ABUSE TRACKER

AUSTRALIA
Adelaide Now

ANDREW Bolt speculates on the direction of Australia’s wide-ranging royal commission into child sex abuse.
———-

I AGREE, we need a royal commission into the sexual abuse of children. The air must be cleared.

Yet this royal commission called by the Prime Minister already risks going badly off the rails and becoming not a force for good but of cultural destruction.

Here are the three greatest dangers:

1) It becomes an anti-Catholic crusade

Many in the largely anti-clerical media want to use this excuse to smash a church that lectures on modesty, duty, faithfulness and other fun-killers.

On ABC TV, columnist Joe Asten put the main lines of the media attack: “It’s quite clear that almost exclusively this is an issue within the Catholic Church.

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AUSTRALIA
The Daily Telegraph

Tommy Campion
The Daily Telegraph
November 15, 2012

WHEN I saw Prime Minister Julia Gillard on TV announcing there would be a royal commission into child abuse in churches and other institutions I was overwhelmed.

I wept uncontrollably. I became breathless. I walked the floor struggling to breathe, trying to comprehend what I had heard.

It was later I realised it was about time the truth was revealed, perhaps it was time for hope and happiness, not sadness.

I lived in the Church of England North Coast Children’s Home in Lismore from 1949 to 1964. Most of those years were full of hatred, bloody brutal floggings, bashings, starvation and sexual abuse. It was a home of hell and fury.

In the time I was there more than 200 innocent children were verbally, physically and sexually assaulted. Fear ruled our lives

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AUSTRALIA
The Australian

Gemma Jones, James Campbell
From:Herald Sun
November 15, 2012

PRIESTS and clergy who refuse to break the seal of confessional before the Royal Commission face being jailed for six months.

Cardinal George Pell pledged this week confession was “inviolable” but the sweeping powers of a royal commission into the cover-up of child sexual abuse will compel priests to answer questions.

Constitutional lawyer George Williams said he expected clergy to face jail rather than divulge what they have been told inside a confessional.

“Royal commissions have the discretion to go behind the confessional seal if need be to compel evidence of what occurred in the confessional box,” he said.

“You would need to think very carefully (about using the power), you would probably find priests willing to go to jail.”

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AUSTRALIA
7 News

By Suzanne Smith, ABC
Updated November 14

The senior lawyer who reviewed the Catholic Church’s Towards Healing protocol says he can point to alleged contemporary cover-ups.

Professor Patrick Parkinson was cited by Cardinal George Pell as the man who had reviewed the church’s protocols on two occasions and had given it his tick of approval.

But Professor Parkinson has told the ABC’s Lateline program he has withdrawn his support for the protocol because the church failed to take action over clergy who do not comply.

He alleged a cover-up in the church, as late as 2005, put children at risk.

The Professor of Law at Sydney University also says allegations made by New South Wales Detective Chief Inspector Peter Fox and Victorian police amount to “organised criminality”.

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UNITED KINGDOM
Western Daily Press

A retired Church of England bishop, one of two clergymen arrested by police investigating historic allegations of child sex abuse, was released last night on medical grounds.

Peter Ball, 80, was held at his home near Langport, Somerset, on suspicion of eight sex offences against eight boys and young men aged from 12 to their early 20s in East Sussex and elsewhere in the late 1980s and 1990s, sources said.

Sussex Police said last night that he was released at his home on medical advice and it was their intention to interview him at a later date.

He has in the past described Prince Charles as a ‘loyal friend’ and lived for a decade in the Somerset village of Aller in a Duchy of Cornwall property after he resigned from the church in mysterious circumstances in 1993.

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UNITED KINGDOM
Eastbourne Herald

Published on Wednesday 14 November 2012

POLICE have released the former Bishop of Lewes after arresting him yesterday on suspicion of sex abuse in East Sussex dating back more than 20 years.

The Right Reverend Peter Ball was released on medical advice following his arrest. Sussex Police have said it is their intention to interview him at a later date.

The former bishop of Lewes and Gloucester, is being held on suspicion of abusing eight boys and men in the late 1980s and early 1990s. All of the victims were in their late teens or early twenties, except one who was 12. He was arrested at his home near Langport, Somerset.

In a statement, Sussex Police said: “We will continue pursue allegations of sexual offending robustly.

“Investigations must always include proper regard for the health and welfare of suspects, as well as for that of victims, and we also comply with the requirements of the Police and Criminal Evidence Act in relation to the treatment of people under arrest.”

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AUSTRALIA
The Age

November 14, 2012

Mark Russell

As former Catholic priest David Rapson began to abuse boys one night at the Salesian College Rupertswood, he told another priest who was urging him to resist the temptation: “God made us this way and it’s his fault”, a court heard today.

One of Rapson’s alleged victims claimed the priest had given a number of boys a cup of Milo which had an acrid taste before abusing them.

Rapson, 59, has been charged with one count of rape, five counts of indecent assault, four counts of indecently assaulting a child under 16, and one count of gross indecency for alleged offences between 1973 to 1990.

Rapson had been a teacher and former vice-principal at Rupertswood.

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AUSTRALIA
ABC News

[with video]

By court reporter Sarah Farnsworth

The Melbourne Magistrates Court has heard a former Catholic priest accused of abusing boys told another priest “you know what we do here”.

David Rapson was a former teacher and vice-principal at the Salesian College Rupertswood in Sunbury, north of Melbourne, when it is alleged he abused seven boys.

In a statement tendered in court at a committal hearing, an alleged victim said he had spent the night in the infirmary in the late 1970s when several boys were brought in.

“I remember thinking how strange it was that everyone got sick at the same time,” he said.

The court heard Rapson then gave the boys a hot drink, forcing it on them if they refused.

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AUSTRALIA
Big Pond News

Wednesday, November 14, 2012

Opposition Leader Tony Abbott says all Australians should report knowledge of child abuse, even what priests are told in confession.

This follows the call from senior opposition frontbencher Christopher Pyne that priests have a responsibility to report crimes to police even if the details are given to them during confession.

Australia’s most senior Catholic, Cardinal George Pell, on Tuesday told reporters ‘the seal of confession is inviolable’ even if a priest confesses to child sex abuse.

Mr Abbott says everyone has to obey the law.

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AUSTRALIA
ABC News

[with video]

By Anthea Kissell

The Catholic Bishop of the Northern Territory says the people of the Tiwi Islands should decide if a Royal Commission is to revisit an alleged child sexual abuse case.

Brother John Hallett was accused of systematically abusing boys at the Francis Xavier Boys School at Nguiu from the mid-1980s to 2003.

He was found guilty of a number of offences by a Darwin jury but his convictions were later quashed on appeal.

At least forty children had claimed they were sexually abused by Brother Hallett.

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AUSTRALIA
Sydney Morning Herald

The Religious Write
Barney Zwartz is religion editor of The Age

George Pell has been a beacon for criticism over the years and even more so this week. Much of it is richly deserved. But some of it is, frankly, silly and shows a culpable ignorance (at least, if you want to be a commentator) of the Catholic Church.

George Pell is Australia’s only active cardinal, but he is not Australia’s chief Catholic. No one is. If there were such a position it would belong to the cardinal’s close friend and colleague, Melbourne Archbishop Denis Hart, as the chairman of the Australian Catholic Bishops Conference.

Each bishop of Australia’s 30-odd Catholic dioceses is theoretically autonomous, answerable to the Pope, not Pell. So to say he should have done this in Newcastle or that in Ballarat is to miss the point: he has no authority there; he is the Archbishop of Sydney.

But that doesn’t let him off the hook when it comes to talking about the Catholic Church in Australia. As he said in Tuesday’s press conference in Sydney, he has considerable moral influence, which he uses to comfort some and discomfort others.

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AUSTRALIA
Hobsons Bay Weekly

By GOYA DMYTRYSHCHAK
Nov. 13, 2012

AN ALTONA Meadows woman, who was molested from age eight to 11 by a priest, says a federal royal commission into sexual abuse by the Catholic Church will weed out paedophiles and protect potential victims.

But Mairead Ashcroft , who will this month address the state parliamentary inquiry into sex abuse by the clergy, warned it would be a tough time for survivors and urged them to seek help.

“Just imagine your worst nightmare is being forced over and over and over and over on the news,” she said. “That’s OK for me because I’ve come to terms with it and I’m working on it, but for those people who have been holding it a secret — for some of them, decades — it must be stirring them up something shocking.

“Some of them will be overwhelmed and some traumatised, but that’s not the fault of the commission; that’s the fault of their abusers.”

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AUSTRALIA
Macquarie Port News

By Judith Ireland and Michelle Grattan
Nov. 14, 2012

Senior federal Liberal frontbencher Christopher Pyne has declared that priests should report child sex abuse crimes revealed in the confessional to police.

On Wednesday, Mr Pyne – who is a practising Catholic – said that as a member of Parliament, it would be wrong of him to advise citizens not to report crimes, particularly something as serious as child abuse.

”If a priest, or anyone else, is aware of the sexual abuse of children that is going on, I think there is an obligation on them to report it to the appropriate authorities,” he told ABC Radio.

On Tuesday, in the wake of Prime Minister Julia Gillard’s announcement of a royal commission on child abuse, Cardinal George Pell said that the seal of confession was ”inviolable”.

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AUSTRALIA
ABC News

The ACT Public Advocate says the terms of reference for the Royal Commission into sexual abuse should be broadened to include emotional abuse.

Prime Minister Julia Gillard has announced a wide-ranging inquiry will investigate child abuse in institutions such as schools, churches and foster homes.

The terms of reference are yet to be announced, but Public Advocate Anita Phillips says it should cover government-run institutions and the abuse of women.

“Many of them, whether they were in single-mothers homes, or young women in organisations run by nuns, they were subjected to physical and emotional abuse,” she said.

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AUSTRALIA
News 24

Sydney – Attorney-General Nicola Roxon said on Wednesday it was “abhorrent” for priests not to report paedophilic acts revealed in the confessional, and urged Australia’s child sex inquiry to investigate the issue.

