice III, and two clerics, Brother Regis Howitz and Father Charles Newman. As a pair of clergymen head into the service, Baselice raises up his billboard. They look over for a moment, then move on. “See what I get?” Art says. “There’s a man of God. He turns his head.”

IRELAND
Sunday Business Post

15 November 2009 By John Burke

The long-awaited report into clerical abuse in the Dublin archdiocese has accused gardaí of delays lasting several years in collating key evidence in some child abuse investigations.

There is no single chapter in the report on the role played by An Garda Síochána, but a ‘‘significant number’’ of its 47 chapters include criticism of the police force, according to a well-placed source who has viewed the report. The chapters which identified major shortcomings in the Garda investigations of persistent child abusers were forwarded to Garda Commissioner Fachtna Murphy by the investigating commission during the summer.

Among the criticisms in the report is a claim that some senior members of An Garda Síochána had deferential relationships with senior clerical figures in the Dublin area. The publication of the report has been delayed by an examination by the High Court into the case of a former priest whose extradition is being sought from Britain to face claims of child abuse.

UNITED STATES
Fox4kc

Another week goes by and another collection of special people who contribute in a negative manner to the political discourse that fills our lives. With special attention this week to those that make their negative comments in the name of God. ...

The Catholic Church also made my personal list of LOSERS this week. Not because of the church’s influence in getting the Stupak amendment passed; I might not like the legislation but if you support the Right to Life movement, it’s your right to petition your representatives in Congress. However, if you are going to take a stand for the rights of the unborn, you should also be willing to support children AFTER birth as well. For instance, take the case of Nathan Halbach, a 22 year old man who is dying of brain cancer. His mother also has terminal cancer. Nathan’s estranged father is Father Henry Willenborg, a Franciscan priest. When the Church was asked to help pay for medical treatment…they refused! Father Henry was never a “Dad” to Nathan, the least he could do for his son is to petition the Order to help make his son’s death a little easier. But he didn’t. And the Church also weighed in on gay marriage this week in D.C. by promising to stop all charitable work in the city if the D.C. city council passed a gay marriage ordinance. I don’t remember Jesus making everyone take a morality “litmus test” before feeding them bread & fish. I’m sure Jesus would be proud! So for these two actions…I’ve got the Catholic Church on the LOSERS LIST!

AUSTRALIA
The Herald

BY ALISON BRANLEY
16 Nov, 2009

HE endured 14 years of sexual and physical abuse while in an institution but David Owen says he does not hate the church that ran the orphanage or the government that put him there.

Mr Owen, of Maryville, will be one of hundreds of thousands of people watching an apology by Prime Minister Kevin Rudd to the Forgotten Australians at 11am today.

The apology will be delivered to Australians and migrants who, as children, suffered abuse and neglect while in institutional care.

MILWAUKEE (WI)
Wisconsin Public Radio

[with audio]

by Bob Hague on November 14, 2009

The Archdiocese of Milwaukee announced Saturday that Jerome Listecki has been named archbishop by the Vatican, an appointment which a group of survivors of priest abuse is voicing concern over. Listecki succeeds Timothy Dolan, who was named Archbishop of New York earlier this year. The 60 year-old Listecki has served as bishop of the Diocese of La Crosse since March of 2005, and members of the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests (SNAP) say they have questions about Listecki’s record in dealing with abuse by clergy in La Crosse.

AUSTRALIA
Care Leavers Australia Network

There will be no official order of events at this quiet reunion at the Riverview Training Farm for Boys, though speeches should start soon after the browning of Wally McLeod’s much-vaunted barbecue sausages. What matters is being here: making the turn off Ipswich Motorway, reaching the end of Endeavour Street, even when your stomach wants out; passing through the gates and trudging up that sorry driveway to stand in the places that haunt your dreams: the laundry, the lucerne field, the piggery, the shower block.

There’s a reason the semi-circle of 50 plastic chairs Bob Toreaux has set up face the entrance to the farm’s recreation hall. It’s the hall he sees in the recurring dream he has of a 12-year-old boy, naked from the waist down and straddling a wooden vaulting horse, blood running down his legs. It’s the hall they all see in their sleep.

“Hey Bob, look who’s ’ere,” calls McLeod. A man with a bushy moustache and tattoos pads warily up to the group gathered around a barbecue outside the hall. Trevor Swifte spent nine months at the farm at Riverview, a suburb ten minutes north of the Ipswich CBD, in 1973. Some of these men spent nine years here, and still they tilt their heads to Swifte. “Aw, mate,” says Toreaux, close to tears. “Didn’t expect to see you here.” Swifte smiles under his moustache: “Didn’t expect to see me here, either.” Toreaux pats his shoulders warmly with both hands. It’s as close to a hug as one can expect from a “homie”, the loose term for those who did time in one of Australia’s 500 state-run homes and orphanages.

PENNSYLVANIA
Off My Knees

By Michael Baumann

An astute reader of this blog provided a website that has a photo of Father Tetherow. While Tetherow is prohibited from presenting himself as a Catholic Priest, he is doing just that. He is also listed as an “Ultimate Service Provider Priest” on Dave Romeo’s Ultimate Service Providers Referral List. I did a screen grab of the site to make sure I had it just in case it somehow changed in the next couple of days. You know how frequently web pages are adjusted after all.

So here he is folks, Father Gabriel, A.K.A Father Virgil Bradley Tetherow, formerly a priest in the Diocese of Scranton. Father Gabriel pleaded guilty in a case where child pornography was found on church computers at St Ann’s Church in Tobyhanna, Pennsylvania. As a result of an investigation into the incident, Father Gabriel pleaded out to lesser charges and received two years probation.

IRELAND
Irish Independent

By Don Lavery

Sunday November 15 2009

THE Dublin archdiocese, the Catholic Church and its institutions must repent for the "heinous crime" of sexual abuse of children, Archbishop of Dublin Dr Diarmuid Martin said yesterday in a wide ranging address at a Mass in St Mary's Pro-Cathedral to mark the feast day of St Laurence O'Toole.

Dr Martin said the diocese must repent for the failings of its members who betrayed their mission of shepherd.

"Shepherds have failed through a sheer lukewarmness, through negligence, through lack of commitment to Jesus and His message.

INDIANA
The Journal Gazette

Rosa Salter Rodriguez
The Journal Gazette

He’s been called “a voice crying in the wilderness” for early alerts on sexual abuse of minors by priests. He became a lightning rod for critics from the left and the right for opposing the University of Notre Dame’s honoring of President Obama at its May commencement.

