ABUSE TRACKER

UNITED KINGDOM
AO Advocates

Posted by: A.Dean on Dec 20 2012

On 14 December, the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children (NSPCC) announced a new advertising campaign that will seek to prevent sexual abuse of children by encouraging people to report child abuse to the NSPCC, even if people are only suspicious or concerned for a child’s welfare without being completely certain that sexual abuse is occurring. The campaign takes a welcome focus on correcting the misconception that child sexual abuse is a scourge of the past, rather than an ongoing and sadly consistent part of our society.

The timing of the NSPCC’s new push to raise awareness of child sexual abuse as a current problem is apt, given how prominent historic child abuse has been in recent months and weeks. Last week Commander Peter Spindler, the senior police officer in charge of handling the investigation into the sexual assaults committed by Jimmy Savile, discussed the huge scale now uncovered of Savile’s alleged activities, once again grabbing headlines and turning stomachs. Savile stands accused of committing 31 rapes against people, the vast majority of them children, in various places across the country. 450 people in total have levelled allegations against him. And by pulling on the Savile thread, the police have unravelled a sordid network of people who, in one form or another, were tied into abuses, either as enablers or perpetrators themselves.

But recent news of historic abuse does not stop there. Another breaking story since early December has been the case of serial sexual abuse of young boys at St Ambrose College in Hale Barns, a top Catholic boys’ school. On 5 December, the Manchester Evening News revealed that police were investigating allegations from five boys who claimed they were molested by teachers at the school. The allegations covered a period of some 30 years, from the 1960s to the 1980s. Police began to ask for other victims to come forward; as of last week an additional 20 people, all “Old Boys” of St Ambrose College who are also possible victims and witnesses, have stepped forward. The ring of alleged abusers has further widened as a result.

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CANADA
Times Colonist

Jeff Bell, Times Colonist
December 19, 2012

Warning: This story contains graphic details.

Crown prosecutor Clare Jennings peppered Father Phil Jacobs with questions Wednesday, hammering away at his alleged sexual activities.

The 63-year-old Jacobs has been charged with four offences linked to boys, including two counts of sexual interference involving a person under 14, one count of sexual assault and one count of touching a young person for a sexual purpose.

The charges stem from incidents that allegedly occurred from September 1996 to June 2001.

Jacobs served as parish priest at St. Joseph the Worker Catholic Church in Saanich from 1997 to 2002.

Since taking the stand Monday afternoon, Jacobs continued to use a firm, confident tone to deny the charges against him.

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WORCESTER (MA)
Telegram & Gazette

By Scott J. Croteau TELEGRAM & GAZETTE STAFF
scroteau@telegram.com

The Roman Catholic priest wanted by authorities in Worcester for allegedly possessing child pornography and stealing from his Fitchburg parish was taken into custody in Los Angeles recently and will be brought to Worcester, authorities said.

The Rev. Lowe B. Dongor, 36, was brought to Los Angeles from the Philippines, his home country.

Records from the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department show Rev. Dongor was arrested Dec. 10 by Los Angeles police. He is being held without bail in a Los Angeles correctional facility. He is to appear in a Los Angeles court Wednesday.Timothy J. Connolly, spokesman for the Worcester district attorney’s office, said Rev. Dongor agreed not to fight rendition, but no time has been set for his return to Worcester.

“Our office is in the process of making arrangements to bring him to Worcester Superior Court,” Mr. Connolly said.

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INDIA
Zee News

Moga (Pb): Police have registered a case against a priest of Duneke village here on charges of attempting to rape a 12-year-old girl of the same village.

Patwinder Singh, who is a Granthi in a village Gurdwara, allegedly tried to rape the minor girl last evening, police said.

Shaminder Singh, the girl’s father in his complaint, alleged that Patwinder had caught the girl outside her home and was stopped before he could commit the crime.

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NEW YORK
Thomson Reuters News & Insight

By Jessica Dye

NEW YORK, Dec 19 (Reuters) – Two insurers are seeking a court order relieving them from paying the legal costs of a Brooklyn prep school accused in a civil lawsuit of covering up allegations of child sex abuse.

The lawsuit, unsealed Tuesday, was filed in Brooklyn federal court against Poly Prep County Day School and current and former administrators.

The lawsuit stems out of another lawsuit initially filed in 2009. The plaintiffs include 10 former students and two men who, while still underage, attended the school’s summer camp. They claimed they had been abused by Philip Foglietta, a football coach at the school from 1966 to 1991. No criminal charges were ever brought against Foglietta, who died in 1998.

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UNITED STATES
Reuters

By Angus MacSwan

London | Thu Dec 20, 2012

(Reuters) – Ray Mouton was a successful young lawyer in Lafayette, Louisiana, respected in the community and blessed with a loving family, when he received a call from a vicar in the Roman Catholic diocese for a lunch meeting on a fateful day in 1984.

The diocese asked him to defend an errant priest, accused of abusing dozens of children in a rural community. Mouton reluctantly agreed to take on the task.

What followed over the next few years was the uncovering of an institution riddled with pedophile priests on a national scale and efforts at high levels in the Catholic Church to hide the problem away.

For Mouton, it meant the end of his law career, health problems, and anger, depression and guilt.

After many years of writing from his self-imposed exile in France, he finally tells his story in the novel “In God’s House”. It is a harrowing read laden with sickening detail, but also for Mouton, a work of atonement.

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FITCHBURG (MA)
Sentinel and Enterprise

By Michael Hartwell, mhartwell@sentinelandenterprise.com
senlandenterprise.com
Posted: 12/20/2012

FITCHBURG — A Fitchburg priest who fled to the Philippines last year after being accused of possessing child pornography and stealing from his parish is expected to be brought back to Massachusetts soon.

Timothy Connolly, spokesman for Worcester District Attorney Joseph D. Early Jr., said the Rev. Lowe Dongor was caught by authorities in his homeland of the Philippines and was extradited to Los Angeles, where he was arrested on Dec. 10. Dongor was arraigned on charges of child-pornography possession and larceny over $250.

Connolly said details are slim at this time, but Dongor waived his right to contest being sent back to Massachusetts and authorities are currently working out the logistics for his return.

“It’ll be soon,” said Connolly.

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PENNSYLVANIA
WHTM

By Myles Snyder

HARRISBURG, Pa. (WHTM) –
An Enola man who was a volunteer youth leader at a Dauphin County church has been charged with additional counts of child sexual abuse.

Joshua Mitchell Markelwitz, 26, is now accused of having a year-long sexual relationship with a 17-year-old girl, according to court documents.

He initially was arrested November 30 on allegations he sexually abused a 15-year-old girl in her home, in his car, and at the Charlton United Methodist Church where he was a volunteer youth leader.

According to the criminal complaint, Markelwitz had sexual intercourse with the 17-year-old on numerous occasions, used his cell phone to record a sexual act with her, sent her at least one nude photograph of himself, and provided her with alcoholic beverages.

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UTAH
Daily Herald

A former employee of the Mormon church has pleaded guilty to sexual offenses involving two children.

Court records show 43-year-old Timothy Bothell accepted charges of attempted aggravated sexual abuse and lewdness involving a child.

The Centerville man took a plea deal Tuesday in 2nd District Court.

Court records accused Bothell of exposing his genitals to a pair of girls and fondling one of them last year.

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PENNSYLVANIA
Times Herald

HARRISBURG, Pa. (AP) — A volunteer church youth leader already accused of having sexual contact with a teen he met through the church is facing additional child sex abuse charges.

Twenty-six-year-old Joshua Markelwitz was already jailed on charges including rape of a child and aggravated indecent assault when authorities in Dauphin County accused him of having a sexual relationship with a 17-year-old girl and recording a sex act on his cellphone.

WHTM-TV reports Markelwitz was arraigned Friday and held on $100,000 bail on the newest charges.

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ILLINOIS
KSIM

A Southern Illinois pastor charged with having a sexual relationship with a minor will get a new fitness hearing! 74-year-old Billy Vandergraph of Alto Pass was arrested in July 2010. He is charged with predatory criminal sexual assault of a child and two charges of aggravated criminal sexual abuse. Police contend he committed two sexual acts with a 4-year-old girl between January and May 2010. Vandergraph underwent a treatment plan and the judge ruled in April 2011, he is fit to stand trial. Judge Mark Boie in July ordered a new fitness hearing to determine if he is willing or able to cooperate with his lawyer. Vandergraph’s jury trial has been pushed back several times due to questions about his mental competency. A new court hearing will take place February 4th.