Australia has announced a royal commission into how religious organisations, not-for-profit bodies, state agencies, schools and police have responded to child sex abuse in a wide-ranging inquiry set to take years.

Roxon said one of the issues it could consider was whether the protection of the confessional should be removed.

“I think the royal commission needs to look very carefully… at institutional barriers, at systematic problems, of course that might include those very sensitive issues for religious organisations,” she said.

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AUSTRALIA
7 News

AAP
Updated November 14, 2012

Priests could forced to break the “inviolable” Catholic seal of the confessional, after calls for the royal commission into the handling of child sex abuse to examine the controversial church rule.

Prime Minister Julia Gillard says using the seal of the confessional to cover up child abuse is a “sin of omission” because all adults have a duty of care towards children.

“It’s not good enough for people to engage in sin of omission and not act when a child is at risk,” she said.

Australia’s most senior Catholic, Cardinal George Pell, insisted on Tuesday the seal of confession was inviolable, even if a fellow priest confessed to child sex abuse.

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AUSTRALIA
Malaysia Chronicle

A FORMER priest charged with sexually abusing seven boys over an 18-year period blamed God for making him do it, a court has been told.

David Rapson, 59, is charged with abusing the boys while teaching at Salesian College Rupertswood, in Sunbury, between 1973 and 1990.

The former college vice-principal is charged with one count each of rape and gross indecency and a string of indecent assault charges.

The Herald Sun revealed last year up to seven priests and brothers at the college have been linked to secret payouts to students who alleged they were abused between the 1960s and the 1990s.

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MALTA
Times of Malta

Wednesday, November 14, 2012 by
Waylon Johnston

Two former priests yesterday sat impassively as an appeals court judge confirmed a magistrate’s decision to send them to jail for sexual abuse crimes committed against children in their care.

Godwin Scerri, 75, and Charles Pulis, 64, bothformer members of the Missionary Society of St Paul, were sentenced in August last year to five and six years’ imprisonment respectively for sexually abusing 11 boys in their care at St Joseph Home in Sta Venera some 20 years ago.

Mr Justice David Scicluna spent two hours reading out a meticulous and studied judgment. The men were then led away surrounded by six police officers and taken in a prison van to begin their jail term.

The case first came to light in 2003 when the victims and, namely, Lawrence Grech, who became the unofficial spokesman for them, spoke up about what went on in the home when he was a teenager.

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AUSTRALIA
7 News

By Tim Palmer, ABC
Updated November 14, 2012

A retired bishop has slammed Australia’s most senior Catholic, Cardinal George Pell, as an embarrassment, saying priests must be prepared to break the confessional seal if it is for the “greater good”.

Bishop Geoffrey Robinson says Cardinal Pell is out of step with the majority of Australia’s bishops and should no longer speak for the Catholic Church in Australia on the issue of sexual abuse by the clergy.

He was speaking to The World Today after Attorney-General Nicola Roxon said the issue of whether priests should be forced to reveal information given to them in the confessional would be considered by the upcoming royal commission into institutionalised sexual abuse.

Bishop Robinson, who won international attention for his published work on the need for the church to confront the abuse problem, told Tim Palmer that he believed Cardinal Pell was “not a team player”.

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UNITED KINGDOM
The Guardian

Robert Booth
The Guardian, Tuesday 13 November 2012

The arrest of Bishop Peter Ball on suspicion of sexual offences against boys and men at addresses in East Sussex and elsewhere is the latest development in a wide-ranging and often contentious series of official inquiries into decades of alleged child protection failures in the diocese of Chichester on England’s south coast.

Sussex police said on Tuesday that Ball is suspected of committing offences during the late 1980s and early 90s, when he was Bishop of Lewes, with responsibility for most of the parishes of East Sussex.

But alleged crimes and indecent behaviour by some priests linked to the diocese involving children, young church members and trainees date back further than that. Over the last four years church officials in Chichester, as well as at Lambeth Palace, the office of the archbishop of Canterbury, and Sussex police have all been involved in trying to get a grip on abuse allegations in the area.

Ball is the highest-profile church figure yet to be arrested, but the attention the scandal is likely to receive is only set to rise. Between now and next April, three separate child abuse cases against priests in the diocese of Chichester will be heard at Lewes crown court.

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LOUISIANA
Avoyelles Today

A former Marksville pastor reached a plea deal and plead guilty on one count of indecent behavior of a juvenile and has been sentenced to eight years in prison with no benefit of probation, parole or suspension of sentence. The plea deal for Allen Chris Gintz was reached on Thursday, November 8 in 12th Judicial District Court. District Court Judge Billy Bennett sentenced Gintz to prison. Because Gintz plead guilty to a sex crime, he must serve the entire eight years in prison.

Gintz was ordered to remain under house arrest and wear an ankle bracelet until he reports to prison. He can not leave his home unless it is to places approved by the court. Judge Bennett ruled Gintz could not even go to church.

He gave Gintz two weeks to get his affairs in order before reporting to prison on the Monday after Thanksgiving. Gintz had requested 30 days but Judge Bennett refused the request giving him just two weeks.

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AUSTRALIA
The Daily Telegraph

AAP
November 14, 2012

FEDERAL Attorney-General Nicola Roxon says the debate surrounding Catholic priests who admit to pedophilia in confession points to the failure of institutions and not religion.

Australia’s most senior Catholic, Cardinal George Pell, on Tuesday told reporters “the Seal of Confession is inviolable” even if a priest confesses to child sex abuse.

Ms Roxon described the situation as unacceptable.

“No one thinks it’s acceptable that if you knew about a crime of child abuse, that you would not protect the child, let alone report the matter to police,” Ms Roxon told ABC radio on Wednesday.

She said the federal government’s royal commission into child abuse would look beyond religion.

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AUSTRALIA
9 News

Victorian Catholic priest has disagreed with Cardinal George Pell over the role of the media in reporting child sex abuse in the Catholic Church, saying most Catholics would be grateful for the exposure.

Cardinal Pell, Australia’s most senior Catholic, said on Tuesday the church was not interested in denying misdeeds but objected to it being exaggerated in the media.

But Father Kevin Dillon, of the St Mary of the Angels Catholic Parish in Geelong, said he disagreed with Cardinal Pell and believed the media had played an important role in its focus on child sex abuse in the Catholic Church.

“I believe most Catholics are probably rather grateful to the media for a focus on something which they find enormously shameful and greatly distressing,” Father Dillon told ABC Radio on Wednesday.

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AUSTRALIA
Herald Sun

Lawyers should be required to report evidence of child abuse to police, says Child Safety Commissioner Bernie Geary

LAWYERS should be required to report evidence of child abuse to police if they aware that a client they are defending is guilty, says Child Safety Commissioner Bernie Geary.

Mr Geary told 3AW radio that both lawyers and priests should be legally compelled to report evidence of abuse to authorities.

“I think it’s one in all in. I can’t see any reason that anybody who is aware of a child being maltreated, abused, should hold that information. For the sake of the child we all should be looking after children,” he said.

“Professional people are compelled to report, social workers and the like. There’s a list of mandated people. Lawyers too, yes. If they are aware of the person that they were defending is guilty, of course, professionally they need to acknowledge that. I do think that we do make rules for some and not for others.

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AUSTRALIA
The Standard

By ANDREW THOMSON
Nov. 14, 2012

A Warrnambool detective has revealed abusive priests were relocated by the former head of the Catholic Church.

THE former head of the Catholic Church in western Victoria knew about sex abusing priests but just kept moving them, the Warrnambool detective who led two investigations into clergy abuse has revealed.

Detective Senior Constable Colin Ryan headed the investigations into former Catholic priests Paul David Ryan and Brian Coffey which led to convictions.

He has also passed on a large amount of information about the activities of the two paedophiles to the state parliamentary inquiry.

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AUSTRALIA
The Australian

Jared Owens
From:The Australian
November 14, 2012

CARDINAL George Pell has moved to release abuse victims from any confidentiality agreements signed with the Catholic Church in exchange for compensation but is resolute that priests who have heard pedophiles’ confessions should not answer questions at the proposed royal commission.

Australia’s most senior Catholic said yesterday the wide-ranging inquiry into child sexual abuse across religious, state and community institutions would be a “welcome” opportunity to “separate fact from fiction”.

The Archbishop of Sydney also lashed out at the media for “exaggerating” abuse in Catholic institutions, and denied any “widespread public cynicism” about the church’s efforts to bring abusers to justice.

Asked whether the church would seek to uphold historic confidentiality clauses to prevent witnesses testifying at the commission, Cardinal Pell said witnesses should be “free to say what they want”.

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AUSTRALIA
The Australian

Lanai Vasek and Peter Wilson
From:The Australian
November 14, 2012

ATTORNEY-General Nicola Roxon says the royal commission into child abuse will determine if the confidentiality of the Catholic confessional should be broken to ensure pedophile priests are reported to authorities.

Ms Roxon said she was currently consulting with her state counterparts to determine the terms of reference of the commission and expected “several commissioners” to be chosen to work on the inquiry.

She said it would be up to the commission to work out if Catholic priests would be compelled to report confessed child abusers.

“I think we are asking the royal commission to look at what went wrong in particular institutions,” Ms Roxon told ABC radio.

“I don’t think we should be ruling in and out any issues that might be raised at the commission.

“We know that there are delicate matters and ultimately that’s why I think it’s important to pick commissioners with high standing and considerable experience and let them do the job that the government and the community is asking them to do.”

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UNITED STATES
Village Voice

By Marsha McCreadie Wednesday, Nov 14 2012

It’s a good thing that documentary filmmaker Alex Gibney is an ex-Catholic; it takes the rage of the disillusioned to so zealously rip the veil as he does in Mea Maxima Culpa: Silence in the House of God. Yet even nonbelievers will get angry deciding which is worse: the sexual abuse of deaf children (mostly, though not exclusively, boys) at St. John’s School for the Deaf in Milwaukee from the 1950s through the early ’70s or that the church worked so hard to hide it.

