ABUSE TRACKER

NETHERLANDS
Irish Independent

By Bruno Waterfield

Tuesday March 20 2012

AT LEAST 10 teenage boys or young men under the age of 21 were surgically castrated “to get rid of homosexuality” while in the care of the Dutch Roman Catholic Church in the 1950s.

Evidence of the castrations has emerged amid controversy that it was not included in the findings of an official investigation into sexual abuse within the church last year.

The NRC Handelsblad newspaper identified Henk Heithuis who was castrated in 1956, while a minor, after reporting priests to the police for abusing him in a Catholic boarding home.

Joep Dohmen, the investigative journalist who uncovered the Heithuis case, also found evidence of at least nine other castrations. “These cases are anonymous and can no longer be traced,” he said. “There will be many more. But the question is whether those boys, now old men, will want to tell their story.”

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NEW JERSEY
The Star-Ledger

By Kevin Manahan/The Star-Ledger

MORRIS COUNTY — Two former Mendham residents are planning to file a lawsuit Tuesday in Morris County, alleging sexual abuse by two Delbarton School monks in the 1970s, when the men were adolescents, according to the complaint, obtained by The Star-Ledger.

The alleged victims, referred to in the Superior Court document only by their initials, will remain unnamed until a press conference at the Morris County courthouse at 10:30 Tuesday morning, said the men’s attorney, Gregory Gianforcaro of Phillipsburg.

Named as defendants in the lawsuit are the private all-boys school and St. Mary’s Abbey, which runs the school. Both are located in Morris Township.

The allegations, made against Rev. Justin Capato and Rev. Luke Travers, are the latest in a string of accusations that have rocked the elite school in the past three months.

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MONTANA
Missoulian

By MATT VOLZ Associated Press | Posted: Monday, March 19, 2012

HELENA – The Roman Catholic Diocese of Helena has pledged to open its books and attempt to use a mediator to settle claims that priests and nuns sexually abused about 250 people as children in western Montana.

Attorneys for the diocese and for the plaintiffs in the two lawsuits asked District Judge Jeffrey Sherlock of Helena last week to temporarily halt court proceedings as they begin the process.

The sides plan to meet next month to set up interviews of each alleged victim to determine the validity of claims.

The diocese also has said it would open its financial records and share its files on accused priests with the plaintiffs’ attorneys.

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WISCONSIN
Lez Get Real

Posted by: Bridgette P. LaVictoire on March 19, 2012.

Perhaps the Roman Catholic Church is starting to take some of their child sexual abuse problem seriously. Father Mark Molling of St. Paul Parish in Genesee Depot, Wisconsin has been placed on leave during an investigation started by the Archdiocese of Wisconsin. They are investigating allegations of sexual abuse of a minor back in the mid 1990′s.

According to Archbishop Jerome Listecki, Molling denies the allegations, and they were reported to the Waukesha County district attorney’s office, which has not filed charges. Molling has worked as a resident chaplain at the state juvenile corrections facility Ethan Allen School for Boys in Wales, Wis. John Pilmaier, Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests Wisconsin director, stated “The way the diocese made the statement, it’s unclear if the DA declined to prosecute because the statute of limitations ran out or if there were other problems.”

According to the Journal Sentinel:

The report of the alleged sexual abuse by Molling was filed with the federal bankruptcy court as part of the Archdiocese’s Chapter 11 bankruptcy claims process. Before the Feb. 1 deadline, 570 claims of sexual abuse by individual victims were filed, and Molling appears to be one of at least 100 unidentified persons accused of committing at least 8,000 instances of sexual abuse against children in the archdiocese, according to SNAP.

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MINNESOTA/INDIA
Chicago Tribune

By David Jackson and Gary Marx, Chicago Tribune reporters

March 20, 2012

A fugitive Roman Catholic priest has been arrested in India after seven years on the run from charges that he sexually assaulted a 14-year-old Minnesota girl who sought his advice about becoming a nun.

The Rev. Joseph Jeyapaul’s case was included in a March 11 story in the Tribune. His alleged victim, Megan Peterson, who is now 22, said in an interview Monday that she was taken off guard by the arrest after so many years of waiting.

“I find it quite ironic that we did that interview and then a week later he is in handcuffs,” Peterson said. “I wasn’t expecting it to happen this fast.”

Peterson said she was still firmly committed to testifying against Jeyapaul if he is extradited to Minnesota to face trial. “I am ready — it’s about time,” she said. “If my voice can help, then I’ll be there.”

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NETHERLANDS
AMERICAblog

By Chris in Paris on 3/19/2012

Just when you think the Catholic church abuse stories couldn’t get any worse, something else is reported. Like castrating a young boy for having the temerity to report that his priest abused him. In this case, a politician even participated in the coverup according to the report. DutchNews:

At least one boy under the age of 16 was castrated to ‘help’ his homosexual feelings while in Catholic church care in the 1950s, the NRC reported on Saturday.

But there are indications at least 10 other boys were also castrated, the paper said. The claims were not included in the Deetman report on sexual abuse within the Catholic church published at the end of last year.

The paper says the one confirmed case concerned a boy – Henk Heithuis – who reported being sexually abused by priests to the police in 1956. After giving evidence, he was placed in a Catholic-run psychiatric institution where he was then castrated because of his ‘homosexual behaviour’.

As Joe noted the other day, the Catholic church is still attacking their own victims (quoting the NYT):

Turning the tables on an advocacy group that has long supported victims of pedophile priests, lawyers for the Roman Catholic Church and priests accused of sexual abuse in two Missouri cases have gone to court to compel the group to disclose more than two decades of e-mails that could include correspondence with victims, lawyers, whistle-blowers, witnesses, the police, prosecutors and journalists.

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NETHERLANDS
Huffington Post

The Huffington Post | By Laura Hibbard

Shocking reports have surfaced that reveal at least ten teenage boys were castrated in the 1950s by the Dutch Roman Catholic Church as a “treatment” for homosexuality, the Telegraph reports.

Dutch journalist Joep Dohmen, reporting for the NRC Handelsblad uncovered ten cases of the castrations, one of which was suffered by Henk Heithuis, who was castrated as a minor for reporting to police sexual abuse by a priest that he endured while in the boarding home.

Although the priests were convicted of the abuses, Heithuis was still transported to a Catholic hospital, and underwent a surgical castration as a treatment for homosexuality and, according to the report, a punishment for tattling on the clergy.

Radio Netherlands Worldwide reports that the new information wasn’t included in the large Deetman Commission report published three months ago on sexual abuses in the church — and furthermore — that the commission received a complaint about the castrations last year, but claimed there was a “lack of sufficient leads” to warrant an investigation.

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UNITED STATES
Baptist Joint Committee

The U.S. Supreme Court denied cert in a lawsuit attempting to hold the Archdiocese of St. Louis responsible for child sexual abuse committed by one of its priests who has since passed away. The Catholic Church argued that the First Amendment’s guarantee of religious freedom denies courts the ability to scrutinize personnel decisions it makes regarding its clergy. The Missouri Court of Appeals agreed, and today’s decision by the Supreme Court leaves that ruling in place.

In throwing out [the plaintiff]’s lawsuit, the Missouri Court of Appeals for the Eastern District noted that courts in Missouri have declined to recognize a cause of action for negligent failure to supervise clergy. Such an inquiry would impermissibly inject the courts into matters of religious doctrine, the state’s courts have ruled.

“The [Missouri] Supreme Court has held questions of hiring, ordaining, and retaining clergy, necessarily involve interpretation of religious doctrine, policy, and administration, and such excessive entanglement between church and state has the effect of inhibiting religion, in violation of the First Amendment,” the state appeals court said.

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WISCONSIN
Channel 3000

GENESEE DEPOT, Wis. — The Archdiocese of Milwaukee has placed a Waukesha County priest on leave following allegations of sexual abuse of a minor.

An email from Archbishop Jerome Listecki stated the Rev. Mark Molling of St. Paul Parish in Genesee Depot was placed on temporary administrative leave after allegations contained in the archdiocese’s Chapter 11 bankruptcy. Molling denies the accusations.

Listecki said there’s been no substantiation of the allegations, which will be reviewed by an independent investigator.

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MINNESOTA/INDIA
Grand Forks Herald

By: Stephen J. Lee, Grand Forks Herald

A former Greenbush, Minn., Catholic priest appeared in court today in New Delhi related to charges filed in 2006 in Roseau, Minn., alleging he sexually assaulted a 14-year-old girl, according to The Associated Press in a report out of India.

But the extradition process to return the Rev. Joseph Palanivel Jeyapaul from his native India to Roseau to face the charges in state district court could take three months, Indian government officials said.

Jeyapaul, 57, was arrested Friday near the southern Indian town of Erode based on a warrant from Interpol, according to Indian news reports.

He was a visiting priest in the Catholic Diocese of Crookston from September 2004 to September 2005, serving in Thief River Falls for a month or so, then about 10 months in Blessed Sacrament Catholic Church in Greenbush and a nearby parish in Karlstad, Minn.

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PHILADELPHIA (PA)
Philadelphia Daily News

BY MENSAH M. DEAN
Philadelphia Daily News
Daily News Staff Writer

Two of the three Catholic priests who will go on trial next week in the clergy-child-abuse case are themselves being victimized by their troubled accusers, defense lawyers said today during a pretrial hearing.

The two former altar boys who allege that they were raped in the 1990s by Rev. James Brennan, 48, and defrocked priest Edward Avery, 69, are longtime drug addicts with criminal records who have made false allegations hoping to improve their situations, lawyers for the two priests said.

They asked Common Pleas Judge M. Teresa Sarmina to allow them to tell the jury about what they believe to be the alleged victims’ motivations.

Sarmina is expected to make a ruling tomorrow.

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NEW JERSEY
The Record

Written by
Abbott Koloff
Staff Writer

Two former Morris County men plan to file a lawsuit Tuesday against the Delbarton School alleging sexual misconduct by former headmaster Luke Travers and another monk, their attorney said on Monday.

Greg Gianforcaro, a Phillipsburg attorney, issued a press release Monday afternoon announcing the lawsuit and a press conference to be held Tuesday morning in front of the courthouse in Morristown. He offered few details and said the identities of the men alleging the abuse would not be revealed until Tuesday.

