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  A Guide to Catholic Sex Scandals

ABC News
August 5, 2010

http://abcnews.go.com/Blotter/slideshow/guide-catholic-sex-scandals-11289279

Georg Ratzinger with his brother, Pope Benedict XVI, in Regensburg, Germany, in 2006. In 2010, allegations emerged of physical and sexual abuse in the Regensburg boys' choir, which Georg directed from 1964 to 1994. He has not been accused of sexual abuse, and has denied knowledge of any sexual abuse by others, but has admitted slapping students. From 1981 to 2005, as a cardinal, Joseph Ratzinger led the Vatican's investigation of sexual abuse charges against priests around the world. As pope, his handling of accusations of sexual abuse over the past three decades has come under renewed scrutiny

In 1984 Louisiana priest Gilbert Gauthe was among the first pedophile priests brought to trial in the United States. Gauthe pleaded guilty to 34 molestation charges involving 11 boys, drawing national attention to clerical sex abuse for the first time. After his release from prison, he was convicted on a second charge in Texas in 1996, and then convicted in 2008 of failing to register as a sex offender. He was released from prison in 2010.

Cardinal Bernard Law of Boston leaves court in Boston, May 8, 2002. Law, who was Archbishop of Boston from 1984 to 2002, was among the first high-ranking church officials shown to have played an active role in protecting priests accused of abuse. He acknowledged that he moved priests John Geoghan and Paul Shanley from parish to parish despite evidence they had molested children. He resigned as archbishop in 2002, issuing an apology that said, "To all those who have suffered from my shortcomings and mistakes I both apologize [and] beg forgiveness." He had initially refused to resign, but left after the release of church records that detailed his role in the church's response to abuse allegations. After Law resigned, Pope John Paul II appointed him to a position in the Vatican.
(David L. Ryan/AFP/Getty Images)

Former Catholic priest Former Catholic priest John Geoghan, left, and his attorney sit in Middlesex Superior Courthouse in Cambridge, Massachusetts, Jan. 18, 2002, while awaiting a verdict in Geoghan's trial. Geoghan was convicted of indecent assault and battery for improperly touching a 10-year-old boy. He was later sentenced to 9-to-10 years in prison. He was suspected of sexually abusing up to 150 children over 30 years in six Massachusetts parishes, but charged in three cases. One was dropped when the alleged victim wouldn't testify, while another was dropped because the statute of limitations had run out. He was convicted in the third case. The Boston Archdiocese has reached a $10 million settlement with 86 alleged victims. Geoghan was killed in prison by another inmate. (Kevin Wisniewski/AFP/Getty Images) Geoghan, left, and his attorney sit in Middlesex Superior Courthouse in Cambridge, Massachusetts, Jan. 18, 2002, while awaiting a verdict in Geoghan's trial. Geoghan was convicted of indecent assault and battery for improperly touching a 10-year-old boy. He was later sentenced to 9-to-10 years in prison. He was suspected of sexually abusing up to 150 children over 30 years in six Massachusetts parishes, but charged in three cases. One was dropped when the alleged victim wouldn't testify, while another was dropped because the statute of limitations had run out. He was convicted in the third case. The Boston Archdiocese has reached a $10 million settlement with 86 alleged victims. Geoghan was killed in prison by another inmate.
(Kevin Wisniewski/AFP/Getty Images)

Rev. Paul R. Shanley, 71, walks into San Diego Superior Court for a hearing May 3, 2002. He was extradited to Massachusetts, where he was convicted of raping a minor and sentenced to 12 to 15 years in prison. Documents show that church officials were told in the 1990s of abuse allegations against Shanley, settling at least one case against him, and that he had made public statements defending pedophilia.
(David McNew/Getty Images)

Former Catholic priest James Porter stands during a break in testimony in Bristol County Superior Court, in Taunton, Mass., April 14, 2004. Porter pleaded guilty in 1993 to molesting 28 children while he was a priest in Massachusetts during the 1950s and '60s. He was sentenced to 18 to 20 years in prison and served nine, but as his release neared in 2004 the state moved to keep him behind bars via civil commitment. He died in 2005 at age 70 after being transferred to a hospital from prison. Porter had twice been sent to mental hospitals by church authorities after molestation incidents in the 1960s, and was moved from one parish to the next after allegations surfaced.
(Keith Nordstrom/Pool/AP Photo)

Brendan Smyth leaves a courthouse in Northern Ireland after extradition from the Republic of Ireland in this undated photo. Smyth, who died in prison in 1997, was suspected of abusing children in North Dakota, Rhode Island, Italy and Wales as well as Northern Ireland over a four-decade career. For decades his order shuttled him among parishes. He fled from Northern Ireland to the Republic in 1991, and delays in his extradition helped bring down the Irish government. He pleaded guilty in 1994 in Northern Ireland to 17 counts of assaulting five girls and two boys. Earlier this year, an Irish archibishop admitted that he had seen two boys sign documents committing them to silence after testifying against Smyth during an internal church inquiry in the 1970s.
(Brian Little/AP Photo)