Putting a face on misery, as he did in his Oscar-winning Taxi to the Dark Side, Gibney begins with four of the 200 boys abused by Father Lawrence Murphy—Terry Kohut, Gary Smith, Pat Kuehn, and Arthur Budzinski—all as brave today for being filmed as they were when they first tried to out Murphy in 1973, handing out flyers proclaiming “Serial Child Abuser Is Loose in Milwaukee” and turning him in to the police to no avail. (The men’s stories are given voice by actors including Chris Cooper, Ethan Hawke, and John Slattery.) Kohut describes Murphy as wolflike; in one of the movie’s re-enactments, we watch his nightly visitations stalking the dorm, looking especially for boys whose parents didn’t sign and couldn’t be told.

Although Murphy admitted to some wrongdoing in a church-supervised internal investigation, defending himself by saying he was taking the sexual sins of adolescents upon himself, he was like so many abusive priests simply moved to another diocese. The film also exposes secret million-dollar settlement funds, and even an attempt to buy an island in the Caribbean for pederastic priests. Cute, but instead they too were recycled, not expelled. A rat-a-tat spray of documents and expert testimony from sex counselors, priests with and without collars, and journalists including religion reporter Laurie Goldstein demonstrates who knew what and when they knew it. Vatican chronicler Marco Politi asserts that church archives date child abuse to the fourth century.

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BALTIMORE (MD)
National Catholic Reporter

by Jerry Filteau | Nov. 13, 2012

Baltimore —
Update: The U.S. bishops failed to pass a proposed statement on the economy, titled “The Hope of the Gospel in Difficult Economic Times.” The document failed to get the required two-thirds needed for passage. The vote was 134, yes, 84 no, with nine abstentions.

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MISSOURI
Fox 4

[with video]

November 13, 2012, by Sarah Clark

INDEPENDENCE, Mo. — The admitted killer of 27-year-old Bethany Deaton made his first court appearance Tuesday morning.

Micah Moore, 23, confessed to suffocating Deaton because he feared she would reveal the ongoing sexual abuse she endured by him and others to her therapist

Jackson County prosecutors said Moore lived with Deaton, her husband and other men. A probable cause statement reveals Moore told a detective he and the other men in the home, including Deaton’s own husband, drugged her and sexually assaulted her for months.

The statement said witnesses called this a “religious community” where they had sex with each other. According to the witness statements, Deaton’s husband, Tyler Deaton, was the spiritual leader. He has not been charged with any wrongdoing in connection to the death of his wife.

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AUSTRALIA
ABC – PM

[with audio]

MARK COLVIN: One of Australia’s foremost child protection experts, Dr Freda Briggs, believes that millions of Australians have been victims of child abuse.

She says a royal commission can only deal with that by restricting its terms of reference to the systems which ignored or covered up the abuse, and she hopes the inquiry will come up with a new jurisdiction to deal with child sex abuse cases.

Emeritus Professor Briggs spoke to Alexandra Kirk.

ALEXANDRA KIRK: No doubt the royal commission will be a very painful experience for victims and their families; do you have advice as to how they should prepare themselves?

FREDA BRIGGS: Yes, you’re absolutely right because I was involved helping quite a few of the men who went to the Mullighan Inquiry and it is extraordinarily difficult for men to be able to go and talk about what happened to them because they very often haven’t told anybody.

They’re worried that other people will find out. I mean what they need is an absolute assurance of confidentiality and privacy unless they themselves want their story published, possibly anonymously.

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AUSTRALIA/IRELAND
ABC News

[with video]

The judge who ran an inquiry into child abuse and neglect in Irish institutions says the Australian Government should not put an arbitrary time frame on its royal commission into child sexual abuse.

Ireland is the only other country to have launched a national child abuse inquiry similar to that announced on Monday by Australia’s Prime Minister.

The majority of allegations investigated by the commission, led by high court judge Sean Ryan, related to 60 residential schools operated by the Catholic Church, who were funded and supervised by Ireland’s department of education.

After nine years of inquiries, the commission reported its findings in 2009.

It said rape and abuse of Irish children in Catholic care was endemic: the entire system that held 30,000 children treated them more like prison inmates and slaves than people with legal rights and human potential, and that some religious officials encouraged ritual beatings and consistently shielded their orders amid a culture of self-serving secrecy.

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AUSTRALIA/IRELAND
The Australian

Peter Wilson, Europe correspondent
From:The Australian
November 13, 2012

THE IRISH judge who conducted the only national child abuse inquiry similar to that proposed by Julia Gillard has urged her not to impose restrictive time limits on Australia’s royal commission, and to stop it getting bogged down in hundreds of miniature criminal trials.

High Court Justice Sean Ryan said the success of his 2009 report into abuse in Ireland owed much to its strategy of choosing “samples” of abusive incidents rather than getting tied down in the details of every allegation made against an institution.

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AUSTRALIA
Sunshine Coast Daily

Adam Davies
14th Nov 2012

FORMER Toowoomba Catholic priest Dr Jim Madden said the announcement of a royal commission into the sex abuse of minors was well overdue.

In announcing the royal commission, Prime Minister Julia Gillard said the investigation would not focus solely on the Catholic Church.

She said it would include religious organisations, state-run institutions, church and state-run schools and not-for-profit organisations, including sporting clubs and Scouts.

Mr Madden, who served as a priest for 16-years, said the Catholic Church was only reluctantly playing ball because it had been forced to do so by public pressure.

“The church has for a long time turned a blind eye to it all,” Dr Madden said.

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AUSTRALIA
The Daily Telegraph

AAP
November 14, 2012

SENIOR opposition frontbencher Christopher Pyne says priests have a responsibility to report crimes to police even if the details are given to them in a confession.

Prime Minister Julia Gillard announced on Monday a royal commission to investigate how institutions have dealt with cases of child sex abuse following fresh allegations of cover-ups by the Catholic Church and police in the NSW Hunter.

Australia’s most senior Catholic, Cardinal Pell, said on Tuesday “the Seal of Confession is inviolable” even if a priest confesses to child sex abuse.

Mr Pyne, a Catholic, says the laws of the nation come before canon law.

“If a priest hears in a confessional a crime, especially a crime against a minor, the priest has the responsibility in my view to report that to the appropriate authorities,” Mr Pyne told ABC Radio on Wednesday.

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AUSTRALIA
The Courier

By Rick Feneley
Nov. 14, 2012

SMALL blessings. At last, it’s not all about the Catholic Church. This royal commission, says Cardinal George Pell, is ”an opportunity to clear the air, to separate fact from fiction … We object to being described as the only cab on the rank.”

It was a crowded rank indeed when Cardinal Pell, the Archbishop of Sydney, faced media on Tuesday at the Catholic Church’s city headquarters, on the fifth floor of Polding House. The air might have benefited from some clearing as Cardinal Pell castigated the press for smearing and scapegoating the church with exaggerations and generalisations. The church acknowledged its shame, he said. But when it came to the ”percentages” of abuse, the church was far from the only culprit – and the commission would establish that.

Cardinal Pell agreed he would likely be called before the inquiry – ”I should hope so” – to answer past claims that he covered up for abusing priests, allegations he has consistently denied.

He then got the the kind of grilling he might expect at the commission. Hadn’t victims been paid compensation to shut them up, to block legal action? ”I’ve never been involved in a case where people have been offered money so they wouldn’t go through the courts.”

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NEW ZEALAND
Radio New Zealand

A group that investigates church-related sexual abuse says clergymen from New Zealand are among those that Australian police want to interview.

The federal government is setting up a Royal Commission to investigate how institutions including schools, foster homes and churches have handled accusations of abuse.

The Catholic church in New Zealand says its officials will investigate the handling of a paedophile priest who came from Australia to Hamilton in the 1980s.

But John McNally of Broken Rites, a support group in Australia, says that case is the tip of the iceberg, and the police want to talk to some members of the Catholic order, St John of God.

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AUSTRALIA
Armidale Express

By Jane Lee
Nov. 14, 2012

THE royal commission into child abuse will expose hundreds more victims who have been attacked in state care to the present day, victims’ advocates say.

Prime Minister Julia Gillard announced a federal royal commission into child abuse on Monday, bowing to pressure surrounding the Victorian inquiry and the New South Wales government’s announcement of a special commission in the Hunter region.

While the government has yet to release its terms of reference, Ms Gillard said it would not be limited to the Catholic church, and would cover a range of institutions including state authorities, boy scouts and sports groups.

The Victorian inquiry faced criticism that it was only charged with investigating religious and non-government organisations, not public orphanages or children’s homes.

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AUSTRALIA
Eureka Street

Pat Power
November 13, 2012

The Prime Minister took the only course open to her in agreeing to a Royal Commission into child sexual abuse in our country. There has been more than enough media coverage to convince any fair-minded person of the terrible damage done through the abuse of children.

Over the past 20 years I have listened to people who have suffered such abuse, sometimes many years ago, and every time I hear a heartrending story I see another facet of the horror of this criminal behaviour.

The loss of childhood innocence, the secrecy which means little ones carry a burden they can share with no one, the misguided sense of guilt they often carry for many years, blaming themselves for what someone else has done to them, their shame before God; all of which may be compounded at times when they do try to unburden their troubled souls and find they are not believed or understood.

Some experience failed marriages; speaking to such people it becomes clear that sexuality, which is meant to be God’s joyous gift, has been a source of confusion and hurt because of their destructive childhood experiences. Every person’s experience will be different, but I believe the present publicity, painful though it be, will give more people the opportunity to unburden themselves and thus take the first steps towards finding healing and peace.

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AUSTRALIA
Stock & Land

RACHEL OLDING

14 Nov, 2012

TONY HERSBACH and his son were in their kitchen on Monday evening putting in some timber fittings when they heard Julia Gillard announce on the radio a royal commission into institutional child abuse.

Mr Hersbach, 59, was overwhelmed. He was elated, terrified, satisfied and exhausted. It has been more than 40 years since his parish priest, the man who assumed the role of surrogate father, repeatedly molested him. He is still waiting for the truth.

