ABUSE TRACKER

A digest of links to media coverage of clergy abuse. For recent coverage listed in this blog, read the full article in the newspaper or other media source by clicking “Read original article.” For earlier coverage, click the title to read the original article.

March 22, 2012

Mexico gears up for Pope Benedict XVI’s first visit

MEXICO
Chicago Tribune

By Tracy Wilkinson, Los Angeles Times

Reporting from Leon, Mexico— The Roman Catholic Church in Mexico this year took the unusual step of issuing guidelines on how Mexicans should vote in the upcoming presidential election: Candidates should value marriage as a bond between a man and a woman and should place prime importance on “the right to life, starting at conception.”

Both ideas were clearly aimed at leftist parties and others who have backed same-sex marriage and abortion, legalized in recent years in Mexico City.

Pope Benedict XVI arrives Friday to a Mexico that, officially, is a strictly secular nation. And although the Catholic Church has almost always enjoyed a powerful position, it has taken on a particularly activist role in partisan politics during the last decade. …

And in another controversial move, Benedict is not meeting with victims of sexual abuse by priests, something he has done in most other countries he has visited, including the U.S. This comes despite Mexico having been home to one of the church’s most notorious abusers, the late Rev. Marcial Maciel.

Maciel, who the church now says fathered at least three children by two women and sexually, physically and emotionally abused numerous young seminarians and others, was for years protected by the Vatican under the late Pope John Paul II. A Mexican, Maciel founded the Legionaries of Christ, which rose to become one of the most powerful and influential orders in the Roman Catholic Church. Maciel was frequently at John Paul’s side, especially during his many trips to Mexico.

The Catholic hierarchy in Mexico also defended Maciel for many years and has stayed largely silent since his disgrace. For Benedict to meet with abuse victims, the Mexican bishops would have had to formally request the encounter, as their counterparts did in other countries. They made no such request, Vatican spokesman Father Federico Lombardi said last week.

Note: This is an Abuse Tracker excerpt. Click the title to view the full text of the original article. If the original article is no longer available, see our News Archive.

Abuse charges test Chile’s Catholic faithful

LATIN AMERICA
Aljazeera

[with video]

As Mexico prepares to host Pope Benedict XIV, the Latin American faithful have been rocked by continued allegations of sexual abuse of children by Roman Catholic priests.

Throughout Latin America, the Vatican has been accused of covering up dozens of abuse cases spanning decades.

In the staunchly Catholic nation of Chile, reports of abuse are leading many away from the church.

Note: This is an Abuse Tracker excerpt. Click the title to view the full text of the original article. If the original article is no longer available, see our News Archive.

Lamb addresses church

CORSICANA (TX)
Corsicana Daily Sun

By Janet Jacobs Corsicana Daily Sun

Corsicana — A typical Wednesday evening at Northside Baptist Church involves supper and some socializing, praying and some music, but this Wednesday was different. Gary Welch, the 43-year-old beloved youth minister, and a fixture at the church for the last seven years, was arrested Monday and charged with aggravated sexual assault of a child. He is accused of having a three-year affair with a teenage member of the youth group. He remains in jail in lieu of $150,000 bond. He has been suspended from his job with pay, a move designed to help Welch’s family, according to Pastor Rick Lamb.

Several hundred people attended the Wednesday evening service, many of them in tears, hugging one another and exchanging subdued greetings. Lamb led the Wednesday service, and he expressed his own sorrow over the week’s events.

“I’ve cried a thousand tears. It’s been a rough, rough week,” Lamb told his congregation. Seated on a stool behind a music stand, he spoke frankly and wept as he spoke of the man whom he loved “like a son,” calling this the second-most difficult week of his life.

Note: This is an Abuse Tracker excerpt. Click the title to view the full text of the original article. If the original article is no longer available, see our News Archive.

Watchdog to study abuse complaint

IRELAND
The Irish Times

GENEVIEVE CARBERY

CONCERNS RAISED in the Cloyne report about a Garda failure to investigate abuse complaints are being examined by the Garda Síochána Ombudsman Commission.

The investigation relates to complaints from two women of child sexual abuse by a priest named in the report as Fr Corin.

The report into the Catholic diocese published last year was critical of the lack of a proper Garda investigation into the complaints.

Note: This is an Abuse Tracker excerpt. Click the title to view the full text of the original article. If the original article is no longer available, see our News Archive.

Activists in Mexico Want to Be Heard by the Pope

MEXICO
IPS

By Emilio Godoy

MEXICO CITY, Mar 21, 2012 (IPS) – Spiralling violence, demands for justice voiced by victims of child sexual abuse at the hands of Roman Catholic priests, and ordination of women priests are issues that, in the view of experts and activists, Pope Benedict XVI will not be able to evade in his visit to Mexico.

The pope “does not have a specific policy for different groups in society, as did (his predecessor) John Paul II, who had distinct ways of approaching young people, intellectuals and indigenous people, for example,” said Elio Masferrer, an expert at the National School of Anthropology and History.

Masferrer told IPS that the Church is turning away from a strategy based on addressing the needs and concerns of the Catholic grassroots social base, and reaching out instead only to the elite.

“This is a great weakness. The Church is in a state of paralysis. The faithful do not follow what the hierarchy lays down, and therefore the leadership has lost its power to influence the daily lives of Catholics,” he said.

Note: This is an Abuse Tracker excerpt. Click the title to view the full text of the original article. If the original article is no longer available, see our News Archive.

Kalispell Priest Faces Child Porn Charge

MONTANA
NBC Montana

[with video]

By Scott Zoltan

KALISPELL, Mont. — Rudy Bullman, a longtime priest at the Risen Christ Catholic Church in Kalispell, has been accused of sexual abuse of children. Prosecutors charged Bullman with the felony after investigators said they found child porn on his computer.

The investigation started in October, when a woman purchased a gaming system from Bullman and reported it held pictures of naked young boys.

“There were some images on there that disturbed the person, so that started our investigation,” said Flathead Sheriff Chuck Curry.

Bullman allegedly told investigators that he used the system to view gay porn, but that he only accessed sites which represented the boys were over eighteen. Court documents say investigators found child pornography on his computer. After being charged, Bullman was released on his own recognizance.

Note: This is an Abuse Tracker excerpt. Click the title to view the full text of the original article. If the original article is no longer available, see our News Archive.

Montana Catholic Priest Accused Of Possessing Child Pornography

MONTANA
Lez Get Real

Posted by: Bridgette P. LaVictoire on March 21, 2012

Father Rudolph Carl Bullman, 67, is a priest at Risen Christ Parish in Kalispell has been charged with felony sexual abuse of children stemming from his alleged possession of digital images of nude boys on his computer. He was arraigned in Flathead County District Court in Montana. He has been out of jail on his own recognizance and on administrative leave from the Church since 16 November.

He was put on administrative leave as soon as the Roman Catholic Diocese of Helena first learned of the investigation. Diocese spokeswoman Renee St. Martin Wizeman stated “We were made aware of an investigation by the Flathead County Attorney’s Office and at that time he was placed on administrative leave, which is what our policies and procedures call for.”

Note: This is an Abuse Tracker excerpt. Click the title to view the full text of the original article. If the original article is no longer available, see our News Archive.

Kalispell Catholic priest faces sexual abuse of children charges

MONTANA
KAJ

by Dax VanFossen (KAJ News)

KALISPELL- A Kalispell Catholic priest is arrested on charges of sexual abuse of children. Rudy Bullman was charged back in late February, but had been placed on administrative leave since December 16th of 2011.

According to court documents, the case began after a handheld gaming system, sold by Bullman, was found to have photographs of nude boys on it.

Bullman was the Catholic priest at Risen Christ Parish in Evergreen for more than 10 years. If convicted, Bullman could face up to 10 years in prison.

Note: This is an Abuse Tracker excerpt. Click the title to view the full text of the original article. If the original article is no longer available, see our News Archive.

Belleville Diocese settles sex abuse suits

BELLEVILLE (IL)
Belleville News-Democrat

BY GEORGE PAWLACZYK – News-Democrat

BELLEVILLE — Three lawsuits settled on Tuesday in St. Clair County Court involving two priests of the Catholic Diocese of Belleville brings to at least five the number of victims of sexual abuse of a minor by a priest of the diocese that have resulted in monetary damages.

While the previous payouts total $7.5 million for two lawsuits — $6.3 million paid to James Wisniewski last year and $1.2 million to a victim identified only as “John Doe” in 2009 — the amount of damages in the newly announced agreements is confidential by agreement of the parties.

Belleville plaintiffs attorney Mike Weilmuenster said the agreement to settle the lawsuits contained a clause in each stating that the exact amount of damages cannot be disclosed. However, he said, “It is a substantial sum.”

Note: This is an Abuse Tracker excerpt. Click the title to view the full text of the original article. If the original article is no longer available, see our News Archive.

Garda Ombudsman to investigate sex abuse complaints

IRELAND
The Journal

THE GARDA SÍOCHÁNA Ombudsman Commission (GSOC) is to investigate how the gardaí handled a number of complaints of sex abuse as outlined in the Cloyne Report.

The GSOC made the announcement last night, saying that it has decided to open an investigation, under section 102(4) of the Garda Síochana Act 2005, into “certain matters arising from the Commission of Investigation Report into the Catholic Diocese of Cloyne”.

It said that the matters arise from chapter 10 of the report and relate to garda behaviour. This includes concerns stated in the report about the gardaí involvement in the case involving a priest described as ‘Father Corin’.

Note: This is an Abuse Tracker excerpt. Click the title to view the full text of the original article. If the original article is no longer available, see our News Archive.

March 21, 2012

“Hare, hunter, field” — Castration for deviancy

UNITED STATES
GetReligion

The New York Post usually wins the award for best worst headline amongst the New York metropolitan papers. “Headless body in topless bar” remains my favorite.

The New York Times however is giving the Post a run for their money. In the 21 March 2012 issue on page A4 we have “Dutch Church is accused of castrating young men”.

This is not a story for the faint of heart. And, if you were looking for a fair, informed treatment of the story, look elsewhere.

Here is the lede.

A young man in the care of the Roman Catholic Church in the Netherlands was surgically castrated decades ago after complaining about sexual abuse, according to new evidence that only adds to the scandal engulfing the church there.

The case, which dates from the 1950s, has increased pressure for a government-led inquiry into sexual abuse in the Dutch church, amid suspicions that as many as 10 young men may have suffered the same fate.

Note: This is an Abuse Tracker excerpt. Click the title to view the full text of the original article. If the original article is no longer available, see our News Archive.

We shouldn’t blame the Catholic Church …

NETHERLANDS
The Telegraph (United Kingdom)

We shouldn’t blame the Catholic Church for the shocking Dutch castrations before we know all the facts

Tim Stanley

There is nothing sadder or sicker than child abuse. Somehow it seems even worse when the abuser is a figure of trust – a parent, a teacher or a priest. And so the world was understandably horrified when the story came out of The Netherlands this week that a Dutch boy who had been sexually abused by a Catholic priest in the 1950s was castrated by doctors as a form of “punishment”. It’s a revolting, tragic incident that many have taken as a damning indictment of the Catholic Church’s grip over Dutch society.

The story is, however, rather more complicated than it first looks. The website GetReligion.org has done a brilliant deconstruction of the tragedy that points to a notable lack of either sourcing or context in the American reporting. Innuendo abounds – and that’s not fair either to the Church or the children who suffered in its care.

Here’s how the New York Times first covered it: “The victim, Henk Heithuis, lived in Catholic institutions from infancy after being taken into care. When he complained about sexual abuse to the police, Mr. Heithuis, 20 at the time, was transferred to a Catholic psychiatric hospital before being admitted to the St Joseph Hospital in Veghel, where he was castrated [in 1956].” Heithuis befriended a sculptor called Cornelius Rogge and showed him his scars (the two men appear to have exchanged letters but details are not given in the NYT report). Heithuis died in a road accident in 1958.

Note: This is an Abuse Tracker excerpt. Click the title to view the full text of the original article. If the original article is no longer available, see our News Archive.

Kremsmünster: Alles nur Sex & Crime?

OSTERREICH
Nachrichten

Die im Internat des Stiftes Kremsmünster aufgedeckten Missbrauchs- und Gewaltfälle scheinen die journalistische Lust an derartigem “Sex-Horror” anzuheizen – diesen Eindruck erweckt jedenfalls ein neuer Bericht in einem österreichischen Wochenmagazin.

Wer wie ich acht Jahre in diesem Internat war, weiß, wovon er redet: Ja, es gab auch in unserem Jahrgang sexuelle und gewalttätige Übergriffe. Nicht Betroffene wie ich haben das zwar “irgendwie” gewusst: “wirklich wissen” hätte geheißen, es ohne Peinlichkeit und Rücksichtnahme auf Opfer wahrnehmen und sagen zu können. Man kennt diese Dynamik aus Peinlichkeit, Scham und diffusem Unbehagen aus derartigen Traumatisierungen in autoritären Institutionen zur Genüge. Deshalb ist die Veröffentlichung solcher Missstände wie im Jahr 2010 wichtig. Ein Mail-Wechsel unter Klassenkollegen legte dann nach 40 Jahren (!) offen, was Einzelnen zugestoßen war.

Note: This is an Abuse Tracker excerpt. Click the title to view the full text of the original article. If the original article is no longer available, see our News Archive.