John Kelly of the Survivors of Child Abuse, left, looks on as Kevin Flannagan, brother of an abuse victim, shouts at members of the government-appointed Commission to Inquire into Child Abuse in state-funded Catholic Church-run institutions, for being turned away from a press conference at the Conrad Hotel, in Dublin, May 20, 2009. A 2,500-page report on mistreatment in church-run bodies dating back to the 1930s said sexual abuse of children was "endemic" in boys' institutions in Ireland and church leaders knew about it.
(Peter Muhly/AFP/Getty Images)

Peter Isely, right, a spokesman for the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, reacts during victim Arthur Budzinski's address outside the federal courthouse April 22, 2010, in Milwaukee. A federal lawsuit was filed that accuses Pope Benedict XVI and senior Vatican officials of failing to defrock Rev. Lawrence Murphy despite allegations Murphy molested at least 200 deaf children at St. John's School for the Deaf from 1950 to 1975. Lawyers for Budzinski produced a letter from an alleged victim of Murphy that was sent to then-Vatican Secretary of State Angelo Sodano in 1995. In a statement this year, the Archdiocese of Milwaukee referred to Murphy's behavior as "criminal" and apologized to victims. Murphy died in 1998.
(Morry Gash/AP Photo)

Following a hearing at the Walworth County Justice Center, nuns from Mother Teresa's order, the Missionaries of Charity, greet the Rev. Donald McGuire, Sept. 6, 2007, in Elkhorn, Wis. McGuire, a former spiritual advisor to the Missionaries of Charity and Mother Teresa's confessor, was convicted in 2006 of five counts of indecent behavior with a child. On July 20, 2010, the Wisconsin Supreme Court upheld the conviction of the former Jesuit priest, who claimed he was falsely accused. In a 7-0 ruling, justices ruled that McGuire's prosecution 36 years after he allegedly abused two teenage boys in the 1960s was fair.
(Dan Lassiter/The Janesville Gazette/AP Photo)

Pope John Paul II blesses Father Marcial Maciel at the Vatican, Nov. 2004. For years, Maciel, a Mexican priest who founded the Catholic order known as the Legion of Christ, seemed to have powerful connections within the Vatican that allowed to him to weather accusations of pedophilia, drug abuse, and misuse of funds. But John Paul's successor, Pope Benedict XVI, removed Maciel from active priesthood in 2006, and installed an outsider to run the Legion of Christ in 2010. The Legion of Christ has now conceded that Maciel, who died in 2008, fathered at least one child and that there is probably merit to allegations that he molested young seminarians.
(Plinio Lepri/AP Photo)

A May 17, 2002 law enforcement booking photo shows Stephen Kiesle, formerly a priest in Oakland, California. A letter obtained by the Associated Press and bearing the signature of future Pope Benedict XVI shows then-Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger resisted defrocking Kiesle after his case had languished for four years at the Vatican. The 1985 letter was typed in Latin and is part of years of correspondence between the Diocese of Oakland and the Vatican about the proposed defrocking. Kiesle pled no contest to child molestation misdemeanors in 1978. In 2002, Kiesle pled no contest to a felony charge of molesting a girl in 1995. He is now a registered sex offender and still lives in California.

Roger Vangheluwe, Belgium's longest-serving bishop, steps down as Bishop of Bruges on April 23, 2010 after admitting to sexually abusing a young boy about 25 years earlier. In 2000, a commission established by the church had attempted to investigate more than 300 abuse complaints against clergy and church workers, but in about half the cases the alleged abusers refused to testify. In 2009, a second commission was disrupted when police raided the commission's office and confiscated 475 dossiers on abuse suspects. Pope Benedict criticized the raids and sent a message of support to the Archbishop of Brussels.
(Edwin Fontaine/Reuters)

In this undated photo provided by the Vatican newspaper L'Osservatore Romano, Pope Benedict XVI, left, poses with Irish Bishop John Magee at the Vatican. On March 24, 2010 the Pope accepted the resignation of Magee, a former papal aide who stood accused of endangering children by failing to follow the Irish church's own rules on reporting suspected pedophile priests to police. Magee apologized to victims of any pedophile priests who were kept in parish posts since he took charge of the southwest Irish diocese of Cloyne in 1987. Magee was personal secretary to three popes.
(L'Osservatore Romano/AP Photo)

Pope Benedict XVI celebrates a mass in Saint Peter's Square at the Vatican, June 11, 2010. Speaking in Italian to a sea of 15,000 white-clad priests attending Mass in St. Peter's square to celebrate the end of the Year of the Priest, the pope asked for forgiveness from God and from the victims of sexual abuse by priests, "particularly the abuse of the little ones." During an April 2010 visit to Malta, Pope Benedict met with alleged victims of abuse and pledged to bring abusers to justice.
(Tiziana FabiAFP/Getty Images)

 
 

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