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VIRGINIA
WJLA

[with video]

A priest is accused in Fairfax County of sexually abusing a man at the Saint Bernadette Parish in Fairfax County.

The alleged victim reported in November that Father Luis Fernando Franco Henao, 40, sexually assaulted him in February. Henao turned himself in to police Wednesday. He is charged with sexual battery.

After he was processed by police, Franco was released.

A spokesperson for the Catholic Diocese of Arlington said Franco no longer practices or teaches at Saint Bernadette.

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DELAWARE
The News Journal

WILMINGTON — A U.S. District judge has struck down a provision of the U.S. Bankruptcy Court settlement between the Catholic Diocese of Wilmington and survivors of priest sexual abuse that prevented the diocese from making any pension or charitable payments to abuser priests.

The ruling by U.S. District Jude Sue L. Robinson, in an appeal brought by former priest Kenneth Martin, clears the way for the diocese to make those payments if it so chooses.

Priest sex abuse survivor John Vai said on Wednesday that he was outraged.

“This is a left hook,” said Vai. “This is unbelievable.”

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PENNSYLVANIA
Times Leader

Terrie Morgan-Besecker

Dec 18

SCRANTON – A former Holy Redeemer football coach will serve 25 years in prison under a plea agreement reached with federal prosecutors relating to charges he enticed numerous people, including minors, from at least 13 states to engage in sexually explicit behavior over the internet.

Joseph Ostrowski of Wilkes-Barre has agreed to plead guilty to charges of production and attempted production of child pornography, extortion and cyber stalking, according to a plea agreement filed today in federal court.

Ostrowski was arrested in May after authorities said he posed as a female on Facebook to trick a male Wilkes-Barre teenager into emailing nude photos of himself, according to an arrest affidavit. He then used the images to try to extort the teen into sending more photos.

A new complaint filed Tuesday indicates he was taking part in similar conduct over a six year period that involved victims from across the United States.

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PENNSYLVANIA
The Sentinel

SCRANTON, Pa. (AP) — An ex-high school football coach in northeastern Pennsylvania has agreed to plead guilty to charges he produced child pornography.

Federal authorities say that 28-year-old Joseph Ostrowski enticed minors to engage in sexually explicit conduct that he transmitted electronically. A separate criminal complaint from Michigan says he tricked people into sex acts over Skype and then sent the images to others on Facebook.

Federal prosecutors say his victims came from Pennsylvania, Michigan and 12 other states.

Ostrowski agreed Tuesday to plead guilty to producing and attempting to produce child pornography, interstate extortion, and cyber stalking. The agreement calls for a sentence of 25 years in prison. It requires a judge’s approval.

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PENNSYLVANIA
Citizens Voice

By Michael R. Sisak (Staff Writer)

Published: December 19, 2012

Former Holy Redeemer head football coach Joseph J. Ostrowski agreed Tuesday to plead guilty and serve 25 years in federal prison for producing child pornography and engaging in what U.S. Attorney Peter J. Smith called the “sextortion” of youths in more than a dozen states.

Ostrowski, 28, of Wilkes-Barre, “persuaded and tricked” computer users into “engaging in sexually explicit acts” that he viewed over Skype, the video chat service, according to one of two indictments returned against him earlier this year.

Ostrowski extorted and attempted to extort nude photographs, images and live transmissions of sexual conduct from those online encounters and transmitted images through hacked Facebook accounts, federal prosecutors said.

The plea agreement Tuesday encompassed that indictment, returned in August in Michigan, and a May indictment in Pennsylvania that charged Ostrowski with threatening extortion and producing and attempting to produce child pornography.

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PENNSYLVANIA
Jeff Anderson & Associates

More Pain From Pennsylvania: Former Coach Engages in Internet Sextortion, Reaching Victims Across the Country

Jeffrey R. Anderson | 2:48 PM
This week, Joseph Ostrowski, the former head football coach at Holy Redeemer High School in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, pled guilty to producing child pornography. The U.S. Attorney charged with prosecuting the case said that Ostrowski engaged in “sextortion” of his victims by tricking them into sexual acts that he viewed over video chat. Ostrowski then shared the sexual conduct and pictures via Facebook.

“Sextortion” is loosely defined as “a form of sexual exploitation that employs non-physical forms of coercion to extort sexual favors from the victim.” Like extortion, sextortion is the abuse of power through coercion, but seeks sexual acts from the victim in exchange for some sort of favor. Sextortion is not itself a crime but it is federally prosecuted under statutes for extortion, sexual assault, and child pornography.

The 28-year-old Ostrowski engaged in sextortion and the production of child pornography beginning in 2006. He targeted children and adults in 13 different states including Pennsylvania, New York, California, Florida, Ohio, Virginia, and Minnesota.

Ostrowski was the head football coach at Wilkes-Barre High School, in the Diocese of Scranton, Pennsylvania, during the 2011-2012 school year. The Diocese suspended him when he was arrested in the weight room of the school in May 2012. He will likely serve 25 years in prison.

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WORCESTER (MA)
Telegram & Gazette

By Scott J. Croteau TELEGRAM & GAZETTE STAFF
scroteau@telegram.com

The Roman Catholic priest wanted in Worcester on charges of child pornography possession and stealing from his Fitchburg parish was taken into custody in Los Angeles recently and will be brought to Worcester, authorities said.

Lowe B. Dongor, 36, was brought to Los Angeles from the Philippines, his home country.

Timothy J. Connolly, spokesman for the Worcester District Attorney’s office, said Rev. Dongor agreed not to fight rendition, but no time for his arrival here in Worcester has been set.

“Our office is in the process of making arrangements to bring him to Worcester Superior Court,” Mr. Connolly said.

Mr. Connolly said Los Angeles police picked Rev. Dongor up when he arrived in the United States. He did not know what day the arrest occurred.

According to the Inquirer Visayas newspaper, Rev. Dongor was flown to the United States Monday evening.

”I am so sorry. I want to apologize to all the people … for all the damage I have done to you, to the church, and to myself,” Rev. Dongor told the Inquirer.

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VIRGINIA
CBS DC

WEST SPRINGFIELD, Va. (CBSDC) – A Catholic priest has been charged with the sexual battery of an adult in Springfield on Wednesday.

Police say Father Luis Fernando Henao, 40, is charged with sexual battery of an adult male in an incident that occurred back on Feb. 2, 2012.

On Nov. 30, the victim reported he was sexually assaulted at Saint Bernadette Parish in the 7600 block of Old Keen Mill Road while seeking support and guidance from the suspect, when the same man touched him inappropriately.

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VIRGINIA
Fairfax News

Fairfax County Police have arrested a priest from the Springfield area on a charge of sexual battery.

Police said Father Luis Fernando Franco Henao, 40, was charged in connection with an incident that allegedly occurred on February 2, 2012.

The victim reported on November 30, 2012 that he was sexually assaulted at Saint Bernadette Parish at 7600 Old Keene Mill Road while seeking support and guidance from the suspect, who allegedly touched him inappropriately.

Franco Henao turned himself over to police detectives on Wednesday, December 19, 2012. He was processed and released.

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VIRGINIA
WTOP

WASHINGTON – A Catholic priest has turned himself in to police after allegedly sexually assaulting an adult male at his parish.

Father Luis Fernando Franco Henao, 40, has been charged with sexual battery.

The incident took place on Feb. 2 at Saint Bernadette Parish in Fairfax County, Va. after the victim approached Henao while seeking “support and guidance” from the priest, authorities say. He was touched inappropriately, but didn’t report it to police until Nov. 30.

Henao turned himself in Wednesday.

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VIRGINIA
WUSA

WEST SPRINGFIELD, Va. (WUSA) – A Catholic priest is charged with the February 2, 2012 sexual battery of an adult male, according to police.

The victim reported the incident on Nov. 30. He said that he was sexually assaulted at Saint Bernadette Parish at 7600 Old Keene Mill Road. At the time the victim was seeking support and guidance from the suspect when the suspect allegedly touched him inappropriately.

Franco Henao turned himself over to police detectives on Dec. 19 when he was processed and released.