Trotz Kritik von der Kirchenbasis

DEUTSCHLAND
dradio

[mit Audio]

Katholischer Missbrauchsbeauftragter will pädophile Priester weiterbeschäftigen

Von Ludger Fittkau

Ausgerechnet der Trierer Bischof Stephan Ackermann, Missbrauchsbeauftragter der Deutschen Bischofskonferenz, beschäftige sieben als pädophil aufgefallene Pfarrer, behauptet “Der Spiegel”. Das Bistum bestätigt diese Zahl nicht. Klar ist aber: Es gibt die Täter im kirchlichen Dienst. Die Kirchenbasis kritisiert vor allem, dass sie in der Seelsorge eingesetzt werden.

Stephan Ackermann hat ein Problem: Seit zwei Jahren ist der Trierer Bischof der Missbrauchsbeauftragte der Deutschen Bischofskonferenz. In dieser Funktion muss er vor allem dafür Sorgen, dass die Opfer sexuellen Missbrauchs in der Kirche Gehör finden.

Note: This is an Abuse Tracker excerpt. Click the title to view the full text of the original article. If the original article is no longer available, see our News Archive.

“Vom Pastor zum Psychiater und dann zum Chirurgen”

NIEDERLANDE
Welt

In den Niederlanden soll die Kirche in den 50ern Jungen in ihrer Obhut kastriert haben – angeblich, um deren Homosexualität zu heilen. Ohne das Einverständnis der Eltern.

Die Aufregung um den Missbrauchskandal in der katholischen Kirche in den Niederlanden legt sich nicht – im Gegenteil: Am Wochenende löste ein Bericht des liberalen “Handelsblads” aus Rotterdam neuen Wirbel aus.

Note: This is an Abuse Tracker excerpt. Click the title to view the full text of the original article. If the original article is no longer available, see our News Archive.

Römisch-katholische Kirche unter Kastrationsverdacht

NIEDERLANDE
Heise

Peter Mühlbauer 21.03.2012

In den 1950er Jahren soll der Eingriff angeblich zur “Heilung von Homosexualität” eingesetzt worden sein

Bis ins 19. Jahrhundert hinein war die Kastration von Knaben zur Vorbereitung auf eine Sängerkarriere in Europa nicht unüblich. Nun wurden in den Niederlanden Vorwürfe laut, dass noch in den 1950er Jahren Jungen kastriert wurden, um deren Homosexualität zu “heilen”. Besonders schwerwiegend sind diese Vorwürfe auch deshalb, weil es dem NRC Handelsblad zufolge in mindestens einem Fall einen nach damaligen Recht Minderjährigen traf, der sich vorher über sexuellen Missbrauch in seinem römisch-katholischen Heim beschwerte.

Dessen Anschuldigung führte zwar zur Verurteilung zweier Kirchenmänner, aber auch dazu, dass Henk H. von der Polizei in eine psychiatrische Klinik der römisch-katholischen Kirche und anschließend in das Sankt-Josephs-Krankenhaus in Veghel verbracht wurde. Dort wurde er Gerichtsdokumenten nach im Alter von zwanzig “auf eigenen Wunsch” kastriert. Volljährig wurde man damals erst mit einundzwanzig. Und seltsamerweise liegt kein Dokument vor, auf dem H. diesen angeblichen Wunsch mit seiner Unterschrift bestätigt.

Note: This is an Abuse Tracker excerpt. Click the title to view the full text of the original article. If the original article is no longer available, see our News Archive.

Vatican ‘Shamed’ by Irish Sex Scandal, Asks Victims for Forgiveness

IRELAND
The Christian Post

By Luiza Oleszczuk, Christian Post Reporter

March 21, 2012

A Vatican delegation to Ireland concluded Tuesday in an investigative report on causes of an Irish sex abuse scandal that came to light several years ago that local church leaders were guilty of negligence. Delegates also asked victims for forgiveness in the name of the Roman Catholic Church, and vowed to continue to implement reform to further protect children.

The report is a conclusion of the two-year investigation by seven Vatican-appointed church leaders who visited four archdioceses across Ireland; the report was promised by Pope Benedict XVI in his letter to Catholics in Ireland in 2010. It looked at the church’ s dealings with survivors of abuse and current child protection policies.

The report on sexual abuse of Irish children by Catholic clergy blames Ireland’s religious leaders. Investigators said church authorities, including some bishops, had failed to understand and react to the problem. In the report summary, church delegates asked victims for forgiveness in the name of the Roman Catholic Church.

Note: This is an Abuse Tracker excerpt. Click the title to view the full text of the original article. If the original article is no longer available, see our News Archive.

MPs call for inquiry into Catholic castrations

NETHERLANDS
Gulf News

Reuters
March 22, 2012

Amsterdam: The Dutch parliament on Tuesday called for an investigation into reports that Catholic clerics ordered castration of young males in the 1950s in an attempt to cure their homosexuality.

Dutch MPs raised questions in parliament over a weekend report in Dutch newspaper NRC Handelsblad saying boys from a Catholic boarding school had been castrated.

“All these horrible reports strengthen me to call for a parliamentary investigation and perhaps even an enquiry,” Labour member of parliament Khadija Arib said in a debate.

Note: This is an Abuse Tracker excerpt. Click the title to view the full text of the original article. If the original article is no longer available, see our News Archive.

Dutch Parliament to Investigate Church Castration Reports

NETHERLANDS
Voice of America

Posted Wednesday, March 21st

The Dutch parliament has called for an investigation into reports that Catholic clerics ordered castrations of boys in the 1950s in an attempt to cure their homosexuality.

Dutch lawmakers discussed the issue Tuesday after a report in the local newspaper NRC Handelsblad said more than 10 boys from a Catholic boarding school had been castrated.

The report focused on a man named Henk Hethuis who allegedly was castrated in 1956 on the instruction of Catholic clergy, after telling police he was being sexually abused by priests.

Note: This is an Abuse Tracker excerpt. Click the title to view the full text of the original article. If the original article is no longer available, see our News Archive.

Dutch Catholic Church Is Accused Of Castrating Boys

NETHERLANDS
NPR

by Eyder Peralta

Dutch lawmakers are calling for a parliamentary hearing, today, after new allegations of abuse by the Catholic Church surfaced over the weekend. This time, an investigation by the newspaper NRC Handelsblad found that Catholic-run institutions had surgically castrated young boys.

The paper said it had uncovered at least 11 cases in the 1950s. According to The Guardian, the paper focused on one boy who complained about being sexually abused. Police took the boy to a Catholic psychiatric ward, where he was declared a homosexual and castrated.

As awful that sounds, perhaps the bigger story here is that back in 2010, the the Conference of Bishops and the Dutch Religious Conference formed a commission to investigate abuse in the church. In December, it issued a 1,100-page report, which detailed extensive abuse, but it did not mention castrations.

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Self-anointed monk arrested

ST. LOUIS (MO)
WCF Courier

By DENNIS MAGEE, dennis.magee@wcfcourier.com

ST. LOUIS, Mo. — The figure some in Buchanan County knew as the Most Rev. and Lord Abbot Ryan St. Anne Scott is awaiting extradition today in the St. Louis County Jail.

“We’ll probably go get him at the beginning of the week,” said Sgt. Scott Cordle, chief of jail operations for the Knox County Sheriff’s Office in Illinois.

Scott, a self-anointed monk, is facing three counts of financial exploitation of an elderly person; three counts of theft and one count of deceptive practices, according to Cordle. Each charge is a felony in Illinois.

Authorities issued the arrest warrant Feb. 29. Deputies collected Scott at 8:30 a.m. Tuesday at a house on Sweet Gum Drive in St. Louis. One of Scott’s associates, Thomas Bertke, reportedly lives there.

Note: This is an Abuse Tracker excerpt. Click the title to view the full text of the original article. If the original article is no longer available, see our News Archive.

Anonymous Hacks Christian Websites In Mexico: “POPE is not welcome, out out!!!!!”

MEXICO
International Business Times

By Jacob Kleinman

March 21, 2012

Anonymous Hispano, the Mexican branch of the online hacktivist collective based in Latin America lay siege to two Mexican websites on Tue, March 20 in protest of Pope Benedict XVI’s upcoming visit in an cyber-operation referred to as #opFariseo (hypocrite) on Twitter. The hackers succeeded in temporarily knocking the websites offline and defacing them with their own message: “Hacked system. The POPE is not welcome, out out!!!!!”

Both hacked websites were linked to the Pope’s planned visit to the country this Friday through Monday, before the religious leader continues his tour in Cuba. The website of the Achdiocese of Mexico was down for several hours on Tue. March 20 as was the website of the Institute of Communications and Philosophy (Comfil), which is usually devoted to teaching philosophy.

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Why the Irish Church must fumigate its seminaries

IRELAND
Daily Mail (United Kingdom)

By Mark Dooley

Yesterday, the Vatican published a report based on an Apostolic Visitation to the Irish Church last year. In response to the deep and disturbing crisis which has engulfed the Catholic Church, Pope Benedict XVI dispatched a number of senior prelates to Ireland with a view to ascertaining the true extent of the disaster. Nothing could have prepared them for what they encountered.

When the Pope announced his intention to send a delegation to Ireland, I was lecturing at Maynooth University – the home of Ireland’s National Seminary. I got to know many of the seminarians as they were obliged to attend my philosophy lectures. They also knew that, as someone with a public profile, I was in a position to highlight their grievances.

Those grievances were shocking – so shocking that I did not hesitate to use my column in the Irish Daily Mail to expose them. Here is a sample of what I wrote in May 2010, and which I subsequently reproduced in my book Why Be a Catholic?

‘Irish seminaries are hotbeds of serious moral decay which is devastating the Church in this country. Their culture is one that rejects piety and holiness in favour of religious laxity and moral confusion. This is resulting in priests who barely believe in the doctrine they are ordained to promote.

Note: This is an Abuse Tracker excerpt. Click the title to view the full text of the original article. If the original article is no longer available, see our News Archive.

ARCHBISHOP CHAPUT FORMS PASTORAL COUNCIL

PHILADELPHIA (PA)
Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Philadelphia

Archbishop Charles J. Chaput, O.F.M Cap., recently met with the newly founded Pastoral Council of the Archdiocese of Philadelphia. The Pastoral Council is an advisory group to the Archbishop that examines the pastoral activities of the Archdiocese of Philadelphia and offers practical counsel to promote the mission of the Church.

While similar councils exist in parishes throughout the Archdiocese, this is the first time that an Archbishop of Philadelphia has established a Pastoral Council for the entire Archdiocese.

Archbishop Chaput said, “The council we now have in place is a local snapshot of the whole People of God, with intelligent, dedicated Catholics from every walk of life. In both of my previous places of ministry as bishop – Rapid City and Denver – the diocesan pastoral council was a vital source of collaboration and help in my work. I look forward to the same good working friendship with council members here in Philadelphia.”

The Archdiocesan Pastoral Council consists of Archbishop Chaput and four additional administrators from the Archdiocese who serve in an ex-officio capacity, as well as up to 30 members selected from around the Archdiocese. Some are nominated by particular Deaneries. Others are appointed “at large.” The Council currently includes 12 lay women, 11 lay men, one priest, one deacon, and one consecrated religious woman.

Note: This is an Abuse Tracker excerpt. Click the title to view the full text of the original article. If the original article is no longer available, see our News Archive.

Archbishop Chaput Addresses Financial Transparency

PHILADELPHIA (PA)
Catholics4Change

March 21, 2012

ARCHBISHOP CHAPUT’S WEEKLY COLUMN:
THE NATURE OF THE CHURCH AND THE IMPORTANCE OF LAY ACTION

In the next few months, at my request, the Catholic Standard and Times will publish a report on the financial condition of the Archdiocese of Philadelphia, including its offices, ministry programs and many of its related agencies and non-profit corporations.

Too often we think of the Church as an institution, and institutions are hard to love. The structures of Catholic life are required by canon and civil law, and they’re important. But they’re also secondary. At her heart, the Church is a family, a community of believers. Like any family, her members have mutual obligations of respect and accountability. This has practical consequences. We ask our people to be generous. As a result, they have a right to know that their resources, which the Church holds in trust for them, are used properly.

To put it another way: We can’t be confident about the future; we can’t even begin to solve our problems; unless we’re well informed. Much of this year’s financial information will be new. Some of it will be quite sobering. Nonetheless, beginning this year and every year in the future, we will provide to our people as full a picture of our financial life as a Church as we reasonably can.

Note: This is an Abuse Tracker excerpt. Click the title to view the full text of the original article. If the original article is no longer available, see our News Archive.

Silva Redigonda, Providing Pastoral Psychotherapy

CANADA
Silva Redigonda

Pedophile Priests
Two summers ago I had to submit a post grad proposal for a research paper. I have debated posting it on my blog because the subject is so controversial and personal. However, after reading this morning’s Toronto Sun, page 47, I felt that the time had arrived, to be risqué once again. I allow myself the luxury of reading the paper each morning now as I drink my coffee. I have read the Sun since its’ birth. This morning Peter Worthington, the founding editor reported the New York Times accepting an anti-Catholic ad of $38,000. “The ad was in the form of a letter that asked Catholics: “”Why send your children to parochial schools to be indoctrinated…sex scandals involving preying priests, church complicity, collusion and cover up going all the way to the top.”” It reminded me of an ad a while ago in the TTC which indicated “There is no God” or words to that effect which was soon removed. I wondered as I read this morning’s paper, how many children $38,000 could feed? I was also very disappointed in the New York Times as I had always thought it a cut above the rest. But why, I pondered did I? I even stopped watching Harry’s Law because of some negative remarks about Catholics on the show. Cathy Bates is such an amazing actor that the words were even more biting.