Gianforcaro said the two victims, both minors at the time the alleged abuse occurred and now in their 40s, are expected to attend the press conference along with several victims’ advocates including Pat Marker, who lives in Washington state and runs a website devoted to allegations against Delbarton monks.

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PHILADELPHIA (PA)
Corporate Counsel

Gina Passarella and Shannon Green
Corporate Counsel

March 20, 2012

This article was written in collaboration with The Legal Intelligencer, a sibling publication of CorpCounsel.com.

The decision by the Archdiocese of Philadelphia to place its general counsel on administrative leave appears to be the latest move in an effort by the new archbishop to bring in new outside and in-house legal counsel.

The Philadelphia Inquirer first reported Saturday that Archdiocese General Counsel Timothy Coyne was placed on administrative leave.

A source with knowledge of the decision told The Legal Intelligencer Monday that the parameters of the administrative leave are unclear even to the source, but said the expectation is that Coyne will not be returning.

Coyne has been with the archdiocese for six years, and prior to that was with Stradley Ronon Stevens & Young, which had served for several decades as outside counsel for the Philadelphia church.

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MISSOURI
Berger’s Beat

. . .Sources have it that the former pastor of Wildwood’s St. Alban Roe Catholic parish, Fr. Charles Manning, has left his post in Colorado and is back in our town after having been suspended by his pal and boss, Bishop Michael Sheridan, another ex-St. Louisan. Manning faces a pending criminal investigation that he may have molested a youngster in Colorado Springs. Manning was at churches in Wildwood from 1997-2001, in Bridgeton from 2002-2004 and in Imperial, MO from 2004-2007.

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PHILADELPHIA (PA)
Catholic Culture

March 19, 2012

The Archdiocese of Philadelphia has refused to release some documents for the sex-abuse trial of a former archdiocesan official, saying that the documents are protected by the lawyer-client privilege.

Lawyers for Msgr. William Lynn are seeking to subpoena letters from an exchange he had with archdiocesan attorneys while he was secretary for clerical affairs.

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UNITED STATES
Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests

Posted by Barbara Blaine on March 19, 2012

New revelations are surfacing about Catholic employees castrating boys in the Netherlands and Catholic nuns essentially stealing babies in Spain.

The Pope has set up a new church investigation, but not into these crimes. Instead, it’s focused on “leaks” in the Vatican hierarchy.

Again, the church hierarchy shows its true, and tragic, priorities. The priests and nuns who abuse and torture children are rarely pursued and punished. Instead, those who allegedly leak details of the Vatican’s mishandling of child sex cases are.

On Saturday it was revealed that during the 1950s, psychiatric wards under the auspices of the Dutch Roman Catholic church were castrating young boys for suspicions of homosexuality.In the late fall of last year, Spain was rocked by thousands of reports of babies being stolen by nuns and priests and sold for a profit, a practice that continued for decades Despite the horrors of these crimes, Church officials have responded more quickly – and devoted greater resources – to uncovering those who hacked its website and which officials leaked information.

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OREGON
Catholic Sentinel

An alleged victim of priest sexual abuse has failed to convince a federal appeals court that he did not wait too long to make a claim for money damages against the Archdiocese of Portland.

John Doe 150, as he is identified in court papers, had asked the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals to reverse a federal judge’s ruling that his lawsuit is time-barred.

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UNITED STATES
Catholic League

Catholic League president Bill Donohue comments on the decision by the U.S. Supreme Court not to accept a church-state case that involves the Archdiocese of St. Louis:

A man claims he was abused by another man back in 1971 when he was a teenager. The alleged offender is dead, and the alleged victim never knew what supposedly happened to him until one day in therapy ten years ago. Then, all of a sudden, it hit him like a ton of bricks—bingo, his memory was restored. Sound familiar? It happens all the time to priests. For some strange reason, this jarred-memory-phenomenon does not happen very often when the alleged molester is a school teacher.

Those issues, while important, were not at the heart of this case. The U.S. Supreme Court refused to hear this case because the Missouri Court of Appeals reached an eminently defensible conclusion in 2010: in order for the courts to determine whether the Archdiocese of St. Louis was negligent in its handling of the accused priest, Father Thomas Cooper, it necessarily had to involve itself in the internal affairs of the Church. Such a level of intrusion would cross church-state lines, and therefore violate the First Amendment.

This is a big loss for Marci Hamilton, an attorney who is notoriously partisan against the Catholic Church. It also signifies a loss for the editorial board of the New York Times; last week it called the Missouri decision “bizarre.”

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MINNESOTA
WGN

By David Jackson and Gary Marx
Tribune reporters

1:53 p.m. CDT, March 19, 2012
A fugitive Roman Catholic priest has been arrested in India after seven years on the run while facing charges that he sexually assaulted a 14-year-old Minnesota girl who sought his advice about becoming a nun.

The Rev. Joseph Jeyapaul’s case was featured in a March 11 story in the Tribune. His alleged victim, Megan Peterson, who is now 22, told the newspaper in an interview today that she was taken off guard by the arrest after so many years of waiting.

“I find it quite ironic that that we did that interview and then a week later he is in handcuffs,” Peterson said. “I wasn’t expecting it to happen this fast.”

But Peterson said she was still firmly committed to testifying against Jeyapaul should he be extradited to Minnesota to face trial. “I am ready — it’s about time,” she said. “If my voice can help, then I’ll be there.”

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UNITED STATES/UGANDA
The Africa Report

From Oregon to Uganda: A “Lively” Legal Debate on Gays, Sex, and Christianity

By Joseph Hellweg

Most people have never heard of Scott Lively, an evangelical pastor living in the United States. But in Uganda he has developed quite a following—whether his followers know his name or not.


As the founder of Abiding Truth Ministries, he has played a leading role in furthering the so-called “anti-homosexuality bill” in the Ugandan parliament. First introduced in 2009 and subsequently revised, the bill would punish by fines and imprisonment anyone engaging in various forms of same-gendered sexual activity as well with those who shield such persons from the punishments the bill would impose.


Opposing the bill is Frank Mugisha, who heads Sexual Minorities Uganda, an advocacy group for lesbian, gay, and transgendered Ugandans. Mugisha accuses Scott Lively and other evangelical leaders from the U.S.—one might add Caleb Lee Brundidge and Don Schmierer to the list—of having helped draft Uganda’s anti-gay legislation. Mugisha has since secured the help of the New York-based Center for Constitutional Rights to file a law suit on March 14, 2012 against Lively in a U.S. federal court in Springfield, Massachusetts. The suit charges that Lively has conspired to violate the human rights of lesbian and gay people in Uganda.

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NETHERLANDS
The Telegraph (United Kingdom)

At least 10 teenage boys or young men under the age of 21 were surgically castrated “to get rid of homosexuality” while in the care of the Dutch Roman Catholic Church in the 1950s.

By Bruno Waterfield

5:31PM GMT 19 Mar 2012

Evidence of the castrations has emerged amid controversy that it was not included in the findings of an official investigation into sexual abuse within the church last year.

The NRC Handelsblad newspaper identified Henk Heithuis who was castrated in 1956, while a minor, after reporting priests to the police for abusing him in a Catholic boarding home.

Joep Dohmen, the investigative journalist who uncovered the Heithuis case, also found evidence of at least nine other castrations. “These cases are anonymous and can no longer be traced,” he said. “There will be many more. But the question is whether those boys, now old men, will want to tell their story.”

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UNITED STATES
The Daily Isureveille

By Nicholas Pierce
Columnist

Bishop Charles Brown of the Church of God in Christ was reinstated last week to his position as chief clergyman of the New Orleans and Houston areas.

Not much to see here — except that the right reverend had been suspended due to multiple counts of sexual misconduct, including a charge of forcible rape.

None of the charges stuck, though, and Rev. Brown slipped out the back door via the statute of limitations.

Lucky him, I guess. I get the impression Brown is a slippery guy.

How do things like this happen? Simple. A crime committed in the past is restricted to the statute of limitations that was on the books then, not now. Since Brown’s alleged assaults, the laws have been changed. Had his actions taken place only a few years later, his case would still have merit.

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MINNESOTA
Crookston Daily Times

By Staff reports
Crookston Daily Times

Posted Mar 19, 2012 @ 12:28 PM

Crookston —

A Catholic priest accused of sexually assaulting one and possibly two underage girls in Greenbush while assigned to the Diocese of Crookston in 2004 has been arrested in India, where he had been preaching since 2006 and considered a fugitive. The Associated Press reports that the Rev. Joseph Palanivel Jeyapaul, 57, appeared in court today, Monday. He will be held in custody pending a formal U.S. request for his extradition, to be filed along with case evidence, government officials said. It could take up to three months to process the extradition request.

Police detained Jeyapaul on Friday, March 16 near the southern Indian town of Erode after Interpol issued an alert, according to police Subinspector Pugal Maran.

Jeyapaul was one of many foreign priests brought to the United States to help fill shortages in American parishes.

“We are grateful to the police and prosecutors in Minnesota and elsewhere for getting this dangerous cleric behind bars. But most of all, we are grateful to Jeyapaul’s victim, for having the courage to report to secular authorities and the compassion to cooperate with them so that this arrest could be made and so that children might be spared unspeakable pain,” said Barbara Dorris, outreach director of the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests (SNAP).

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PHILADELPHIA (PA)
The Sacramento Bee

By MARYCLAIRE DALE
Associated Press

Published: Monday, Mar. 19, 2012

PHILADELPHIA — Lawyers for two priests accused of raping boys in the mid-1990s plan to attack the victims’ motives when the landmark trial starts next week in Philadelphia.

Defense lawyers revealed their strategy at a pretrial hearing Monday.

The Rev. James Brennan’s lawyer will tell jurors that his client’s accuser sought the priest out as an adult when he needed to do court-ordered community service.

Defrocked priest Edward Avery’s accuser was expelled from an archdiocesan high school at age 14 and began a long battle with drug addiction.

His lawyer will argue that the accuser hoped to get money from the church and get revenge for the expulsion.

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NETHERLAND
Radio Netherlands

The revelation that a number of minors abused in Dutch Roman Catholic institutions were forcibly castrated has shocked the Netherlands. It casts grave doubt upon the recent findings of a commission of inquiry. RNW’s Robert Chesal, who first brought the sex abuse scandal to light, argues that only parliament can be trusted to investigate further.