”That’s what I’ve struggled with for so many years,” he said. ”That the whole story has never come out. I’m still trying to get the church to admit what they did. I’m still trying to get over what happened. It affects me every single day.”

Father Victor Gabriel Rubeo sexually abused Mr Hersbach when he was 11 years old until he was 18 at a house in Laverton in Melbourne’s west.

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BALTIMORE (MD)
Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests

Posted by Becky Ianni on November 12, 2012

Is there any crime a bishop can commit that would get him kicked out of America’s bishops group? Or even denounced by one of his fellow bishops? That’s what we can’t help but wonder.

At least three men will be at today’s bishops meeting who, we believe, shouldn’t be. We think they should have voluntarily stayed home. Or, even better, we think they should have been disinvited by their brother bishops. Why? Because when we ignore wrongdoing, we encourage wrongdoing.

Who are these three?

One (KC Bishop Robert Finn), just last month, was criminally convicted of keeping evidence of child sex crimes from police for months.

Another one (Archbishop Thomas Wenski), also just last month, finally suspended a priest from his parish after the fourth man filed the fourth civil lawsuit against the priest.

And the third (Bishop Daniel Conlon), back in September, abruptly and inexplicably announced that he was putting a credibly accused priest, back on the job even though the priest had been suspended for child sex abuse allegations. Ironically, and sadly, that bishop heads the USCCB child sex abuse committee.

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UNITED KINGDOM
Chichester People

Right Reverend Peter Ball, 80-years-old, the former Bishop of Lewes has been arrested on suspcision of sex abuse.

The former Bishop of Lewes and Gloucester, was arrested at his home in Langport, Somerset on suspicion of abusing eight boys and men in the late 1980’s and early 1990’s.

Vickery House, 67-years-old, was also arrested near his home in Haywards Heath in West Sussex. The retired Church of England priest was arrested for two sexual offences involving two teenage boys in East Sussex between 1981 and 1983.

The arrests follow a review and subsequent inquiry over the past six months by a team of Sussex Police detectives.

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AUSTRALIA
Newcastle Herald

By JOANNE McCARTHY
Nov. 14, 2012

MAITLAND-Newcastle Bishop Bill Wright has formally apologised to three women – including a former nun – who were sexually harassed or assaulted by the late priest Terry Sylvester.

The bishop has confirmed the allegations about the priest’s offences against a nun after it was revealed by the Newcastle Herald in September. The public apology came after parishes across the diocese at the weekend were read a statement from the bishop, at his direction, that criticised the Herald for ‘‘misrepresenting’’ facts.

In a lengthy statement, Bishop Wright confirmed the diocese accepted that Father Sylvester had engaged in ‘‘a pattern of verbal harassment and a single incident of physical harassment of a sexual nature against an adult person’’ in the late 1970s.

The Herald has a document identifying the ‘‘adult person’’ as a Hunter nun. The matter was not reported to police.

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UNITED KINGDOM
AFP

LONDON — A retired Church of England bishop was among two clergymen arrested on Tuesday by police investigating allegations of sex abuse dating back three decades.

Peter Ball, 80, the former bishop of Lewes and Gloucester, is being held on suspicion of abusing eight boys and young men aged from 12 to their early 20s in the late 1980s and 1990s.

A 67-year-old retired priest, named by British media as Vickery House, was also detained at his home on suspicion of separate sex offences against two teenage boys between 1981 and 1983, Sussex Police said.

The abuse is alleged to have taken place in East Sussex in southern England.

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UNITED KINGDOM
Daily Mail

Retired Church of England bishop, 80, arrested by police over historic child sex abuse allegations at scandal-hit Diocese

By Steve Nolan

Police investigating historic child sex allegations in a scandal-hit diocese arrested a retired Church of England bishop today.

Peter Ball, 80, was arrested at his home in Langport, Somerset, on suspicion of eight sex offences against eight boys and young men aged between 12 and their early twenties in the late Eighties and Nineties, sources said.

The offences are alleged to have taken place in East Sussex and elsewhere within the diocese of Chichester.

Rev Ball, former bishop of Lewes and later Gloucester, has connections with Prince Charles whom he has described in the past as a ‘loyal friend’.

He is thought to be the highest member of the clergy to be arrested in connection with a sex abuse investigation.

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UNITED KINGDOM
The Associated Press

LONDON (AP) — Police have arrested a retired Church of England bishop and a retired priest in an investigation of alleged child sex abuse in the diocese of Chichester.

Britain’s Press Association said 80-year-old retired bishop Peter Ball was arrested at his home on suspicion of eight offenses with young men in the 1980s and 1990s. Police would not identify the suspect, but when asked about Ball, police said the force arrested an 80-year-old at his home on suspicion of sex offenses.

British police do not generally identify suspects under arrest by name until they are charged.

Police confirmed that a 67-year-old priest also was arrested on suspicion of abuses in 1981 and 1983. He was not identified.

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UNITED KINGDOM
Digital Journal

By Steve Hayes
Nov 13, 2012

Langport – A retired bishop of the Church of England has been arrested by police investigating allegations of child sexual abuse. He was arrested at his home this morning on suspicion of eight separate offences.

As the Guardian points out, the Right Reverend Peter Ball is thought to be the most senior member of the Church of England to have been arrested in connection with a child sexual abuse inquiry. He was arrested on suspicion of offences against eight boys and young men, ranging in age from twelve to their early twenties. The offences are alleged to have been committed during the 1980s and 1990s.

Bishop Ball was the former bishop of Gloucester. He resigned in 1993, as This Is The West Country notes, after receiving a police caution for committing an act of gross indecency against a teenager.

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UNITED STATES
Voice of the Faithful

Bishop Robert Finn of Missouri stands convicted of covering up for a priest caught with thousands of images involving “child sex” on his computer. That this is a travesty is an understatement. That he has not resigned or been removed or even censured by his brother bishops is abhorrent. As U.S. bishops gather for their Fall General Assembly, Sept 12-15, in Baltimore, Bishop Finn’s situation appears not to have made the agenda.

Bishop Finn’s conviction is the most significant example of how Roman Catholic bishops have exempted themselves from the requirement to follow their Charter for the Protection of Children and Young People. Over the decade since this Dallas Charter was adopted, bishops have failed to report allegations of clergy sexual abuse, have kept accusations from their own review boards, and in at least one instance, have simply decided that the Charter does not apply to them at all. The U.S. bishops’ own National Review Board, which conducts audits to ensure bishops are carrying out the Charter guidelines, even warned them against “complacency or Charter drift” in its June 13, 2012, 10-year report.

Although Voice of the Faithful® is disappointed at the relative inaction on this issue by the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops at previous national meetings, we call for them to act immediately at their present Fall General Assembly by doing the following, which would put teeth into fraternal correction and make the USCCB position on child protection absolutely clear:
•When USCCB learns a bishop has engaged in activity that would be prohibited by the Charter, or
•When USCCB learns a bishop has disregarded the principles of the Charter and has failed to take the actions required by the Charter, or
•When USCCB learns a bishop has made public statements indicating his disagreement with the Charter’s principles or his unwillingness to take the action the Charter requires,

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BALTIMORE (MD)
National Catholic Reporter

by Jerry Filteau | Nov. 13, 2012

Baltimore —
Portents of a major social justice conflict among the U.S. bishops rose on the first day of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops’ annual fall meeting Monday when retired Archbishop Joseph Fiorenza of Galveston-Houston, Texas, denounced a proposed pastoral statement on workers, poverty and the economy as a betrayal of Catholic social teaching.

If approved in its draft form, the statement would be “lampooned” in the Catholic academic world, he said.

Fiorenza, a former USCCB president, said the proposed statement devotes only one short sentence to the long history of Catholic social teaching on workers’ rights to organize in unions, to bargain collectively with their employers and to go on strike if their demands for just wages and working conditions are not met.

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UNITED KINGDOM
Diocese of Chichester, Church of England

The Diocese of Chichester can confirm that two men, a retired Bishop aged 80 and a retired priest aged 67, were arrested this morning, Tuesday the 13th November, by detectives from Sussex Police. These arrests relate to allegations of sexual abuse in the 1980s and 1990s. We can confirm that the retired Bishop has had no ministry in Sussex for many years and no longer lives in this area. The retired priest has had his Permission to Officiate suspended.

These arrests occur as part of an investigation in which the Diocese of Chichester has been working closely with Sussex Police. We have also been working closely with Elizabeth Hall, the National Safeguarding Adviser for the Church of England, and Kate Wood, the safeguarding consultant appointed by the Church of England to compile a file of evidence that was handed to Sussex Police in May.

Our cooperation with Sussex police in this investigation continues our ongoing commitment to do all that is necessary to bring any alleged criminal matters to the attention of the public authorities, and to ensure that the Diocese of Chichester is a safe place for all in our church communities, whilst being an unsafe place for any who may seek to abuse them.

A special helpline has been set up for anyone who feels they need support or advice whenever learning of this or any similar cases. The helpline is staffed by the NSPCC and is available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Calls will be handled sensitively and confidentially. Where appropriate, callers will be referred to specially trained police officers and, if required, a range of counselling services, who are able to offer expert support to those who come forward. Funding is available for counselling for people who are directly affected by these events.

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UNITED KINGDOM
Solihull News

Nov 13 2012

A retired Church of England bishop is among two clergymen arrested by police investigating historic allegations of child sex abuse within the scandal-hit Diocese of Chichester.

Peter Ball, 80, was held at his home near Langport, Somerset, on suspicion of eight sex offences against eight boys and young men aged from 12 to their early 20s in East Sussex and elsewhere in the late 1980s and 1990s, sources said.

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AUSTRALIA
Brimbank Weekly

By Mark Russell
Nov. 13, 2012

A FORMER Catholic priest has appeared in court today accused of sexually abusing boys at the Salesian College Rupertswood in Sunbury.

David Edwin Rapson, 59, appeared in the Melbourne Magistrates Court charged with one count of rape, five counts of indecent assault, four counts of indecently assaulting a child under 16, and one count of gross indecency between 1973 to 1990.