But Bishop John Michael D’Arcy also has been called a sincerely spiritual man – and an even-handed faith leader whose outspokenness has been only to uphold traditional Catholicism in communion with his papal superiors and church colleagues.

UNITED STATES
Politics Daily

David Gibson

When the nation's 300 or more Catholic bishops gather for each November for their annual fall meeting, there's always a hearty show of clerical camaraderie, much of it deeply-felt, but some of it a charitable mask on the rivalries that are inevitable in any group of strong-willed fellows.

Through the recent years of abuse scandals and a Catholic credibility crisis, however, the meetings could be glum affairs as the bishops were united mainly by a shared defensive posture toward their critics and often divided among themselves about how to move forward.

Not anymore. ...

The clergy sexual abuse scandal also haunts the hierarchy, much as they would like to put it behind them.

Last month the Diocese of Wilmington, Delaware, became the seventh Catholic diocese in the United States to file for bankruptcy protection due to claims by abuse victims. And on Dec. 1, the Diocese of Bridgeport, Connecticut, will be forced by court order to unseal 12,000 pages of documents relating to its dealings with sexually abusive priests. Many of the documents date from the tenure of retired Cardinal Edward Egan, and are expected to reveal embarrassing details about the church's actions.

COVINGTON (KY)
State-Journal

By Kevin Wheatley

A man who says Rev. Joseph N. Muench sexually abused him as an associate pastor of Good Shepherd Church has sued the Catholic Diocese of Covington and its bishop for an unspecified amount of damages.

Muench (pronounced “minch”) also faces criminal charges in Franklin County of sexual abuse stemming from the same time frame and the lawsuit claims the diocese and bishop didn’t report the allegations to police, a legal requirement.

The lawsuit also says the defendants created an atmosphere that encouraged Muench’s alleged sexual abuse by turning a blind eye to reported incidents.
The plaintiff in the lawsuit says he suffers from depression, anxiety, insomnia, post-traumatic

BESSEMER CITY (NC)
WIS

BESSEMER CITY, NC (WBTV) - A North Carolina pastor faces several charges of sexually battery for taking advantage of women who came to his church’s food bank for help, police say.

Harley Michael Keough is a pastor at King James Baptist Church in Bessemer City, NC. Detectives say the incidents happened over a three-year period from September 2006 to October 2009.

But Keough’s members said Friday the charges are false and that they stand by him.

CHICAGO (IL)
Chicago Breaking News

A retired U.S. Army chaplain and native of Chicago's Southeast Side has been named archbishop of Milwaukee, the Roman Catholic archdiocese there said today.

Bishop Jerome Listecki of La Crosse, Wis., was named the 11th archbishop of the archdiocese by Pope Benedict XVI. A news release from the archdiocese says the Vatican announced the selection Saturday.

The 60-year-old Listecki will lead the archdiocese of some 675,000 parishioners and 211 churches. He succeeds Timothy Dolan, who was named archbishop of New York earlier this year.

MILWAUKEE (WI)
Voice from the Desert

New Milwaukee Archbishop appears to have nation’s “worse record” on dealing with child sex abuse reports

Bishop Listecki’s diocese of La Crosse left higher percentage of priests accused of child abuse in ministry than anywhere in country

64 percent of accused priests left in ministry in La Crosse as opposed to under 10 percent nationwide

Listecki also wrote Eau Claire police chief in April he won’t change reporting policy to notify law enforcement

MAINE
Governmental Ethics & Election Practices

This site lists contributions made to the Diocese of Portland in its successful efforts to defeat same-sex marriage in that state.

UNITED STATES
California Catholic Daily

It was widely reported that the Roman Catholic diocese of Portland, Maine was a large contributor to the Question 1 campaign against same-sex marriage.

But Portland, Maine is a small diocese. How did it come up with over $500,000 for this battle? Who donated to the Maine diocese?

Among the largest donations were from other Catholic dioceses. Phoenix (Bishop Olmstead) and Philadelphia (Archbishop Rigali) gave $50,000 each. Next were Kansas City, Kansas (Archbishop Finn); St. Louis, Missouri (Archbishop Carlson); Providence, Rhode Island (Bishop Tobin), Youngstown, Ohio (Bishop Murry); and Newark, New Jersey (Archbishop Myers) – all at $10,000 each.

MILWAUKEE (WI)
Catholic News Agency

(CNA).- The Most Rev. Jerome E. Listecki, until now Bishop of La Crosse and a retired Lieutenant Colonel in the United States Army, has been appointed by Pope Benedict XVI to succeed the Most Rev. Timothy Dolan as the new Archbishop of Milwaukee.

“I am humbled by my selection as the Archbishop of Milwaukee. I will do my best to fulfill the confidence His Holiness Benedict XVI has placed in me," said the Archbishop-elect in a statement.

MILWAUKEE (WI)
WUWM

[with audio]

Early Saturday, the Archdiocese of Milwaukee announced that Jerome Listecki has been named archbishop-designate. He will replace Timothy Dolan, who left the post earlier this year.

Listecki is bishop of the Diocese of La Crosse, where he was installed in March 2005.

Members of the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests (SNAP) are concerned about Listecki's appointment. They have questions about his record in rooting out abuse by clergy in La Crosse.

SNAP's Midwest Director Peter Isely says Listecki has refused to meet with SNAP in the past, and has encouraged victims to take their allegations to him -- not the police.

UNITED STATES
Catholic Culture

Nearly five dozen bishops and dioceses nationwide contributed to the Diocese of Portland’s successful efforts to prevent the legalization of same-sex marriage in Maine, according to campaign finance records. The largest contributions came from the Archdiocese of Philadelphia and the Diocese of Phoenix, each of which donated $50,000 to the effort.

UNITED STATES
John Paul II Millstone

John Paul II went to Pedophiles’ Paradise in May 2, 1984, Fairbanks, Alaska. He led a Liturgy of the Word in Fairbanks. It was his third landing in American soil. He said Mass in Anchorage, Alaska in Feb. 26, 1981.

Ironically John Paul II’s first visit to the USA was here in Boston where he connived with Cardinal Law on how to cover-up the priest-pedophilia in the USA. In 1985, Tom Doyle gave his intensive research about priest-pedophilia in New Orleans to John Paul II (see our earlier articles) and he was fired from his job as Chaplain of the US Navy.