That summer when I conducted the research, it was very difficult and I wept more than once. It reminded me of when I asked a professor why there was no study provided, about Satanism and he indicated that it would be too difficult a topic to study for the length of time required for a university credit. At the end of my research, after gleaning that pedophiles are in such great numbers and appear to be among everyone, I would have rephrased my hypothesis, to the Roman Catholic Church being an unfair target of media attacks in regards to pedophile priests. My research was soul wrenching. One pedophile priest who was rightfully kicked out of the Church, was roaming freely in his country of origin and children could be seen nearby on the video as he bashed the Catholic Church, not taking any responsibility for his actions.

Note: This is an Abuse Tracker excerpt. Click the title to view the full text of the original article. If the original article is no longer available, see our News Archive.

Belleville Diocese Settles Priest Abuse Lawsuits

BELLVILLE (IL)
KMOX

Brian Kelly
March 21, 2012 1:18 PM

BELLEVILLE, Il (KMOX)- Three people who alleged they were abused by priests in the late 70′s and early 80′s have settled their lawsuits against the Belleville Diocese.

Two of the suits were filed against the Reverend Raymond Kownacki for abuse that allegedly took place at St. Theresa’s Church in Salem, the other was against the Reverend Jerome Ratermann for abuse that allegedly took place at Saints Peter and Paul parish in Waterloo.

The victims’ attorney, Mike Weilmuenster tells KMOX his clients were glad to avoid going to trial, “It’s a roller-coaster ride for these victims. First of all having the courage to come forward and file a lawsuit and all that entails, and having their family investigated and those kind of things”

Note: This is an Abuse Tracker excerpt. Click the title to view the full text of the original article. If the original article is no longer available, see our News Archive.

Visitation criticised …

IRELAND
Club Bible

Published on March 21st, 2012

ONE IN FOUR, a support group for those who experienced sexual abuse in Ireland, has said the Vatican is still not accepting responsibility for its role “in creating the culture of purposeful cover-ups” in the Catholic Church.

Responding to the findings of the Apostolic Visitation, the organisation said it was disappointed the Vatican did not acknowledge that its interventions in the abuse scandal had allowed individual Catholic Church leaders in Ireland to ignore guidelines.

In a statement, executive director Maeve Lewis said, “While we welcome the findings of the Visitation that the Irish Church now has good child protection practices in place, we feel it is a lost opportunity to address the role played by the Vatican in perpetuating the policy of protecting abusive priests at the expense of children.”

Note: This is an Abuse Tracker excerpt. Click the title to view the full text of the original article. If the original article is no longer available, see our News Archive.

Catholic Church Accused of ‘Bullying’ Organization Representing Clergy Sex Abuse Victims

UNITED STATES
Christian Post

By Luiza Oleszczuk, Christian Post Reporter

March 21, 2012

A victims advocacy organization alleging pressure from lawyers representing the Roman Catholic Church to hand over confidential documents related to clergy sex abuse cases claims the tactics being used are akin to “bullying” and “intimidation.” Church officials deny, however, that any tactics are being used to pressure the group.

The advocacy group, the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, or SNAP, has been uniting clergy sex abuse victims since 1991, offering counseling, group support and legal advisement. The group is known for having filed a lawsuit against top Vatican leaders, including Pope Benedict XVI, at the International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague in Sept. 2011.

When lawyers representing the Catholic Church in two sexual abuse cases, one in Kansas and one in Missouri, requested in Dec. 2011 that SNAP release confidential documents, including emails between the organization and abuse victims as well as whistle-blowers and witnesses, SNAP viewed the request as a form of harassment.

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SNAP’S DEFENDERS SHOW TRUE COLORS

UNITED STATES
Catholic League

Catholic League president Bill Donohue comments on those who continue to defend the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests (SNAP):

Last week we released a report on SNAP that showed beyond a reasonable doubt what an utter fraud the organization is (click here to read it). It was not an essay; it was not an op-ed; it was not conjecture; it was not our opinion. It was the voice of David Clohessy, the director of SNAP. When coupled with our report last summer on the proceedings of its national convention (it offered irrefutable proof of its hate-filled agenda) it cannot be maintained by any serious observer what SNAP is all about.

The credibility of those who continue to defend this wholly discredited organization is on the line. That would include the editorial board of the New York Times and the Newark Star-Ledger (the latter offered a particularly vicious statement), as well as pundits such as Andrew Sullivan. That the near-moribund National Organization for Women and the Feminist Majority should weigh in is not surprising: though SNAP has nothing to do with women’s rights, it has everything to do with attacking the Catholic Church, and that is music to the ear of radical feminists. But it is Frank Bruni, an op-ed columnist for the New York Times, who needs to be answered more than anyone; he loves SNAP.

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Belleville Diocese settles 3 sexual abuse lawsuits

BELLEVILLE (IL)
News-Democrat

Three lawsuits pending against the Catholic Diocese of Belleville that alleged sexual abuse of a minor by a priest have been settled, Belleville attorney Mike Weilmuenster said today.

Weilmuenster said the agreement to settle contained a clause stating that the exact amount of damages cannot be disclosed. However, he said, “It is a substantial sum.”

At least two of the lawsuits involved allegations against the Rev. Raymond Kownacki, a priest of the diocese who was removed from ministry more than 15 years ago after he after allegations of sexual abuse were made against him to a diocesan review board.

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Jesuit Leader’s Roommate Molests Disabled Boy

UNITED STATES
Dallas Blog

by Tom McGregor

Wed, Mar 21, 2012

Rev. Thomas Smolich was recently appointed as president of all 17,000 Jesuit priests based in the United States of America. His former roommate in California was Fr. Mariano, who was sued and arrested for sexually abusing a disabled boy in his bedroom at the Provincial for the Jesuits at the Sacred Heart Center in Los Gatos.

Fr. Smolich has a long history of protecting sex predators. He provided free food and lodging for several accused and convicted Jesuit rapists and child molesters at the Sacred Heart Center, including: Fr. Conner, Fr. Jerold Linner, Fr. Edward Burke and Fr. Moniz.

The Jesuits settled a lawsuit “concerning the death of a wheelchair bound member at the facility.

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State House News — House leader sees momentum behind child sex abuse bill

BOSTON (MA)
Wicked Local Weymouth

By Colleen Quinn, State House News Service

Boston —

Rosanne Sliney was 5 years old when her uncle allegedly started sexually abusing her, abuse that would last until she was 14 years old.

When she was an adult, her uncle wrote her a letter apologizing for the alleged abuse, she said. The letter could be used as evidence against him, but the alleged crimes have passed the statute of limitations, making it impossible for her to press charges, she said.

Sliney and other childhood sexual abuse victims gathered at the capitol Wednesday pushing lawmakers to pass legislation that would eliminate the statute of limitations for sex abuse crimes against children. Advocates said they have overwhelming support among House lawmakers to get it passed, with 101 state representatives saying they favor changing the law – enough for it to pass in the 158-member House.

They asked that the bill be released from committee for debate and a floor vote in the House.

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Pecados de sacerdote opacan la visita del Papa Benedicto XVI a México

CULIACáN (MEXICO)
Carlos Sagatan Blog [Managua, Nicaragua]

March 21, 2012

By Agaton

Read original article

Víctima exige a la Iglesia Católica mexicana que reconozca los abusos sexuales 

Jesús Romero Colín quiere una entrevista con Benedicto XVI.  Si consigue la audiencia, no será para contarle que cuando tenía 10 años era monaguillo, tampoco para explicarle que alguna vez quiso ser sacerdote, ni para confesarle que perdió la fe y que ya no cree en Dios.  Quiere hablar con el Sumo Pontífice para decirle que fue abusado sexualmente por un cura y que se trata de una de las tantas víctimas mexicanas que claman y exigen justicia. 

El caso Romero Colín se conoció por primera vez en 2007 cuando la periodista y escritora, Sanjuana Martínez, publicó el libro ‘Manto Púrpura y prueba de fe: la red de cardenales obispos’.  La obra denuncia las violaciones cometidas por el presbítero Carlos López Valdez, quien recién cuatro años más tarde fue sancionado por la Congregación para la Doctrina de la Fe, el ex Santo Oficio.  El 25 de febrero le fue notificada una resolución inapelable del Vaticano: se le decretó la dimisión del estado clerical.

“Carlos López, además de ser un pederasta, es un pornógrafo”, dice Martínez.  “Tenía cientos de fotos de niños y de Jesús Romero en su poder.  Las fotografías son de un contenido muy explícito.  Y no las íbamos a exponer cuando presentamos el libro.  Solo mostramos algunas”, agrega.

El Papa llegará a México el 23 de marzo para una visita de tres días. Luego viajará a Cuba.

Cordero de Dios

Tres años después de la publicación del libro de Martínez apareció el documental ‘Agnus Dei’ (Cordero de Dios), de la cineasta y documentalista mexicana Alejandra Sánchez.  La cinta constituye una denuncia, un grito de agonía para detener la pederastia, un reclamo, un llamado de atención que, cuando fue exhibido en las salas de cine, dejó boquiabiertos a un público que todavía no logra comprender la gravedad de un escándalo que hace tambalear a la Santa Sede.

En ‘Agnus Dei’ Romero Colín narra los abusos a que fue sometido por el presbítero López Valdés entre los 11 y los 16 años de edad, la difícil y compleja lucha de todos los días para vencer los traumas y lesiones causadas por las reiteradas violaciones sexuales, la pérdida de la inocencia de un niño y la búsqueda del sacerdote por todas las parroquias de México para mirarlo a la cara y pedirle explicaciones.

“En México existe un inmovilismo absoluto por parte de la Iglesia en el tema de los abusos sexuales de los sacerdotes”, dice Sanjuana Martínez.  Añade que la Iglesia mexicana cuenta con “clínicas” que albergan a pederastas, y que una de ellas, en Jalisco, ha atendido a más de 550 abusadores provenientes de 16 países.  “En México hay tres casas, dos en Guadalajara y una en el Estado de México, Casa Damasco”, la misma donde en 2007 la Arquidiócesis Primada le pidió a López Valdez que ingresara y atendiera sus “conductas inadecuadas”, y evitara el “escándalo”.

López Valdés no hizo caso y siguió ejerciendo después del primer llamado de atención hecho por el Obispo Auxiliar de México y Vicario Episcopal, Jonás Guerrero, el 13 de septiembre de 2007.  En el documental Agnus Dei se muestra oficiando misa y, al final, aparece sentado frente Romero Colín, quien lo grabó con una cámara oculta y donde reconoce los abusos que cometió.

Dolor inexplicable

“Yo no lo voy a perdonar nunca”, dice Romero. En otra escena cuenta que “la primera vez me trató de penetrar y me lastimó mucho, mucho” (…)  “Yo le dije: Padre, esto está mal. El me dijo: No, yo te quiero mucho y tú me quieres mucho.  Me mató espiritualmente”.

En otro pasaje del documental Romero refiere que López Valdés había sugerido que “lo que en la noche pasa en la noche se queda”.  Al término de la denuncia cinematográfica la víctima afirma que el padre Carlos “me robó mi vida”.

Romero conoció a López cuando tenía 10 años “en la parroquia de San Agustín de las Cuevas, en la Ciudad de México.  Yo acudía a esa parroquia con mi madre todos los domingos, mi madre es muy creyente y yo siempre la acompañaba, me gustaba estar con ella y además sentía que hacia algo bueno al ir a la casa de Dios”, recuerda.

“El sacerdote pidió acólitos para el servicio del altar.  Mi madre me preguntó, muy entusiasmada, si yo quería participar.  No pude negarme.  El sacerdote puso especial atención en mí.  ¿Por qué?  No lo sé, yo supongo que ellos saben rastrear los casos en donde los menores son más vulnerables”, dijo.

Romero dice que tal vez y porque “en mi situación había una falta de figura paterna, ya que mi padre trabajaba mucho y llegaba muy cansado a la casa” fue una causa de debilidad que permitió ocurrieran los abusos a que fue objeto durante seis años.  “Mi familia tenía grandes problemas económicos.  Entonces mi madre buscaba refugio en la iglesia y por ende en los representantes de Dios en la tierra: los sacerdotes.  El sacerdote y mi madre fueron cosechando una relación, donde mi madre le expresaba no solo sus problemas, si no su deseo porque yo fuera sacerdote”.

“El cura aprovechó todo esto para pedirles a mis padres hacerse cargo de mi formación espiritual y académica, con la condición de que me fuera a vivir con él, ya que así estaría totalmente al pendiente de mi”, contó Romero.

El infierno del padre López

Los abusos del padre López comenzaron “en una casa de campo que tiene en Cuernavaca”, relató Romero.  Tenía 11 años de edad.  “Le pidió permiso a mis papas para que me dejara pasar un fin de semana con él.  Al anochecer me pidió que me acostara con él, a pesar de que había dos recamaras más.  Sentí algo muy raro el que yo fuera a dormir con un sacerdote en la misma cama, era como si yo no pudiera compartir ese lugar, que a pesar de estar fuera de la parroquia estaba, al menos para mí, impregnado de algo sagrado.  Yo me puse mi pijama para dormir, pero él me dijo que eso era antihigiénico, que me la quitara (el pijama).  Obedecí con mucha pena, ya que nunca había estado desnudo delante de alguien que no fuera mi familia”.

“En la madrugada comencé a sentir que me tocaban mis partes intimas, desperté asustado y me di cuenta que era el sacerdote Carlos López.  No supe cómo reaccionar, simplemente no lo podía creer.  A lo único que me pude aferrar fue a pensar que el estaba dormido”.