Rapson had been a teacher and former vice-principal at Rupertswood.

Prosecutor Anne Hassan told the court the charges against Rapson involved seven complainants who had been aged in their early teens at the time of the alleged abuse.

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AUSTRALIA
The Courier

By Deborah Gough
Nov. 13, 2012

COUNSELLING over sex abuse is being sought for children in Catholic and non-Catholic schools, and the royal commission announced this week can expect to hear about current as well as historic cases, a Melbourne clinical psychologist has said.

While Cardinal George Pell, leader of the Archdiocese of Sydney, on Tuesday continued to describe the instances of child sex abuse as “historic”, psychologist Andrew Fuller said he was treating children who had suffered abuse at Catholic schools recently.

“Kids from all types of schools suffer; there is all sorts of abuse,” Mr Fuller said.

“It is pretty horrendous. It is certainly something that has occurred recently. A royal commission is something I would support, but I do think it is almost a bottomless pit,” he said.

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AUSTRALIA
Perth Now

By Rashida Yosufzai
From: AAP
November 13, 2012

NSW Premier Barry O’Farrell has become emotional telling parliament that he doesn’t understand how Catholic priests who admit to paedophilia in confession aren’t reported to police.

His remarks follow a press conference called by Cardinal George Pell in Sydney in response to the federal government’s announcement of a royal commission.

Australia’s most senior Catholic told reporters “the Seal of Confession is inviolable” even if a priest confesses to child sex abuse.

“I heard Cardinal Pell today indicate that the bonds of the confessional remain intact,” an emotional Mr O’Farrell told question time.

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AUSTRALIA
The Australian

Dan Box
From:The Australian
November 14, 2012

THE Catholic Bishop of Newcastle, whose northern NSW diocese has allegedly experienced some of the worst child sex abuse, said it was possible a pedophile ring once existed among its clergy.

Bishop Bill Wright said his staff had “tried to join the dots” between individual abusive priests.

“One priest who was abusing someone was in a parish next to another priest who turned out to be an abuser. Or one known abuser contributing funds to the defence of another known abuser,” Bishop Wright said.

“We’ve not exactly been able to join those dots. What we haven’t got is evidence of them passing victims around, what you would call a ring. It’s possible.”

The Maitland-Newcastle diocese has paid out at least $15 million in settlements to more than 100 victims, while unofficial estimates put the total number of victims at hundreds more.

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AUSTRALIA
Herald Sun

A BROTHER at a Sydney Catholic school has become the latest member of the Church charged with child molestation.

Patrician Brothers College Blacktown Brother Martin Harmata did not appear in Wyong Court this morning after being arrested on the NSW Central Coast yesterday evening.

The 59-year-old allegedly molested two boys aged 12 and 13 in his care during the late 1980s.

Both children were in Harmata’s care at the time and police will allege that all incidents occurred on school grounds.

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AUSTRALIA
CNN

By Monica Attard for CNN

updated 12:21 AM EST, Tue November 13, 2012

Sydney, Australia (CNN) — In Ireland it took years to weed out the details of systemic sexual abuse of children by Catholic clergy.

In Australia, Prime Minister Julia Gillard has put no time limit on what will be the most wide-ranging inquiry into child sex abuse in the nation’s history — one that will not be confined to the Catholic Church.

As she announced the establishment of a Royal Commission into institutional responses to instances and allegations of child sex abuse, Gillard said the inquiry would not target any one church but would encompass all religious institutions, state institutions, schools and not-for-profit groups like scouts and sports clubs.

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MALTA
Malta Today

Karl Stagno-Navarra

Addressing the media outside the law courts soon after he witnessed defrocked priests Godwin Scerri and Carmelo Pulis be escorted to jail in a prison van, Lawrence Grech – who had put his face to the cases against the two priests – said that he was not going to forgive them.

“I will not forgive,” Grech said, adding that “government must now insist with the Archbishop’s Curia to transfer all the files it has on many other victims to the Police, just across the road, so that they would be thoroughly investigated.”

Grech, who according to Judge David Scicluna who presided over the Court of Criminal Appeal was the subject of “blatant contradictions” and at times “lied” in his evidence, cried when he was asked how he felt when he saw Pulis and Scerri being handcuffed and taken to prison.

“I regarded Fr. Pulis as my father…what can I say, I am saddened,” he said.

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AUSTRALIA
Canberra Times

Megan Levy
Breaking news reporter

A senior detective who blew the whistle on an alleged police cover-up of sex abuse in the Catholic Church said he had received threatening messages on police letterhead since speaking out on an issue that he acknowledged would end his career in the force.

But after Prime Minister Julia Gillard announced a sweeping royal commission into child sex abuse on Monday, Detective Inspector Peter Fox said he felt vindicated and satisfied that the thousands of voices of abuse victims would finally be heard.

The senior investigator’s explosive allegations on Lateline last week – that the Catholic Church had covered up crimes of paedophile priests and silenced police investigations in the Newcastle-Hunter area of New South Wales – helped to trigger the royal commission, which will probe organisations ranging from church and state authorities to the Boy Scouts and sports groups.

Detective Inspector Fox said the royal commission was a “wonderful result”. He said the push for the inquiry had affected him and his family, including his wife, who suffered a nervous break-down after receiving threatening letters.

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AUSTRALIA
Canberra Times

November 13, 2012

Noel Towell

More than 100 Canberra men have come forward saying they were abused while at school at two Canberra Catholic colleges between the 1970s and 1990s.

Lawyers acting for the victims say the national royal commission announced by the Prime Minister on Monday was the only acceptable response to the legacy of institutional sexual abuse.

Jason Parkinson, of Porters Lawyers, has taken legal action throughout Australia against the Catholic and Presbyterian churches as well as the Salvation Army and the Church of England on behalf of victims.

He says the inquiry had to be nationwide to cope with the ”Chinese walls” erected by institutions to avoid legal responsibility. Mr Parkinson said the scale of abuse of his clients, former students at Catholic schools Marist College and Daramalan College between 1976 and 2000, had left many of the city’s young people ”terribly scarred”.

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AUSTRALIA
Canberra Times

November 13, 2012

David Ellery

Victims of sexual abuse within the Roman Catholic Church and their families have paid a “devastating” price for misconduct by some clergy and church workers, according to the former Archbishop of Canberra and Goulburn, Francis Carroll.

Bishop Carroll, who held the See from 1983 to 2006, said the actions of a relatively small number of people had also damaged the church and seriously undermined the morale of many other members of the clergy.

“I can personally attest that many good clergy are horrified by what has occurred,” he said.

Bishop Carroll, who now lives in Wagga Wagga, but maintains close ties with his former diocese, has welcomed Prime Minister Julia Gillard’s announcement of a royal commission into sex abuse – as long as it is thorough.

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UNITED STATES
Minnesota SNAP

By Vinnie Nauheimer

The Catholic Hierarchy lost more in this past election than Mitt Romney ever could. The sin of hypocrisy has caught up with and trampled the power of what once was a powerful voice in American politics: the hierarchy of the American Roman Catholic Church. The bishops played their final hand in American politics and came up woefully short, aces and eights: the dead mans hand. Catholic bishops were undeniably roundly, soundly, and publicly rebuked in a fashion that was equal to the effort they expended to influence the election. Whether the hierarchy accepts it or not, they will now be consigned to pages of the volume: No Longer Politically Relevant.

Can bishops be politically significant to national politics when they can’t influence their own parishioners? They can’t. Bishops along with their pundits loudly proclaimed their ability to hold sway over the Catholic population of between sixty to seventy million Catholics in the United States, but as this election proved to the world, they couldn’t deliver a pizza without a GPS.

Only a few years ago, Bishop Chaput, Archbishop of Denver, was able to rally Colorado Catholics as a block to defeat a revision of the Statute of Limitations Bill that would have made it easier for victims of Clergy Abuse to recover damages from their abusers and the church that protected them. This year Colorado was one of only two states that passed a bill legalizing marijuana.

Not since the days of the Legion of Decency have the bishops been so vocal. In those days they utilized all the media in their efforts to prevent scandalous movies like Baby Doll or Lolita from being viewed by Catholics under the pain of sin. Below are some of the numerous exhortations voiced against Obama by bishops of the Roman Catholic Church.

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UNITED KINGDOM
The Argus

A retired Church of England bishop is one of two clergymen arrested by police investigating historic allegations of child sex abuse in East Sussex this morning (November 13).

Former Bishop of Lewes Peter Ball, 80, is being held at his Somerset home on suspicion of eight sex offences against eight boys and young men aged between 12 and their early 20s.

The abuse is alleged to have taken place in East Sussex and elsewhere in the late 1980s and 1990s.

An unnamed 67-year-old retired priest, has also been detained at his home near Haywards Heath, West Sussex, on suspicion of separate sex offences against two teenage boys in East Sussex between 1981 and 1983.

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UNITED KINGDOM
Shoreham Herald

Published on Tuesday 13 November 2012

AN 80-year-old man was arrested today (Tuesday, November 13) on suspicion of eight sexual offences committed against eight boys and young men.

The man was arrested at his home near Langport, Somerset.

The alleged offences, involving victims ranging in age from 12 to their early 20s, took place at addresses in East Sussex and elsewhere during the late 1980s and early 1990s.

A 67-year old man was also arrested at his home address near Haywards Heath today on suspicion of two separate sexual offences against two teenage boys in East Sussex between 1981 and 1983.

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UNITED KINGDOM
Reuters

LONDON (Reuters) – A former Church of England bishop was arrested on Tuesday on suspicion of sexually assaulting boys as young as 12, police said, the latest public figure to be accused after weeks of child abuse claims that have engulfed the BBC and celebrities.

Separate police investigations into the late television presenter Jimmy Savile have fuelled a national abuse scandal that has dominated public debate and provoked a bout of national soul searching.

Police said Peter Ball, 80, was held in western England on suspicion of sex offences against eight boys and young men, aged from 12 to their early 20s, in the late 1980s and early 1990s. He was a bishop in Lewes, southern England, and Gloucester, in the southwest.