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UNITED STATES
Catholics for Choice

“ The most unhappily and inappropriately named society on the planet”

INTRODUCTION
The Cardinal Newman Society (CNS) claims that its mission is “to help renew and strengthen Catholic identity in Catholic higher education,” but there are many clergy, staff at Catholic universities, students and laypeople who don’t recognize themselves in the organization’s vision of Catholic identity. Some, like the National Catholic Reporter, have pointed out the striking contrast between Cardinal Newman the man and the society that bears his name: “the most unhappily and inappropriately named society on the planet.”

The Cardinal Newman Society devotes its energy to pointing out supposed breaches of dogma within Catholic universities, engineering negative publicity primarily by instigating letter-writing campaigns and posting online petitions. America magazine criticized the society’s “watchdog tactics” for employing a negative rather than positive definition of Catholicism — that is, it aims to prune away perceived deviations from orthodoxy, rather than cultivating a Catholicism that is something more than mere conformism. …

KEY FINDINGS

The Cardinal Newman Society:
• Incorrectly portrays itself as a voice for all Catholics, when its views are substantially to the right of all but the most conservative members of the hierarchy;
• Uses the threat of negative publicity to target schools, calling on them to cancel speakers or dismiss faculty;
• Depicts a Catholic higher educational system that is threatened by heretics in order to justify its narrow worldview and strong-arm tactics;
• Fosters a contentious environment in which instructors and administrators fear they must choose between policing or being policed; and
• Makes judgments on the basis of a short checklist of issues, such as reproductive rights and LGBT rights, rather than encompassing the wealth and depth of Catholic teaching.

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VIRGINIA
Washington Post

By Justin Jouvenal

A Springfield priest was charged with sexually assaulting a man who had come to him for guidance in February, Fairfax County police said.

Father Luis Fernando Franco Henao, 40, of Saint Bernadette Parish, turned himself over to authorities on Wednesday, police said. He is facing a count of sexual battery.

Franco Henao allegedly inappropriately touched a 29-year-old man on the parish grounds on Feb. 2, after the man came to him seeking support, police said.

The victim reported the crime at the end of November. Franco Henao was processed and released on Wednesday. Police declined to release further details about the case.

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ILLINOIS/DELAWARE
Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests

Posted by Barbara Blaine on December 19, 2012

It’ll be a merry Christmas for a convicted child molesting Catholic priest. He gets to keep both his secrets and his pay. For the second time this month, a judge has ruled in favor of Fr. Kenneth Martin. First, he was allowed to keep his personnel records private. And yesterday, he was awarded his paycheck.

Both decisions come from a federal court after the Diocese of Wilmington’s bankruptcy plan had been heard in bankruptcy court. Though he worked twice in Chicago (in 2003 and 2008), Fr. Martin is originally from Delaware. In 2001, however, he pled guilty in Maryland to molesting a boy.

Now that the facts won’t come out in court, Chicago Catholics deserve to hear the whole story about this recklessness from the Cardinal himself. Sadly, it’s more likely that he will keep quiet and the full truth will remain hidden.

In February 2003, the Chicago Sun Times disclosed that Martin “has stayed at the cardinal’s mansion on North State Parkway about one week a month since last May.”

In the wake of the controversy, George publicly promised Fr. Martin “won’t be coming back to Chicago.” But in 2008, even after the Vatican barred him from presenting himself as a priest, the Sun Times again found Fr. Martin working for the archdiocese.

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UNITED STATES
Christian Catholicism

Read the story

(by Jerry Slevin, retired Wall Street lawyer)

As the world still mourns deeply for the innocent victims of the Newtown, Connecticut grade school massacre, and as President Obama tried sadly on Sunday to console those directly affected, promising to act decisively to protect children better, President Obama’s Chief of Staff, Jack Lew, later on Sunday reportedly strongly condemned as well, as President Obama did in August, sexual violence against children in organizational settings.

As countless people thankfully are now urging President Obama to act to curtail gun violence especially involving children, please help to urge President Obama also to act decisively now as well to curtail the widespread sexual violence against children in organizational settings.

Please take a moment and click on and sign the White House petition to curtail organizational sexual violence against children accessible at:

http://wh.gov/5aAQ

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CANADA
Saanich News

By Edward Hill – Saanich News
Published: December 19, 2012

Warning: The following story contains graphic testimony of a sexual nature that could be upsetting to some readers.

Phillip Jacobs vigorously denied that he molested male students at St. Joseph the Worker church, but admitted he needs to be mindful of “compulsions” that led to sexually abusing young men in Ohio decades ago, during continued testimony Tuesday in Victoria Supreme Court.

Jacobs, 63, under guidance of defence lawyer Chris Considine, refuted testimony of the three young men who told the court last week that the former parish priest engaged in episodes of molestation and sexual touching at the Saanich church more than a decade ago.

After becoming parish priest of St. Joseph the Worker, Jacobs admitted that “due to my own past history” he opted to limit his interactions with the adjoining Catholic elementary school. “I had the most limited relationship with a school I ever had as a priest because I chose to,” he said.

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UNITED STATES
TheMediaReport

Thank you to everyone for making 2012 the best year ever for TheMediaReport.com – now in its ninth year! Our readership continues to grow dramatically, thanks to you. We are very grateful!

We figured we would close out the year with a look at our most compelling posts of the past twelve months. It has been an eventful year!

#10 SHOCK STORY: Notorious Church-Suing Lawyer Obtained Clients by Phoning Parishioners and ‘Fishing for Victims’

A number of observers have long looked with skepticism upon California’s high-profile, Church-suing lawyer John Manly. Therefore, it was not surprising to see that Manly openly admitted to Sue Nowicki at The Modesto Bee newspaper that that his office has obtained clients for abuse lawsuits by making unsolicited phone calls to Catholic Church parishioners.

The story was a shocker, indeed.

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WORCESTER (MA)
Catholic Free Press

Father Lowe B. Dongor, 36, wanted on a charge of being a fugitive from justice, has been returned to the United States from the Philippines, where he had fled in October 2011 after being charged with possessing child pornography and larceny of more than $250 from St. Joseph’s Parish in Fitchburg. He had turned himself in to authorities there.

He was arrested by the Los Angeles Police Department on the fugitive charge, according to Timothy Connelly, spokesman for the office of District Attorney Joseph D. Early Jr.

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WORCESTER (MA)
NECN

December 19, 2012

WORCESTER, Mass. (AP) — A Roman Catholic priest who was indicted in Massachusetts on child pornography charges is in custody in Los Angeles.

A spokesman for the Worcester District Attorney’s office says Lowe Dongor, who is also accused of stealing from his former parish in Fitchburg, is being held as a fugitive and could be returned to Massachusetts shortly.

A grand jury handed up indictments in March charging the Rev. Lowe Dongor with possession of child pornography and larceny of more than $250.

The DA’s spokesman, Tim Connolly, said Dongor was recently brought to Los Angeles from his native Philippines, where authorities believed he had fled. Connolly had no other details on the arrest but said Dongor had agreed to be returned to Massachusetts.

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WASHINGTON
Columbia Basin Herald

By Lynne Lynch,
Herald managing editor

MOSES LAKE – A visiting priest from Mexico, who died in the 1980s, is believed to have abused four boys, ages 7-13, in the Moses Lake Catholic parish in the early 1970s.

The Yakima Diocese is now asking possible victims to come forward and report the abuse by calling the diocese’s confidential abuse hotline at 1-888-276-4490, according to a statement issued Monday by the diocese.

The accused priest is the late Rev. Hilario Ramirez. He stayed with at least two families when visiting Moses Lake in the early 1970s and allegedly abused the four children. Two of those have since died.

Ramirez was originally invited to Our Lady of Fatima parish in Moses Lake by a parishioner who met him in Dilley, Texas. At the time, Ramirez was a guest priest in Texas and the parishioner believed Ramirez’ ministry could be of use in Moses Lake.

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WORCESTER (MA)
Telegram & Gazette

By Scott J. Croteau TELEGRAM & GAZETTE STAFF
scroteau@telegram.com

The Roman Catholic priest wanted in Worcester on charges of child pornography possession and stealing from his Fitchburg parish was taken into custody in Los Angeles recently and will be brought to Worcester, authorities said.