Al día siguiente del primer abuso Romero guardó silencio.  “El no comentó nada y yo tampoco, él actuó como normalmente lo hacía, como un padre.  Seguí la vida que llevaba con él, acudiendo a la parroquia para ayudar a las celebraciones y para elaborar mis tareas escolares.  En esa semana en la biblioteca del sacerdote encontré revistas de pornografía homosexual.  Fue un trauma para mí. Inmediatamente lo relacioné con lo que había pasado en Cuernavaca y sentí temor, pero sobretodo una gran culpa”.

“Una semana después él habló con mis papas para que yo me fuera a vivir definitivamente a la parroquia con él.  Yo no quería, tenía miedo, pero me sentí atrapado entre los deseos de mi madre y entre el silencio que guardé.  Tal vez suene, ilógico pero pensaba que me culparían por no haber hablado o que no creerían lo que les dijera.  Me sentía atrapado”.

El infierno al que Romero fue llevado por el padre López duró más de cinco años. Después cayó en un depresión profunda que lo acercaron a la muerte.

“Excesos” de “cariño”

Al final de Agnus Dei Jesús Romero se reúne y encara al padre López.  El encuentro fue grabado por una cámara oculta que la víctima llevaba oculta en el ojal de su camisa.

“Quiero que me explique qué fue lo que pasó”, exige con la voz entrecortada por el llanto y el miedo.  “¿Por qué se dieron las cosas así?  ¿Por qué no fue diferente?  ¿Por qué no fue como debió haber sido?  Cuando lo conocí fue maravilloso y lo empecé a querer mucho, como una figura paterna.  Pero cuando abusó de mí, vino toda la concusión. Por eso eran muchas actitudes mías de que no iba a la escuela, me levantaba tarde y todo el día estaba borracho. En realidad a mi me jodió toda mi vida, padre…”

López Valdés guarda silencio, sentado en un sillón mirando fijamente a Romero. Juega con los dedos de su mano derecha.

“Quiero saber por qué lo hace.  Quiero entenderlo, pues”, reclama.  ¿Por qué me hizo eso?  ¿Y por qué le hizo eso a todos los demás que usted dice que no?

Tras pausas que por momentos parecen interminables, López responde:

“Ya te dije, yo no te puedo dar explicaciones.  Se fue dando todo.  Fue quizá un exceso, si tú quieres de cariño.  Yo qué sé, que no vemos hacia el futuro lo que pueda pasar…”

Los archivos secretos

Romero dejó de creer en Dios, pero no pierde la esperanza “en la bondad y el apoyo desinteresado de muchas personas”, entre ellos Alejandra Sánchez y los medios de comunicación que cuentan su historia.  De la justicia, dice que “para víctimas de abuso no puede haber, porque ya nos pasó y es un hecho irreversible”, pero subraya que debería “haber un reconocimiento al dolor castigando con cárcel a los delincuentes”.

También cuenta que “Carlos López ha abusado de (otros) siete menores” y que “seguramente llevará más, pero sólo hablo de los que puedo afirmar”.

Sánchez no confía que la justicia mexicana actúe con la prontitud que ameritan los casos como el de Romero.  “Creo que la justicia mexicana juega un papel de complicidad por comisión o por omisión con las mafias, en este caso, con la mafia de la Iglesia Católica, razón por la cual los diferentes casos de abuso sexual continúan en la impunidad.  La justicia defiende al victimario y no a las víctimas.  La justicia mexicana hace pactos de complicidad con quienes han delinquido pero que poseen el poder para permanecer en la impunidad”.

Ante la misma pregunta, de si confía en la justicia mexicana, la periodista Sanjuana Martínez responde con mayor severidad.  “La justicia de México no funciona.  Los jueces de los ministerios públicos actúan como tapadera de los victimarios por el poder de la Iglesia.  En México un cardenal manda más que el presidente. Es una eminencia y a una eminencia no se le llama a declarar.  No hay condiciones para que en México haya justicia con el tema de la pederastia de los sacerdotes”.

Añade que cuando interrogan a las víctimas les preguntan en insisten en que describan “cómo te la metió, de qué tamaño la tenía y cosas así.  Es horrible el sistema para entrevistar y averiguar qué sucedió”.

“No hay voluntad por parte de la Jerarquía.  La Iglesia no ha abierto sus archivos secretos. Cuando lo haga, sabremos todos los crímenes cometidos por los sacerdotes”, aseveró.

Las partes nobles de López

Sanjuana Martínez cuenta que los abusos cometidos por el padre López no sólo están contenidos en el testimonio de Romero Colín en uno de sus libros y en el documental de Sánchez, sino en una serie de fotografías que el sacerdote le tomó al niño estando “desnudo en su cama” y también en pleno acto sexual. “Íbamos a mostrarlas todas en 2007, pero no lo hicimos.  Sin embargo, rescatamos una donde viene el cura, desnudo, y tapamos sus partes nobles que no son tan nobles”.

Un video con la presentación del libro de Martínez está publicado en internet.  Pero las imágenes más fuertes fueron incluidas por Sánchez en su película Agnus Dei, donde se mira al padre López en pleno acto sexual con un niño, Jesús Romero, una de las tantas víctimas de abusos sexuales cometidos por sacerdotes católicos.

“Con el cura López no hicieron nada”, protesta Martínez. “Ya estaba expuesto públicamente, pero no hicieron nada. No fue hasta 2011 que se supo que la Iglesia lo había sancionado.  Pero cuando yo di a conocer el caso nadie hizo nada. López estuvo tres años más oficiando misas”.

Y agrega: “Yo pienso que en México hay cientos de casos, miles, según lo que he investigado.  Pero aquí la iglesia no ha reconocido uno solo.  Y si lo reconocen, deberán pagar más de $2 mil millones (de dólares) tal y como lo reconoce la iglesia católica en Estados Unidos.  Pero en México no lo harán”.

La aceptación por parte de la iglesia católica estadounidense de los abusos cometidos por sacerdotes citada por Sanjuana Martínez se registró el 8 de febrero durante un simposio organizado por el Vaticano para afrontar los escándalos.  La National Catholic Risk Retention Group, de Vertmont, y el Programa de Protección de Niños VIRTUS, señalaron que los casos reportados hasta ahora han tenido “profundas consecuencias negativas” para la Iglesia Católica, “cuyo corazón han perforado”.

Expertos de ambas entidades precisaron que no hay valoración que pueda hacerse a las miles de víctimas, niños y adultos vulnerables, cuyas vidas cambiaron para siempre.  Y que no se puede poner un precio a las que se quitaron la vida por la desesperación y que simplemente han analizado los daños causados a la Iglesia por estos escándalos, que nunca se sabrán al cien por cien.

Acuerdos fuera de corte

Los $2 mil millones (de dólares) en pagos han sido por acuerdos a los que se llegó en las demandas puestas por las víctimas a las diócesis, en juicios, asesoramientos legales, terapias para las víctimas y seguimiento de los agresores, entre otras.

Sólo en Estados Unidos se estima que fueron unas 100 mil, a las que hay que sumar los cientos de víctimas de los casos denunciados en Irlanda, Alemania, Australia, Austria, Bélgica, Brasil, Canadá, Chile, India, Holanda, Filipinas y Suiza, entre otros países.

Entre esos otros países se encuentra México.

Además de las violaciones que comenzaron a los 11 años, “de los 14 a los 16 yo estaba bajo el influjo de las drogas y el alcohol”, cuenta Romero.  “Yo acudía a él (al padre López) a pedirle ayuda para superar mis adicciones.  Él me decía que ayudaría, pero siempre terminaba abusando de mí.  Es otra de las muchas cosas que nunca podré perdonarle”.

“Lo enfrente en muchísimas ocasiones, pero siempre me envolvía con su discurso prometiéndome un futuro mejor y comprometiéndose en cambiar sus conductas.  Las últimas peleas eran porque yo me daba cuenta de que abusaba de más niños.  Yo me revelaba ante eso, pero nunca conseguí cambiarlo”.

Romero Colín dice que se atrevió a denunciar los abusos del padre Lopez “cuando me di cuenta que mi vida estaba destrozada, cuando me reflejé en esos niños que él seguía abusando, cuando el dolor se hizo más intenso, cuando no podía permitirme ser cómplice de más vidas destrozadas, pero sobre todo cuando pude entender que yo no fui el culpable de todo lo que me había pasado”.

Justicia ciega

El caso López Valdés fue llevado a la justicia mexicana en 2007, “pero a la fecha no han logrado nada, parece que no quieren tocar a los sacerdotes”, dice Romero.  “A Carlos López no lo han citado para declarar con el argumento de que no saben dónde está. Y a los demás sacerdotes involucrados no los quieren citar, a pesar de que yo lo he solicitado en más de diez ocasiones”.

Sanjuana Martínez dice que en México casos como el de Romero hay cientos, miles. Y que “la jerarquía ha sido muy mezquina con las víctimas. Las rechaza y luego las intenta denigrar con un linchamiento social. Es espeluznante. En México hay casos terribles. Muchos se dan en zonas pobres, donde vive gente en la extrema pobreza, socialmente marginados”.

Antes de viajar a México, después de ser entrevistado por el periodista Jorge Ramos para el programa Al Punto de la Cadena Univision, Jesús Romero reconoció, preocupado, que la terapia que sigue en México le ha permitido sobrevivir a los abusos sexuales cometidos por el padre López Valdés, pero que en ocasiones se ha visto obligado a suspender sesiones por falta de dinero para pagar las consultas.

A la fecha no ha recibido ninguna ayuda por parte de la jerarquía de la Iglesia Católica de México.

Si se reunirá o no con el Papa, Romero Colín no lo sabe. Pero está convencido que su batalla todavía está lejos de finalizar y que la seguirá librando contra viento y marea.

“Por varias razones”, explica. “Por darle voz y respeto al niño que fui, porque me refleje en los niños que seguían siendo abusados por este sacerdote, por mi responsabilidad para con la sociedad, porque es un tema tabú, el cual debe de ser conocido y hablado, porque me indigna mucho la doble moral que maneja la Iglesia, así como la manipulación por medio de la fe a sus feligreses.  Y porque me di cuenta de que yo no era el culpable de lo que me había ocurrido”.

El padre José de Jesús Aguilar, vocero auxiliar de la Arquidiócesis de México, dijo a Univision.com sobre el caso del presbítero Carlos López Valdés que el caso ya había sido juzgado por la Iglesia y se encontraba en manos de la justicia mexicana.

El 25 de febrero de 2001 el Tribunal Eclesiástico Interdiocesano de México notificó que con fecha 8 de enero de ese año la Congregación para la Doctrina de la Fe decretó la dimisión del estado clerical del presbítero Carlos López Valdés y que la resolución era “inapelable en virtud de haber sido emanada por la Suprema Autoridad de la Iglesia”.

A finales de febrero de este año el tribunal que lleva la causa de Romero regresó la documentación del caso argumentando que los supuestos delitos cometidos por López prescribieron.  Daniel peña, abogado de Romero Colín, dijo que volverán a presentar una demanda y que no se detendrán hasta que se haga justicia.

Postdata 1:

El 6 de marzo Univision.com entrevistó por teléfono dos veces a uno de los voceros de la Arquidiócesis Primada de México, padre José de Jesús Aguilar.  En el primer contacto se le preguntó por el paradero del presbítero Carlos López Valdés. Aguilar dijo que el caso “seguía siendo tratado”, que había sido detenido y que “está mostrando las pruebas necesarias para demostrar su posible inocencia”.  Agregó que “mientras el proceso se aclara, la iglesia no lo reconoce como un sacerdote”.

En la segunda llamada Aguilar confirmó que López estaba preso y que, incluso, le había enviado un libro de su autoría titulado ‘365 días para conversar con Dios’.

Horas más tarde uno de nuestros equipos en México acudió con cámara para grabar la respuesta de Aguilar.  El vocero entonces rectificó las dos declaraciones previas dadas a Univision.com por teléfono e indicó que se había confundido de nombre y que el detenido era el religioso José Carlos Contreras.  Añadió que el caso del padre López fue juzgado por la Iglesia y ahora se encuentra en manos de la justicia.

El periodista Jorge Ramos, en su última columna de opinión, preguntó por qué la jerarquía de la Iglesia Católica de México no lo entregó a la justicia.

Postdata 2:
El 16 de marzo Romero, junto con Joaquin Aguilar -una víctima de abuso por un sacerdote- y José Bonilla Sada -padre de un menor abusado en un colegio de los Legionarios de Cristo- entregaron una carta al Nuncio de la Santa Dede en México, en la que pidieron una cita con el Papa Benedicto XVI.

“En caso de que nos autoricen”, dijo Romero, “algunos de los puntos a tratar serian los siguientes: procurar medidas eficientes de parte de la Iglesia Católica contra sacerdotes pederastas; transformar la política de silencio de los clérigos para que cumplan con sus obligaciones como ciudadanos denunciando ante el aparato judicial los casos de pederastia; abrir los expedientes y las investigaciones de la Iglesia Católica referentes a estos casos para fortalecer las investigaciones judiciales y alcanzar una justicia más temprana; y, crear sistemas de apoyo para las víctimas, para que puedan afrontar su dolor acompañados de terapia y lo que sea necesario para sobrellevar los traumas generados por dichos abusos. 