We now know that former Dutch cabinet minister Wim Deetman did not meet the expectations he raised when he chaired the commission of inquiry into sexual abuse in the Roman Catholic church. He did not get to the bottom of the abuse scandal or reveal all he could find about the horrors that took place behind church doors in the Netherlands.

Whistle blowers punished
We know this thanks to investigative journalist Joep Dohmen of the newspaper NRC Handelsblad. Dohmen wrote about a boarding school student who had been sexually abused by a Dutch monk. When the former student reported the abuse to the police, he was brought to a Roman Catholic psychiatric ward, declared a homosexual and then castrated. The same surgery was probably performed on at least ten other schoolmates of his who tried to blow the whistle on abuse.

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UNITED STATES
Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests

Posted by Barbara Dorris on March 19, 2012 ·

Today, the US Supreme Court announced that they will not review the case of John Doe AP versus Roman Catholic Archdiocese of St. Louis. This is a tragedy that will only make kids in Missouri, Utah, and Wisconsin more vulnerable to child molesters and employers from those states more reckless about children’s safety.

We feel it’s morally wrong for the St Louis archdiocese officials to use legal technicalities to avoid taking responsibility for letting this known predator hurt more kids.

The loophole Archbishop Carlson is using is that this child molester abused his victim “off premises,” on private property, not church property. Carlson should be ashamed for making this claim.

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UNITED STATES
Christian Science Monitor

By Warren Richey, Staff writer / March 19, 2012

The US Supreme Court declined on Monday to take up a case challenging the use of the First Amendment’s separation of church and state as a shield to block a negligence lawsuit against a Roman Catholic archdiocese that hired and supervised a priest accused of being a pedophile.

The high court action ends an attempt to hold the Catholic Church legally accountable for alleged sexual abuse that took place more than 40 years ago.

The plaintiff in the case says he was twice sexually abused by a trusted parish priest when he was 13 or 14 years old. The priest, who has since died, was assigned to a Catholic Church in St. Louis.

The plaintiff, identified only as “John Doe,” sued the Archdiocese of St. Louis for negligence for employing the priest in positions where he would have contact with children.

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OREGON
Thomson Reuters News & Insight

March 19 (Westlaw Journals) – An alleged victim of priest sexual abuse in the 1950s has failed to convince a federal appeals court that he did not wait too long to make a claim for money damages against the bankruptcy estate of the archdiocese of Portland in Oregon.

Doe 150 v. Archdiocese of Portland in Oregon et al., No. 10-36126, 2012 WL 662207 (9th Cir. Mar. 1, 2012).

John Doe 150, as he is identified in court papers, had asked the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals to reverse a federal judge’s ruling that his lawsuit is time-barred.

But the appeals panel agreed with the judge that the plaintiff either knew or should have known of his abuse prior to a Bankruptcy Court-imposed deadline for filing claims in the archdiocese’s Chapter 11 case.

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VATICAN CITY/MILAN
Huffington Post

By Philip Pullella and Lisa Jucca

VATICAN CITY/MILAN, March 19 (Reuters) – JP Morgan Chase is closing the Vatican bank’s account with an Italian branch of the U.S. banking giant because of concerns about a lack of transparency at the Holy See’s financial institution, Italian newspapers reported.

The move is a blow to the Vatican’s drive to have its bank included in Europe’s “white list” of states that comply with international standards against tax fraud and money-laundering.

The bank, formally known as the Institute for Works of Religion (IOR), enacted major reforms last year in an attempt to get Europe’s seal of approval and put behind it scandals that have included accusations of money laundering and fraud.

Italy’s leading financial daily Il Sole 24 Ore reported at the weekend that JP Morgan Chase in Milan had told the IOR of the closing of its account in a letter on Feb. 15.

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VATICAN CITY
International Business Times

By Gianluca Mezzofiore | March 19, 2012

The Italian branch of the Anonymous collective has taken down the official website of the Vatican again, this time to protest against the sex abuse cases involving Roman Catholic priests.

“Forgive us if we’re not too friendly with you, but we are literally disgusted by the Catholic Church’s conspiracy of silence over paedophilia cases, sometimes really objectionable,” reads a statement published on Pastebin

The collective also denounced an alleged abuse that occurred to a friend of one of the members. “She was raped at 13 years old by a priest, the same one that baptized her,” reads the statement.

“We know that the Vatican tends to hide the abuses without reporting them to the police. They care more about their members than of their faithful,” adds the statement.

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ILLINOIS
MySuburbanLife

Dave Heitz, dheitz@mysuburbanlife.com

Posted: 03/19/2012

The Rev. Gerald Riva has received many accolades during his long tenure at St. Scholastica Catholic Church in Woodridge, where he has served as pastor since 1999.

Among them is a 2007 Outstanding Citizen of the Year award from the Village of Woodridge. Then this winter he was named a “2012 Distinguished Pastor” by the National Catholic Education Association. He was one of only 10 pastors nationwide to win the award, which honors pastors who have given “outstanding support to Catholic elementary education.”

But according to court and police records, the 70-year-old Riva has a criminal past.

In 1992, Riva pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor charge of public indecency after he grabbed the male genitals of a DuPage County Forest Preserve officer in a forest preserve in Winfield Township.

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NETHERLANDS
Instinct Magazine

Written by Jonathan Higbee | Monday, 19 March 2012

Horrifying allegations are being made against the Catholic Church this weekend in the Dutch press. According to a committee set up to investigate the priest abuse scandal, information has come to light suggesting that a Catholic institution regularly castrated young boys as a means to cure their homosexuality.

One confirmed case of Catholic castration has been found in Henk Hethius, who was sent to a Church-run psychiatric facility after providing evidence of years of sexual abuse at the hands of local priests. As reported by Dutch paper Limburger today, the Catholic facility then made the decision to castrate Hethius without involving his parents in an effort to curb him of his homosexual behavior. Various reports indicate that at least a dozen other boys were subjected to the same torture.

Dutch News adds:

Minutes of meetings held in the 1950s show inspectors were present when the castrations were openly discussed, the Limburger said. The minutes also showed directors of the institutions did not think parents needed to be involved in the decision-making process when minors were involved.

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CANADA
MarketWatch

Reminder to Former Indian Residential School Students that the Independent Assessment Process Application Deadline is September 19, 2012

OTTAWA, ONTARIO, Mar 19, 2012 (MARKETWIRE via COMTEX) — Aboriginal Affairs and Northern Development is reminding former students of Indian Residential Schools that the Independent Assessment Process (IAP) deadline to submit applications is September 19, 2012. In accordance with the Indian Residential Schools Settlement Agreement (IRSSA), applications will not be accepted after this deadline.

The Independent Assessment Process is an out-of-court process created to resolve claims of abuse at recognized Indian Residential Schools. Former students who have received a Common Experience Payment can also apply to the IAP. Information on the process can be found in the IAP guide and IAP application form which are available online or by calling 1-866-879-4913. Once completed, the application form should be sent to the address listed in the guide.

Former students who are eligible to apply to the IAP should begin the application process now, as it is complex. Due to this complexity, and the legal concepts and processes involved, all parties to the IRSSA believe that former students should have a lawyer to represent them – but it is not a requirement.

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SPAIN
The Irish Times

An 80-year-old nun has become the first person to be accused of baby snatching in the scandal over trafficking of newborns in Spanish hospitals in past decades.

Sr Maria Gomez has been named as a suspect in the investigation into one of more than 1,500 cases of suspected illegal trafficking of babies who were stolen, sold or given away by adoption over four decades until the 1980s.

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SPAIN
Business Insider

An 80-year-old nun has been accused of baby snatching in the scandal over the trafficking of newborns in Spanish hospitals, the Guardian reports.

Sister María Gómez is the first person to be formally indicted in the investigation into one of more than 1,500 cases of suspected illegal trafficking of babies who were stolen, sold or given away by adoption between the 1950s and 1980s.

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VATICAN CITY
Vatican Insider

The decision to re-enter the Ocse’s “White List”

Giacomo Galeazzi
Vatican City

The new rules have become effective and the Vatican has changed the structure of the department that deals with the economy, from being a ‘Court of accounts’ that monitors the Vatican administration to a Pontifical Ministry of Financial Orientation and Programming. This is a mini-revolution that will touch the Prefecture for the Economic Affairs of the Holy See (led by Versaldi who is supported by Bertone) and indirectly the whole system of economic power in the Roman Curia.

It is another step in the progressive revision of administrative laws, in a time when the department has been the centre of tales of poison pens and leaks. Meanwhile, after the Moneyval Anti-Money Laundering inspection, that will decide whether the Vatican can be admitted in the Ocse’s ‘White list’ (a record of financially virtuous countries), the Milan branch of JP Morgan bank has ended its relationship with the Ior, since the Vatican body has been investigated for a long time by the Public Prosecutor of Rome for breaking laws against money laundering

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UNITED STATES
Bloomberg

By Bob Drummond – Mar 19, 2012

The U.S. Supreme Court refused to reinstate a lawsuit claiming the Catholic Archdiocese of St. Louis was negligent by employing a pedophile as a priest, a job that put him in contact with children.

The justices today rejected an appeal challenging a Missouri court’s ruling that the Constitution’s religious- freedom protections shield churches from lawsuits questioning practices for employing and supervising the clergy.

The Catholic Church has faced hundreds of lawsuits, and paid millions of dollars in damages and settlements, in claims from people who alleged sexual abuse by priests over a period of decades. At least eight Catholic dioceses have declared bankruptcy since 2004 in connection with damage claims, and Pope Benedict XVI in 2010 expressed “deep sorrow” for child abuse within the church.

While most state and federal courts to consider the issue have permitted suits against the church in connection with misconduct by its clergy, state courts in Missouri, Utah and Wisconsin have said the First Amendment bars claims related to the employment or supervision of priests, according to the appeal at the high court.

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UNITED STATES
Doggerelo

The Catholic Church, after a period in which it admitted it was wrong in covering up the actions of pedophilic priests, has now decided to get tough. The Survivor’s Network of those Abused by Priests, or SNAP, has been the target of legal actions by the Church to disclose any documents that, during the past 23 years (!), might contain any information that could be relevant to a legal case in Kansas City. William Donahue, President of a church advocacy group in New York has said that “SNAP is a menace to the Catholic Church….[The bishops] had better toughen up and go out and buy some good lawyers to get tough. We don’t need altar boys.” For a previous post on a related issue, see Bishop Finn.