Lowe B. Dongor, 36, was brought to Los Angeles from the Philippines, a location law enforcement officials suspected he might have fled to because it is his home country.

Timothy J. Connolly, spokesman for the Worcester District Attorney’s office, said Rev. Dongor agreed not to fight rendition, but no time for his arrival here in Worcester has been set.

“Our office is in the process of making arrangements to bring him to Worcester Superior Court,” Mr. Connolly said.

Mr. Connolly said Los Angeles police picked Rev. Dongor up when he arrived in the United States. He did not know what day the arrest occurred.

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VATICAN CITY
GlobalPost

The Vatican is reining in the progressive leadership of American nuns, which has led to a global clash over the future of the Catholic church.

Jason Berry
December 18, 2012

VATICAN CITY — Sister Pat Farrell and three other nuns crossed St. Peter’s Square through the fabled white columns, paused for a security check and entered the rust-colored Palace of the Holy Office.

It was April 18, 2012, and on entering the palazzo, they were aware of its history, that in this same building nearly 400 years earlier Galileo had been condemned as a heretic by the Roman Inquisition for arguing that the earth orbits around the sun.

Today, the palazzo houses the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF), the Vatican office that enforces adherence to church teaching. As president of Leadership Conference of Women Religious (LCWR), Sister Farrell and her executive colleagues had an appointment with the prefect, Cardinal William Levada, about a CDF investigation of their group by the forces that control the Vatican, who viewed the nuns as somehow going ‘off the reservation.’

They were walking into what Hans Küng, the internationally renowned theologian who had his own battles in the palazzo, calls “a new Inquisition.”

On the 50th anniversary of the reform-driven Second Vatican Council, the nuns were accused of undermining church moral teaching by promoting “radical, feminist themes incompatible with the Catholic faith.” To many nuns, the CDF action is a turn toward the past, causing a climate of fear and a chill wind reaching into the lives of missionary leaders.

The Vatican wants control of the LCWR, an association of 1,500 superiors, representing 80 percent of American nuns. Most of the sisters, long active in the front lines of social justice, dispensed with their black habits and traditional jobs, like teaching school, after Vatican II.

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GERMANY
GlobalPost

Küng sees the Vatican’s attempt to rein in the Leadership Conference of Women Religious as “medieval.”

Jason Berry
December 18, 2012

TÜBINGEN, Germany — Fifty years ago in this medieval city with its steep hills and the sprawling campus of one of Germany’s great universities, Hans Küng and Joseph Ratzinger were priests and theology department colleagues.

Emerging out of the University of Tübingen, Küng and Ratzinger were the youngest and most influential progressives to advise bishops in Rome at The Second Ecumenical Council, or Vatican II, which began in the fall of 1962.

When Vatican II concluded in 1965 it unleashed an historic movement in the church toward greater engagement in the daily lives of People of God, as the council documents called rank and file believers. A new sensibility for justice and individual rights arose in the church that would grow to 1 billion Catholics worldwide, with missions of activism in many of the poorest countries on earth.

Back in Tübingen, Küng, a native of Switzerland, and Ratzinger, who had grown up in the Nazi darkness of his native Germany, soon found themselves at odds over the sweeping changes in the church, and a theological debate that would echo across Europe and the global church.

Now on the 50th anniversary of Vatican II, Küng, an internationally renowned scholar, and Ratzinger, known as Benedict XVI since his election as pope seven years ago, are even more at odds. Of the many issues that divide them, Küng sees the attempt to rein in the Leadership Conference of Women Religious as a sign of myopia, a failure of vision.

“You cannot deny that Joseph Ratzinger has faith,” says Küng, in a coat and tie, seated in his office, speaking in calm tones in the blue twilight. “But he is absolutely against freedom. He wants obedience.”

“He is against the paradigm of Vatican II.” Küng pauses. “He has a medieval idea of the papacy.” …

Küng sees the clergy abuse crisis and the crackdown on the leadership council of American nuns as symptoms of a pathological power structure. By his lights, the impact on church moral authority, and finances, is a crisis rivaling the Protestant Reformation.

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MISSISSIPPI
Clarion-Ledger

By Ruth Ingram ringram@clarionledger.com

December 19, 2012

A Clinton man who admitted to “sexual indiscretions” with male children in Mississippi and Texas in the 1980s will face trial, and the state’s statute of limitations doesn’t prevent that, a judge ruled.

Circuit Judge Bill McGowan heard arguments Tuesday on John Langworthy’s defense motion that too much time has passed for the former Clinton High choir director and church music minister to face felony gratification of lust charges.

Langworthy was music minister at Morrison Heights Baptist Church in Clinton before his arrest in September 2011. An eight-count indictment charges him with sexually molesting five boys between April 1980 and December 1984, with the alleged abuse occurring at the boys’ Jackson homes, Langworthy’s sister’s home in Jackson, or in Langworthy’s dorm room at Mississippi College.

Clinton police charged him with two counts of gratification of lust; Jackson police charged him with six.

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CANADA
Sooke News Mirror

By Staff Writer – Sooke News Mirror
Published: December 19, 2012

Father Philip Jacobs, 62, now on trial in B.C. Supreme Court in Victoria on charges of sexual assault, two counts of sexual interference of a person under 14 and touching a young person for a sexual purpose, was first sent to St. Rose of Lima Catholic Church because it would limit his access to children. Jacobs was assigned to the Sooke church in 1995 and spent two years as the parish priest of the small church along Sooke Road.

The Roman Catholic Diocese of Victoria knew of allegations of “inappropriate behaviour” with a young male in Ohio. The admissions show allegations of sexual misconduct were made against Jacobs when he was ministering in the Catholic Diocese of Columbus, Ohio. No criminal charges were laid or civil suits filed as a result of the Ohio allegations.

The current charges come from incidents alleged to have occurred in Saanich between 1996 and 2001. Jacobs was arrested Aug. 4, 2010 and released on $25,000 bail.

An alleged victim of a former Saanich priest testified Tuesday that Phil Jacobs molested him a number of times more than a decade ago, while attending St. Joseph the Worker Catholic School on Burnside Road West.

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BELGIE
De Standaard

BRUSSEL – De speurders mogen de gegevens die ze op 24 juni 2010 in beslag namen in het aartsbisschoppelijk paleis en de woning van kardinaal Danneels in Mechelen dan toch niet gebruiken.

‘De huiszoekingen van 24 juni hebben de rechten van verdediging op onherstelbare wijze geschonden. De openbare macht werd die dag op willekeurige wijze aangewend én het Europees verdrag voor de Rechten van de Mens werd geschonden. Dat schrijft de KI.’

Volgens Fernand Keuleneer, de advocaat van het bisdom en van kardinaal Danneels, is de Brusselse Kamer van Inbeschuldigingstelling (KI) zeer scherp geweest in zijn arrest over de huiszoekingen bij kardinaal Danneels, algemeen bekend als operatie Kelk.

Operatie Kelk was de codenaam die de federale politie had gegeven aan een reeks huiszoekingen op 24 juni 2010 in het onderzoek naar schuldig verzuim door de kerkelijke autoriteiten bij de behandeling van seksueel misbruik in de kerk. De speurders vielen onder meer binnen in het aartsbisschoppelijk paleis, bij kardinaal Danneels thuis en in de Sint-Romboutskathedraal in Mechelen.

Twee en een half jaar later blijkt dat allemaal voor niets te zijn geweest. De huiszoekingen bij Adriaenssens werden al eerder nietig verklaard. Nu besliste de KI dat geen enkel van de stukken en gegevens die op die dag in beslag werden genomen, gebruikt mogen worden in het onderzoek omdat de speurders hun boekje te buiten zijn gegaan.

Het was al de vierde keer dat een KI in een gewijzigde samenstelling zich over deze zaak moest buigen. ‘Theoretisch kunnen het federaal parket en de advocaten van de slachtoffers ook tegen dit arrest nog cassatieberoep aantekenen. De kans dat daar gronden voor zijn, is echter bijzonder klein.

De beslissing van de KI is een zware klap voor het onderzoek. Maar of het onderzoek naar seksueel misbruik nu helemaal dood en begraven is, zal moeten blijken. Het federaal parket liet in januari vorig jaar een reeks nieuwe huiszoekingen uitvoeren bij de bisdommen. Die blijven geldig, net zoals de verhoren van de bisschoppen.