A woman who answered the telephone at his house in Somerset, southwest England, declined to comment on the arrest.

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UNITED STATES
Huffington Post

Religion News Service | By Daniel Burke Posted: 11/13/2012

(RNS) Three Catholic bishops met with leaders of the American nuns’ group they are tasked with overhauling in an “open and cordial” meeting on Sunday (Nov. 11), according to a joint statement.

Archbishop Peter Sartain of Seattle led the bishops’ discussion with four officials from the Leadership Conference of Women Religious, including its new president, Sister Florence Deacon.

Citing doctrinal deficiencies, the Vatican asked Sartain in April to rein in the LCWR, which represents about 80 percent of 56,000 American nuns. The nuns have disputed the Vatican’s assessment, and have called for additional dialogue with the hierarchy to resolve their differences.

Sunday’s meeting “was open and cordial and those present agreed to meet again to continue the conversation,” Sartain and Deacon said in a joint 88-word statement. A spokeswoman for the LCWR declined to say what topics were discussed or when future meetings might be held.

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UNITED KINGDOM
The Independent

Tom Pugh

Tuesday 13 November 2012

A retired Church of England bishop was among two clergymen arrested by police investigating historic allegations of child sex abuse within the scandal-hit Diocese of Chichester.

Peter Ball, 80, was held at his home near Langport, Somerset, on suspicion of eight sex offences against eight boys and young men aged from 12 to their early 20s in East Sussex and elsewhere in the late 1980s and 1990s, sources said.

A second man, an unnamed 67-year-old retired priest, was also detained at his home this morning near Haywards Heath, West Sussex, on suspicion of separate sex offences against two teenage boys in East Sussex between 1981 and 1983, Sussex Police said.

The arrests follow a review and subsequent inquiry over the past six months by a team of Sussex Police detectives.

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AUSTRALIA
Canberra Times

November 14, 2012

Phillip Coorey
Sydney Morning Herald chief political correspondent

When Prime Minister Julia Gillard walked into cabinet at 4pm on Monday, she had already decided to hold a broad-ranging royal commission into the sexual abuse of children.

Her decision crystallised earlier that day after consultations with senior colleagues, including Treasurer Wayne Swan and Environment Minister Tony Burke.

Inside cabinet, there was no resistance. The Minister for Workplace Relations, Bill Shorten, was a little put out, according to cabinet sources, only because he would be embarrassed.

On Friday, with Gillard in Indonesia, Shorten had wanted to back calls for a royal commission after revelations about the systemic abuse and cover-ups by the Catholic Church in the Hunter Valley. But the ”line” from the Prime Minister’s office that day was to dead-bat calls for a commission until Gillard returned home.

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AUSTRALIA
Canberra Times

November 14, 2012

Jack Waterford

The religious institutions have largely passed through the gauntlets that are child abuse investigations. Government has yet to do so.

The Catholic Church is inevitably the main target of the inquiry into sexual abuse of children. It pretty much deserves what it has had so far, and what it will get, but my bet is that it will emerge from the long inquisition ahead in far better shape than some of the other institutions under scrutiny, including government itself. This inquiry could be a big own goal.

Julia Gillard has yet to settle the terms of reference for the commission, but she has already made it clear that it will extend beyond the Catholic Church to other religious and civic bodies, and possibly schools, which have been given the charge of children. That was the condition on which Tony Abbott, and to an extent Catholic prelates, agreed to manifest a faint enthusiasm for the project.

The inquiry could take ages, every now and again sending a great fizz of sparks across the political horizon. Some will come from accounts of abuse – in orphanages, schools and other children’s institutions. Some will be from amazement at some of those who engaged in abuse, and at their brazenness.

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AUSTRALIA
NEWS.com.au

Cardinal George Pell refuses to name priests who admit in the confessional that they are paedophiles

CARDINAL George Pell has refused to name and shame priests who admit in the confessional that they are paedophiles.

Cardinal Pell yesterday welcomed the royal commission into sexual abuse and said he would front the commission if called on – but openly advised priests to avoid hearing confessions of sexual abuse from fellow priests to help preserve the sanctity of the confessional.

He also claimed there had been a “smearing” of the Catholic Church.

The Government released details of the royal commission, which it said would begin work early next year, amid concerns from MPs that the scope of the inquiry, which could last 10 years, was possibly too broad to get a significant result for abused children.

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AUSTRALIA
Vatican Radio

(Vatican Radio) The President and Permanent Committee of the Australian Catholic Bishops Conference, on behalf of the Australian Bishops, have given their support to the announcement by the Prime Minister of a Royal Commission into child sex abuse.

Below the full text of statement released by Australian Catholic Bishops Conference Monday:

“This is a serious issue not just for the Catholic Church but for the whole community. As Catholic bishops and as individuals we share the feelings of horror and outrage which all decent people feel when they read the reports of sexual abuse and allegations of cover ups.

Over the past 20 years, there have been major developments in the way the Church responds to victims, deals with perpetrators and puts in place preventive measures. In addition, there is a much greater general awareness of the issue of paedophilia in the broader community. Sexual abuse of children is not confined to the Catholic Church. Tragically, it occurs in families, churches, community groups, schools and other organisations. We believe a Royal Commission will enable an examination of the issues associated with child abuse nationally, and identify measures for better preventing and responding to child abuse in our society. We have taken decisive steps in the past 20 years to make child safety a priority and to help victims of abuse. This includes working closely with police.

While there were significant problems concerning some dioceses and some religious orders, talk of a systemic problem of sexual abuse in the Catholic Church is ill-founded and inconsistent with the facts. To assist in determining the appropriate scope of the Royal Commission, it would be very useful for police and child protection authorities to release the information they have about the number of cases they are dealing with now and the situations which they have arisen: families, government organisations and non-government organisations, including churches. In NSW it would also be helpful to highlight when the offences occurred and, in particular, whether they occurred pre or post the Wood Royal Commission in the 1990s, and the rigorous child protection regime put in place after it.

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UNITED KINGDOM
Eastbourne Herald

THE former Bishop of Lewes was arrested this morning on suspicion of sex abuse dating back more than 20 years ago.

The Right Reverend Peter Ball is being held on suspicion of eight sexual offences committed against eight boys and young men, ranging in age from 12 to the early twenties, at addresses in East Sussex. Police say the offences date back to the late 1980s and early 1990s.

The news coincides with the arrest at his home in Haywards Heath this morning of retired Church of England priest, Vickery House. The 67-year-old was arrested on suspicion of two separate sexual offences against two teenage boys in East Sussex between 1981 and 1983.

Both have been detained in Somerset and Sussex respectively, for interview and further enquiries by Sussex Police officers. Police have stressed that the allegations against the two men were being dealt with separately.

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AUSTRALIA
The Canberra Times

November 14, 2012

Its terms of reference have yet to be officially decided, but the royal commission into sexual abuse in institutions run by governments, churches and community has already been given a potentially wide brief by the Prime Minister. In announcing the inquiry on Monday, Julia Gillard declared there would be no deadline for completion, and that ”victims must be allowed to heal, and perpetrators must be brought to justice”.

These are lofty ambitions, certainly, but many of the victims and their families are likely to be profoundly appreciative. Like a good many other countries, the abuse of children and young adults within institutions has been longstanding and widespread in Australia.

The shame, betrayal and confusion felt by the victims meant that not all of these incidents were reported. Those that were – either to senior church authorities or the police – were frequently denied by the perpetrators and their accomplices after the fact.

To protect the reputation of their churches, senior clergy members have conspired in cover-ups or actively frustrated police investigations.

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AUSTRALIA
The Australian

Shannon Deery
From:Herald Sun
November 15, 2012

VICTIMS of child sexual abuse in Melbourne’s Jewish community are being ordered by religious leaders not to report incidents to police.

Jewish community insiders say Melbourne’s ultra-Orthodox Chabad community has banded together to cover up cases of sexual abuse.

Sources have also accused Jewish leaders of intimidating victims, their families and supporters and threatening to expel them from the tight-knit community.

One of the global Chabad community’s most senior figures has categorically warned at least one victim he could not report allegations of abuse to police, the Herald Sun has confirmed.

The senior rabbi, who was a leader in education for several decades within the Australian Chabad movement, said doing so would ruin the alleged perpetrator’s life and would amount to “grave sin” under Jewish law.

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AUSTRALIA
Blacktown Advocate

Patrician Brothers Blacktown former Brother Martin Harmata and teacher charged over child sex abuse

by BEN McCLELLAN and AAP

A FORMER Patrician Brothers Catholic Brother, Martin Harmata, and teacher who both allegedly sexually abused the same 13-year-old boy did so on separate occasions and were not working together, the head of an investigation into the 25-year-old allegations said today.

The two men were charged on Monday night with numerous child sex offences allegedly committed against an eight-year-old girl in 1985 and two 13-year-old boys in 1987.

All three were allegedly abused on school grounds at the Blacktown college and a Lalor Park primary school.

Sex Crimes squad Acting Superintendent Michael Haddow dismissed allegations from a former priest an alleged paedophile ring was operating at Patrician Brothers, but investigations were continuing and he didn’t rule out further arrests.

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UNITED KINGDOM
ITV

A retired Church of England bishop was among two clergymen arrested by Sussex Police investigating historic allegations of child sex abuse within the scandal-hit Diocese of Chichester, according to sources.

Peter Ball, 80, was arrested at his home near Landport, Somerset, on suspicion of eight sexual offences committed against boys and young men during the late 1980s and late 1990s, sources said.

A second man, aged 67, was also arrested this morning at his home near Haywards Heath, West Sussex, on suspicion of separate sexual offences against two teenage boys in East Sussex between 1981 and 1983.

Sussex Police confirmed arrests have been made but did not reveal the identity of the suspects.

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UNITED KINGDOM
ITV

Detective Chief Inspector Carwyn Hughes of Sussex Police, who is in charge of the investigation into historic allegations of child abuse at the Chichester Diocese, said the allegations are being treated “just as seriously as any more recent offences”.