The Church is really scared it seems
That SNAP could threaten its existence
So they demand, with great persistence,
That SNAP disclose to what extremes

Its emails show that it conspired
With others to destroy the Church.
And so they launch a mammoth search
To see just what may have transpired.

But SNAP’s allied with those whom priests
Have raped and sodomized so long
Ago, and though the Church is strong
Its perils, it fears, might have increased.

“We’ll not let weakness and remorse,
Nor feelings for the victims’ plights
Persuade us to give up our rights –
Defend the Church’s the proper course”

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OSTERREICH
Die Presse

Ein ehemaliger Internatsschüler klagt das Vorarlberger Kloster auf 135.000 Euro Schmerzengeld und Verdienstentgang. Es ist die zweite Klage dieser Art.

Das Bregenzer Zisterzienser-Kloster Mehrerau sieht sich mit einer weiteren Zivilgerichtsklage eines ehemaligen Internatsschülers konfrontiert. Der Kläger verlangt 135.000 Euro an Schmerzengeld und Verdienstentgang, außerdem solle das Kloster auch für zukünftige Schäden haften. Der Mann wird von mindestens 20 ehemaligen Mitschülern unterstützt, teilte die Gruppe rund um das Opfer am Montag in einer Aussendung mit.

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DEUTSCHLAND
Usinger Anzeiger

Fulda/Limburg/Mainz (dpa/lhe) – Nach dem Skandal um Gewalt und sexuellen Missbrauch in der katholischen Kirche haben Opfer in Hessen dutzendfach Entschädigungszahlungen erfolgreich eingefordert. Das hat eine Umfrage der Nachrichtenagentur dpa in den Bistümern Fulda, Limburg und Mainz ergeben. 56 Anträge wurden in den drei Bistümern gestellt, in 48 Fällen wurde Geld gezahlt – bis zu einer Höhe von 14 000 Euro. Vor rund einem Jahr hatte die katholische Kirche Missbrauchsopfern ermöglicht, finanzielle Hilfen zu beantragen. Laut der Deutschen Bischofskonferenz in Bonn sind bislang 1030 Anträge bundesweit eingegangen.

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NEDERLAND
PowNed

Volgens de krant De Limburger was de inspectie voor zwakzinnigenzorg op de hoogte van de castraties die uitgevoerd werden op minderjarige patiënten in instellingen in Brabant en Limburg in de jaren ’50.

De krant baseert dit nieuws op notulen van vergaderingen uit die tijd, waarbij ook controleurs van de inspectie aanwezig waren.Tijdens die vergaderingen werd openlijk gesproken over castratie. Hoewel meerderjarigen zelf toestemming moesten geven, bleef er in de praktijk weinig van die vrijwilligheid over. Ouders werden niet of pas achteraf ingelicht.

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NEDERLAND
Den Bosch Dichtbij

Afgelopen weekend stond in het NRC een artikel over Henk Heithuis, een jongen die seksueel werd misbruikt door broeders in een katholiek internaat. Heithuis blijkt in de jaren ’50 te zijn castreerd in het Sint Jozephziekenhuis in Veghel. Dat zegt onderzoeksjournalist Joep Dohmen. Hij denkt dat er waarschijnlijk op gezag van de Katholieke Kerk nog meer jongens zijn gecastreerd.

De jongens werden gecastreerd om zo van hun homoseksuele gedrag te worden afgeholpen. Henk Heithuis, die tot dan toe in allerlei katholieke gestichten gewoond had, werd in 1956 in de door katholieken geleide psychiatrische inrichting Huize Padua in Boekel gedwongen opgenomen. Het NRC schrijft dat dit is gebeurd nadat hij broeders had beschuldigd van seksueel misbruik. Heithuis, zo beweerden de broeders, zou psychisch gestoord en homoseksueel zijn.

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NEDERLAND
Vandaag (Belgie)

De Nederlandse inspectie voor de “zwakzinnigenzorg” wist dat instellingen in de Nederlandse provincies Brabant en Limburg in de jaren 1950 minderjarige patiënten castreerden “om hen van homoseksueel gedrag af te helpen”. Ouders werden niet of pas achteraf ingelicht. Dat schrijft Dagblad De Limburger.

Tijdens vergaderingen van vertegenwoordigers van de Limburgse en Brabantse Katholieke psychiatrische inrichtingen schoof ook iemand van de inspectie aan. Er werd openlijk gesproken over castratie.

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NEDERLAND
Reformatorisch Dagblad

RIJSWIJK (ANP) – De inspectie voor de zwakzinnigenzorg wist dat instellingen in Brabant en Limburg in de jaren ’50 minderjarige patiënten castreerden.

Dat schrijft de krant De Limburger maandag, op basis van notulen van vergaderingen uit die tijd. Ouders werden niet of pas achteraf ingelicht.

Tijdens vergaderingen van vertegenwoordigers van de Limburgse en Brabantse Katholieke psychiatrische inrichtingen schoof ook iemand van de inspectie aan. Er werd openlijk gesproken over castratie. Volgens De Limburger blijkt uit de verslagen dat hoewel meerderjarigen zelf toestemming moesten geven, er in de praktijk van vrijwilligheid weinig sprake was.

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UNITED KINGDOM
The Argus

Priests and parishioners have been urged to act as the eyes of the community by looking for child abusers within the clergy.

The Acting Bishop of Chichester, the Right Reverend Mark Sowerby, has written to members of the clergy across the county warning them they need to be vigilant and help “root out” offenders.

His letter follows the arrests of two former Church of England priests on suspicion of sexually abusing young people between the 1960s and 1980s.

The letter, which he addressed to “brothers and sisters in Christ”, has also been read out to congregations at churches across Sussex.

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VATICAN CITY
Catholic News Service

By Cindy Wooden
Catholic News Service

VATICAN CITY (CNS) — Pope Benedict XVI has established a commission to investigate a series of leaks of letters exchanged among Vatican officials and between the officials and the pope himself.

Archbishop Angelo Becciu, Vatican substitute secretary of state, said March 16 that the papal commission would try “to shed light on the whole affair,” while a Vatican tribunal would look into taking legal action against those who gave the documents to reporters, and the Vatican Secretariat of State would carry out an administrative review of every Vatican office.

While some of the leaked letters are gossipy, others include allegations of serious financial misconduct.

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WISCONSIN
Sheboygan Press

GENESEE DEPOT (AP) — The Archdiocese of Milwaukee has placed a Waukesha County priest on leave following allegations of sexual abuse of a minor.

An email from Archbishop Jerome Listecki says the Rev. Mark Molling of St. Paul Parish in Genesee Depot was placed on temporary administrative leave after allegations contained in the archdiocese’s Chapter 11 bankruptcy. Molling denies the accusations.

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SPAIN
Daily Mail (United Kingdom)

By Leon Watson

A Catholic nun has been charged with being part of a child stealing operation that ran over four decades in Spain.

Sister María Gómez Valbuena is the first person to be indicted in connection with the probe into more than 100 cases of babies snatched from hospitals between the 1950s and 1980s.

She was subpoenaed to testify before investigators recently but refused to answer questions, according to sources at the Madrid prosecutor’s office.

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ESPANA
la Republica

MARÍA JOSÉ ESTESO POVES / REDACCIÓN DIAGONAL

La Fiscalía de Madrid ha denunciado a la monja sor María Gómez Valbuena por su presunta implicación en el robo de niños. La Fiscalía ya citó a declarar como imputada a la religiosa que se negó a prestar declaración, ahora ha sido denunciada nuevamente esta vez por detención ilegal en uno de los casos de bebés robados que se investiga, según consta en la demanda interpuesta ante el juzgado de Madrid número 43, según se ha dado conocer hace unas horas.

La Fiscalía investiga un caso de 1982, el de María Luisa Torres, entonces una madre separada, que fue engañada por la monja Gómez Valbuena y que tras dar a luz en la clínica San Ramón, la religiosa le dijo que la recién nacida había fallecido. El parto fue atendido por el doctor de esa clínica, Eduardo Vela Vela, quien está también acusado de tráfico de bebés por decenas de familias. Por lo que es previsible que sea llamado a declarar por la Fiscalía en breve.

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ESPANA
RTVE

[con video]

Varias denuncias de familias de presuntos niños robados apuntan hacia ella y ahora la fiscalía de Madrid ha decidido acusarla de un delito de detención ilegal. Es Sor María Gómez Valbuena, una monja que atendía a las parturientas en el hospital Santa Cristina. Una de esas mujeres se ha reencontrado con la hija que, según cuenta, le robó sor María.

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ESPANA
Apporea

18/03/12.-Sor María Gómez Valbuena es una monja octogenaria de las Hermanas de la Caridad, es la primera persona denunciada por la Fiscalía de Madrid por la causa de los bebés robados. Ella asegura que en todo momento obró de acuerdo a las leyes de la época e insiste en que los hijos adoptados no deberían buscar a sus familias biológicas. Epoca en la que era asistente social y su nombre y firma figuran en centenares de adopciones y también en muchas de las denuncias presentadas ante la fiscalía.

La Fiscalía de Madrid la llamó como imputada recientemente. Sor María Gómez Valbuena acudió, pero se negó a declarar. El caso que ha llevado a la fiscalía a denunciarla finalmente por detención ilegal es el de María Luisa Torres, que dio a luz a su hija Pilar en la clínica Santa Cristina de Madrid en marzo de 1982

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SPAIN
Herald Sun (Australia)

A NUN in Spain has become the first person to be charged with abducting a baby as part of a larger investigation into the kidnapping and worldwide sale of children by priests and nuns over a 40-year period.

Sister Maria Gomez Valbuena, 80, has been linked to some 3000 claims of kidnapping by families who say the Madrid nun stole their children for resale to childless couples, The (London) Times reported Saturday.

According to Spanish daily El Pais, the abductions mostly took place at San Ramon and Santa Cristina hospitals in Madrid from the 1950s to the early 1980s.