IRELAND
RTE News

Saturday, 14 November 2009
The Papal ban on discussing the ordination of women has been challenged by Bishop Willie Walsh of Killaloe.

Bishop Walsh called for the debate on women priests in an interview with RTÉ News following an address to the Association of European Journalists in Dublin.

He said he would love to see another Pope John XXIII opening up discussion, particularly of exclusion.

FORT WAYNE (IN)
The Journal Gazette

By Rosa Salter Rodriguez
The Journal Gazette

Bishop Kevin C. Rhoades of the Diocese of Harrisburg (Pa.) will become the ninth bishop of the Fort Wayne-South Bend Diocese, retiring Bishop John M. D'Arcy announced at a news conference this morning.

The new bishop would oversee a diocese that stretches across 14 counties in northern Indiana, encompassing 80 parishes. About 13,000 students attend diocesan schools.

HARRISBURG (PA)
The Patriot-News

By EMILY OPILO, The Patriot-News
November 14, 2009, 10:22AM

Bishop Kevin C. Rhoades of the Diocese of Harrisburg has been transferred to a new post in Indiana.

An announcement about the move was made by the Vatican early Saturday morning. Rhoades has served as Bishop of Harrisburg since he was appointed in October 2004. Then 46, he was the youngest man to ever be named bishop in the United States.

Rhoades grew up in Lebanon and served as a priest in the Diocese of Harrisburg for 26 years prior to being appointed bishop.

IRELAND
Total Catholic

The Archbishop of Dublin, Dr Diarmuid Martin has said his diocese is facing huge changes in order to contend with the shortage of priests and he has called for the Year of the Priest to be a moment in which priests seek renewal and repentance. ...

As the Diocese of Dublin awaits the publication of the report on the handling of allegations of sexual abuse by members of its clergy, Archbishop Martin said, “The abuse of children is a heinous crime, especially when it was perpetrated by those entrusted with the mission of the Good Shepherd.”

He added, “The Church and its institutions must repent, but that repentance must result in renewal and in a renewal which may not produce conformity and symbioses with the thought patterns of the day.”

MILWAUKEE (WI)
NBC 26

By Annysa Johnson of the Journal Sentinel

Seven months after Archbishop Timothy M. Dolan left for New York, the Vatican on Saturday announced his successor, naming Bishop Jerome Edward Listecki of La Crosse as the new spiritual leader of Southeastern Wisconsin's nearly 700,000 Catholics.

Listecki, 60, will be installed as the Milwaukee Archbishop in early January. ...

The victim advocacy group Survivors Network of Those abused by Priests raised concerns about his track record on the issue, saying Listecki's jurisdiction "boasts the highest percentage rate of siding with the priest and against the alleged victim reporting the abuse of any diocese in the United States."

BESSEMER CITY (NC)
Charlotte Observer

Posted: Saturday, Nov. 14, 2009
BESSEMER CITY, N.C. -- Gaston County Police have arrested a 72-year-old pastor who is accused of sexual battery.

Harley Michael Keough, pastor of King James Baptist Church in Bessemer City, is charged with five counts of sexual battery.

Police say the charges stem from incidents that allegedly occurred over a three-year period from September 2006 through October 2009.

HARRISBURG (PA)
York Daily Record

Daily Record/Sunday News
Updated: 11/14/2009 09:40:19 AM EST

Bishop Kevin C. Rhoades has been transferred from the Catholic Diocese of Harrisburg to a diocese in Indiana, according to a news release this morning from the Harrisburg diocese.

Rhoades has been bishop in the Harrisburg diocese since December 2004. In January, he will become bishop of Fort Wayne-South Bend, Ind., the news release said.

"Naturally, it will not be easy for me to bid farewell to my family and friends, my brother priests and the faithful of the Harrisburg diocese," Rhoades is quoted as saying in the news release.

Billie Mazzei's Survival Kit

•Beware of the five sterile choices that lead nowhere – revenge, denial, cynicism, self-betrayal and paranoia. Make choices that lead to life.

•Begin to reclaim your innocence. You can do that through your senses and the arts.

•Practice hearing seeing, smelling and touching.

•Look for ways to express your creativity. It isn’t a contest, and you won’t be graded.

Draw, paint, write, garden, cook, work with clay, take photographs, arrange flowers, build something.

HAWAII
Star-Bulletin

Kamehameha Schools has accepted the resignation of a teacher who was banned by his religious order from teaching and ministry with minors after being accused of sexual misconduct in Wisconsin about 17 years ago.

Thomas Gardipee's resignation was accepted "to eliminate any possible lingering distractions," said Michael J. Chun, president and headmaster of Kamehameha Schools, Kapalama Campus.

The resignation follows a Sept. 25 story in the Star-Bulletin reporting Gardipee's background and what his order regarded as "inappropriate behavior."

HAWAII
Honolulu Advertiser

A Kamehameha Schools teacher who had been accused of sexual misconduct with a student while working on the Mainland more than 20 years ago has resigned his position, the school announced yesterday.

Thomas Gardipee began teaching at Kamehameha's Kapalama campus in 2002. Yesterday, Michael Chun, Kamehameha Kapalama president and headmaster, said the school has accepted Gardipee's resignation.

In 1992, Gardipee was suspended as athletic director at St. Lawrence Seminary, a Roman Catholic prep school in Wisconsin after allegations of sexual misconduct. A former student had accused Gardipee of exposing himself and intimidation.

SOUTH AFRICA
IOL

By Thabiso Thakali

The National Prosecuting Authority is set to pounce on the Central Methodist Church next week after completing its investigation into allegations of sexual abuse of children living in the refugee centre.

The NPA was handed a dossier containing serious allegations of abuse against children taking place at the church in July after the head of Methodist Church's public concern committee investigated them.

The church is home to more than 2 000 refugees, mostly from Zimbabwe, and also houses a number of unaccompanied minors.

ST. LOUIS (MO)
Belleville News-Democrat

ST. LOUIS -- The Archdiocese of St. Louis says Archbishop Robert Carlson used $10,000 in discretionary funds to support the successful effort to prevent legalization of gay marriage in Maine.

Such money, from private gifts, has been used previously to financially support everything from disaster relief to anti-abortion efforts. Tax-exempt religious organizations can't support a candidate, but they can advocate for issues.

UNITED STATES
Whispers in the Loggia

Good morning... and, as expected, happy news.