Er dreigt wel nog ander onheil voor het onderzoek. In februari moet de KI controleren of het dossier onherstelbare schade heeft opgelopen doordat minstens 445 pv’s en andere documenten uit het dossier verdwenen zijn.

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BELGIE
De Standaard

De voorzitter van de kamer van inbeschuldigingsstelling (KI) die zich op 5 februari buigt over de zaak van de verdwenen processen-verbaal uit het onderzoeksdossier Operatie Kelk, het gerechtelijk onderzoek naar seksueel misbruik binnen de katholieke kerk, trekt zich terug uit de zaak.

Walter Van Steenbrugge, advocaat van een aantal slachtoffers van seksueel misbruik binnen de Kerk, vond de magistraat niet objectief en had een verzoek tot wraking ingediend.

Van Steenbrugge meent dat de magistraat partijdig kan zijn omdat hij al eerder is tussengekomen in het dossier.

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BELGIE
Kerknet

BRUSSEL (KerkNet) – De Kamer van Inbeschuldigingstelling (KI) bij het Hof van Beroep te Brussel heeft zich vandaag opnieuw uitgesproken over Operatie Kelk. In een scherp en heel uitgebreid gemotiveerd arrest beslist de KI (voor de derde keer) dat alles wat op 24 juni 2010 in beslag werd genomen in het aartsbisschoppelijk paleis en in de woning van kardinaal Godfried Danneels te Mechelen, uit het strafdossier verwijderd moet worden. De Kamer van Inbeschuldigingstelling is van oordeel dat de openbare macht op willekeurige wijze werd aangewend en dat de rechten van de verdediging op onherstelbare wijze zijn geschondenn. Onder meer het Europees Verdrag voor de Rechten van de Mens werd hierbij met voeten getreden. Verder omschrijft de KI de operatie op 24 juni als een “fishing expedition”.

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BELGIE
Knack

Alle stukken en voorwerpen die door onderzoeksrechter Wim De Troy werden in beslag genomen in het aartsbisschoppelijk paleis en in de kantoren en de privéwoning van kardinaal Danneels in Mechelen, moeten uit het onderzoeksdossier verwijderd worden en neergelegd op de griffie van de Brusselse rechtbank van eerste aanleg. Dat heeft de Brusselse kamer van inbeschuldigingstelling beslist. Meester Fernand Keuleneer, advocaat van het aartsbisdom Mechelen en van kardinaal Danneels, toont zich zeer tevreden met het arrest.

Eerder werd al beslist dat die huiszoekingen onwettig en dus nietig waren. Die huiszoekingen, op 24 juni 2010, kaderden in Operatie Kelk, het gerechtelijk onderzoek dat de Brusselse onderzoeksrechter Wim De Troy voerde naar seksueel misbruik van kinderen en een mogelijke doofpotoperatie daarrond binnen de katholieke Kerk. Drie verschillend samengestelde KI’s beslisten achtereenvolgens dat die huiszoekingen onregelmatig waren, vervolgens dat ze perfect wettelijk waren en ten slotte dat
ze toch onregelmatig waren.

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BELGIE
De Standaard

BRUSSEL – Alles wat door onderzoeksrechter De Troy in beslag genomen werd in het aartsbisschoppelijk paleis en in de kantoren en de privéwoning van kardinaal Danneels in Mechelen, moet uit het onderzoeksdossier verwijderd worden en neergelegd op de griffie van de Brusselse rechtbank van eerste aanleg. Dat heeft de Brusselse kamer van inbeschuldigingstelling beslist. Eerder werd al beslist dat die huiszoekingen onwettig en dus nietig waren.

De huiszoekingen vonden plaats op 24 juni 2010 en kaderden binnen ‘Operatie Kelk’. Dat is het gerechtelijk onderzoek dat Brussels onderzoeksrechter Wim De Troy voerde naar seksueel misbruik van kinderen en een mogelijke doofpotoperatie daarrond binnen de katholieke Kerk. Drie verschillend samengestelde KI’s beslisten achtereenvolgens dat die huiszoekingen onregelmatig waren, vervolgens dat ze perfect wettelijk waren en ten slotte dat ze toch onregelmatig waren.

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VATICAN CITY
Vatican Insider

A papal pardon for Paolo Gabriele is near. But the cardinals Herranz, Tomko and De Giorgi have gone on with their full-scale investigations

Andrea Tornielli
Vatican City

Benedict XVI received their Emminences Cardinals Julian Herranz, Josef Tomko and Salvatore De Giorgi in an audience today. The event as barely given any focus at all in today’s Vatican Press Office Bulletin, squeezed in between the audience with the Italian Olympic committee and with Palestinian leader Abu Mazen. What is the significance then of the Pope’s meeting with the commission of three cardinals set up to investigate the Vatileaks scandal? Readers will recall that the three cardinals presented their first report on the case to the Pope last July. The report contained the results of a number of examinations carried out in utmost secrecy. From these, it emerged that the Pope’s former butler, Paolo Gabriele was responsible for the Vatican document leak – he confessed to and was eventually charged with stealing and distributing confidential documents belonging to Benedict XVI. The examinations also gave a clear picture of the climate in which the Vatileaks scandal developed.

It is not unlikely that one of the issues discussed during the meeting was the potential papal pardon for Paolo Gabriele. Some sources say he could be granted a pardon in time for Christmas, which would allow the Pope’s former butler who is currently being held in a Vatican prison cell, to spend the holidays with his family. The Pope wished to make it clear that a pardon was not a given, particularly as the interested party had not demonstrated complete awareness of the gravity of his offence. The written explanation of how the verdict against Paolo Gabriele was reached, stated that his crime was a “reprehensible” violation of trust that damaged the Pope himself and the rights of the Holy See, the Vatican City state and the entire Catholic Church. At the same time, however, the judges stated they believed he had acted in good faith for the benefit of the Church, not in order to harm it. The same conclusion seems to have been reached by the cardinals as well.

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VATICAN CITY
Vatican Insider

The Vatican Secretary of State shares his thoughts at the presentation of the new Regulations governing the Prefecture for Economic Affairs of the Holy See

Alessandro Speciale
Rome

The Vatican’s financial transparency issue has more to do with the crisis than with the Vatican document leak scandal: the Holy See must proceed in “the gradual, but effective, reduction of costs in the face of a continuing inability to increase revenues,” the Vatican Secretary of State, Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone told employees of the Prefecture for Economic Affairs of the Holy See in a speech this morning.

The Regulations – which will be presented officially to the press next Thursday – were in fact promulgated last 22 February and were probably prepared long before that date. In the face of the global crisis, “the Holy See”, must also proceed in “the gradual, but effective, reduction of costs in the face of a continuing inability to increase revenues at least in proportion to the deficits as recently recorded in the consolidated balances,” Bertone said.

In actual fact, the Holy See’s balance sheets have seen fluctuations in recent years but it was only in 2011 that it came dangerously close to being in the red, with a deficit of almost 15 million Euros. It should be stressed, however, that after reaching a peak of 253 million Euros in 2009, the Holy See’s revenues have been gradually decreasing, while last year expenses went through the roof, increasing by 30 million Euros in 2011 alone. As a result, dioceses across the world were asked to make an extra big effort to gather an unlikely five million Euros more than the previous year. Even the Vatican bank, the IOR, had to reduce its contributions from a maximum of 55 million to 49 million Euros.

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AUSTRALIA
Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests

[Catholic university approved research into paedophile clergy – The Canberra Times]

Posted by Nicky Davis on December 18, 2012

Once again, evidence surfaces that Catholic officials deliberately hid known and suspected child sex crimes from law enforcement officials. It’s particularly disturbing, however, that academics played a role in this reckless deception.

No one should ever underestimate how shrewd and determined Catholic officials are in keeping a lid on this horror, under a range of often-innocuous sounding pretenses.

We strongly suspect that church officials were- and remain – far more interested in keeping crimes secret than in understanding criminals’ psyches.

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CANADA
Times Colonist

Jeff Bell , Times Colonist December 19, 2012

Warning: This story contains graphic details.

The presentation of evidence in the B.C. Supreme Court trial of Father Phil Jacobs is expected to wrap up today.