Maria Luisa Torres was one of countless people who took up Valbuena’s offer to help single mothers who were in dire straits, agreeing to temporarily place her baby in a child care facility that she could visit, the Times said.

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INDIA
Praetoria News (South Africa)

Indian police say they have arrested a Catholic priest wanted in the United States on charges of sexually assaulting a teenage parishioner in Minnesota.

The Rev Joseph Palanivel Jeyapaul appeared on Monday in a New Delhi court and will be held in custody pending an official US request for his extradition.

Police Sub-inspector Pugal Maran says Jeyapaul was detained Friday near the southern Indian town of Erode after Interpol issued an alert.

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NEDERLAND
DePers

De Tweede Kamer wil een debat over de castratie van kinderen binnen de katholieke kerk in de jaren vijftig.

De Tweede Kamer wil zo snel mogelijk praten over berichten dat de rooms-katholieke kerk in de jaren vijftig kinderen heeft gecastreerd. Dat heeft PvdA-Kamerlid Khadija Arib zaterdag gezegd. Volgens haar willen de betrokken Kamerleden proberen op korte termijn een hoorzitting te houden met Wim Deetman, die een commissie leidde die seksueel misbruik binnen de kerk onderzocht.

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NEW JERSEY
The Record

BY JUSTO BAUTISTA
STAFF WRITER
The Record

PALISADES PARK — Parishioners at a church on East Brinkerhoff Avenue were up in arms on Sunday after someone beheaded the statute of their beloved patron saint.

“This is horrible,” said an outraged parishioner.

“There’s no head. Is nothing sacred anymore?” said the parishioner referring to the incident at his church and the recent spate of vandalism in Bergen County, where synagogues in Hackensack and Maywood were defaced by anti-Semitic graffiti and a synagogue in Rutherford was firebombed, an incident that resulted in the arrests of two Lodi men, one of whom was charged with nine counts of attempted murder. …

And in November, an unemployed cook in Morris County was charged with desecration of a venerated object and criminal mischief for allegedly smashing a memorial to victims of clergy sex abuse. Police said a sledgehammer was used to wreck the memorial — a circular black millstone outside St. Joseph’s Catholic Church in Mendham and installed to call attention to the abuse of local boys by a former St. Joseph’s pastor from Paterson.

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DEUTSCHLAND
Idea

Yeovil (idea) – Ein anglikanischer Pfarrer hat kurzerhand seinen ganzen Kirchenchor entlassen. Der Grund: Zwei Sängerinnen, beide 83 Jahre alt, hatten sich geweigert, ein polizeiliches Führungszeugnis zu beantragen. Der Geistliche hielt das für nötig, um Kindesmissbrauch vorzubeugen.

Jetzt steht die St. Michaels-Gemeinde in Yeovil (Südwestengland) nicht nur ohne Chor, sondern auch ohne Orgelbegleitung da. Denn aus Solidarität mit den beiden Sängerinnen legte auch die 70-jährige Organistin und Kantorin Jenny Hansford ihr Amt nieder. Sie hatte im Internet herausgefunden, dass nach den Regeln der anglikanischen Kirche nur Chorleiter ein Vorstrafenregister vorlegen müssen.

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VEREINIGTE STAATEN
Berner Zeitung (Schweiz)

Als Reaktion auf Dutzende Klagen gegen Priester wegen sexuellen Missbrauchs hat der Jesuitenorden im Nordwesten der USA Gläubigerschutz beantragt.

Die entsprechenden Unterlagen wurden am Dienstag beim amerikanischen Insolvenzgericht in Portland eingereicht. Die Provinz Oregon des katholischen Ordens führt darin ein Vermögen von weniger als 5 Millionen Dollar und Verbindlichkeiten von fast 62 Millionen Dollar auf.

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OSTERREICH
Nachrichten

KREMSMÜNSTER. Von „sadistischer Gewalt, die uns Kleinkinder zu Hunderten kaputtgemacht hat“, spricht ein ehemaliger Zögling des Internats von Stift Kremsmünster laut einem Gerichtsakt, in dem die Ermittlungsergebnisse der Polizei zu den Missbrauchsvorwürfen zusammengefasst sind.

Dem Wiener Nachrichtenmagazin „profil“ liegt der Akt nun vor. Erschütterndes Ergebnis: Systematische Gewaltexzesse, sexueller Missbrauch und emotionale Zermürbung standen auf der Tagesordnung. Im Stift reagiert man mit tiefstem Bedauern.

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OSTERREICH
Profil

Das Benediktinerstift Kremsmünster war für Hunderte Klosterschüler bis in die neunziger Jahre die Hölle. An der Tagesordnung: systematische Gewaltexzesse, sexueller Missbrauch, emotionale Zermürbung. Ein pädophiler, schwer bewaffneter Mönch stand als Konviktsdirektor an der Spitze eines ­sadistischen Regimes. Ihm droht nun die Anklage. profil liegt der Gerichtsakt vor.

Von Emil Bobi

Unmittelbar hinter dem Rathausplatz im oberösterreichischen Kremsmünster erhebt sich der Berg mit der überdimensionalen Kulisse des Stifts. „Das Kloster sitzt wie ein Krake auf dem Ort“, sagt Jürgen Öllinger, 46, der in Kremsmünster geboren und im Stift über Jahre sexuell missbraucht und körperlich misshandelt worden sein soll. Heute ist Öllinger evangelischer Pfarrer in Villach. Seinerzeit habe der ganze Ort weggeschaut, weil man nichts Genaues wissen wollte, heute wolle man nicht mehr hinschauen. „Eh vorbei. Net scho wieder stierln“, sagten die Leute.

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NEDERLAND
Omroep Brabant

SON – In het Sint Jozephziekenhuis in Veghel zijn in de jaren vijftig zeker twee minderjarige jongens gecastreerd op gezag van de Katholieke Kerk. En waarschijnlijk nog wel meer. Dat zegt onderzoeksjournalist Joep Dohmen.

De jongens werden gecastreerd om zo van hun homoseksuele gedrag te worden afgeholpen. In zeker een geval gaat het om een jongen die seksueel misbruikt was door broeders in een katholiek internaat. In 1956 komt Henk Heithuis, twintig jaar oud, terecht in Huize Padua, een door katholieke broeders geleide psychiatrische instelling in Boekel.

Homoseksueel
Heithuis, die tot dan toe in allerlei katholieke gestichten gewoond had, werd in 1956 in de door katholieken geleide psychiatrische inrichting Huize Padua in Boekel gedwongen opgenomen nadat hij broeders had beschuldigd van seksueel misbruik. Heithuis, zo beweerden de broeders, zou psychisch gestoord en homoseksueel zijn.

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NETHERLANDS
Radio Netherlands

Published on 19 March 2012

The health authorities in the predominantly Catholic provinces of Brabant and Limburg apparently knew that institutions for the mentally handicapped were involved in forcible castrations in the 1950s.

Regional newspaper De Limburger published a report on Monday based on minutes taken at board meetings during that period. Parents were reportedly never informed of the castrations – or at best only later.

The paper writes that representatives of the provincial health authorities regularly attended board meetings of the Limburg and Brabant Catholic psychiatric institutions. Castration was openly discussed. Minutes from these meetings show that, although adult patients had to give their permission for the procedure, in practice there was nothing voluntary about it.

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NEDERLAND
De Telegraaf

[met video]

RIJSWIJK – De inspectie voor de zwakzinnigenzorg wist dat instellingen in Brabant en Limburg in de jaren ’50 minderjarige patiënten castreerden. Dat schrijft de krant De Limburger maandag, op basis van notulen van vergaderingen uit die tijd. Ouders werden niet of pas achteraf ingelicht.

Tijdens vergaderingen van vertegenwoordigers van de Limburgse en Brabantse Katholieke psychiatrische inrichtingen schoof ook iemand van de inspectie aan. Er werd openlijk gesproken over castratie. Volgens De Limburger blijkt uit de verslagen dat hoewel meerderjarigen zelf toestemming moesten geven, er in de praktijk van vrijwilligheid weinig sprake was.

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UNITED STATES
Star-Ledger

By Star-Ledger Editorial Board

Ten years after Catholic bishops swore to clean up their act after decades of sexual abuse by priests and cover-ups by their leaders, the Catholic Church is proving that old habits die hard.

The New York Times reported last week that attorneys for the church have subpoenaed records from the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, known to most people as SNAP, as part of sex abuse lawsuits in St. Louis and Kansas City. The subpoenas demand e-mail records and, in some cases, testimony — even though SNAP isn’t directly involved in the suits.

The church demanded 23 years of SNAP’s communication with victims, though the victim in the suit is only 19. They’ve wasted hundreds of hours of staff time and cost SNAP $50,000. Now, SNAP is begging lawyers to work pro bono.

William Donohue, president of the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights, outlined the strategy to the Times: “SNAP is a menace to the Catholic Church,” he said. “There’s a growing consensus on the part of the bishops that they had better … buy some good lawyers and get tough.”

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MINNESOTA/INDIA
Lez Get Real

Posted by: Bridgette P. LaVictoire on March 18, 2012.

The Roman Catholic Church has been known to rather rapidly remove those who do things like get accused of stealing from the Church or speaking out against their hatred of LGBT peoples. Still, The Church hierarchy has no problems just letting things go when it comes to child sexual abuse. Father Joseph Jeyapual was not disciplined officially by the Church after he was accused of sexually assaulting a 14-year-old girl in Minnesota almost a decade ago, nor did they move to discipline him after he fled.

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WISCONSIN
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

By Meg Jones of the Journal Sentinel

March 18, 2012

A Catholic priest in Waukesha County is on temporary administrative leave after allegations of child sexual assault.

Father Mark Molling of St. Paul Parish in Genesee Depot was placed on leave while the Archdiocese of Milwaukee investigates an allegation of sexual abuse of a minor in the mid-1990s, according to an email sent by Archbishop Jerome Listecki.

In the email, Listecki writes that Molling denies the allegation. The allegations were reported to the Waukesha County district attorney’s office, which declined to file charges.

The Survivors Network for those Abused by Priests reports that Molling has worked as a resident chaplain at state juvenile corrections facility Ethan Allen School for Boys in Wales.