In an unprecedented double-shot of Saturday appointments on these shores, Pope Benedict has named:

Bishop Jerome Listecki of LaCrosse as archbishop of Milwaukee. The Chicago native, 60, succeeds Archbishop Timothy Dolan, who was transferred to New York on 23 February...

...and Bishop Kevin Rhoades of Harrisburg as bishop of Fort Wayne-South Bend. A native son of the Pennsylvania capital, the Indiana-bound prelate, who turns 52 later this month, succeeds Bishop John D'Arcy -- the nation's oldest active prelate -- who reached the retirement age of 75 in August 2007.

MILWAUKEE (WI)
WTMJ

By Jay Sorgi
Story Created: Nov 14, 2009

MILWAUKEE - After nearly a nine-month wait, Pope Benedict XVI has made his decision on the head of the Catholic Church in Milwaukee.

La Crosse Bishop Jerome Listecki will serve the Archdiocese of Milwaukee as its new Archbishop.

According to the Archdiocesan web site, Bishop Listecki, 60, will take over the role in early January.

MILWAUKEE (WI)
WISN

MILWAUKEE -- The Vatican has announced that Bishop Jerome Listecki, 60, will be the new archbishop of Milwaukee. He is currently working in La Crosse, Wis.

There will be a news conference about the selection at about 10 a.m. Saturday. You can watch is live on WISN.com

Rocco Palmo wrote on Friday that the appointment of the 11th archbishop of Milwaukee was expected on Saturday.

HARRISBURG (PA)
Roman Catholic Diocese of Harrisburg

[press release]

[statement by Bishop Rhoades]

The Vatican announced that Pope Benedict XVI has appointed Bishop Kevin C. Rhoades as the ninth Bishop of Fort Wayne-South Bend, Indiana, transferring him from the Diocese of Harrisburg. He will be installed as Bishop of Fort Wayne-South Bend on January 13, 2010.

LACROSSE (WI)
Roman Ctholic Archdiocese of LaCrosse

The diocesan website offers full information, including a video, on Bishop Jerome E. Listecki.

LACROSSE (WI)
Roman Catholic Diocese of LaCrosse

This morning at 5 a.m. Central Standard Time, the Vatican announced that Pope Benedict XVI has named Bishop Jerome E. Listecki as the 11th bishop of the Archdiocese of Milwaukee.

MILWAUKEE (WI)
Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Milwaukee

[en espanol]

[with links to additional information about Bishop Listecki]

The Most Reverend Jerome Edward Listecki has been named the 11th archbishop of the Archdiocese of Milwaukee by Pope Benedict XVI, the Vatican announced today. Listecki, 60, succeeds the Most Reverend Timothy M. Dolan, who was named Archbishop of New York on February 23, 2009, and installed as Archbishop of New York April 15, 2009. Listecki currently serves as bishop of the Diocese of LaCrosse, where he was installed as bishop on March 1, 2005, succeeding the Most Reverend Raymond L. Burke.

Bishop Listecki will be installed as Archbishop of Milwaukee in early January by the Papal Nuncio to the United States, Archbishop Pietro Sambi. At that time, he will assume responsibility for the spiritual well-being of Catholics in the 10 counties of southeastern Wisconsin and take on the day-to-day administration of the archdiocese.

FORT WAYNE (IN)
News-Sentinel

From staff reports
The Holy See Press Office in Rome issued a statement today announcing the replacement of retiring Bishop John M. D'Arcy. Bishop Kevin C. Rhoades of the Diocese of Harrisburg in Pennsylvania will take over, according to the statement.

Roman Catholic Church law requires that when a bishop reaches age 75, he must offer a letter of resignation to the pope. D’Arcy eclipsed that milestone Aug. 18, 2007.

MILWAUKEE (WI)
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

By Annysa Johnson of the Journal Sentinel

Posted: Nov. 14, 2009 5:48 a.m.

Seven months after Archbishop Timothy M. Dolan left for New York, the Vatican on Saturday announced his successor, naming Bishop Jerome Edward Listecki of La Crosse as the new spiritual leader of Southeastern Wisconsin's nearly 700,000 Catholics.

Listecki, 60, will be installed as the Milwaukee Archbishop in early January.

A Chicago Native and retired military man, Listecki has been described as "Dolanesque" in his dealings with parishioners - an engaging storyteller who mingles well at baptisms and confirmations. But unlike Dolan during his tenure in Milwaukee, Listecki has been more inclined to wade into the political fray, admonishing House Speaker Nancy Pelosi for her misstatement on Catholic teachings on the beginnings of life and criticizing the University of Notre Dame's decision to honor Barack Obama earlier this year.

SIOUX CITY (IA)
Sioux City Journal

By Molly Montag Journal staff writer | Posted: Friday, November 13, 2009

SIOUX CITY -- Two members of a victim's rights organization will host a meeting this weekend for victims of sexual assault by members of the clergy.

The Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests will hold the meeting from 2-4 p.m. Sunday at the Gleeson Room of the Wilbur Aalfs Library, 529 Pierce St., Sioux City.

MISSOURI
Fox 4

INDEPENDENCE, MO - Activists representing people who have been abused by clergy members traveled to the metro area on Friday to ask the Community of Christ Church to help bring other potential victims of a family accused of multiple counts of child rape.

Three members of the Mohler family were lay ministers of the Independence-based church. SNAP, the Survivors' Network of those Abused by Priests, says that the church can do much to help other potential victims, and the church says that's a mission that they share.

"(Abusers) tend to use God as a way to get to their victims," said SNAP regional director Judy Jones, who traveled with the group from their St. Louis headquarters on Friday. "Victims are very afraid to come forward, a lot of times they've been threatened that they'll be sent to hell."

IRELAND
The Irish Times

PATSY McGARRY Religious Affairs Correspondent

A BISHOP warned the media yesterday not to become “oppressive”, as the Catholic Church had once been.

Addressing a meeting of journalists in Dublin, the Bishop of Killaloe Most Rev Willie Walsh also said the Ryan report did not do “full justice” to religious congregations, many of whose members were now “very broken and very sad”.

In his wide-ranging address, the bishop said he “lacks any enthusiasm for the Latin Mass” and was “saddened” that he could not feel free to take part in Communion at Church of Ireland services because of the rules in his own church. This was despite the fact that “in Ennis it was never suggested that Church of Ireland people are not welcome to receive in our church.”