Más en Univision.com: http://noticias.univision.com/al-punto/article/2012-03-17/pecasos-de-sacerdote-ensombrecen-visita-papal#ixzz1pciP7TTD

Fuente:
http://noticias.univision.com/al-punto/article/2012-03-17/pecasos-de-sacerdote-ensombrecen-visita-papal#axzz1pcgyAx00

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Ministerie wist niets van castraties kerk

NEDERLAND
Kerknieuws

Publicaties zaterdag in NRC Handelsblad over castraties door de Rooms-Katholieke Kerk in de jaren ’50 hebben minister Ivo Opstelten (Veiligheid en Justitie) geschokt. Dat zei hij dinsdag in het vragenuurtje in de Tweede Kamer. Volgens hem was het de eerste keer dat zijn ministerie van dergelijke praktijken hoorde.

“Naar eer en geweten kan ik zeggen dat dit de eerste keer is”, zei hij op de vraag van PvdA-Kamerlid Khadija Arib of zijn ministerie niet eerder lucht kreeg van dergelijke verhalen.

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Pope to axe Irish bishops accused of sex abuse against minors

VATICAN CITY
Vatican Insider

The enquiry of Vatican representatives on the abuses perpetrated by the clergy has come to an end. The verdict: “Inadequate and unable to contain the number of cases of paedophilia”

Giacomo Galeazzi
Vatican City

The Vatican is clamping down on Irish bishops. Rather than a real investigation, the enquiry carried out by the Vatican was more an explanation of the reason why Benedict XVI is about to cut ecclesiastical hierarchies down to zero. “Controls were omitted, bishops and religious superiors were inadequate and incapable of monitoring and containing the spread of extremely serious cases of paedophilia in the clergy. The culprits went unpunished and the victims were treated with indifference.” At the end of the apostolic visit to Ireland, the Holy See prepares a damning report on the Irish crisis concerning paedophile priests.

The island will be struck by a complete change of tactics. New cases will be reported immediately and the Pope will personally intervene to change “the current configuration of the dioceses in order to make diocesan structures better suited to deal with the current mission.” It is time now for all the bishops that covered up the truth regarding paedophile priests (7 have already resigned) to take their leave and the cooperation between dioceses will see a smaller number of better quality priests. The Holy See “feels embarrassed and betrayed by the sinful and criminal acts at the root of this crisis.”

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MT priest charged with possessing child porn

MONTANA
Coshocton Tribune

KALISPELL, Mont. (WTW) — A Roman Catholic priest at a northwestern Montana parish is charged with felony sexual abuse of children for allegedly possessing pictures of nude boys on his computer.

The Rev. Rudy Bullman is scheduled to enter a plea at an arraignment hearing on March 29 in District Court in Kalispell. He remains released on his own recognizance and has been on administrative leave from Risen Christ Parish in Kalispell since Dec. 16, when the Roman Catholic Diocese of Helena learned of the investigation.

County Attorney Ed Corrigan says the investigation into Bullman began last October when someone who purchased a Nintendo DS game console from Bullman found it contained photos of nude boys. Court records say a search of his computer turned up similar images.

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Wie der Bischof sich verteidigt

DEUTSCHLAND
Sueddeutsche

Von Matthias Drobinski

Ausgerechnet der Missbrauchsbeauftragte der katholischen Kirche muss sich rechtfertigen: Opfer werfen Bischof Stephan Ackermann vor, erschreckend fahrlässig mit verurteilten Sexualstraftätern umzugehen. Wohin aber mit ihnen, wenn sie ihre Strafe verbüßt haben? Dient es dem Kinderschutz, sie einfach zu entlassen?

Ausgerechnet er muss sich nun verteidigen: Stephan Ackermann, an diesem Dienstag 49 Jahre alt gewordener Bischof von Trier, Beauftragter der Bischofskonferenz für Fälle von sexuellem Missbrauch. Ausgerechnet er, der nicht müde wird zu erklären, dass es keine Toleranz gegenüber sexueller Gewalt geben dürfe und die katholische Kirche eine “Kultur der Achtsamkeit” lernen müsse.

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„Kein Guantanamo für kirchliche Täter“

DEUTSCHLAND
Der Tagesspiegel

Als Missbrauchsbeauftragter der Deutschen Bischofskonferenz soll Stephan Ackermann die Täter aus dem Verkehr ziehen. Nun muss sich der Bischof von Trier rechtfertigen. Ein Porträt.

Im April veranstaltet das Bistum Trier die Heilig-Rock-Wallfahrt. Es geht um die Tunika von Jesus Christus, die angeblich vor 1000 Jahren in den Hochaltar des Trierer Doms eingemauert wurde. Hunderttausende Pilger kommen, hochkarätige Besucher aus Rom, es gibt Symposien und plötzlich ist das Bistum am Saum der Republik wichtig.

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Antoine Bodar over stress bij priesters.

NEDERLAND
Pauw & Witteman

De afgelopen jaren heeft de Rooms-katholieke kerk, door het grootschalige en structurele seksueel misbruik met minderjarigen door geestelijken binnen de kerk, een flinke deuk in haar imago opgelopen.

In Nederland deed de commissie-Deetman hier onderzoek naar en kwam er veel leed boven water. Deze week werd bekend dat er zelfs kinderen gecastreerd zouden zijn om ze van hun homoseksuele gevoelens af te helpen.

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Kelly takes stand, strongly denies charges against him

CALIFORNIA
Lodi News-Sentinel

By Ross Farrow/News-Sentinel Staff Writer

Father Michael Kelly stated emphatically under oath on Tuesday that he has never sexually assaulted a child.

Kelly, pastor at St. Joachim’s Catholic Church in Lockeford the past eight years, is defending himself in a lawsuit on a sexual assault allegation by a 37-year-old man who was an altar boy in the 1980s. Kelly maintains that such a thing never happened.

“His recollection is completely different from mine,” Kelly said of the plaintiff, who attended Church of the Annunciation in Stockton and attended the church’s parochial school in the 1980s.

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WATCHDOG TO CONSIDER PRIMETIME DEFAMATION OF AHASCRAGH PRIEST

IRELAND
Galway News

March 21, 2012

The Broadcast Authority of Ireland will next week consider the findings of an investigation into the RTE programme that wrongly accused an Ahascragh priest of fathering a child in Kenya.

A paternity test established there was no basis for the allegation.

The Prime Time Investigates programme ‘mission to prey’ falsely accused Fr.Kevin Reynolds of fathering the child while he was a missionary priest in Africa.

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In de VS luistert de kerk wél naar slachtoffers van misbruik

NEDERLAND
Trouw

De Nederlandse kerkleiding ziet slachtoffers nog steeds als tegenstanders en als ‘probleem’. In de VS hield de kerk die houding uiteindelijk niet vol.

Tien jaar geleden begon in het Amerikaanse Boston het eerste grote proces tegen een rooms-katholieke priester, John Geoghan, die een hardnekkig misbruiker van minderjarige jongens bleek te zijn. Het proces leidde datzelfde jaar tot het terugtreden van de aartsbisschop van Boston, die de priester, wetend van zijn wangedrag, stilzwijgend van de ene naar de andere parochie had overgeplaatst.

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Veel medisch leed na castratie

NEDERLAND
Trouw

Sander Becker − 20/03/12

Als een volwassen man wordt gecastreerd, verliest hij met zijn teelballen meteen zijn belangrijkste bron van het geslachtshormoon testosteron. De acute daling van de hoeveelheid testosteron lokt uiteenlopende medische klachten uit, weet Theo de Reijke, uroloog in het AMC in Amsterdam.

Het eerste wat opvalt, is een verminderde potentie. “Gecastreerde mannen hebben vaak moeite om een erectie te krijgen”, zegt De Reijke. “Verder neemt hun libido af, net als hun agressie en hun lichaamsbeharing.”

Op langere termijn raakt ook de aanmaak van bloedcellen verstoord, wat leidt tot bloedarmoede. De botten worden broos. Veel mannen zonder teelballen ontwikkelen ook nog suikerziekte. En hun lichaamsvet krijgt een vrouwelijker verdeling: minder op de buik, meer op de heupen. Lichte borstvorming is ook een bekend fenomeen.

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Opstelten…

NEDERLAND
Troux

Opstelten: ministerie wist niets van castraties ‘homoseksuele’ jongeren

Publicaties afgelopen zaterdag in NRC Handelsblad over castraties door de Rooms-Katholieke Kerk in de jaren ’50 hebben minister Ivo Opstelten (Veiligheid en Justitie) geschokt. Dat zei hij vandaag in het vragenuurtje in de Tweede Kamer.

Volgens Opstelten was het de eerste keer dat zijn ministerie van dergelijke praktijken hoorde.

‘Naar eer en geweten kan ik zeggen dat dit de eerste keer is’, zei hij op de vraag van PvdA-Kamerlid Khadija Arib of zijn ministerie niet eerder lucht kreeg van dergelijke verhalen.

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Ierse bisschoppen pakken misbruik beter aan

VATICAANSTAD
Reformatorisch Dagblad (Nederland)

VATICAANSTAD (ANP/AFP) – De Ierse bisschoppen hebben de laatste jaren vooruitgang geboekt bij het beschermen van kinderen tegen misbruik. Dat stelt het Vaticaan in een dinsdag gepubliceerd rapport.

In het rapport staat dat medewerkers van het Vaticaan vorig jaar naar Ierland zijn gestuurd om te onderzoeken hoe de Rooms-Katholieke Kerk gevallen van seksueel misbruik door priesters aanpakt. De vertegenwoordigers van het Vaticaan stellen dat ze onder de indruk zijn van de wijze waarop de Ierse kerk probeert nieuwe richtlijnen van het Vaticaan voor de aanpak van misbruik uit te voeren. Volgens het Vaticaan hebben de „aartsbisschoppen verzekerd dat bij alle nieuw ontdekte gevallen van misbruik” direct de verantwoordelijke religieuze en burgerlijke autoriteiten op de hoogte worden gesteld.

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Geschiedenis van misbruik …

NEDERLAND
Trouw

Geschiedenis van misbruik en castratie vraagt om onderzoek, niet om enquête

Dat in Nederland een halve eeuw geleden jongens werden gecastreerd om hun homoseksuele gevoelens te ‘genezen’, is vreselijk. En er is alle reden voor historisch onderzoek naar die feiten. Maar laat dat degelijk en integer gebeuren, en buiten de politieke arena. In de soms oververhitte reacties wordt nu te snel de link gelegd tussen seksueel misbruik, castratie en de noodzaak van een parlementair onderzoek.

NRC Handelsblad bracht afgelopen zaterdag het verhaal over een jongen die in 1956 aangifte deed van seksueel misbruik door rooms-katholieke geestelijken. De jongen werd na de aangifte opgenomen in een psychiatrische inrichting, en niet veel later gecastreerd.

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Catholics eye Cleveland closures for national precedent

UNITED STATES
USA Today

By Michael O’Malley, Religion News Service

CLEVELAND – Before a recent prayer service in a shuttered Catholic church in Holyoke, Mass., parishioner Victor Anop stood before 120 people and made an urgent announcement:

“The Vatican has ordered the bishop of Cleveland to reopen 13 closed churches.”

“Everybody broke into applause,” Anop said in a telephone interview. “People are still talking about it. What happened in Cleveland brings us hope.”

Catholics fighting church closings across the U.S. are keeping their eyes on the Catholic Diocese of Cleveland, where Bishop Richard Lennon was overruled by the Vatican for not properly following church law and procedures on closing churches.

Copies of the decrees are circulating throughout the country and even in Canada. Anop and other parishioners of the closed Mater Dolorosa Catholic Church have been holding around-the-clock vigils inside their century-old sanctuary ever since their bishop ordered it closed last June.

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Clarity at Cantwell High School

CALIFORNIA
The Worthy Adversary

Posted by Joelle Casteix on March 20, 2012

Sometimes, the most profound statements at a press conference come from the reporters, not us.

Today, my friend and colleague Ken Smolka and I were in front of Cantwell Sacred Heart of Mary High School in Montebello, California. We were there because the Irish Chrisitian Brothers, the religious order that ran Cantwell High School, declared bankruptcy when more than 50 victims of child sex abuse in Washington State and Canada came forward to file civil sex abuse and cover-up suits. Order officials sought bankruptcy protection to avoid embarrassing public civil trials. The Christian Brothers are the 10th diocese or religious order to take this (less than pastoral) path.

The Brothers ran Cantwell High School until 1990, when Cardinal Roger Mahony kicked them out and put the Jesuits in their place. No real explanation was given.

But I have an idea: in the six yearbooks I have reviewed, we have found four known perpetrators who worked at the school (three of them were there at the same time). Maybe Mahony realized that even he couldn’t keep a lid on the Christian Brothers much longer.

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St. Scholastica community set to move on after Gerald Riva’s resignation

WOODRIDGE (IL)
Woodridge Reporter

[Why we published this story: A note from the editor]

By Dave Heitz, dheitz@mysuburbanlife.com
Woodridge Reporter

Woodridge, IL —

The Catholic Diocese of Joliet insists it takes the conduct and celibacy of its priests very seriously, a statement that comes days after a longtime pastor resigned amid reports of a 20-year-old public indecency guilty plea the diocese maintains it was unaware of until recent weeks.

The Rev. Gerald Riva resigned as pastor of St. Scholastica Catholic Church in Woodridge this weekend.

The diocese has launched an investigation into Riva’s 1992 arrest and guilty plea to public indecency — a charge stemming from a DuPage County Forest Preserve officer’s report that Riva masturbated over his clothes in front of the officer, then grabbed the male officer’s genitals.