“The Church of England, including the Diocese of Chichester, are co-operating fully with police.

Although the matters referred to are still subject of police investigation, Sussex Police make it clear that the force will always take seriously any allegations of historic sexual offending, and every possible step will be taken to investigate whenever appropriate.

– Detective Chief Inspector Carwyn Hughes of Sussex Police

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UNITED KINGDOM
The Guardian

Robert Booth
guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 13 November 2012

Detectives investigating complaints of sexual abuse in the Church of England have arrested a retired bishop on suspicion of eight sexual offences against eight boys and young men ranging in age from 12 to early 20s.

Officers from the Sussex police serious crime directorate involved in a six-month investigation into historic allegations at the diocese of Chichester arrested the Rt Rev Peter Ball, former bishop of Lewes and later bishop of Gloucester, on Tuesday morning at his home address near Landport, Somerset.

Ball is thought to be the most senior figure in the church to be arrested in connection with a sex abuse investigation. The bishop, now 80, has connections to Prince Charles, whom he has described in the past as “a loyal friend”.

Police also arrested a 67-year old retired priest at his home address near Haywards Heath on suspicion of two separate sexual offences against two teenage boys in East Sussex between 1981 and 1983.

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UNITED KINGDOM
Harlow Star

A retired Church of England bishop is among two clergymen arrested by police investigating historic allegations of child sex abuse within the scandal-hit Diocese of Chichester.

Peter Ball, 80, was held at his home near Langport, Somerset, on suspicion of eight sex offences against eight boys and young men aged from 12 to their early 20s in East Sussex and elsewhere in the late 1980s and 1990s, sources said.

A second man, an unnamed 67-year-old retired priest, was also detained at his home near Haywards Heath, West Sussex, on suspicion of separate sex offences against two teenage boys in East Sussex between 1981 and 1983, Sussex Police said.

The arrests follow a review and subsequent inquiry over the past six months by a team of Sussex Police detectives.

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UNITED KINGDOM
The Telegraph

By John Bingham, Religious Affairs Editor
11:50AM GMT 13 Nov 2012

The Rt Rev Peter Ball, 80, who served as the Bishop of Lewes and later Bishop of Gloucester, was arrested at his home in Somerset, on suspicion of eight sex offences against eight boys and young men.

The alleged victims were aged from 12 to their early 20s in the late 1980s and 1990s when the offences allegedly took place in Sussex.

A second man, named by sources as the Rev Vickery House, 67, was also detained at his home this morning near Haywards Heath, West Sussex, on suspicion of separate sex offences against two teenage boys in East Sussex between 1981 and 1983, Sussex Police said.

It comes after a six month inquiry into allegations of abuse centering on the diocese of Chichester by a team of Sussex Police detectives.

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AUSTRALIA
Sydney Morning Herald

November 14, 2012

Gerard Henderson
Executive director, The Sydney Institute

The Prime Minister, Julia Gillard’s, decision to establish a royal commission into institutional responses to child sexual abuse has received overwhelmingly public support. We know, on the available evidence, that the wide-ranging and expensive inquiry will focus on past crimes and whether people in authority, in Gillard’s terminology, ”averted their eyes” with respect to abusers.

We also know, on the available evidence, that indigenous children in some Aboriginal communities are being sexually assaulted in 2012. Despite the efforts of Commonwealth, state and territory authorities, these crimes continue. Moreover, regrettably, there is scant public outrage about this contemporary abuse.

Sections of the media have focused on the Catholic Church’s deplorable inability in the past century to stop the crimes of some priests and some brothers with respect to primarily male children.

However, as the Jesuit priest Frank Brennan said on Lateline, the Catholic Church reformed its handling of sex abuse allegations in 1996. Soon after Pell became Archbishop of Melbourne in 1996, he set up the Melbourne Response, which was aimed at confronting abuse of children by clerics and assisting victims.

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AUSTRALIA
NEWS.com.au

Tory Shepherd
news.com.au
November 13, 2012

SOME priests think pedophilia does not “break celibacy” and that sins can be confessed away, one of the nation’s top child protection experts says.

Emeritus Professor Freda Briggs, who has just published a seminal text on child protection, says sexual abuse by a priest is “the most damaging of all” for children and that the Catholic Church is guilty of forgiving priests instead of punishing them.

Her comments come after Prime Minister Julia Gillard announced a sweeping federal royal commission into institutional child sex abuse, which was sparked by revelations of abuse within the Catholic Church.

Asked whether Catholic celibacy was a possible contributor to child sex abuse, Prof Briggs told news.com.au celibacy was not the problem “for men who are sexually attracted to children” anyway.

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AUSTRALIA
NEWS.com.au

Defiant Cardinal George Pell says sex abuse royal commission will ‘separate fact from fiction’

CARDINAL George Pell says priests who hear confessions from colleagues who commit child sex abuse should remain bound by the Seal of Confession.

Addressing the media in Sydney in relation to the royal commission into child sex abuse, Cardinal Pell explained church protocol for priests who confess to child sex abuse to another priest.

“If that is done outside the confessional (it can be passed on),” he said.

“(But) the Seal of Confession is inviolable.”

He said priests should avoid hearing confession from colleagues suspected of committing child sex abuse to avoid being bound by the Seal of Confession.

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AUSTRALIA
The Australian

Shannon Deery
From:Herald Sun
November 13, 2012

A FORMER vice-principal of a Catholic boys school embroiled in one of the state’s biggest alleged child sex abuse cover-ups has faced court charged with abusing seven boys.

Former priest David Rapson appeared at the Melbourne Magistrates’ Court today charged with abusing the boys while teaching at Salesian College Rupertswood, in Sunbury, between 1973 and 1990.

Rapson is charged with one count each of rape and gross indecency and a string of indecent assault charges.

The Herald Sun revealed last year up to seven priests and brothers at the college have been linked to secret payouts to students who alleged they were abused between the 1960s and the 1990s.

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AUSTRALIA
Herald Sun

In short, it’s a formal independent public inquiry instigated by a state government or the federal government. Royal commissions are typically called whenever there is ongoing impropriety, illegal activity or gross administrative incompetence in any area of Australian life. There are also sometimes royal commissions in the wake of natural disasters and accidents.

Why are we having it again?
Because, as Detective Chief Inspector Peter Fox has revealed in shocking detail, there is overwhelming evidence of ongoing sexual abuse and alleged systemic cover-ups by members of institutions like the Catholic Church. A royal commission will test these allegations and seek to put the wheels of justice in motion.

How long will this Royal Commission last?
We don’t know. They usually last at least a year, and sometimes several years. For example, the Royal Commission into the Building and Construction Industry ran from August 2001 to February 2004. There have been calls today for a deadline on the child abuse royal commission amid fears it could drag out for a decade.

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AUSTRALIA
7 News

Mike Duffy, 7News Sydney
Updated November 13, 2012

More arrests are expected after police charged two former Sydney schoolteachers with child sex offences.

The allegations go back to the 1980’s, when both worked at Patrician Brothers’ College in Blacktown.

Last night’s arrests came as the Federal Government announced a Royal Commission into child abuse.

Science teacher Brother Martin Harmata is known to thousands of western Sydney school children.

The 59-year-old outdoorsman with 30 years of service at Patrician Brothers’ College in Blacktown is highly regarded. But now Brother Harmata stands accused of the sexual abuse of two schoolboys, aged 12 and 13, in the 1980’s.

Parents are shocked.

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AUSTRALIA
ABC – PM

[with audio]

MARK COLVIN: Victorian victims of clerical sexual abuse are sceptical about many of Cardinal Pell’s statements.

They’re still critical of the so-called “Melbourne Response”, which he set to handle complaints in the late 1990s.

And they don’t agree that the church has improved its processes.

Samantha Donovan reports.

SAMANTHA DONOVAN: Cardinal Pell confirmed again today that he’d accompanied paedophile priest Gerald Ridsdale to his court hearings several years ago.

But he said he didn’t realise at the time the impression this would give Ridsdale’s victims.

Melbourne man Stephen Woods is one of those victims. He was 14 when he was raped by the priest. He listened to George Pell’s comments today with interest.

STEPHEN WOODS: He seems to be setting up a narrative that the Catholic Church is now the victim, that they are the ones who are just one of many assaulters in the society and yet I can’t think of any other organisation that has had so many, even though there are many clergy, but they have had so many paedophiles, and of course tens of thousands of victims.

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MALTA
Malta Independent

Following the confirmation of a 2011 sentence against two priests accused of the sexual abuse of minors in their custody, Lawrence Grech, who claimed he had been sexually abused while residing at St Joseph’s Home in Santa Venera in the late 1980s, told The Malta Independent that “only time will help him come to terms with what he had been through”.

“The confirmation of the sentence is positive and at least the anxiety that I suffered as a result of hiding from the public eye what I had been through before the case came to light, is nearly over. However, time has to take its course.”

When asked whether the Church offered to further discuss compensation for the 11 sexually abused victims, Mr Grech said that the Church always made it very clear that it was not responsible for what had taken place and that “we would have to go about seeking justice against the perpetrators privately.”

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UNITED KINGDOM
ITV

The Diocese of Chichester has said a retired Bishop aged 80 and a retired priest aged 67, have been arrested by detectives from Sussex Police.

The arrests follow allegations of sexual abuse in the 1980s and 1990s.

“We can confirm that the retired Bishop has had no ministry in Sussex for many years and no longer lives in this area. The retired priest has had his Permission to Officiate suspended.

These arrests occur as part of an investigation in which the Diocese of Chichester has been working closely with Sussex Police. We have also been working closely with Elizabeth Hall, the National Safeguarding Adviser for the Church of England, and Kate Wood, the safeguarding consultant appointed by the Church of England to compile a file of evidence that was handed to Sussex Police in May.”

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AUSTRALIA
ABC – PM

[with audio]

Major churches and charities say they don’t think the Royal Commission into child sexual abuse will affect donations and support for their charitable works. Cardinal George Pell says the issue of sexual abuse has hurt the public image of the Catholic Church.The church is a major provider of health, education and charitable services in Australia.