IRELAND
Ireland Online

The head of the charity One in Four has said she is very concerned by the delay in the publication of the report into clerical child abuse in the Dublin Archdiocese.

The High Court ruled last month that a chapter relating to a particular alleged abuser be removed.

Publication of this chapter has been delayed in order not to jeopardise on-going criminal proceedings.

IRELAND
The Irish Times

PATSY McGARRY

A DELAY in the publication of a report into how allegations of clerical child sex abuse in Dublin’s Catholic archdiocese were handled means there is “a danger that the civil authorities could be seen to be acting to protect themselves from public scrutiny”, the One in Four agency has said.

“This must be of concern to the Minister for Justice, who needs to act in a transparent and accountable fashion to ensure public confidence,” said the campaign group’s executive director, Maeve Lewis.

The report “may be fatally compromised by the delay in publication of fundamental sections”. Noting that last month the High Court ruled that publication of one chapter should be delayed in order not to jeopardise ongoing criminal proceedings, she said: “The High Court is now considering whether or not another section ought to be published or withheld.”

MISSOURI
KCTV

[with video]

INDEPENDENCE, Mo. -- A victim's advocacy group is asking anyone who saw, suspected or suffered abuse to come forward.

The group called SNAP is praising the victims who came forward and reported the alleged crimes in the Lafayette County child sex abuse case that came to light this week.

“Family members have been hurt, and the community is hurt,” said Adam Walker. “It’s a sad horrible day.”

MISSOURI
CNN

Lexington, Missouri (CNN) -- Police on Friday charged another member of a Missouri family under investigation for allegations of child sexual abuse, police said.

The man, Darrell Mohler, who is not in custody, has been charged with two counts of rape, police said.

Five members of the Mohler family of Lafayette County, Missouri, were arrested earlier this week after six alleged victims, who are relatives of the five suspects, made accusations of sexual abuse. A sixth person, described as an "associate" of the family, was arrested Thursday but released Friday, police said.

UNITED STATES
City of Angels

By Kay Ebeling

(When different churches face charges of clergy sex crimes, they respond in similar ways, Kelly Clark tells City of Angels. A lawyer for plaintiffs in pedophile lawsuits regarding Mormon and Adventist clergy as well as Roman Catholic priests, Clark took time to sit down and answer several questions on video when we were in Portland Oregon last summer. His answers re similarities between religions' responses is transcribed here, with the video embedded at the bottom of this post. We will use Clark's answers to other questions from last summer's interview in future blogs.)

Here, Clark says: "We find the same emphasis on secrecy slash confidentiality emphasized in Mormon and Adventist cases, as we find in Catholic cases. I call it secrecy, the Churches call it Privacy or Confidentiality. They end up being sued not just for child abuse but for coverup as well.

"Another common theme is, Our work is too important to have our name smudged with child abuse claims. Another similarity in Mormon, Adventist, and Catholic Church sex abuse cases is institutional blindness.

LONG ISLAND (NY)
Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests

An accused predator priest is now on the advisory board of a Long Island-based non-profit that serves children.

The website of COPAY, the Community Organization for Parents and Youth, in Great Neck lists Msgr. Brendan P. Riordan as a board member. http://copayinc.com/ExecutiveDirector.php

A child sex abuse lawsuit against Riordan was settled out-of-court in 1995. He allegedly molested a boy at a controversial and now-closed church-run treatment center for troubled priests in Massachusetts called the House of Affirmation.

UNITED STATES
Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests

When it comes to helping colleagues with politics and ballot measures, bishops find ways to share money. When it comes to helping abuse victims with recovery, bishops refuse to share money, claiming they're all 'independent.' Each diocese - large or small, richer or poorer - pretends they're isolated from one another, so abuse victims in many dioceses get chump change despite enduring horrific pain.

We've never seen a bishop donate to victims in another diocese. We've never even seen a bishop ASK his colleagues for money to help abuse victims. Yet when it comes to political issues, clearly they help one another.

MISSOURI
KMBC

INDEPENDENCE, Mo. -- Members of SNAP, Survivors' Network of those Abused by Priests, said they do not want the Community of Christ Church to ignore possible victims of abuse within the church.

Five members of the Mohler family have been charged for sex crimes in Lafayette County.

Linda Booth, a spokeswoman for Community of Christ church, said Burrell Mohler Sr., David Mohler and Jared Mohler were lay ministers but were not in positions of leadership or involved with youth.

FORT WAYNE (IN)
WANE

FORT WAYNE, Ind. (WANE) - The Fort Wayne-South Bend Catholic Diocese plans to make what is being called "an historic announcement" on Saturday morning.

Bishop John D'Arcy confirmed for WSBT Radio the announcement does involve the appointment of a new bishop. He said the new bishop is currently serving in another diocese. ...

Bishop D'Arcy has also been very critical of the way the Catholic Church handled the priest sex abuse scandal.

The announcement is set to take place 10:15 a.m. at the Archbishop Noll Catholic Center located at 915 S. Clinton Street in Fort Wayne. That announcement will be followed by a similar one in South Bend at 2:15 p.m.

Good Jesuit, Bad Jesuit

[includes a list of accused Jesuits]

His Holiness Pope John Paul II in an excerpt from his homily at

The World Youth Day 2002
Toronto, Downsview Park, Sunday July 28, 2002

Even a tiny flame lifts the heavy lid of night. How much more light will you make, all together, if you bond as one in the communion of the Church! If you love Jesus, love the Church! Do not be discouraged by the sins and failings of some of her members.

SOUTH BEND (IN)
WSBT

SOUTH BEND — The Fort Wayne-South Bend diocese is expected to announce the appointment of a new bishop Saturday.

A news release Friday afternoon said there will be "an historic announcement: something that takes place once in a generation."

Current Bishop John D'Arcy, 77, announced in 2008 that he would be retiring this year. D'Arcy confirmed for WSBT Radio the announcement does involve the appointment of a new bishop. He said the new bishop is currently serving in another diocese.

IRELAND
CiNews

The first international conference in Ireland for young theologians was held in St Patrick’s College Maynooth last weekend in which 12 young theologians from Ireland, the UK, USA and Holland presented papers on a range of theological issues.

The conference: ‘Interface: Being a Young Theologian in the World’ was organised by students and alumni of St Patrick’s College and organiser, Francis Cousins told CINews that it had two objectives, viz. “to explore the role of the young theologian and to explore the role of theology in contemporary society”.