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PHILADELPHIA (PA)
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

March 19, 2012

By Amaris Elliott-Engel, The Legal Intelligencer /

The Catholic Archdiocese of Philadelphia said in a motion that it will not waive its own attorney-client privilege regarding 12 documents that Monsignor William J. Lynn wants to subpoena in the criminal case against him.

Monsignor Lynn, the archdiocese’s secretary for clergy from 1992 until 2004, is facing criminal charges, including endangering the welfare of children, on allegations that he failed to take sufficient action to protect children from sexually abusive priests.

During a hearing in January, attorneys for the archdiocese said that it might one day assert attorney-client privilege that can’t be waived, even if the monsignor waives his own attorney-client privilege.

That day came.

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INDIA/MINNESOTA
Christian Today

By: Babu Thomas

Monday, 19 March 2012

The Tamil Nadu police last week arrested a Christian priest who was wanted by Interpol for his alleged involvement in a child abuse case.

Rev Joseph Jeyapaul was arrested by Erode Superintendent of Police S Panneerselvam on Saturday.

The Catholic priest faces charges of sexually assaulting a 14-year-old girl in Minnesota, US.

The US police had handed over the case to the Interpol which obtained an arrest warrant against the priest and asked Tamil Nadu police to trace him.

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MINNESOTA
Fox 9

[with video]

A Catholic priest accused of sexually assaulting a 14-year-old girl in Minnesota nearly a decade ago will appear in a court in India now that Interpol has tracked him down.

Joseph Jeyapaul, 57, will be extradited back to Minnesota after his appearance in a New Delhi courtroom.

The victim says Jeyapaul attacked her while he was a priest at Blessed Sacrament Catholic Church in Greenbush; however, he went to India before charges could be filed in 2005 and has been working there as a priest since.

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NEDERLAND
BN DeStem

DEN HAAG – De Tweede Kamer wil op korte termijn praten over berichten dat de rooms-katholieke kerk in de jaren 50 kinderen heeft gecastreerd. Dat heeft PvdA-Kamerlid Khadija Arib zaterdag gezegd.

Volgens haar willen de betrokken Kamerleden proberen op korte termijn een hoorzitting te houden met Wim Deetman, die een commissie leidde die seksueel misbruik binnen de kerk onderzocht.

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NEDERLAND
NOS

Geschokte reacties op het verhaal van een misbruikte jongen die gecastreerd werd vanwege homoseksueel gedrag. Slachtoffers van seksueel misbruik, bisschoppen en politici hebben allen met afgrijzen gereageerd.

Uit onderzoek van NRC Handelsblad bleek vandaag dat zeker één minderjarige jongen in de jaren 50 is gecastreerd na misbruik in een katholieke zorginstelling.

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MINNESOTA
Grand Forks Herald

By: Stephen J. Lee, Grand Forks Herald

Megan Peterson was home with family near Middle River, Minn., on spring break from college this weekend when she heard that the fugitive priest who she says sexually assaulted her when she was 14 was arrested Friday in India.

“I’m kind of in shock,” said Peterson, 22, today as she drove back to Winona (Minn.) State University where she’s majoring in studio art with a minor in child advocacy. “I just heard about it last night. It’s a big weight off my shoulders and I’m glad he’s away from kids and hopefully justice can be served.”

According to news sources in India, the Rev. Joseph Palanivel Jeyapaul, 57, was arrested Friday there on charges out of Roseau County that he sexually assaulted two girls in 2004 and 2005 while he was priest of Blessed Sacrament parish in Greenbush, Minn.

Jeyapaul was a visiting priest from India and returned there before criminal charges were filed against him in state district court in Roseau in 2006. He’s been a fugitive since from justice here while still working as a priest there.

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UNITED STATES
The New York Times

By KATHARINE Q. SEELYE

Published: March 16, 2012

Rick Santorum’s prospects for re-election to the Senate were not rosy when friends and advisers urged him in 2005 not to risk making things worse.

Mr. Santorum, hurting politically in Pennsylvania because of his defense of the Iraq war and President George W. Bush, had written a book, “It Takes a Family.” It was a blistering attack on liberal “elites” and what he saw as their moral relativism as well as “radical feminists” who, he said, had devalued mothers who preferred staying home rather than going to work. …

The Casey campaign had stoked the flames. For example, after the sexual abuse scandal in the Roman Catholic Church broke in Boston in 2002, Mr. Santorum had written on a Catholic Web site: “It is no surprise that Boston, a seat of academic, political and cultural liberalism in America, lies at the center of the storm.”

The comment was little-noticed at the time, but the Casey team unearthed it three years later and sent it to columnists, according to Saul Shorr, a top Casey strategist. It prompted Senator Edward M. Kennedy Jr., the Massachusetts Democrat, to demand that Mr. Santorum apologize. After Mr. Santorum refused, Mr. Kennedy took the rare step of upbraiding his colleague on the Senate floor, calling his remarks “irresponsible, insensitive and inexcusable.”

Mr. Santorum fired back.

“I don’t think Ted Kennedy lecturing me on the teachings of the church and how the church should handle these problems is something I’m going to take particularly seriously,” he said during a conference call with news media from Catholic organizations.

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UNITED STATES
Pope Crimes & Vatican Evils…

Paris Arrow

All roads lead to Rome…is ancient history in the 21st century. It’s for fanatic Catholics that All roads lead to Rome… but not New York’s roads and not Ireland’s roads. The vast and biggest USA state of New York and the country of Ireland neither lead to Rome nor to the Vatican. Ireland just shut down its Vatican Embassy in Rome and has refused to “invite” Benendict XVI to the International Eucharistic Congress in Ireland this June. Ireland also closed its embassy to East Timor and Iran but the major difference between these two countries and the Vatican is that, the Prime Minister of Ireland took time to address the Irish Parliament that “the Cloyne Report excavates the dysfunction, disconnection, elitism….the narcissism that dominate the culture of the Vatican to this day”

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ITALIA
IVG

Savona. Protesta silenziosa della Rete L’abuso di Savona durante la processione diretta al santuario di Nostra Signora della Misericordia organizzata per la festa patronale.

Alcuni attivisti dell’associazione antipedofilia, tra i quali il loro portavoce Francesco Zanardi, hanno indossato una t-shirt con le foto dei quattro presuli che si sono avvicendati a Savona e la scritta “Hai ancora il coraggio di lasciare i tuoi figli sotto la loro tutela?”.

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MINNESOTA
WCCO

MINNEAPOLIS (WCCO) — A Minnesota priest accused of sexually assaulting two young girls is sitting in a jail, in India Sunday morning.

Fifty-seven-year-old Rev. Joseph Jeyapaul allegedly committed the crimes in the Diocese of Crookston in 2004.

According to the Times of India, he’s expected to appear in a New Delhi court Sunday.

Back in September, the Crookston Diocese agreed to pay $750,000 in a lawsuit settlement to a victim allegedly raped when she was 14 years old.

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VATICAN CITY
Vatican Radio

Below, please find the statement from the Press Office of the Holy See regarding the recently concluded meetings betwee the Holy See and MONEYVAL – the Department of the Council of Europe which deals with the evaluation of systems adopted by member States to counter money-laundering.

********************

Within the framework of the active co-operation between the Holy See and MONEYVAL (the Department of the Council of Europe which deals with the evaluation of systems adopted by member States to counter money-laundering), meetings of a technical nature were held in the Vatican between 14 and 16 March 2012.

The meetings had been planned earlier, taking into account both the specific nature of the Holy See and of Vatican City State and the fact that this was the first evaluation of their respective legal systems. The meetings made it possible to continue gathering information on the steps taken thus far in the process of complying with international standards in the area of preventing and countering money-laundering and the financing of terrorism, such as the adoption of the Decree No. CLIX of 25 January 2012, replacing Law No. CXXVII of 30 December 2010, as well as the ratification of and adhesion to certain international Conventions pertinent to the question.

As on the occasion of the earlier meetings that took place in November 2011, the experts met representatives of the competent Authorities of the Holy See and of Vatican City State.

The present phase will lead to the drafting of a report which, as scheduled, will be examined by the Plenary Assembly of MONEYVAL next July.

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MEXICO
Courier Mail (Australia)

FROM the war on drug cartels in Mexico to reviving faith in Cuba, Pope Benedict XVI will address a series of burning issues in Latin America this week.

On his 23rd visit abroad and his first to Latin America, the pontiff will tackle the declining number of Catholics in the region, the rise of rival religious movements such as Pentecostalists and what the Church sees as the threat to family values.

The six-day program, starting in Mexico on Friday, takes into account the frailty of the aged pope, who will conduct both political meetings and religious rites focusing on the marian figures of Mexico’s Our Lady of Guadalupe and Cuba’s Our lady of Charity.

Benedict, 84, is likely to face criticism over the clerical abuse scandal and the Vatican’s management of Mexico’s most famous offender, Marcial Maciel, the founder of the Legion of Christ, who was accused of molesting eight minors.

The Vatican has already ruled out a meeting with victims of paedophilia.

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VATICAN CITY
The Telegraph (United Kingdom)

The Pope has taken the unusual step of setting up an internal, criminal investigation to identify the source of damaging leaks of compromising Vatican documents.

By Nick Squires, Rome
1:50PM GMT 18 Mar 2012

The inquiry will seek to punish the insiders who leaked the papers, whom the Vatican hierarchy regard as “disloyal and cowardly”.

Pope Benedict XVI had been “hurt” by the leaks, said Archbishop Angelo Becciu, the Vatican’s deputy secretary of state and third most powerful Vatican figure, in an interview with L’Osservatore Romano, the city state’s daily newspaper.

Documents leaked to the Italian press over the last few weeks have shed light on dark power struggles between senior cardinals, alleged corruption and nepotism in the running of the Vatican administration, and a mysterious prediction that the 84-year-old pontiff would die within a year, possibly as a result of an assassination attempt.

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DEUTSCHLAND
Saarbrucker Zeitung

Köllerbach. Im Februar 2010 wurde der Trierer Bischof Stephan Ackermann zum Beauftragten der katholischen Kirche für sexuellen Missbrauch ernannt. Kurz darauf erhielt der damalige Pfarrer der Köllerbacher Herz-Jesu-Gemeinde, Johannes Ittmann, einen Anruf vom Bistum, in dem ihm mitgeteilt wurde, dass es auch im Bereich seiner Gemeinde Hinweise auf Missbrauch gebe. Man wolle die Sache aber aus dem Bistum heraushalten.