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Lawsuit Against Savannah’s Catholic Diocese

GEORGIA
WSAV

[with video]

By: Alice Massimi | WSAV News 3

SAVANNAH GA —
The Catholic Diocese of Savannah is being sued.

The lawsuit accuses St. James Early Learning Center of hiring a woman as a teacher’s aide who not only had a lengthy criminal history but was actually under house arrest when she was hired.

Many people are wondering how someone with such a background could be hired, which is one of the reasons for the lawsuit.

According to court documents, the school never did a proper background check, and because of that, the lawsuit states, a student and her family suffered.

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Jesuits Maintain Negative Track Record

UNITED STATES
AlterNet

Joey Piscitelli

One would assume by March of 2012, that the Society of Jesus, aka “The Jesuits” – the largest single order of Priests in the Catholic Church, would be well aware that the clergy abuse crisis in the USA, and the world for that matter- is not only humiliating, but staggering. After paying out several million dollars in several lawsuits for molestation, one would obviously also assume the Jesuits would switch tracks, and derail the old train of negligence. …

But just as the smoke seemed to be clearing for the beleaguered order, which has been virtually inundated with lawsuits and complaints dating back decades; the Society has apparently gotten back on the wrong track. Countless previous lawsuits- citing negligence and knowledge that the Jesuit leaders had knowingly promoted and transferred numerous child molesters and their protectors around the world, should have been the STOP sign held by the mammoth white elephant in the Society of Jesus’s headquarters.

The recent investigation and prosecution by US Homeland Security, and the State of Illinois, that infamous Jesuit Fr. Donald McGuire, who was Mother Teresa’s personal adviser and confessor – and was known by Jesuit superiors for decades to be a serial rapist; should have also have been the atomic blast of wake up calls.

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Up in alms over salaries

BOSTON (MA)
Boston Herald

By Erin Smith
Wednesday, March 21, 2012

With the Archdiocese of Boston in the middle of its 2012 Catholic Appeal fundraiser, the number of church employees earning upward of $150,000 has skyrocketed by more than threefold even as the church has been shuttering parishes, a Herald review found.

In 2006, the archdiocese listed only five employees earning more than $150,000, but its latest annual report shows 17 “senior lay executives” topped $150,000 last year. Among the latest eye-popping salaries and fiscal details the review found:

•    Total compensation for Mary Grassa O’Neill, superintendent of the archdiocese’s Catholic schools, last year topped $351,000, surpassing the $323,222 earnings of Boston Superintendent of Schools Carol R. Johnson.

•    The top archdiocesan lawyer totaled $326,169.

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Wim De Troy stopt met Operatie Kelk

BELGIE
Deredactie

Onderzoeksrechter Wim De Troy zal niet langer Operatie Kelk leiden, het onderzoek naar seksueel misbruik in de kerk. Hij heeft minister van Justitie Annemie Turtelboom (Open VLD) gevraagd zijn mandaat niet te verlengen. “Dit is een klap voor de slachtoffers”, reageert advocaat Walter Van Steenbrugge.

Het vertrek van De Troy komt niet als een complete verrassing. In september vorig jaar had hij al zijn ontslag gevraagd, maar dat werd door toenmalig minister van Justitie Stefaan De Clerck (CD&V) geweigerd. De Troy was toen boos omdat zijn vaste griffier na haar bevallingsverlof niet meer mocht terugkeren.

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Onderzoeksrechter stopt met Operatie Kelk

BELGIE
RKnieuws

BRUSSEL (RKnieuws.net) – De Brusselse onderzoeksrechter Wim De Troy zal niet langer Operatie Kelk leiden, het onderzoek naar seksueel misbruik in de Kerk. Dat meldt de VRT.

De Troy heeft minister van Justitie Turtelboom gevraagd zijn mandaat niet te verlengen. De slachttoffers van seksueel misbruik zijn ontgoocheld.

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Onderzoeker naar misbruik kerk België stopt

BELGIE
AD

De man die in België onderzoek deed naar seksueel misbruik van kinderen door geestelijken stopt met zijn werkzaamheden. Hij legt zijn taken per 1 april neer en wil niet dat de minister van Justitie zijn opdracht verlengd, zo meldden meerdere Vlaamse media vandaag.

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In de VS luistert de kerk wél naar slachtoffers van misbruik

NEDERLAND
Trouw

De Nederlandse kerkleiding ziet slachtoffers nog steeds als tegenstanders en als ‘probleem’. In de VS hield de kerk die houding uiteindelijk niet vol.

Tien jaar geleden begon in het Amerikaanse Boston het eerste grote proces tegen een rooms-katholieke priester, John Geoghan, die een hardnekkig misbruiker van minderjarige jongens bleek te zijn. Het proces leidde datzelfde jaar tot het terugtreden van de aartsbisschop van Boston, die de priester, wetend van zijn wangedrag, stilzwijgend van de ene naar de andere parochie had overgeplaatst.

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Let’s give justice time

MASSACHUSETTS
Boston Globe

March 20, 2012|Kevin Cullen, Globe Columnist

If timing is everything, Kathy Picard’s was lousy.

She was 32 years old when she accused a relative of sexually abusing her when she was a girl. Police in Western Massachusetts told her the 15-year statute of limitations that kicked in when she turned 16 had expired the year before.

Picard threw herself into the campaign to remove the statute of limitations. In 2006, after prosecutors complained that they couldn’t make cases against Catholic priests who had abused minors years before, the Massachusetts Legislature voted to extend the statute of limitations to 27 years after a victim turns 16. It was a compromise, but an improvement.

When the new law kicked in, Picard was 44, again one year too late to seek charges.

“It’s arbitrary and wrong,’’ she says. “When it comes to abusing kids, there shouldn’t be any statute of limitations.’’

More than 100 of 160 House members have already endorsed House Bill 469, which would eliminate the statute of limitations for the sexual abuse of minors and make it impossible for predators to escape prosecution and accountability by hiding behind the calendar.

Whether they get a chance to vote on this is another question. On Beacon Hill, pure power often trumps pure democracy. The House chairman of the Judiciary Committee, Representative Eugene O’Flaherty, says he opposes the bill but insists that’s not why it won’t be reported out this week on time. There’s just a backlog, he says

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Sex Abuse Survivor Says State Should Eliminate Deadline On Prosecuting Child Molesters

MASSACHUSETTS
WBUR

[with audio]

By Sacha Pfeiffer
Mar 20, 2012

BOSTON — Here’s a disturbing estimate: roughly 90 percent of all childhood sexual abuse goes unreported.

The reasons for that are numerous and complicated. But Rosanne Sliney understands why. She’s a Waltham native and says she was sexually abused by her uncle from age 5 to 14. Sliney now says she wishes she could prosecute. But she can no longer do that under Massachusetts law, which has a statute of limitations on bringing criminal charges in cases involving the sexual abuse of minors.

There’s a bill pending to eliminate that statute, however, and on Tuesday the Legislature’s Judiciary Committee reported the bill out favorably, meaning it will now go to the full House for debate. If it becomes law, it would make child sex abuse the only crime besides murder that has no time limit on filing charges.

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Child sex victims fight time limits

MASSACHUSETTS
WWLP

Christine Lee, 22News State House Correspondent

BOSTON, Mass. (WWLP) – Kathy Picard of Ludlow and Lisa Foster of Longmeadow are among a group of child sex abuse survivors turned advocates, demanding that Massachusetts eliminate the statute of limitations that protects their abusers from facing justice in a court of law. Together, Picard and Ludlow lobbied support from lawmakers Wednesday at the Massachusetts State House.

“Our laws shouldn’t be protecting the abusers. They should be ensuring that the victims get to have their say and their justice when they are able to seek it,” said Foster.

The statute of limitations puts a time limit on when an accused child abuser can be criminally prosecuted. In 2006, Picard played a role in extending the time limit from 15 to 27 years past a victim’s 16th birthday, or from when a sex crime is first reported. In both cases, she was a year past the deadline.

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Child abuse bill to go before Mass. House

BOSTON (MA)
Boston Globe

March 21, 2012|By Milton J. Valencia

After years of resistance and public criticism, state legislative leaders agreed Tuesday to let the full House of Representatives vote on an increasingly popular proposal to eliminate the statute of limitations on prosecuting child sexual abuse crimes.

The measure as proposed would essentially eliminate the deadlines that victims have in filing complaints of child sex abuse, a limit that had been set to protect alleged predators from false claims based on foggy memories.

Under criminal law, prosecutions of certain cases are limited after 27 years, and they are limited to as few as three years in some civil court cases, according to advocates of the new proposal.

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Vatican report is ‘window dressing’, say abuse victims

IRELAND
Irish Examiner

By Claire O’Sullivan

Wednesday, March 21, 2012

Clerical abuse victims have criticised the summary of the Vatican report into child protection practices as “window dressing”, but priests and the hierarchy have praised the document.

Last night, it emerged that child protection legislation was being prepared. Frances Fitzgerald, the children’s minister, said child protection guidelines would soon be on a statutory footing.

She was responding to the report drawn up by four bishops who travelled to Ireland at the request of Pope Benedict two years ago.

They met with religious leaders, abuse victims, and the wider Catholic community as part of an effort to analyse the state of child protection guidelines and challenges for the wider Irish Church.

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De Troy treedt terug: de aankondiging van een voorspelde moord

BELGIE
Apache News Lab

21 maart 2012 Reageer

Eigenlijk weten we met zijn allen alles. Er zijn geen geheimen meer, noch verdoken agenda’s, noch manipulaties, noch juridische spelletjes. Feiten zijn feiten. ‘Operatie Kelk’, aanvankelijk bedoeld om te proberen te achterhalen of en hoe geestelijke oversten van dit land met gevallen van seksueel misbruik binnen de kerk zijn omgegaan, heeft zelfs op Wikipedia haar eigen lemma.

Daarin wordt geprobeerd uit te leggen hoe alles verlopen is en waarom. De feiten zijn gekend en tot vervelens toe herhaald, in dezelfde media, door dezelfde journalisten, met dezelfde achtergrondinformatie en zelfs dezelfde woorden.

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Roep Deetman op als getuige rk-misbruik

NEDERLAND
Radio Nederland

Nederland reageert met afschuw op onthullingen over het castreren van misbruikslachtoffers in katholieke instellingen. Tijd voor een parlementaire enquete vindt Wereldomroepjournalist Robert Chesal, die het misbruik samen met Joep Dohmen als eerste naar buiten bracht.

We weten nu dat Wim Deetman de hoge verwachtingen die hij wekte bij het aantreden van zijn commissie, niet heeft waargemaakt. Zijn onderzoek naar seksueel misbruik in de Rooms-Katholieke Kerk heeft de onderste steen niet boven gekregen.

Zwakke uitleg
Dat weten we dankzij onderzoeksjournalist Joep Dohmen van NRC Handelsblad. Dohmen schreef over een internaatsleerling die seksueel was misbruikt door een katholieke broeder. Toen de leerling daarvan in 1956 aangifte deed, werd hij afgevoerd naar een katholieke psychiatrische inrichting en chirurgisch gecastreerd.

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Vatican bank struggles to be cleansed of past sins

ITALY
Reuters

By Pierre Briançon

The author is a Reuters Breakingviews columnist. The opinions expressed are his own.

The failure of the Vatican bank to comply with the basic rule of the Sacrament of Penance is odd. The Holy See’s financial arm has been seeking absolution for past sins for two years, but remains reluctant to confess to what it did wrong. Of all institutions, it should understand that one cannot go without the other.

According to Italian newspapers, JPMorgan Chase is closing the account of the bank formerly known as Istituto per le Opere di Religione (IOR) because of concerns about a lack of transparency. The move comes a few weeks after the U.S. State Department added the Vatican to the list of countries it considers vulnerable to money laundering.

JPMorgan’s move is no administrative tidying-up: some 1.5 billion euros is reported to have passed through the account in the past 18 months. Yet considering the reputational beating that investment banks have taken in recent years, it’s refreshing that one of them is concerned about being tainted by its association with the Vatican.

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Priest takes stand, insists sex abuse incidents didn’t happen

STOCKTON (CA)
The Modesto Bee

By Jennie Rodriguez-Moore
The Record (Stockton)

STOCKTON — A Catholic priest accused of child sexual abuse testified in his civil trial for the first time Tuesday, fielding questions from the plaintiff’s attorney.

Rev. Michael Kelly and the Diocese of Stockton are being sued by a former altar boy who served at Cathedral of the Annunciation under Kelly’s direction during the mid-1980s.

Kelly, now pastor of St. Joachim Church in Lockeford, is accused of touching the boy as he baby-sat him, assaulting him in the priest’s rectory and at a motel and raping him in a wooded area.

“That’s what he said, and it never happened,” Kelly said on the stand.

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New revelations, new trial, new phone calls?

UNITED STATES
The Salt Lake Tribune

Lindsay Whitehurst

Warren Jeffs is still seeing apocalyptic things. March has actually been rather a slow month for receiving revelations from God packets. Check out the new revelations here; big Warren Jeffs revelations calendar here.

Perhaps the most interesting thing about this latest set, as Paul Murphy with the Utah Attorney General’s Office pointed out, is that they are signed by a couple of new faces: Richard Barlow and Edmund Barlow.

Usually the signers are Vaughan Taylor, Nathan Jessop, John M. Barlow or John Wayman.

Any insights?

Anywho, Warren may get more vocal soon: His 90-day phone privilege suspension is slated to end Sunday, according to Texas prison officials.