Professor Michael Paul Gallagher, SJ, of the Gregorian University, Rome, delivered the keynote address on ‘Mediators of God’s Meaning: A Challenging but Consoling Call’.

IRELAND
The Irish Catholic

A subtle form of denial has come into operation since the Ryan Report which offloads all the blame on religious orders the Bishop of Killaloe, Willie Walsh has said.

''I believe that in the wake of the Ryan Report a subtle form of denial has come into operation. By offloading the whole blame on religious orders we rid ourselves of any responsibility and can feel united in condemning the cruel treatment of children'', he said.

And Bishop Walsh asks if the bishops participated in this denial. ''And have we as bishops and the wider Church participated in this denial by somehow distancing ourselves from the religious in avoidance of blame? It is a frequent sociological phenomenon for a community to find its identity in its exclusion of certain groups of 'unacceptable people'.

TEXARKANA (AR)
Arkansas Democrat-Gazette

By Arkansas Democrat-Gazette Staff and Wire Reports

A federal judge sentenced evangelist Tony Alamo to 175 years in prison Friday following his conviction in July of 10 counts of taking underage girls across state lines for sex.

U.S. District Judge Harry Barnes imposed the maximum sentence after three women who Alamo took as child “brides” testified at Alamo’s sentencing hearing about the damage the convicted evangelist did to them and their families. Barnes indicated he took into account Alamo’s role as pastor and father figure to control the young girls.

He told Alamo that he will one day face “a greater judge,” and said “may (God) have mercy on your soul.”

TEXARKANA (AR)
NPR

By Mark Memmott

Convicted over the summer of taking five underage girls across state lines to have sex with them, evangelist Tony Alamo was today sentenced to 175 years in prison by a judge in Texarkana, Ark.

"May (God) have mercy on your soul," U.S. District Judge Harry Barnes told Alamo, the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette reports.

AUSTRALIA
The Herald

BY JOANNE MCCARTHY
14 Nov, 2009

VICTIMS of Maitland-Newcastle pedophile priest John Denham took the first steps this week in what could be Australia's biggest compensation payout by the Catholic Church to child sex abuse victims.

Some victims have sought a meeting with Maitland-Newcastle Bishop Michael Malone, one month before Denham is sentenced for child sex offences from 1968 to 1986.

The Denham case could produce a total payout greater than the previous known highest Australian payout of $6 million, paid to nine victims of Maitland-Newcastle pedophile priest Vince Ryan.

TEXARKANA (AR)
KATV

Texarkana, AR - Evangelist Tony Alamo has been sentenced to 175 years in federal prison for child sex convictions.

Alamo was sentenced Friday in Texarkana for convictions on a 10-count indictment for taking children across state lines for sex.

U.S. District Judge Harry F. Barnes listened to testimony from three of Alamo's child "brides" before giving Alamo the maximum time allowed by federal guidelines. He told Alamo that he will one day face "a greater judge," and said "may (God) have mercy on your soul."

INTERNATIONAL FALLS (MN)
The Daily Journal

By LEE GRIM

A local ecumenical group of 17 priests, a deacon and lay leaders attended the 36th annual Call to Action International Conference in Milwaukee, Wis., Nov. 6-8. The theme of the conference was “Everyone at the Table: Rejoicing as People of God.”

About 3,000 people, from almost all USA states, Canada and some European countries attended the conference at the Midwest Airlines Convention Center.

When Pope John XXIII addressed the opening of the Second Vatican Council, he warned of “prophets of doom” who only forecast decline when the Church opens to change. But Pope John was convinced that Divine Providence was leading people into a new way of being church. Now, almost five decades after Pope John’s historic speech, Call to Action continues its work in creating an inclusive and just Church.

LONG ISLAND (NY)
New York Post

By KIERAN CROWLEY

A priest listed on the board of a Long Island nonprofit that counsels drug-addicted teens was once named in the out-of-court settlement of a sexual-abuse suit, says a group made up of victims of abusive priests.

The Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests voiced outrage at Monsignor Brendan Riordan, pastor of St. Aloysius Catholic Church in Great Neck, for being on the advisory board to the Community Organization for Parents and Youth.

CANADA
The Windsor Star

By Don Lajoie, The Windsor Star
November 13, 2009

WINDSOR, Ont. -- Dozens of supporters and spectators filled a Windsor courtroom Thursday at a bail hearing for a former city priest who has been charged with molesting teenage boys at the mission he founded in Haiti.

The hearing for Hearts Together for Haiti founder John Duarte, which had been expected to last just a few hours, was adjourned after a full-day of testimony by a single witness. All evidence given at the hearing and the identities of the alleged victims are subject to a publication ban.

Duarte, 43, is charged under the Criminal Code with nine counts of sexual exploitation of boys between the ages of 12 and 17. The offences are alleged to have taken place in the Haitian capital of Port-au-Prince and in the fishing village of Labadie, on the nation’s north coast, where the priest operated a charity that included a school, a medical clinic and a sponsorship program for hundreds of impoverished families.

SOUTH BEND (IN)
WLNS

Associated Press - November 13, 2009

SOUTH BEND, Ind. (AP) - The attorney for an 81-year-old Roman Catholic priest who faces possible extradition to Ireland says the clergyman moved to the South Bend area in 1990 to take a job counseling drug and alcohol abusers.

The Rev. Francis Markey was arrested this week at his South Bend home and faces possible extradition to Ireland on charges that he raped a teenage boy there in 1968.

CHICAGO (IL)
WLS

November 12, 2009 (CHICAGO) (WLS) -- The Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Chicago says it found "credible evidence" that a priest on the city's West Side sexually abused a child.

Reverend Edward Maloney is a retired priest who served at St. Mark Roman Catholic Church.

IRELAND
Irish Independent

By Brendan Farrelly

Friday November 13 2009

THE retired Irish priest at the centre of extradition proceedings in the US over the alleged rape of a 15-year-old boy in Ireland worked for years at an clinic that helps people with drug and alcohol addiction.

Fr Francis Markey (81) will be brought before US District Court in South Bend, Indiana, again on Monday.

The hearing will determine if he will continue to be held in jail or given bail with conditions.

WILMINGTON (DE)
The Daily Times

WILMINGTON (AP) -- The judge presiding over a Delaware Catholic diocese's bankruptcy has approved the diocese's settlement with an alleged victim of priest sex abuse and agreed to keep the settlement amount secret.