Jacobs, who is charged with four sexual offences involving boys while he was working as a Roman Catholic priest, spent all of Tuesday on the stand after beginning his testimony Monday afternoon.

The 63-year-old Jacobs is accused of offences against three boys between September 1996 and June 2001.

He was parish priest at St. Joseph the Worker Catholic Church from 1997 to 2002.

Much of Jacobs’s testimony in the judge-alone trial has been in response to questioning from defence lawyer Chris Considine.

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INDIA
Albany Tribune

Written by UCAN

December 18, 2012

The Kerala Catholic Bishops’ Council yesterday dismissed a priest after police filed human trafficking charges against him.

Father Jaison Kollannur, who was secretary of the Kerala bishops’s council youth commission, was charged last month as part of a ring of five people who allegedly tried to traffic 42 young Indians to Houston, Texas, under the pretext of attending a student exchange program which ended in June.

“The accused, including the priest, faked certificates to support that 42 persons were experts working in the education sector,” said Amose Mammen, assistant commissioner of the police Crime Records Bureau in Kochi.

Fr Kollannur will also face an internal probe by the bishops’ council following his dismissal, said Kerala council spokesman Stephen Alathara.

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AUSTRALIA
ABC – PM

[with audio]

SALLY SARA: Queensland’s peak child protection body is calling for the Federal Government’s child sexual abuse inquiry to employ multiple commissioners rather than just one.

The Federal Government is finalising the terms of reference for the inquiry by the end of this year.

PeakCare says the Royal Commission into child sexual abuse needs more Commissioners to cope with the scale of the investigation and ensure it doesn’t take longer than necessary.

The organisation’s call to broaden the inquiry’s scope is backed up by South Australia’s Dignity for Disability MP Kelly Vincent, who wants disability issues to be properly investigated and expressly referred to in the terms of reference.

Nance Haxton reports.

NANCE HAXTON: PeakCare represents more than 70 child protection bodies in Queensland.

The not-for-profit group has written a submission to the Federal Government asking that the Royal Commission into Child Sexual Abuse consider having more than one commissioner.

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VATICAN CITY
Chiesa

VATICAN CITY, December 19, 2012 – At the upcoming feast of Epiphany, Benedict XVI will consecrate as bishop, together with other prelates, Monsignor Georg Gänswein, his personal secretary since 2003, recently appointed prefect of the pontifical household.

Gänswein will keep his previous position, and will continue to live in the pontifical apartment. This signifies that, after the tempest of Vatileaks and the conviction of the butler Paolo Gabriele, Benedict XVI – with a gesture that seems to have no precedent – has confirmed, or rather redoubled, his trust toward his closest coworker.

In effect, looking at the latest pontificates, no churchman had ever taken on the positions of personal secretary and prefect of the pontifical household. With John Paul II, in fact, his personal secretary Stanislaw Dziwisz was made only “adjunct” prefect, and appointed bishop in 1998 at the age of 59, to be elevated in 2003 to the dignity of archbishop.

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UTAH
KUTV

By Ladd Egan
(KUTV) Followers of imprisoned polygamous sect leader Warren Jeffs have been told to prepare backpacks of necessities as part of a doomsday prophesy for this Sunday.

“By December 23rd it’s going to have ended,” said former FLDS member Isaac Wyler of the prediction. “Warren was talking about the Yellowstone Nation Park blowing.”

Jeffs, 56, is serving a life sentence in Texas on convictions of sexually assaulting two underage girls. Behind prison bars he still issues edicts and leads the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. …

Wyler said he’s heard it all before: “it’s just Warren whipping them up into another frenzy to gather money.”

And when the end doesn’t come? Wyler said Jeffs will still be right and blame his followers for not having enough faith for it to happen.

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NEW ZEALAND
Radio New Zealand

A Kaitaia businessman and foster parent charged with abusing young boys will remain in jail over Christmas.

Daniel Taylor, who was an elder in the Mormon Church and a Child Youth and Family caregiver, is facing 22 charges of sexual assault on boys.

He applied for electronic bail on Wednesday in the Kaitaia District Court, but Judge John McDonald refused it. He says Mr Taylor is facing serious charges involving children, including one who had been in his custody.

He said the police evidence was that Mr Taylor had shown a careful and devious mind in grooming boys for sexual offending by gaining the trust of their families.

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TENNESSEE
The Tennessean

Written by
Bob Smietana
The Tennessean

A judge has dismissed most of the claims in a lawsuit filed against Bishop Joseph Walker III of Mt. Zion Baptist Church.

Former church member Valencia Batson had sued Walker, Mt. Zion and several other ministers earlier this year for alleged sexual abuse.

Church leaders have called the allegations ridiculous in the past.

Walker’s attorneys argued that the statute of limitations had passed for most of Batson’s claims and that some of the other claims in the suit were improperly filed.

Court documents show that the last time Walker and Batson had physical or verbal contact was in January 2005. Any claim of sexual abuse had a one-year statute of limitations.

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AUSTRALIA
Hills News

A report into the Catholic Church’s management of sexual abuse allegations made against a former priest who was connected to the Parramatta and Armidale diocese has been handed to NSW Police.

The church commissioned the report by Anthony Whitlam QC after allegations were made that information about the priest, known as Father F, was not acted on.

The report deals with Father F’s sacking from the ministry in 2005 and what happened during a meeting between Father F and senior Catholic figures in 1992.

The Armidale diocese has denied Father F made admissions when he met Sydney priests Father Lucas and Monsignor Usher Sydney in 1992.

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OHIO
The Columbus Dispatch

By JoAnne Viviano
The Columbus Dispatch
Tuesday December 18, 2012

An advocacy group is asking the bishop of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Columbus to step up efforts to reach possible abuse victims after a priest on trial in Canada testified that he engaged in inappropriate sexual activity with boys while working in central Ohio decades ago.

Media outlets in British Columbia report that the Rev. Phillip Jacobs, 63, testified before a judge in Supreme Court in Victoria that he took at least three teen boys on overnight trips in Ohio intending to introduce them to masturbation.

According to the Saanich News, Jacobs told Justice J. Miriam Gropper on Monday that “the goal was for the person to become normal with this physiological act under my direction.”

“I would ask them what they know about their bodies … whether they were curious … eventually, if I could get some sense of curiosity, I would ask, ‘How much do you trust me? Can I explain it?’” he said.

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MISSISSIPPI
Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests

Posted by Amy Smith on December 18, 2012

We are grateful that the case against Rev. John Langworthy will move forward. Delaying or denying the trial would only have endangered kids and hurt victims.

To better safeguard kids, we urge Mississippi lawmakers to reform or repeal the state’s archaic, predator-friendly statute of limitations so that in future cases, there will be no doubt whatsoever that those who assault kids will face justice, no matter how effectively they may have hidden their crimes or intimidated their victims.

Now, more than ever, anyone who may have seen, suspected, or suffered sex crimes at the hands of Rev. Langworthy should come forward and make a report to police. Children are safer when predators like Langworthy are behind bars.

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SAN ANTONIO (TX)
KSAT

A priest who spent time in the Archdiocese of San Antonio has been accused by at least four boys in Washington state of molestation.

David Clohessy, director of the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, said he is concerned that the Rev. Hilario Ramirez may have abused victims in Texas as well.

SNAP leaders are calling on San Antonio Archbishop Gustavo Garcia-Siller to reach out to others who may have been allegedly abused by Ramirez.

“The Archbishop has the most resources available to him to find others in the San Antonio area who may have been hurt by Ramirez. If he’s serious about protecting his flock, he’ll use all of them to reach out to victims,” Clohessy said.

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IRELAND
RTE News

A 79-year-old former priest has been given a four-year suspended sentence for sexually assaulting a pupil at a Co Wexford school in the 1960s.

The former priest pleaded guilty to eight counts of gross indecency against a boy who was 14 at the time the incidents started.

Wexford Circuit Court heard the accused assaulted his victim at night 12 to 14 times over a two-year period.

His victim told the court by way of a victim impact statement that it had taken him decades to go to the authorities.

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DELAWARE
ABC 27

Posted: Dec 18, 2012 7:02 PM

By RANDALL CHASE
Associated Press
DOVER, Del. (AP) – A federal judge has ruled in favor of an ex-priest who challenged a ban on future payments to accused pedophile priests as part of the Catholic Diocese of Wilmington’s bankruptcy plan.