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Vatican accused over failure to explain its role in cover-up

IRELAND
Irish Independent

By Colm Kelpie, Paul Melia and Fionnan Sheahan

Wednesday March 21 2012

SURVIVORS of clerical abuse last night reacted with fury to the Vatican’s long-awaited report into the handling of child sex abuse scandals in the Catholic Church.

Despite the appointment of four senior churchmen to study the abuse crisis, the Vatican had not explained its role in protecting children from paedophile priests and the subsequent cover-up, victims’ groups claimed.

And support group the Survivors of Child Abuse (SOCA) revealed it had asked the investigators for a meeting, but were told they did not have enough time to talk to them.

Two years after the so-called Apostolic Visitation was promised by Pope Benedict, a seven-page summary report was published yesterday, with no further details of the investigation expected to be released.

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Trainees ‘should be separated from other students’

IRELAND
Irish Independent

By Paul Melia and Colm Kelpie

Wednesday March 21 2012

TRAINEE priests should live in separate buildings — away from other clerics or students — to help prepare them for the priesthood, the report from the Vatican investigators said.

Only seminarians or those involved in their training should be allowed enter the dedicated buildings, and one set of standards should be developed and used to assess if candidates were suitable for joining the priesthood.

The report makes seven recommendations on improving the seminaries, including focused classes for trainees on child protection and training in helping victims of sexual abuse and their families.

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Corsicana youth minister arrested for alleged sexual assault

TEXAS
KHOU

by JONATHAN BETZ
WFAA

Posted on March 21, 2012

CORSICANA – Many describe Gary Welch as a popular youth minister at Corsicana’s Northside Baptist Church. A man, church members say, who was just as eager to embrace a child as to counsel them.

“Gary was always cool with us,” said Devan Putman, 15.

She’s been a member of the church’s youth group for as long as Welch was its leader.

“[He was] always giving us hugs and high-fiving us,” she said. “I just couldn’t believe it.”

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Vatican visitors propose Church reforms to deal with abuse fallout

IRELAND
The Journal

A DELEGATION of high-ranking Catholic officials sent to Ireland by Pope Benedict to deal with the aftermath of successive abuse scandals has proposed a series of reforms to tackle the Church’s difficulty.

The findings of the Apostolic Visitation, led by the Archbishop of New York, Cardinal Timothy Dolan, propose imposing new restrictions on admission to seminaries, and including new child protection classes in the academic programme for trainee priests.

The Visitation has also proposed reforming the structure of Ireland’s 26 Church dioceses “and their ability to respond adequately to the challenges of the New Evangelisation”.

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Irish Catholic bishops “make heartfelt pleas for forgiveness”

IRELAND
The Journal

CARDINAL SEÁN BRADY, head of the Catholic Church in Ireland, said he “welcomed” the findings of a panel appointed by the Vatican to visit the four Irish archdioceses to look at how they were responding to the child abuse scandal.

A summary of the findings of the ‘Apostolic Visitation’ was published today. It suggested that new restrictions be placed on admission to seminaries and made other recommendations which it felt would help the “renewal” of the Catholic Church in Ireland. It also proposed a restructuring of the 26 dioceses in the country.

The Irish Bishops’ Conference held a press conference on the publication this morning. It said it was grateful to those who had co-operated in their meetings with the Vatican-picked panel, including survivors of child abuse, religious congregations, seminaries and the four archdioceses.

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Visitation criticised for not addressing Vatican role in abuse cover-ups

IRELAND
The Journal

ONE IN FOUR, a support group for those who experienced sexual abuse in Ireland, has said the Vatican is still not accepting responsibility for its role “in creating the culture of purposeful cover-ups” in the Catholic Church.

Responding to the findings of the Apostolic Visitation, the organisation said it was disappointed the Vatican did not acknowledge that its interventions in the abuse scandal had allowed individual Catholic Church leaders in Ireland to ignore guidelines.

In a statement, executive director Maeve Lewis said, “While we welcome the findings of the Visitation that the Irish Church now has good child protection practices in place, we feel it is a lost opportunity to address the role played by the Vatican in perpetuating the policy of protecting abusive priests at the expense of children.”

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Vatican admits sex abuse ‘shame’

IRELAND
The Irish Times

[Full text of the summary of the Apostolic Visitation report (PDF)]

PATSY McGARRY Religious Affairs Correspondent

The Catholic Church has acknowledged “with a great sense of shame” that “innocent young people were abused by clerics and religious” in Ireland. Those “who should have exercised vigilance often failed to do so effectively”, it said.

Its acknowledgement of this “terrible phenomenon” came yesterday in a summary of reports prepared by seven teams sent by the Vatican to conduct an unprecedented examination of the island’s four Catholic archdioceses, seminaries, and religious congregations.

They made several recommendations and said it was up to the Irish church to implement the findings of the visitation teams, whose work “should now be considered completed”.

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Dutch boys and young men …

NETHERLANDS
New York Daily News

Dutch boys and young men who accused priests of sexual abuse in the ‘50s were surgically castrated ‘to get rid of homosexuality,’ journalist finds

By David Boroff / NEW YORK DAILY NEWS

Wednesday, March 21, 2012,

Dutch boys and young men who accused priests of sex abuse in the 1950s were surgically castrated “to get rid of homosexuality” while in the care of the church, an investigative journalist has found.

Joep Dohmen of the NRC Handelsblad, a daily newspaper in the Netherlands, discovered evidence of at least 10 castrations by the Dutch Roman Catholic Church.

“These cases are anonymous and can no longer be traced,” Dohman told The Telegraph newspaper of London. “There will be many more. But the question is whether those boys, now old men, will want to tell their story.”

Dohman did discover the identity of one of the victims, a young man named Henk Heithuis, who was castrated at the age of 20 in 1956 after accusing clergymen of abusing him.

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Documentado: encubrieron comportamiento criminal de Marcial Maciel

MEXICO
Proceso

Bernardo Barranco V.
17 de marzo de 2012

La visita a México de Benedicto XVI no será tan tersa como desearían sus organizadores. Al tiempo de su llegada saldrá a la venta el libro La voluntad de no saber, que mediante documentos del Vaticano demuestra que Juan Pablo II y su sucesor conocían el comportamiento criminal de Marcial Maciel, al que no obstante protegieron. Además, víctimas del fundador de la Legión de Cristo y de otros sacerdotes católicos pederastas hacen gestiones para plantearle al pontífice de manera personal sus exigencias de justicia. El autor de esta reseña es también autor del prólogo de la obra.

“Este Papa me tiene desilusionado, ya no creo en él”, dice José Barba, catedrático del Instituto Tecnológico Autónomo de México y una de las víctimas de Marcial Maciel. Cuando se le pregunta si accedería a tener un encuentro con Benedicto XVI en su próxima visita a México, responde categórico: “No estoy dispuesto a juegos mediáticos estériles ni a supuestos perdones cargados de retórica”.

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Irish victims say Vatican still denies cover-up role

IRELAND
Times of Malta

A group representing victims of clerical sexual abuse in Ireland accused the Vatican yesterday of failing to accept responsibility for creating a “culture of cover-ups”.

The criticism by the One in Four group followed the Vatican’s publication of the findings of an investigation into abuse scandals, issued by senior Catholic Church officials who were sent to Ireland by Pope Benedict XVI.

The report acknowledged that Irish bishops had made progress in protecting children following decades of scandals involving children being abused by priests, nuns or in religious schools. But One in Four’s executive director Maeve Lewis said the Vatican had failed to address the issue of why the Catholic Church in Ireland had protected abusing priests for decades.

“While we welcome the findings of the Visitation that the Irish Church now has good child protection practices in place, we feel it is a lost opportunity to address the role played by the Vatican in perpetuating the policy of protecting abusive priests at the expense of children,” said Ms Lewis.

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Brady says church had looked at changing dioceses

IRELAND
The Irish Times

PATSY McGARRY

RECONFIGURATION: CATHOLIC primate of All-Ireland Cardinal Seán Brady said the Irish Catholic Church had been looking at a reconfiguration of its 26 dioceses even before Pope Benedict announced the apostolic visitation to Ireland two years ago.

He said “that preceded the visitation” and that the Irish church had a committee which had “made some initial proposals”.

The church in Ireland did not want this reconfiguration “linked with the abuse issue”, he said.

However a new element in this matter was addressed in the summary, which stated that there should be “consultation” with the communities involved in affected dioceses.

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Detailed reports for Holy See eyes only

VATICAN CITY
The Irish Times

No names named but general view of insiders is that the authorities seem to be doing a ‘solemn mea culpa’, writes PADDY AGNEW

THERE WERE contrasting reactions yesterday in Rome to the release of the summary document of the findings of the apostolic visitation in Ireland.

While some commentators were tempted to define the document as “bland” and not especially newsworthy, Vatican insiders begged to differ, pointing out that it had managed to avoid being simplistic and glib.

At first glance, the summary reads like a toothless “executive report”, primarily concerned about avoiding a further washing of dirty Vatican linen in public.

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Early indications that summary would be primarily pastoral in nature

IRELAND
The Irish Times

ANALYSIS: The report amounted to a fleshing out of the pope’s analysis in his letter to the Irish faithful, writes PATSY McGARRY

A PARTICULARLY informed Catholic has described the Summary of the Findings of the Apostolic Visitation in Ireland, published yesterday, as “a damp squid”.

He said so by text yesterday afternoon. In so far as all squids are the same, being damp, the man’s point was all the more accurate even if what he said was a malapropism.

There was an undoubted sense of sameness, and accompanying disappointment, at the content of the 7½ page summary of reports on the Irish church prepared for the Vatican by some of its heavy hitters in last year’s visitation.

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Report ‘almost farcical’ in places

IRELAND
The Irish Times

CHARLIE TAYLOR, PAUL CULLEN and LORNA SIGGINS

THE VATICAN is still not accepting responsibility for its role in creating the culture of cover-ups of the sexual abuse of children, it was claimed yesterday.

One in Four, which supports survivors of abuse, expressed disappointment over what it said was the Vatican’s failure to acknowledge that its interventions in the abuse scandal had allowed church leaders to ignore guidelines and to protect the church at the expense of the safety of children.

“While we welcome the findings of the visitation that the Irish church now has good child protection practices in place, we feel it is a lost opportunity to address the role played by the Vatican in perpetuating the policy of protecting abusive priests at the expense of children,” said executive director of the organisation Maeve Lewis.

One in Four founder Colm O’Gorman said the seven-page summary of the visitation reports offered very little of value and was “almost farcical” in places.

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‘Cloistered life’ not on agenda for students

IRELAND
The Irish Times

PATSY McGARRY, Religious Affairs Correspondent

SEMINARIANS: SUGGESTIONS THAT seminarians were being asked to live a “cloistered life” away from other students were rejected yesterday by Irish church leaders.

Archbishop of Dublin Diarmuid Martin and Primate of Ireland Cardinal Seán Brady said student priests needed “space” but there was no question of locking them away. Archbishop Martin also said the church was “not going . . . heresy hunting”.

They were commenting in the wake of the publication of the summary of seven visitation reports on the Irish church sent to Rome last year.

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Document vital for ‘journey of renewal’

IRELAND
The Irish Times

CHARLIE TAYLOR

VATICAN REPORT

THE REPORT on the clerical abuse crisis is intended as a contribution to the ongoing spiritual and moral renewal of the church, Primate of All-Ireland Cardinal Seán Brady has said.

Dr Brady said yesterday that the summation was not intended to replace or supersede the work of other agencies and was different from other reviews into the clerical abuse scandal in Ireland.

“This was a pastoral visitation which seeks to understand and work out the implications of faith for a given situation in which the church finds itself. We must never forget that it was offered to us as a help,” he said.

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Church leaders conclude abuse scandals eroded trust in clergy

IRELAND
The Irish Times

[the report]

CARL O’BRIEN

The report advanced a number of key reforms to safeguard children and also notes that this ‘time of trial’ has revealed the vitality and strength of Irish faith

A DELEGATION of senior Catholic Church officials has acknowledged that sex abuse scandals in Ireland have led to a loss of trust in members of the clergy.

The findings form part of the Holy See’s investigation into seminaries and dioceses across Ireland in the wake of controversy over the church’s handling of clerical sex abuse cases.

The report also proposes a number of reforms to improve child protection, along with pastoral priorities to help with the renewal of the church.

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Church Leaders Talk Child Sex Abuse, Just Days After Boy Was Allegedly Molested

MIDLAND (TX)
NewsWest9

By Jen Kastner
NewsWest 9

MIDLAND- On Tuesday, church leaders in Midland came together to start learning what they can do to make sure child sex abuse no longer happens inside their churches.

Gregory Love is a lawyer specializing in child sexual abuse. He thinks the rate of abuse in churches is going up. “I think it’s probably growing. I think just generally we find that the protective barriers in our churches are lower than other places. I think, unfortunately, sexual predators know that,” Love said.

Even organizer Hank Henry says, “The assumption is that [when] you’re in church, you’re in a safe environment. People are in there for a reason, which is to worship.”

Last Friday, NewsWest 9 first reported that 26 year-old William Velasquez confessed to performing oral sex on a boy who is only six years old. He reported it took place inside St. Stephen’s Catholic Church in Midland.

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Lori draws mostly plaudits for his 10-year tenure

BRIDGEPORT (CT)
CT Post

Anne M. Amato

BRIDGEPORT — Bishop William E. Lori was hailed by supporters and admirers across the region Tuesday as an inspirational spiritual leader, a man open to new ideas and a reliable friend and supporter of the community.