Ittmann und Pater Gorges von der traditionalistisch-katholischen Martinsgemeinde, die zu Ittmanns Gemeinde gehört, erhielten damals auch selbst Hin weise darauf, dass sich ein früherer Priester der Martinsgemeinde Ende der 90er Jahre an einem Mädchen vergangen haben soll. Derartige Vorwürfe gab es auch gegen einen Laien der Traditionalisten- Gemeinde. Ittmann erstattete deshalb im Mai 2010 Anzeige. Das Opfer bestätigte die Vorwürfe sowie Übergriffe eines weiteren Geistlichen auf ihren Bruder. Jedoch stellte die Staatsanwaltschaft das Verfahren wegen Verjährung ein.

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DEUTSCHLAND
Sueddeutsche

Ausgerechnet der katholische Missbrauchsbeauftragte Ackermann soll in seinem Bistum Trier Pädophile weiterhin als Seelsorger beschäftigen. Mindestens sieben auffällig gewordenen Priester seien dort tätig, so der “Spiegel”. Dabei hatte Ackermann zuvor eine Null-Toleranz-Linie gegenüber Tätern gefordert.

Der Missbrauchsbeauftragte der katholischen Deutschen Bischofkonferenz, der Trierer Bischof Stephan Ackermann, geht nach Recherchen des Spiegels in seinem eigenen Bistum nur zögerlich gegen Pädophile vor.

In seinem Bistum sind mindestens sieben als pädophil aufgefallene Pfarrer im Einsatz, so das Nachrichtenmagazin. Darunter ein Geistlicher, der als Lehrer in einem Internat sexuelle Beziehungen zu einem seiner Schüler unterhalten haben soll, und zwei wegen des Besitzes von Kinderpornografie verurteilte Priester.

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DEUTSCHLAND
Spiegel

Der Trierer Bischof Stephan Ackermann beschäftigt nach SPIEGEL-Informationen in seinem Bistum sieben als pädophil aufgefallene Pfarrer. Einer von ihnen soll sexuelle Beziehungen zu einem Schüler gehabt haben, zwei weitere sind wegen Besitzes von Kinderpornografie verurteilt.

Hamburg – Der Trierer Bischof Stephan Ackermann ist der Missbrauchsbeauftragte der Deutschen Bischofkonferenz und hatte in dieser Funktion eine “Null-Toleranz-Linie” gegenüber Sexualstraftätern gefordert. Nach SPIEGEL-Informationen verfährt er in der Praxis jedoch anders und beschäftigt Pädophile weiterhin als Seelsorger.

In seinem Bistum sind mindestens sieben als pädophil aufgefallene Pfarrer im Einsatz, darunter ein Geistlicher, der als Lehrer in einem Internat sexuelle Beziehungen zu einem seiner Schüler unterhalten haben soll, und zwei wegen des Besitzes von Kinderpornografie verurteilte Priester.

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UNITED STATES
Minnesota SNAP

By Vinnie Nauheimer

It is obvious to the most casual observer that jurist prudence was snapped by the decision to allow lawyers for the Catholic Church carte blanche to pilfer, pour over and ponder twenty three years of personal files in the hands of the survivor’s group known as SNAP. One has to ask just how blind justice is when an organization steeped the sexual abuse of children, the Roman Catholic Church, is allowed to compel the leading advocate group for survivors of clergy abuse to turn over confidential records unrelated to the case in question.

The Roman Catholic Church is an internationally recognized promoter of child abuse having multiple documented allegations of sexual abuse in over thirty countries around the world including its home base, Italy and its home city, Rome. The Roman Catholic Church was been found guilty of acts of genocide against Native American Children in Canada by an International Tribunal in 1998.1 In Ireland, they enslaved and abused children for years in workhouses.2 The European commission has accused the Vatican of money laundering.3 The NY Times recently reported that priests and nuns in Spain and Argentina were guilty of trafficking in babies and selling them for profit.4 That report generated a similar complaint out of Australia.5 Every grand jury convened in the United States to investigate clergy abuse and their equivalent in Ireland roundly criticized the church for their always abominable and in some cases, criminal behavior. In Germany, the largest Catholic publishing company, Weltbild, with 1.7 billion Euros in sales has been publishing pornographic novels for years. The biggest source of revenue is from what the owners of the publishing house, the bishops, call Erotic novels; others have called titles such as Sluts Boarding School and Lawyer’s Whore, porn.6

Based on the truths above, giving the lawyers for the Roman Catholic Church unfettered access to Snap files is the moral equivalent of giving the Mafia unlimited access to FBI files. It is simply unconscionable! Did the church take advantage of the hole created by an imprudent jurist? You bet they did. They opened a six-lane highway and lined it with dumpsters prepared to take away everything they could get away with. The proof is in the transcripts from Mr. Clohessy’s deposition. The church went back twenty-three years though the incident in question only happened recently. In six hours of deposition given by Mr. Clohessy, most of the questions had nothing to do with the case of Rev. Michael Tierney who is accused by four people of sexual abuse. The NY Times tells us, “most of the questions were not about the case but about the network — its budget, board of directors, staff members, donors and operating procedures.” Surely the jurist could have limited the scope of the deposition as has been done so many times to so many victims trying to depose church leaders.

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ROME
Vatican Insider

Members of the Ireland Stand Up movement, visiting Rome for St Patrick’s Day, re-issued their call to the Irish Government to re-open its Embassy to the Holy See and invite Pope Benedict XVI to visit the country

Gerard O’Connell
Rome

Standing in front of the former Irish Embassy to the Holy See in Rome on March 17, the feast of Saint Patrick, sixteen members of the dynamic Ireland Stand Up movement re-issued their call to the Dublin Government to re-open its embassy to the Holy See, reinstate a resident ambassador, and invite Pope Benedict to visit the country.

Led by Mary Fitzgibbon, these Irish lay men, women and children stood in front of the Villa Spada on the Janiculum Hill on the afternoon of Saint Patrick’s Day, to keep up the pressure on the Government. Ireland has had diplomatic relations with the Holy See since 1929 and the Villa Spada has been the seat of its embassy for the past 65 years until the Dublin Government decided to close it on 3 November 2011 for economic reasons, though many believe the rationale was more political than economic.

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CLEVELAND (OH)
The Plain Dealer

By Michael O’Malley, The Plain Dealer

CLEVELAND, Ohio — Before a recent prayer service in a closed 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 last week. “People are still talking about it. What happened in Cleveland brings us hope.”

Catholics fighting church closings throughout the country are keeping their eyes on the Catholic Diocese of Cleveland, where Bishop Richard Lennon was formally notified by Vatican decrees on Wednesday that he did not properly follow church law and procedures on closing churches.

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AUSTRALIA
The Catholic Leader

Published: 11 March 2012
By: Paul Dobbyn

LAST year’s apology by Catholic Health Australia to single mothers, forced to adopt out their children over decades from the 1950s, still stands for all Catholic hospitals in the health care network, in the light of recent publicity on the issue.

It is expected no further apologies will be made.

CHA chief executive officer Martin Laverty in July issued an apology to those “who carry broken hearts as a result of the role that some Catholic organisations played in this widespread, common public policy practice of years past”.

The apology was issued during a Senate inquiry into past adoption practices in government and non-government institutions over three decades.

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AUSTRALIA
ciNews

[Commonwealth Contribution to Former Forced Adoption Policies and Practices]

Catholic Health Australia (CHA) has endorsed the call for a national apology for past adoption policies, including forced adoption that affected up to 150,000 children and mothers.

The Senate Inquiry report into past adoption policies and practices has proposed the national apology following its investigations which started on November 15 2010 and, because of the huge volume of submissions, extended its deadline to February 2012. Catholic Health Australia (CHA) was one of more than 400 organisations and individuals that made a submission to the inquiry.

CHA last year issued its own apology to those, “who carry broken hearts as a result of the role that some Catholic organisations played in this widespread, common public policy practice of years past.”

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NEDERLAND
de Gelderlander

BORCULO – In het Leo-Gesticht in Borculo kwam op veel grotere schaal seksueel misbruik voor dan blijkt uit het rapport van de commissie-Deetman, dat landelijk onderzoek deed naar seksueel misbruik binnen de katholieke kerk.

De conclusie dat het om dertig gevallen zou gaan, doet de omvang van het leed geen recht.

Dat zeggen de broers Gus en Benedict Schillemans (62 en 65 jaar oud).

Op de website van KLOKK (Koepel Landelijk Overleg Kerkelijk Kindermisbruik) plaatsten ze een oproep voor slachtoffers van seksueel misbruik op het Leo-Gesticht. “Er hebben zich bijna dertig personen gemeld en de laatste tijd komen er steeds meer bij.”

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TEXAS
Midland Reporter-Telegram

Staff Reports

A Midland man is being held on a $100,000 bond on a first-degree felony of aggravated sexual assault of a child in connection with an incident that occurred on the premises of St. Stephen’s Catholic Church last May, according to Tasa Watts, the city’s public information officer, and the Diocese of San Angelo.

William Jose Velasquez, 26, was arrested March 9 after the parish contacted police and said a young boy had been sexually assaulted, Watts said.

Velasquez is not an employee of the parish nor is he a member of the parish but he sometimes attends Mass there, said Mike Wyse, chancellor of the diocese.

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MINNESOTA
Star Tribune

A fugitive Catholic priest accused of sexually assaulting two underage girls in northern Minnesota eight years ago has been arrested in India, a newspaper reported Saturday.

The Rev. Joseph Palanivel Jeyapaul, 57, of Ariyalur, who allegedly committed the crimes in the Diocese of Crookston in 2004, will appear in a New Delhi court on Sunday, according to the Times of India.

“We are grateful to the police and prosecutors in Minnesota and elsewhere for getting this dangerous cleric behind bars,” said Barbara Dorris, a national director of the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests (SNAP).

In September, the Crookston Diocese agreed to pay $750,000 in a lawsuit settlement to a victim allegedly raped when she was 14 years old. She said the attacks occurred when Jeyapaul was a parish priest at Blessed Sacrament Catholic Church in Greenbush, Minn.