Judge Sue Robinson ruled Tuesday that the bankruptcy judge went too far in refusing to confirm the diocese’s reorganization plan unless it prohibited payments to priests publicly identified by the late Bishop Michael Saltarelli as child abusers. 1 of those priests, Kenneth Martin, challenged the ban on benefit payments.

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CHILE
Radio Universidad de Chile

La ministra Gloria Ana Chevesich, conocida por una dedicada investigación en el polémico caso MOP-Gate, asumiría como ministra de fuero en las tres demandas por abusos sexuales en contra del párroco de El Bosque, Fernando Karadima.

Esto surge luego que el magistrado Juan Manuel Muñoz, nominado en primer orden para esta investigación, es uno de los posibles ratificados desde el Senado para asumir en la Corte Suprema, lo que abre la vacante para que Chevesich tome la indagación.

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INDIA
U.S. Catholic

By Catholic News Service

COCHIN, India (CNS) — The Catholic Bishops’ Council of Kerala dismissed the secretary of its youth commission, who has been charged as part of a human trafficking ring.

Father Stephen Alathara, spokesman for the council, also said Nov. 17 it would conduct an investigation into the priest’s activities, reported the Press Trust of India.

In November, police included Syro-Malabar Father Jaison Kollannur as part of a five-person ring that allegedly tried to traffic 42 young Indians to Houston under the pretext of attending a student exchange program.

The Asian church news agency UCA News said the five, including Father Kollannur, faked certificates to say the Indians were experts in education.

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MISSISSIPPI
Associated Baptist Press

By Bob Allen

A Mississippi judge ruled Dec. 18 that the state’s statute of limitations does not prevent prosecution of a former Southern Baptist music minister charged with molesting five boys in the early 1980s.

Hinds County Circuit Judge Bill McGowan rejected a motion to dismiss an eight-count indictment against John Langworthy, associate pastor of music and ministries at Morrison Heights Baptist Church in Clinton, Miss., prior to his arrest in September 2011.

After turning down a plea bargain, Langworthy is scheduled to stand trial Jan. 28 on eight counts of gratification of lust, but according to the Jackson Clarion-Ledger, the impending holidays might necessitate a new date. Originally put on the docket for April 2, the trial has already been postponed three times while Langworthy is out of jail on $700,000 bond.

In August 2011, Langworthy confessed to the Morrison Heights congregation of “sexual indiscretions with younger males” prior to coming to Clinton 22 years earlier. After that, prosecutors say six victims came forward to report they had been molested by Langworthy when they were children.

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NEW YORK
Failed Messiah

White House Chief Of Staff Condemns Alleged YU Child Sex Abuse Coverups, Says Response To Child Sex Abuse Must “Transcend The Confines Of Religious Teaching”

Shmarya Rosenberg • FailedMessiah.com

Jacob Lew, and Orthodox Jew and the White House chief of staff, received an honorary doctorate from Yeshiva University Sunday night at the Waldorf Astoria Hotel in Manhattan.

But Yeshiva University was rocked late last week by allegations that it had covered up years of ongoing child sexual abuse at its affiliated high school in Manhattan during the late 1970s and early 1980s.

Its former president, Rabbi Dr. Norman Lamm, who now serves as YU’s chancellor, admitted to allowing accused sexual abusers and faculty who had homosexual affairs to leave quietly and teach elsewhere without notifying the new schools of the abuse or the affairs, and said the allegations of abuse were not as important to him or the university as the university’s then-financial crisis was.

Lamm is accused of personally covering up the abuse of teenage boys.

So is Richard Joel, YU’s current president, who was allegedly asked to undo the coverups by a victim when he was hired about a decade ago. Joel allegedly did nothing then, although he sharply condemned the alleged abuse and apologized for it after the allegations were made public last week.

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SAN ANTONIO (TX)
Express-News

By Abe Levy

Updated 2:29 pm, Tuesday, December 18, 2012

A visiting priest from Mexico — who spent time in the San Antonio archdiocese and is believed to have died in the 1980s — molested four Washington state boys in the early 1970s, Catholic officials there say.

The Diocese of Yakima reported Monday that it received credible evidence that Father Hilario Ramirez molested four boys ages 7 to 13 while staying with two families from Our Lady of Fatima Parish in east-central Washington.

He was there for several weeks as a visiting priest invited by a victim’s family member who had met him in the South Texas town of Dilley, the Yakima diocese said.

St. Joseph’s Catholic Church is the only parish in Dilley and is part of the San Antonio archdiocese. A call to that parish seeking comment was not returned Tuesday.

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AUSTRALIA
Canberra Times

Richard Baker, Nick McKenzie

THE Australian Catholic University approved a highly sensitive research project to analyse archives detailing child sexual abuse by clergy and to identify common themes in their behaviour.

The project, titled ”Sexual Boundary Violations Among Catholic Religious”, was conducted by staff of Encompass Australasia, which was established by the Catholic Church in 1997 to treat clergy for psycho-sexual disorders. Many of those clergy were never reported to police.

To comply with national laws governing human research, Encompass Australasia was required to get approval from an institution with a human research ethics committee.

Fairfax Media has previously reported how Encompass Australasia was used by senior church figures to harbour paedophile clergy who had been diagnosed with ”mood disorders” in order to be treated at Sydney’s Wesley Private Hospital and meet private health insurance criteria.

It is understood that no clergy treated by Encompass Australasia were ever reported to police, despite some admitting to sexually abusing children and others facing serious accusations. In some cases, known paedophile clergy were sent overseas after being treated by Encompass staff at the Sydney hospital.

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NEW YORK
The New York Times

By MICHAEL POWELL

Published: December 18, 2012

Charles J. Hynes, who served as Brooklyn district attorney for more than two decades before he decided to take a close look at the scourge of sexual molesting among the Hasidim, talked tough a few weeks ago.

Sitting for an interview with Ami, a Jewish magazine, Mr. Hynes gave the side of his hand to “some absolute clown at The Daily News” who had written editorials criticizing his inaction on the Hasids. And he aimed an elbow at The New York Times, saying its long explorations of his handling of such cases and the shielding of the names of Hasidic molesters were “silly” and “dishonest.”

Let’s give the district attorney his recent due. A week ago, his office convicted a leader in the Satmar community, Nechemya Weberman, of many counts of molesting. This prosecution owed nothing in particular to his investigators; the young and exceptionally courageous woman in question came forward and insisted on testifying.

Still, Mr. Hynes is to be congratulated.

I mention this to Rabbi Nuchem Rosenberg and he rolls his eyes. For nearly two decades, this Hasidic rabbi, a member of the Satmar sect, challenged his community’s silence and complicity. Until recently, he and a handful of courageous ultra-Orthodox crusaders and families were alone.

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VATICAN CITY
GlobalPost

Vatican selections include bishops and cardinals who protected pedophile priests.

Jason Berry
December 18, 2012

VATICAN CITY — From its 17th century palace, the Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith monitors compliance with Roman Catholic moral teaching and matters of dogma for the oldest church in Christendom.

These issues have little bearing on most of the world’s 1.2 billion Catholics. Faith, for them, rests in parish life and the quality of their pastors. In the 1980s, for example, when the CDF punished theologians who dissented from the papal ban on birth control devices, the 85 percent of Catholics who support contraception did not change their opinion.

But as the CDF accelerates a disciplinary action against the main leadership group of American nuns, many sisters and priests are reacting to a climate of fear fostered by bishops and cardinals who have never been investigated by the church for their role in the greatest moral crisis of modern Catholicism: the clergy sex abuse crisis.

As the Vatican lowers a curtain of scrutiny across communities of religious women in America, a small but resonant chorus of critics is raising an issue of a hypocrisy that has grown too blatant to ignore. The same hierarchy that brought shame upon the Vatican for recycling clergy child molesters, a scandal that rocked the church in many countries, has assumed a moral high ground in punishing the Leadership Conference of Women Religious, a group whose members have put their lives on the line in taking the social justice agenda of the Second Vatican Council to some of the poorest areas in the world.

Many nuns from foreign countries wonder if the investigation is an exercise “in displaced anger,” as one sister puts it, for the hierarchy’s failure in child abuse scandals across the map of the global church.