The orders were signed Thursday in advance of a hearing that was subsequently canceled.

ARKANSAS
CBS 13

JON GAMBRELL, Associated Press Writer
LITTLE ROCK, Ark. (AP) ― Several of the child "wives" who helped convict evangelist Tony Alamo of federal sex charges were expected to return to the witness stand on Friday during his sentencing hearing.

The 75-year-old leader of the Tony Alamo Christian Ministries were scheduled to appear in court in Texarkana. A jury convicted him in July on a 10-count indictment accusing him of taking young girls across state lines for sex. Alamo faces up to 175 years in prison

ARKANSAS
KATV

Little Rock - The Arkansas Department of Human Services is asking a judge to terminate the parental rights of two members of the Tony Alamo Christian Ministries.

Attorneys for DHS on Monday asked Miller County Circuit Judge Joe Griffin to end the legal rights of the father of a teenager who is in foster care. Griffin did not immediately issue a ruling.

Another hearing is set for January 26th on a DHS request to end the parental rights of another Alamo follower.

ARKANSAS
Texarkana Gazette

By: Lynn LaRowe - Texarkana Gazette - Published: 10/22/2009

A federal judge awarded a total of $3 million to two former Tony Alamo followers in a civil suit against fugitive John Kolbek following a hearing this morning.

“The damage it has caused emotionally, physically, spiritually, is almost beyond my comprehension,” said U.S. District Judge Harry Barnes after listening to testimony from Spencer Ondrisek, a foster mother and Texarkana attorney David Carter. “I don’t think there’s enough money in this world that will wash away the emotional harm this has caused.”

Ondrisek and Seth Calagna, both 19-year-old men who were raised in the Tony Alamo Ministries, each received $500,000 in actual damages and $1 million in punitive damages to be paid by Kolbek. The suit was filed on their behalves last year by Carter.

MISSOURI
KOMU

LAFAYETTE COUNTY - Authorities arrested a sixth man Thursday night in connection with the ongoing sex crimes investigation in western Missouri.

Officials found Larry King, a 55-year-old Kansas City man, in Jackson County. Authorities accuse Kidd of raping of a child younger than 14, and they call Kidd a friend of the Mohler family, the family at the heart of the controversy. King has now joined the Mohlers in Lafayette County Jail, KSHB-TV in Kansas City reported. ...

Mohler and two of the other men served as Lay Ministers in Community of Christ.

"Leaders and members of the Community of Christ in the greater Kansas City area are prayerfully upholding those families that are touched by the recent arrests of five members of the Mohler family," said Community of Christ Director of Communications Linda Booth. "The church takes seriously the allegations that have been made and has suspended the priesthood licenses of three lay ministers. Lay ministers are volunteers who do not receive compensation for their service or ministry from the Community of Christ."

RUSSIA
Interfax

Ulyanovsk, November 13, Interfax - A court in Dimitrovgrad in the Ulyanovsk Region found an acolyte of a local church, aged 41, guilty of child sexual abuse and sentenced him to 20 years in prison, a court official told Interfax.

"Eighteen episodes exposing him as a pedophile have been proven. The trial proceeded behind closed doors. Among his victims were five boys and one girl, aged from eight to eleven years old," he said.

The suspect pleaded partially guilty. "He said that he would not reform after confinement and would again engage in child sexual abuse, and requested a life sentence," the official said.

CHICAGO (IL)
Chicago Tribune

By Manya A. Brachear
Tribune reporter

November 13, 2009

The Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Chicago has found credible evidence that a priest on Chicago's West Side sexually abused two children, church officials said Thursday.

The Rev. Edward Maloney, a retired priest who served at St. Mark Roman Catholic Church, 1048 N. Campbell Ave., for 21 years until 1996, was removed from ministry several months ago, according to a letter from Auxiliary Bishop John Manz to parishioners. Maloney currently lives in Fox Lake.

The abuse of two male victims, now in their late 30s and early 40s, is alleged to have taken place about 25 years ago, when the victims were in junior high school and while Maloney was at St. Mark, a church official said.

OCEAN CITY (MD)
The Dispatch

By Shawn J. Soper
Originally published November 13, 2009

OCEAN CITY- Over a month after Ocean City Police traveled to North Carolina to help locate and arrest a former Catholic priest implicated in a decades-old child sex abuse case involving an unidentified victim in Ocean City dating back as early as 1997, the suspect has not been extradited to Worcester County to face a possible indictment on the charge.

Earlier this spring, the Ocean City Police Department received a complaint about the sexual abuse of minor. The alleged incidents were to have taken place in Ocean City between 1977 and 1982 and involved a former priest, later identified as Michael Lowell Barnes, 64, of Haywood County, N.C. At the time of the alleged abuse, the victim was a minor child.

Ocean City police began investigating the alleged pattern of sexual abuse on the minor and later obtained an arrest warrant for Barnes. In early October, local detectives, in cooperation with the Maggie Valley, N.C. Police Department, located and arrested Barnes in North Carolina. According to police reports, Barnes was taken into custody and held in a North Carolina county jail on a $400,000 bond pending extradition to Worcester County to face charges related to the alleged incident.

MISSOURI
Fox 4

LAFAYETTE COUNTY, MO - Authorities say a sixth suspect has been arrested and charged in the ongoing Mohler family child sex case, in which several members of a family face charges of raping and sexually abusing at least two children.

According to the Missouri Highway Patrol, Larry Kidd, 55, from Kansas City, Missouri, has been arrested and charged with rape of a child less than 14 years old.

Authorities say that Kidd was identified as an associate of the Mohler family, which faces numerous child sex allegations.

INDIA
The Times of India

Ananthakrishnan G, TNN 13 November 2009

THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: The Church in Kerala has been hit by yet another controversy, this time by allegations from a Class IX student about sexual abuse by priests in their hostel, two weeks after her sister died of suspected poisoning at their school run by the Orthodox church.

The death of Anu, a 16-year-old girl student of the Catholicate Higher Secondary School in Malappuram district happened on October 24. Anu's sister Anju raised the charges at a news conference with her father.

The 14-year-old alleged they were made to wash the priests' vehicles and massage them and it often ended with them being sexually harassed.

CHICAGO (IL)
Chicago Breaking News

The Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Chicago has found credible evidence that a priest on Chicago's West Side sexually abused a child, according to a letter from Auxiliary Bishop John Manz to parishioners.