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INDIA
MSN News

Chennai: Catholic priest Rev Joseph Palanivel Jeyapaul was arrested in Erode in Tamil Nadu on charges of molesting a child in the US when he was there during 2004, police said Saturday.

Acting on an alert by Interpol, Tamil Nadu police arrested Rev Jeyapaul, 57, Friday evening and presented him in a court in Erode which ordered that he be handed over to Interpol officials in New Delhi.

The Tamil Nadu police had traced Rev Jeyapaul to a church in Erode, around 335 km from here.

The priest, a fugitive from US law has been charged with molesting a 14-year-old girl in the US in 2004 when he was at a pastoral ministry at Roseau county of Crookston Diocese in Minnesota.

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HAVERHILL (MA)
Eagle-Tribune

By Paul Tennant ptennant@eagletribune.com

HAVERHILL — The Rev. Robert Conole will not be returning to his post as pastor of Sacred Hearts Church in Bradford.

Conole’s resignation has been accepted by Cardinal Sean O’Malley, archbishop of Boston. He was investigated by the Archdiocese of Boston for “serious adult-related misconduct,” according to a statement read by the Very Rev. Arthur Coyle, episcopal vicar for the Merrimack Valley Region, during weekend Masses at Sacred Hearts.

“I feel bad for Father Conole,” said John Cartier, an active and longtime parishioner at Sacred Hearts. “I am not going to pass judgment on anybody.”

As difficult as Conole’s resignation is, Cartier said he and other parishioners need to “move forward.” The Rev. John Delaney, currently pastor of St. Michael Church in North Andover, will become the new pastor of Sacred Hearts on April 11.

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UNITED STATES
AlterNet

Joey Piscitelli

Just when I was absolutely sure that I had heard every bizarre story that could possibly emanate from the Vatican, the Catholic hierarchy blows my mind again. The latest antic that arguably may validate the alleged escalation of the ludicrous conduct of the kingpin of the catholic church, Mr. Ratzinger, aka- Pope Benedict- has surfaced. The Pope, who has actually been accused several times of shuffling and covering up for clergy molesters and rapists himself, is commissioning a new perfume scent; while tens of thousands of rape victims in his molestation inundated empire are suffering globally from the life long after-effects of the criminal conduct of thousands of his “employees.”

Although I have given up looking for a rational explanation of why the countless atrocities against innocent children by professed catholic “men of god” have occurred for centuries, I was still under the impression that justice will eventually find it’s way to the forefront, and bombard the mammoth molestation empire as a result of an atomic explosion of deserved Karma.

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TEXAS
American-Statesman

By Eric Dexheimer
AMERICAN-STATESMAN STAFF

Karen Jonson first appeared in the American-Statesman’s pages in September 2008, but not in a way recognizable to readers. She was one of five anonymous women I profiled who said they had been groped or pressured for sex by Prakashanand Saraswati and Kripalu Maharaj, the spiritual leaders of the Barsana Dham Hindu temple south of Austin.

The story was a continuation of our coverage of Prakashanand, who six months earlier had been arrested while getting off a plane in Washington, D.C., and charged with 20 counts of indecency with a child. The charges were based on the recollections of two young women who said they’d been molested by Prakashanand as teenagers while growing up on Barsana Dham in the 1990s.

While reporting that story, I tapped into a nascent network of ex-members who said the girls weren’t the only ones who’d been subjected to sexual advances from gurus while living at the ashram — five adult women had, too. Jonson, one of those women, eventually became one of my primary contacts, putting me in touch with former devotees and describing details of life at the ashram, where she had lived and worshiped for 15 years.

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WISCONSIN
SNAP Wisconsin

Archdiocese removes priest from ministry due to report of sexual assault of a minor
Fr. Mark Molling is pastor of St. Paul Parish in Genesee Depot

Statement by John Pilmaier, SNAP Wisconsin Director
CONTACT: 414.336.8575

In an e-mail message today (see below), Milwaukee Archbishop Jerome Listecki announced that Fr. Mark Molling, pastor of St. Paul Parish in Genesee Depot, was being removed from ministry this weekend due to a report of sexual assaulting a minor. Listecki states that the report was obtained through the Chapter 11 bankruptcy claims process and that the diocesan review board will investigate the matter. The alleged offense or offenses occurred in the mid 1990’s and appear to be time barred from prosecution under the old criminal statues for child sex abuse. Molling has worked in the Wisconsin Juvenile Corrections Division as resident chaplain at Ethan Allen School for Boys in Wales.

A total of 570 victim claims have been filed with the Federal Bankruptcy Court, each claim being a criminal report of sexual abuse. Molling appears to be one of the at least 100 unidentified sexual offenders who committed at least 8,000 instances of sexual abuse against children in the archdiocese, as was reported in bankruptcy court last month. Why Molling was removed from ministry while other alleged offenders named in the bankruptcy reports have not, remains unclear. In the past, sometimes the archbishop removes a priest from ministry before a determination is made by the DA on the criminal statute, sometimes not.

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OHIO
News-Herald

By Rachel Jackson
RJackson@News-Herald.com
@nh_rachel

From Irish wolfhounds to Irish step-dancing, Irish songs and Irish legends, Northeast Ohio’s Hibernian heritage was celebrated throughout the region Saturday.

Organizers of Cleveland’s St. Patrick’s Day Parade had forecast record turnout for the event, which at age 145 is the oldest such parade in the area. …

Catholic schools and churches also had a strong presence, with many of the church representatives carrying signs of support for the closed parishes. The Vatican recently reversed a 2010 order from the Cleveland Diocese that had closed a number of area churches.

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CLEVELAND (OH)
Myrtle Beach Sun

By RALPH VARTABEDIAN – Los Angeles Times

LOS ANGELES — When groups of ethnic Polish, Slovene, Slovak and Hungarian Catholics in Cleveland began protesting orders by their local bishop that closed their churches, they were given little chance of reversing the decision.

The churches were shuttered in a massive retrenchment of Cleveland’s urban core in 2010, striking at the Slavic and other ethnic European congregations that were founded by waves of immigrants from the wars and humanitarian catastrophes over the last century. The parishes claimed that Bishop Richard Lennon, head of the Cleveland diocese, had begun an attack on the ethnic churches.

But after two years of sidewalk vigils, letter-writing campaigns and legal action at the Vatican, the parishioners appear to have won a historic victory against their local diocese. A Vatican court, the Congregation of the Clergy, has ordered as many as 13 of the shuttered churches reopened.

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ARKANSAS
San Antonio Express-News

LITTLE ROCK, Ark. (AP) — A Pulaski County Circuit Court judge has declined to dismiss a Fayetteville woman’s lawsuit against the Diocese of Little Rock that alleges a Catholic priest manipulated her into a sexual relationship.

The Arkansas Democrat-Gazette (http://bit.ly/FSufLk) reported in Saturday’s editions that Judge Wendell Griffen ruled there was no merit to claims by the diocese and Bishop Anthony Taylor that Shannon Oates’ lawsuit violates the religious protections guaranteed by the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.

Oates alleges she and Charles Kanu had a relationship and that church officials knew of should have known about it. The church argues that any injuries Oates suffered were partially brought on by her own actions and that Kanu should be a defendant in the lawsuit.

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UNITED STATES
Bilgrimage

William D. Lindsey

I’ve blogged a number of times recently about what seems to me a crucially important question: how do those Catholics who remain with the church, and how do the pastoral leaders of the church, intend to deal with the ever-increasing phenomenon of disaffiliation of American Catholics from the Catholic church–or, as some folks now put it, of “deconversion” from the Catholic church? My recent reflections on this important issue are here and here.

As I’ve noted repeatedly on this blog (and so I won’t rehearse this matter at length or provide links now–this research is easy to find on this blog and in many other places), as of 2004, Pew Foundation data indicated that one in three American adults who had been raised Catholic has left the Catholic church, and one in ten American adults is now a former Catholic. As commentators have noted, if all those former Catholics constituted a denomination, that denomination would be the second largest Christian denomination in the U.S.

I am not aware of similar studies since 2004. My intuition is that the numbers have grown–even considerably–since 2004. My intuition is that they may well be growing larger right now due to the outrageous partisan political behavior of the U.S. Catholic bishops in recent weeks, their attack on the human rights of gay and lesbian persons, their attacks on the healthcare needs of women, etc.

And my intuition is that the number of Catholics walking away may also be increasing due to the complicity of influential “liberal” Catholic centrist media and academic commentators with the bishops in their recent immoral actions in the public square. For my own part, I can say I’m very much alienated by those centrist fellow Catholics who continue to provide cover for the bishops in their immoral actions.

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INDIA
The Times of India

COIMBATORE: A catholic priest, who was arrested on Friday night at Erode on charges of sexually abusing two minor girls in the US, will be produced before the additional chief metropolitan magistrate at Patiala House in New Delhi on Sunday.

The priest, J Jayapaul alias Joseph Palanivel, 57, of Ariyalur, is accused of sexually assaulting two minor girls at Northern Minnesota in 2004. He was charged in a US court in 2007. But by 2005, Jayapaul had returned to India to be with his ailing mother.

The Interpol had approached the additional chief metropolitan magistrate court in New Delhi to secure the priest. The court sent a warrant to the Erode police to arrest the priest on the basis of which police arrested the Jayapaul on Friday.

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ARIZONA
The Arizona Republic

by Michael Clancy – Mar. 17, 2012
The Republic | azcentral.com.

David Michael Pain Jr. was laid to rest in early December, during a small service at St. Francis Cemetery in Phoenix, nearly 18 months after he died. His father, David Sr., said he remembers his son with the help of Scripture — a prodigal son, a lost sheep, a sinner Christ came to save.

The older man, who goes by the name Michael, told those gathered at the service that he finds solace in those Gospel passages when he thinks of his son. He believes David’s chance at a good life — or, for that matter, a life at all — was lost 25 years earlier when he was allegedly sexually abused, at age 13, by a Catholic priest.

Michael Pain reported the abuse to the Phoenix Diocese within weeks of his son’s death. After a 10-month investigation that deemed the report credible, the diocese suspended the Rev. John “Jack” Spaulding last June from his position as pastor of St. Timothy Catholic Church in Mesa and sent the case — along with three more that surfaced since Pain’s report — to the Vatican in Rome to determine the priest’s future.

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