Sue Lannin

Transcript

MARK COLVIN: Cardinal Pell says the issue of sexual abuse has hurt the public image of the Catholic Church.

The church is a major provider of health, education and charitable services in Australia.

So will the scandal hurt the church’s brand with consequences for charities and not-for-profit groups?

Finance Reporter, Sue Lannin.

SUE LANNIN: Australians make taxable donations each year of around $2 billion and the Catholic Church and its agencies are big recipients.

Organisations PM spoke to, including major charities and churches, said it was too early to tell if their donations would be affected by the fallout from child sexual abuse allegations and the setting up of a royal commission.

Advertising copywriter and commentator, Jane Caro, says she doesn’t think donations to Catholic charities will be affected.

JANE CARO: Look I think it’s a blow to the image of the Catholic Church. I don’t think there’s any doubt about that. But I suspect it’ll have far less effect on charities, partly because people tend to compartmentalise, which they’ve been doing for a long time. They’ll think, oh yes, that goes on in a part of the church that I’m not involved with but my nice charity, my nice school, whatever it is, they’ll probably isolate a little bit from the generalised scandals to the Catholic Church.

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AUSTRALIA
ABC – PM

[with audio]

If there was a catalyst for the royal commission into child sexual abuse it was the sheer weight of horror stories emerging from Newcastle and the Hunter Valley. Bishop Bill Wright, the Catholic Bishop of the Diocese of Maitland and Newcastle, says he doesn’t know why his district harboured so much abuse.

David Mark

Transcript

MARK COLVIN: If there was a catalyst for the royal commission into child sexual abuse it was the sheer weight of horror stories emerging from Newcastle and the Hunter Valley in New South Wales.

There were already criminal cases against priests in Newcastle and the Hunter and on top of that were more allegations from victims, and then last week from a senior policeman.

Bishop Bill Wright, the Catholic Bishop of the Diocese of Maitland and Newcastle, says he doesn’t know why his district harboured so much abuse. He uses the words “deviousness” and “serial offenders” and says he can’t promise that child sexual abuse is not still happening in his diocese.

But Bishop Bill Wright told David Mark he welcomed the royal commission.

BILL WRIGHT: Well I’m very pleased by it because anything that the church produces by way of reports or evidence or anything else has limited credibility in the community. I’ve thought to get all the facts on the table from an independent authority with sufficient weight and all the rest of it has got to be a good thing.

It’s good for the church. I think it will be a good thing for many of the victims who want to have the whole situation clear and get the chance to have the whole story told and so on so I think it’s very welcome.

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MALTA
Malta Today

Karl Stagno-Navarra

A court of criminal appeal presided by Judge David Scicluna has confirmed a 2011 sentence against two priests accused of the sexual abuse of minors in their custody.

They were escorted to prison on a six-year sentence for priest Charles Pulis and five years for Godwin Scerri.

In handing judgement, Mr Justice Scicluna said that although Pulis and Scerri were considered to be ‘father figures’ for the boys at St. Joseph Home in Hamrun, “the fact remains however, that corruption of minors is a serious and ugly crime which could leve serious effects, be they physical or psychological on whoever experienced them.”

Judge Scicluna said that the witnesses in the case had been “credible” even though he found “blatant contradictions” by witness Lawrence Grech in a number of instances. “However the court is not ready to speculate on the motivations behind reports of abuse, because such reports were corroborated by a number of other victims.”

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AUSTRALIA
RTE News

The head of the Catholic Church in Australia, George Pell, has acknowledged the “shame” of child sex abuse among the clergy and welcomed a sweeping inquiry.

However, Mr Pell also warned that the extent of the problem within his church had been exaggerated.

Yesterday, Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard ordered a rare Royal Commission, the highest form of investigation in the country, into how churches, government bodies and other organisations have dealt with possibly thousands of child sex abuse claims.

Mr Pell, Australia’s only cardinal, said the church would co-operate fully with the new inquiry, which can compel witnesses to give evidence and produce documents, and that he did not believe the Catholic Church was the main perpetrator.

“We are not interested in denying the extent of misdoing in the Catholic Church.

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AUSTRALIA
ABC – 7.30

Australian Broadcasting Corporation
Broadcast: 13/11/2012
Reporter: Leigh Sales

Archbishop of Sydney George Pell says the media have campaigned against the Catholic Church but says the church will cooperate with the Government’s Royal Commission into child abuse within institutions.

Transcript

LEIGH SALES, PRESENTER: A day after the Government announced a royal commission into child sex abuse, the Catholic Archbishop George Pell has defended his institution’s handling of such matters. Cardinal Pell believes there’s a persistent press campaign against the Catholic Church and he objects to his organisation being singled out. He also says the Church’s association with sex abuse is, at times, exaggerated. In a press conference today the Archbishop said he would fully cooperate with the Commonwealth investigation as a way to bring to an end decades of damage to the Church’s reputation and to deliver justice to victims. Cardinal Pell has been dogged by this issue for much of his leadership in the Catholic Church.

The day after the Government called a royal commission, Cardinal Pell finally agreed to answer questions about what has led to it.

GEORGE PELL, CATHOLIC ARCHBISHOP OF SYDNEY: We object to it being exaggerated, we object to being described as the “only cab on the rank”, we acknowledge – with shame – the extent of the problem. One of the reasons why we welcome the royal commission is that this commission will enable those claims to be validated… or found to be a significant exaggeration.

LEIGH SALES: George Pell’s history with the child sex abuse issue goes back decades. In the early 90s, in the Victorian town of Ballarat, one of the Catholic Church’s most infamous paedophile scandals was unfolding. The perpetrator, Father Gerald Ridsdale, abused as many as 200 children over 20 years, while his superiors did nothing to stop him.

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AUSTRALIA
The Age

November 14, 2012

Hayden Stephens

The abused and belittled want the terrible truth to be acknowledged at last.

PEOPLE who were sexually abused as children have waited a long time for the announcement of a royal commission. They have been waiting a long time to break down the walls of legal protection that their abusers have hidden behind so successfully, for so long.

In the mid-1990s I represented more than 250 men who, as children, were victims of sexual assault and abuse while in the care of the Catholic Church and the Christian Brothers Order.

We know that the predators within the Order colluded with each other to create a systemic network of abuse. They shared information about vulnerable children and worked together to suppress complaints.

When their activities became too overt church superiors stepped in, and moved them elsewhere within the Order. In doing so, authorities reduced the possibility that a paedophile might have been exposed, and they did nothing to prevent the continuing abuse.

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AUSTRALIA
The Age

Michelle Grattan
Political editor of The Age

JULIA Gillard will consult Tony Abbott on the terms of reference for the royal commission into child sex abuse, in a rare example of bipartisan collaboration between the two leaders.

The Prime Minister’s chief of staff, Ben Hubbard, made a first contact with Peta Credlin, his opposite number in the Abbott office, on Tuesday.

Ms Gillard will write to Mr Abbott and the premiers and chief ministers inviting them to be involved in the process of devising the terms of reference for the sweeping inquiry.

”I think it is very important we work collaboratively” on the terms of reference, she said.

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AUSTRALIA
The Age

November 14, 2012

Kate Hagan

SPEAKING publicly about their experience of childhood sexual abuse is likely to provide healing for many victims, experts say.

Clinical and forensic psychologist Lyn Shumack said the royal commission could provide validation for victims who felt strong enough to tell their stories.

”Feeling violated makes you feel shameful, and it’s shame that allows [abusers] to get away with this sort of behaviour because [victims] keep quiet. So it’s a freeing thing to be able to talk about it,” she said.

Monash University emeritus professor of forensic psychiatry Paul Mullen said giving evidence would be a mostly positive experience for victims motivated by a desire to stop others from suffering abuse in future.

”For some people a royal commission might rekindle some memories, but in a context one hopes will be reassuring,” he said.

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AUSTRALIA
The Age

November 14, 2012

Jane Lee

THE royal commission into child abuse will expose hundreds more victims who have been attacked in state care to the present day, victims’ advocates say.

Prime Minister Julia Gillard announced a federal royal commission into child abuse on Monday, bowing to pressure surrounding the Victorian inquiry and the New South Wales government’s announcement of a special commission in the Hunter region.

While the government has yet to release its terms of reference, Ms Gillard said it would not be limited to the Catholic church, and would cover a range of institutions including state authorities, boy scouts and sports groups.

The Victorian inquiry faced criticism that it was only charged with investigating religious and non-government organisations, not public orphanages or children’s homes.

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AUSTRALIA
The Age

November 13, 2012

Mark Russell

A FORMER Catholic priest has appeared in court accused of sexually abusing boys at the Salesian College Rupertswood in Sunbury.

David Edwin Rapson, 59, appeared in the Melbourne Magistrates Court on Tuesday charged with one count of rape, five counts of indecent assault, four counts of indecently assaulting a child under 16, and one count of gross indecency. The offences are alleged to have occurred from 1973 to 1990.

Rapson had been a teacher and vice-principal at Rupertswood.

Prosecutor Anne Hassan told the court the charges against Rapson involved seven complainants who had been aged in their early to mid-teens at the time of the alleged abuse.

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AUSTRALIA
The Age

November 14, 2012

Barney Zwartz

AS AUSTRALIA’S most senior Catholics told the media that the Catholic Church had changed immeasurably for the better in the past 20 years in tackling clergy sex abuse, a victims group cited 99 instances where it said the church’s so-called Melbourne Response had failed them.

Archbishop of Sydney Cardinal George Pell said on Tuesday the church was victim of a ”persistent press campaign” that significantly exaggerated the problem.

He told a press conference the church was serious about tackling the issue, and objected to it being described as ”the only cab in the rank”, while Melbourne Archbishop Denis Hart – chairman of the Australian Catholic Bishops Conference – said the church had taken decisive steps to make child safety a priority and to help victims.

But a victims group claims the Melbourne Response, set up by Cardinal Pell in 1996 when he was archbishop of Melbourne, is flawed and has often failed victims.

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