The Rev. Edward Maloney, a retired priest who served at St. Mark Roman Catholic Church, 1048 N. Campbell Ave., for 21 years until 1996, was removed from ministry several months ago, according to the letter. He currently resides in Fox Lake.

The abuse of two male victims, now in their late 30s and early 40s, is alleged to have taken place about two decades ago, when the victims were in junior high school and while Maloney was at St. Mark, said Susan Burritt, a spokeswoman for the Archdiocese.

CHICAGO (IL)
Chicago Sun-Times

Another Chicago priest has been accused of sexual abuse of a minor and suspended from ministry.

The accused priest is the Rev. Edward Maloney, who had been pastor of St. Mark Church at 1048 N. Campbell Ave., according to information released Thursday by the Archdiocese of Chicago.

ALASKA
Second Rape: The Diocese of Fairbanks and Sexual Abuse

Videos and Letters Expose the Bishop of Fairbanks’ Dirty Fingerprints. He knew kids were being raped and he covered it up.

Or: Father Jim Poole, The Great Lover of the World (his words, not mine)

There’s more to the story of Fr. Jim Poole, SJ, subject of my last post.

Seattle’s weekly paper, The Stranger (click here to read), wrote a gripping story about Rachel Mike and other victims of sexual abuse in the Diocese of Fairbanks. The story outlines how dozens of child rapists were sent to Fairbanks to “Get them off the grid” and fill jobs where these men could rape hundreds of Alaska Native kids.

Rachel Mike was one of the kids.

PHILADELPHIA (PA)
Philadelphia Gay News

by Jen Colletta

Marriage equality suffered a setback last week when voters in Maine overturned the state’s same-sex marriage law in a ballot initiative that drew intense debate and financial contributions from throughout the country — including from the Archdiocese of Philadelphia.

According to campaign finance reports, the Roman Catholic Diocese of Portland donated $553,608.27 toward the passage of Question 1, and $50,000 of that funding came from the Philadelphia archdiocese.

Donna Farrell, director of communications for the Archdiocese of Philadelphia, declined to comment on the source of the $50,000.

TEXAS
Stop Baptist Predators

“Southern Baptist churches in Texas must stop hiding sexual abuse by clergy and provide outreach to victims.”

That’s what Phil Strickland told the delegates of the Baptist General Convention of Texas exactly 10 years ago when they gathered for their annual meeting in El Paso.

Phil Strickland, who was executive director of the BGCT’s Christian Life Commission, presented a report to the 2000 Texas Baptists gathered there, and said: “There is increasing evidence that clergy sexual abuse is a significant problem among Baptist ministers.”

CHICAGO (IL)
Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Chicago

The following letter from the Most Rev. John R. Manz, Auxiliary Bishop of Chicago and Episcopal Vicar for Vicariate III, was read at all the Masses over the weekend at St. Mark Parish in Chicago.

ARCHDIOCESE OF CHICAGO
Office of the Episcopal Vicar
Post Office Box 1979
Chicago, Illinois 60690-1979

November 7, 2009

Dear St. Mark Parishioners,

I am writing to you so that I can share important information regarding one of your former pastors, Father Edward Maloney. Several months ago, officials at the Archdiocese received an allegation involving sexual abuse of a minor. The independent Review Board of the Archdiocese completed its inquiry regarding the allegations against Fr. Maloney and determined that there is reasonable cause to suspect that sexual abuse of a minor occurred. Cardinal George has accepted the Review Board’s findings and their recommendation that Fr. Maloney not engage in any form of ministry and that appropriate restrictions be imposed in accordance with Archdiocesan policies and procedures.

Father Maloney’s case will now be sent to the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith at the Vatican for its review and determination.

BRAZIL
JTA

RIO DE JANEIRO (JTA) -- Israel and Brazil signed cooperation agreements on extradition, tourism and security.

The deals were signed Wednesday during Israeli President Shimon Peres' visit to Brazil this week.

Israel has signed a $350 million deal to supply dozens of unmanned surveillance aircraft to Brazil's national police, a defense official said Thursday. The Heron drones, made by Israel Aerospace Industries, are to be used to monitor Brazil's borders and help prevent the smuggling of arms, drugs and unspecified natural resources. They will also be used to augment security during the 2014 World Cup and the 2016 Olympics in Brazil. Brazilian police are currently being trained to use the system.

The extradition agreement is part of a cooperation on the war on international crime. It was the result of negotiations between Israel's state prosecutor's office and representatives of the Brazilian authorities. This collaboration led to the recent extradition of religious sect spiritual leader Elior Chen to Israel.

MISSOURI
Missourinet

by Brent Martin on November 12, 2009

Lafayette County Sheriff Kerrick Alumbaugh believes there are more victims out there and that the public can give authorities more information as they attempt to unravel a horrifying tale of widespread sexual abuse in west-central Missouri.

Authorities are digging up parts of 77-year-old Burrell Mohler, Sr.’s former farm near Bates City. They are searching for glass jars that might contain letters written by children younger than 12 who reportedly were brutalized by Mohler and four of his sons as far back as 20 years ago. They also are searching for a body.

Mohler is charged with presiding over systematic abuse that included “mock weddings” between young girls and his relatives. Also charged are 53-year-old Burrell Mohler, Jr.; 52-year-old David Mohler, who lives in Iowa; 48-year-old Jared Mohler of Columbia and 47-year-old Roland Monler of Bates City. Three of the men served as members of the Community of Christ lay priesthood. The church reports that their licenses have been suspended.

John Paul II Millstone

How can a pope who had no compassion nor compunction for any of the thousands of victims of priest pedophiles in the USA and around the world be beatified? Pope John Paul II had more than 26 years to do somthing to stop the stench of priest pedophilia under his Holy See and holy nose. He was the longest reigning pope who lived well hand-in-hand with priest-pedophilia.

For a pope to be able to tolerate the most grevious sin that has affected thousands of children, he cannot be called a blessed or a saint. Most of all, children cannot be praying to him for help because when he was alive, he intentionally refused to help them. Now that he is dead, he cannot help them either.

MISSOURI
The Kansas City Star

By DONALD BRADLEY
The Kansas City Star

LEXINGTON, Mo. | They said they were just little girls trying to bury their horror in jars around the farm.

They wanted somebody to know what happened to them. So, according to authorities, the sisters wrote notes about the years of sexual abuse at the hands of older relatives and hid them in the earth.

Then the children — one was a boy — buried the pain and anguish within themselves.