But some who fought the Roman Catholic Diocese of Bridgeport on the issue of priest sex abuse said that while Lori earned their respect for his willingness to clean up the scandal, he was a disappointment for not reaching out to victims more aggressively and for fighting to keep court documents sealed and other diocesan records private. …

Jamie Dance, co-chairman of Voice of the Faithful in the Diocese of Bridgeport, commended Lori for setting up the diocese’s Safe Environment program to enable people to recognize sexual abuse and how to report it.

The program, implemented in 2003, includes victim assistance, criminal background checks, written codes of conduct and child sexual abuse awareness and prevention training for priests, deacons, lay employees and volunteers.

“I do have to say it’s one of the best around,” she said. But Dance added that victims rights groups and others have never been able to learn how effective the program is because no statistics have ever been released.

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Priest charged for child porn

MONTANA
The Daily Inter Lake

By JESSE DAVIS/The Daily Inter Lake |

A Catholic priest who has led Risen Christ Parish in Evergreen for more than a decade is facing up to 10 years in prison if he’s convicted of possessing child pornography.

The Rev. Rudy Bullman, who is in his mid-60s, was charged Feb. 29 with felony sexual abuse of children.

Bullman had been placed on administrative leave by the Diocese of Helena on Dec. 16.

The case began to unfold last fall after it was initially reported that a Nintendo DS handheld video game system Bullman reportedly sold was found to have photographs of nude boys on it.

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Catholic priest from Kalispell parish accused of possessing child porn

KALISPELL (MT)
Missoulian

By TRISTAN SCOTT of the Missoulian | Posted: Tuesday, March 20, 2012

KALISPELL – A Catholic priest at a Kalispell parish has been charged with felony sexual abuse of children for allegedly possessing digital images of nude boys on his computer.

Rudolph “Rudy” Carl Bullman, 67, a priest at Risen Christ Parish in Kalispell, is scheduled to enter a plea on the charge at a March 29 arraignment hearing in Flathead County District Court. He remains released on his own recognizance and has been on administrative leave from the church since Dec. 16, when officials with the Roman Catholic Diocese of Helena first learned of the investigation.

“We were made aware of an investigation by the Flathead County Attorney’s Office and at that time he was placed on administrative leave, which is what our policies and procedures call for,” diocese spokeswoman Renee St. Martin Wizeman said.

St. Martin Wizeman said Bullman was asked to vacate the parish residence and has been living in a non-ministerial setting off of parish grounds. He has had no involvement in the ministry since the allegations surfaced and has been receiving counseling arranged by the diocese.

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Brothers suing Delbarton School, claiming they were abused by monks

NEW JERSEY
Daily Record

Written by
Abbott Koloff
Staff Writer

MORRISTOWN — Twin brothers filed a lawsuit on Tuesday alleging that they were abused by monks when they were children living at the prestigious Delbarton School, where their father was a longtime teacher and an assistant headmaster.

Bill and Tom Crane filed a lawsuit against Delbarton and St. Mary’s Abbey, which runs the school, and then held a press conference at the front of the courthouse where they were accompanied by their attorney and victims’ advocates. The suit alleges that the Rev. Luke Travers, a former headmaster, abused Tom Crane while the Rev. Justin Capato abused both.

Gerard Hanlon, an attorney representing Travers, said on Tuesday that his client “denies any inappropriate conduct.” An attorney representing Capato was not available for comment.

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2 sue Delbarton over alleged sex abuse

NEW JERSEY
Press of Atlantic City

Associated Press

MORRISTOWN — Being a child around the Delbarton School campus in the 1960s and ’70s with a father who taught there and later became an assistant headmaster was “total joy,” Bill Crane Jr. recalled. That was before he attended the school as a teen and, he says, a priest sexually abused him over a two-year period.

It was years before he came forward, and by that time his twin brother, Thomas, had already told their father that he, too, had been abused. Their allegations are contained in a lawsuit filed Tuesday in state Superior Court in Morristown, about 3 miles from the school, where current students include Gov. Chris Christie’s oldest son.

The suit names Delbarton as well as St. Mary’s Abbey, which runs the school. No individuals are named as defendants in the suit, but the complaint identifies the Rev. Justin Capato and the Rev. Luke Travers as priests responsible for the abuse. In January, Travers was removed from his position as head of an abbey in Richmond, Va., over allegations of sexual misconduct at Delbarton.

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Legion victim’s book details papal knowledge

MEXICO
Times LIVE (South Africa)

A new book says internal Vatican documents show the Holy See knew decades ago of allegations that the Mexican founder of the disgraced Legion of Christ religious order was a drug addict and pedophile.

The documentation has been compiled in a book “La voluntad de no saber” (“The will to not know”), which is co-authored by Jose Barba, a former Legion priest who along with other priests in 1998 brought a church trial against the Legion’s founder, the Rev. Marciel Maciel, for having sexually abused them while they were seminarians.

While details of the abuse were made public years ago in Mexico and the Spanish-speaking world, the authors aim for a larger international audience, saying they will post key documents on the Internet as part of the book release Saturday. Excerpts of the book published by Proceso magazine on Sunday received little attention in Mexico.

“The importance of this book is that it documents the irrefutable evidence and proof that the Vatican has been lying about Maciel,” said Bernardo Barranco, an expert from the Religious Studies Center of Mexico and author of the prologue of the new text.

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Revelarán documentos sobre posible encubrimiento a Maciel

MEXICO
El Diario de Yucatan

Por E. EDUARDO CASTILLO y NICOLE WINFIELD

MEXICO (AP).— La primera visita del Papa Benedicto XVI a México coincidirá con la publicación de un nuevo libro que revelará documentos que presuntamente demuestran que el Vaticano tuvo conocimiento de los abusos sexuales cometidos contra varios seminaristas por parte del fundador de Los Legionarios de Cristo, el mexicano Marcial Maciel, y sobre su aparente adicción a la morfina.

El libro, “La voluntad de no saber“, tiene previsto salir a la luz pública el 24 de marzo, un día después de la llegada a México de Benedicto XVI, un Papa que en viajes fuera del Vaticano y anteriores a éste, se ha reunido con víctimas de abusos sexuales cometidos por sacerdotes pero quien no tiene planeado hacer lo mismo en territorio mexicano.

Editado por Random House Mondadori, el libro tiene un tiraje de más de 6.000 copias y sólo circulará en México.

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Pederastia y política se cruzan en agenda del Papa en México

MEXICO
Terra

19 de marzo de 2012

La visita del Papa Benedicto XVI despierta expectativas sobre un cambio en la estrategia vaticana hacia una región clave en el catolicismo mundial que incluya una señal de justicia hacia las víctimas de abuso sexual.

Después de seis años de pontificado, México y Cuba son los primeros países hispanoparlantes que visita Benedicto XVI después de viajar a Brasil en 2007 cuando asistió a la V Asamblea General del Episcopado Latinoamericano (CELAM).

La visita papal a México tendrá lugar en pleno proceso electoral y aunque autoridades eclesiásticas insisten en su carácter exclusivamente pastoral, expertos advierten sobre una capitalización del mensaje del Vicario de Cristo por parte de los partidos políticos en campaña. “Es un momento delicado en el que los mexicanos estamos eligiendo las opciones políticas futuras por lo que afirmar que no tendrá ninguna repercusión política es absurdo”, dice el sociólogo y vaticanólogo mexicano Bernardo Barranco en conversación con Deutsche Welle.

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Caso Maciel ensombrece visita del Papa

MEXICO
La Opinion

POR: Gardenia Mendoza Aguilar / gardenia.mendoza@laopinion.com

Benedicto XVI no se reunirá con los denunciantes del artífice de actos consecutivos de pederastia y creador de la congregación católica más poderosa del mundo

MÉXICO, D.F.- “No hemos pedido ninguna cita con el Papa”, corta tajante el exsacerdote José Barba, presunta víctima de abusos sexuales de Marcial Maciel, el fallecido fundador de los Legionarios de Cristo, que representa junto con la caída del número de católicos, dos realidades desatendidas en México.

Benedicto XVI no se reunirá con los denunciantes del artífice de actos consecutivos de pederastia y creador de la congregación católica más poderosa del mundo con presencia en 38 países, como lo hizo con otras víctimas de curas en Estados Unidos, Irlanda, Inglaterra y Alemania.

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Pope Mexico trip clouded …

MEXICO
Washington Post

Pope Mexico trip clouded by documents that show Vatican knew of Legion founder’s abuse

By Associated Press, Updated: Wednesday, March 21

MEXICO CITY — Pope Benedict XVI arrives in Mexico this week to a very public reminder of one of the Catholic Church’s most egregious sex abuse scandals: A new book says internal Vatican documents show the Holy See knew decades ago of allegations that the Mexican founder of the disgraced Legion of Christ religious order was a drug addict and pedophile.

The documentation has been compiled in a book “La voluntad de no saber” (”The will to not know”), which is co-authored by Jose Barba, a former Legion priest who along with other priests in 1998 brought a church trial against the Legion’s founder, the Rev. Marciel Maciel, for having sexually abused them while they were seminarians.

While details of the abuse were made public years ago in Mexico and the Spanish-speaking world, the authors aim for a larger international audience, saying they will post key documents on the Internet as part of the book release Saturday. Excerpts of the book published by Proceso magazine on Sunday received little attention in Mexico.

“The importance of this book is that it documents the irrefutable evidence and proof that the Vatican has been lying about Maciel,” said Bernardo Barranco, an expert from the Religious Studies Center of Mexico and author of the prologue of the new text.

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‘It never happened,’ priest says

STOCKTON (CA)
The Record

By Jennie Rodriguez-Moore
Record Staff Writer

March 21, 2012

STOCKTON – A Catholic priest accused of child sex abuse testified in his civil trial for the first time Tuesday under questions from the plaintiff’s lawyer.

The Rev. Michael Kelly and the Diocese of Stockton are being sued by a former altar boy who served at Cathedral of the Annunciation under Kelly’s direction during the mid-1980s.

Kelly, now pastor of St. Joachim Church in Lockeford, is accused of touching the boy as he baby-sat him, assaulting him in the priest’s rectory and at a motel and raping him in a wooded area.

“That’s what he said, and it never happened,” Kelly said on the stand.

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Del. bill targets teachers sex abuse

DELAWARE
WHTM

DOVER, Del. (AP) – The House Judiciary Committee is poised to consider a bill that would subject government employees and agencies in Delaware to lawsuits by victims of child sexual abuse.

The bill to be considered Wednesday would waive the government’s sovereign immunity, which typically shields the state from lawsuits, in cases of sexual abuse of minors. That waiver would apply to the state as well as its political subdivisions, including school districts.

The bill also would allow victims of past child sex abuse a limited period in which they could file lawsuits that otherwise would be barred by the passage of time. A similar provision was included in a 2007 law that paved the way for several priest sex abuse lawsuits.

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Clergy: Lori will be missed

BRIDGEPORT (CT)
Stamford Advocate

Anne M. Amatoand Martin B. Cassidy

BRIDGEPORT — Bishop William E. Lori will be remembered for many things. There are those who will remember him as a great spiritual leader, a person open to new ideas and someone who was a friend and an asset to the community. But for others, they will never forget the way Lori dealt with the priest sexual-abuse scandal, which he inherited from his predecessor, in particular, his failure to reach out to the victims and their families.

Lori, 60, will be leaving the Roman Catholic Diocese of Bridgeport, after 10 years at the helm, to become the 16th Archbishop of Baltimore. The announcement was made Tuesday by Pope Benedict XVI.

The Rev. Dr. Brian R. Bodt, president and CEO of the Council of Churches of Greater Bridgeport, said Lori showed great leadership in the way he dealt with the sexual-abuse scandal.

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Survivors of clergy abuse to meet

WORCESTER (MA)
Telegram & Gazette

By Bronislaus B. Kush TELEGRAM & GAZETTE STAFF
bkush@telegram.com

A new support group is forming in the Worcester area to help victims of clergy abuse.

The group, which will meet every fourth Tuesday of the month, will be affiliated with the national Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests.

David O’Regan, 61, of Spencer, who is helping put the local group together, said its mission is to keep children safe, help victims heal, and promote public safety.

Mr. O’Regan said he was abused by a priest while attending a summer camp in Wellesley that was run by a Roman Catholic religious order. He said the new group will meet at a place in Auburn.

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March 20, 2012

Green Bay Bishop David Ricken named as defendent in federal lawsuit

WISCONSIN
SNAP Wisconsin

According to reports Green Bay Bishop David Ricken has been named as a defendant in a federal civil lawsuit filed by a woman who states that a deacon at St. Anthony’s Catholic Church in Casper Wyoming had a physically and sexually abusive relationship with her. The lawsuit also names the Diocese of Cheyenne, two priests, and Bishop Joseph Hart.

Bishop Ricken was appointed bishop of Cheyenne in 2000 and remained in Wyoming until 2008 when Pope Benedict XVI appointed him as bishop of Green Bay. The woman who filed the lawsuit, Kathy Seeley, states that she was referred to Deacon Don Stewart in 2002 for grief counseling. Seeley reports that Stewart’s “vicious physical assaults and physical sexual relationship” caused emotional and physical damage.

The Diocese of Cheyenne contends that the First Amendment prohibits such a lawsuit from moving forward, arguing that it would involve the court in the internal personnel policies of the church. Seeley’s attorneys argue that church officials “knew or should have known of this inappropriate and meretricious sexual relationship imposed upon plaintiff by defendant Stewart in the course and scope of his employment”.

Note: This is an Abuse Tracker excerpt. Click the title to view the full text of the original article. If the original article is no longer available, see our News Archive.