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KENTUCKY
Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests

Posted by Barbara Dorris on December 17, 2012

We are glad that a trial date for the case against Fr. James Schook has been set. Justice for his victims shouldn’t be further delayed or potentially lost simply because Schook is in ill health. Trials are meant to bring closure for the abused, not comfort for the abuser. Further delays are unnecessarily hurtful to Fr. Schook’s victims.

We hope that others who saw, suspected, or suffered crimes by School or any other church employee within the Diocese of Louisville will come forward and make a report to police.

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NEW YORK
Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests

Posted by Barbara Dorris on December 17, 2012

A priest that was suspended from the Diocese of Vancouver for sexual impropriety and later resurfaced in Long Island, NY is now being sued by one of his victims.

Fr. Lawrence “Damian” Cooper was suspended by the Diocese of Vancouver in 1994 for grooming a girl while she was a minor and beginning an illicit relationship when she was 17. Sexual contact with a priest – someone who is supposedly God’s envoy on earth – involves an inherent power imbalance that undermines it and prevents it from being a true relationship. Even if the victim in this case, Kathleen Taylor, had not been a minor when the sexual contact began, this “relationship” would still have been abuse.

Despite this abuse, following his suspension Fr. Cooper was apparently allowed to go the Diocese of Rockville Centre, NY and resume duties as a priest after six months of treatment, despite the fact that he was originally intended to undergo treatment for five years. Fr. Cooper was later suspended from his diocese in New York for “problems of a similar nature” in 2001.

The Diocese of Vancouver claims that they “fully informed” the Diocese of Rockville Centre of Fr. Cooper’s history, and believe this absolves them from guilt. However, what they should have done was not to allow Fr. Cooper to transfer there at all, but should have put him in a remote and secure treatment facility. What they did was essentially wash their hands of him after doing the bare minimum. Shame on them.

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WASHINGTON
Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests

Posted by David Clohessy on December 17, 2012

While we’re glad Yakima Catholic officials admit that Fr. Hilario Ramirez is a credibly accused child molester, we’re sad that they’ve delayed this disclosure for months and are apparently refusing to give many details.

The statement implies that Fr. Ramirez was in Yakima because of one family’s invitation. It also suggests that he didn’t work in any Yakima Catholic churches. We suspect that’s not the full story.

It only takes seconds for a child predator to shove his hands down a boy’s pants or his tongue down a girl’s throat. So it’s possible that he only molested four kids and did so within a few days. It’s possible he didn’t spend weeks working at Yakima churches.

But we suspect that he was, in fact, in Washington for weeks or months, sent there by his Texas bishop with the knowledge and approval of the Yakima bishop. And we suspect he worked in one or more parishes.

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OHIO
Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests

Posted by David Clohessy on December 18, 2012

A priest who studied and worked in Columbus “had a series of inappropriate experiences with teenage boys” taking at least three of them “on overnight trips, intent on teaching them how to masturbate.” He also claims he was “bullied by fellow classmates into (masturbating) at his Catholic high school in Columbus” (according to news accounts this morning).

Fr. Phil Jacobs is on trial in Canada on charges that he sexually abused three boys in Victoria during the late 1990s.

Under oath yesterday, in open court, Jacobs admitted he hurt kids in Columbus

This new admission should spur Columbus Catholic officials to finally take action. Bishop Frederick Campbell should end his irresponsible silence and immediately reach out now to anyone else that has been hurt by Jacobs.

Doing this is prudent, because it could bring forward more victims, witnesses, whistleblowers and evidence that could help put Jacobs behind bars and away from kids.

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OHIO
San Francisco Chronicle

CINCINNATI (AP) — An Ohio priest accused of taking a 10-year-old boy to West Virginia for sex more than two decades ago has successfully argued to be released, have his trial delayed and be allowed to travel to New York for medical treatment.

A federal judge in Cincinnati on Monday granted the Rev. Robert Poandl’s (poh-AHN’-duhl) request to leave the state for treatment.

Late last week, the judge agreed to have his trial on a charge of coercion of a minor delayed until March 18. It had been scheduled for Jan. 14.

Poandl, of the Cincinnati-based Glenmary Home Missioners, has pleaded not guilty to sexually abusing a 10-year-old boy while the two visited a West Virginia church in 1991.

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CANADA
Saanich News

By Kyle Slavin – Saanich News
Published: December 17, 2012

Warning: The following story contains graphic testimony of a sexual nature that could be upsetting to some readers.

Phillip Jacobs took the stand in his own defence Monday afternoon by explaining how, when he was a young priest in Columbus, Ohio, he took teenage boys on overnight trips, intent on teaching them how to masturbate.

“The goal was for the person to become normal with this physiological act under my direction,” Jacobs, 63, told Justice J. Miriam Gropper during questioning by his defence lawyer Chris Considine. “I would ask them what they know about their bodies … whether they were curious … eventually, if I could get some sense of curiosity, I would ask ‘How much do you trust me? Can I explain it?’”

Jacobs said there were at least three, maybe more, teenage boys he took on these 18-hour “packages,” that included golf, swimming, fishing, pool, dinner and TV in the mid-1970s.

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CANADA
CBC News

A Roman Catholic priest has admitted to sexually abusing teenage boys in the U.S., but denies he did the same thing in Canada.

Father Phil Jacobs testified in his own defence Monday at his trial on charges of sexually assaulting three teen boys in Victoria during the late 1990s.

Jacobs told the court about being bullied into masturbating by fellow students in high school and of having ungratifying masturbation encounters with two fellow students when he was a young man while studying to become a priest.

He’s admitted to trying to teach two teenage boys how to masturbate when he was a priest in Ohio during the early 1990s. He said he felt he could teach them how they should masturbate and avoid the humiliation he had suffered as a teen.

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CANADA
Times Colonist

Jeff Bell , Times Colonist
December 17, 2012

Warning: This story contains graphic details.

Father Phil Jacobs answered with a firm “Never” Monday when defence lawyer Chris Considine asked him if he had engaged in any of the alleged activities that resulted in four sexual charges against him involving boys.

Jacobs, 63, took the stand Monday in B.C. Supreme Court as Considine began the defence’s case, which followed several days of testimony last week from prosecution witnesses.

Considine said Jacobs did not touch any of the three alleged victims with sexual intent, but advised Justice Miriam Gropper that Jacobs would tell her about “the demons that have haunted him” and how he has tried to deal with them through the years.

The offences of which he is accused — two counts of sexual interference involving a person under 14, one count of sexual assault and one count of touching a young person for a sexual purpose — are alleged to have taken place between September 1996 and June 2001. Jacobs was a parish priest from 1997 to 2002 at St. Joseph the Worker Catholic Church, and served as the administrator of Sooke’s St. Rose of Lima Parish before that.

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MISSISSIPPI
Clarion-Ledger

Written by
Ruth Ingram

A Hinds County judge will decide whether a Clinton man who has admitted to “sexual indiscretions” with male children in Mississippi and Texas will go free or face trial.

Circuit Judge Bill McGowan will hear arguments Tuesday on John Langworthy’s defense motion that says too much time has passed for the former Clinton High choir director and church music minister to face felony gratification of lust charges.

Langworthy was music minister at Morrison Heights Baptist Church in Clinton before his arrest in September 2011. An eight-count indictment charges him with sexually molesting five boys between April 1980 and December 1984, with the alleged sexual abuse occurring at the boys’ Jackson homes, Langworthy’s sister’s home in Jackson, or in Langworthy’s dorm room at Mississippi College.

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AUSTRALIA
NSW Police Force

Tuesday, 18 December 2012 01:58:37 PM

NSW Police have charged a retired priest with historical indecent assault offences which allegedly occurred in the Hunter region in the 1960s and 1970s.

On 21 November and 3 December this year, two former students of a local Marist college attended a police station regarding allegations of indecent assault by a teacher who is now retired.

Strike Force Georgiana investigators travelled this month to Cook, in the Australian Capital Territory, and served future court attendance notices on an 80-year-old man at his home address.

He has been charged with three counts of indecent assault allegedly committed against two victims whilst at school in the 1960s and 1970s.

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AUSTRALIA
Canberra Times

December 18, 2012

Noel Towell

A retired Catholic brother living in Belconnen has been charged with sex offences against two boys in the NSW Hunter region in the 1960s and 1970s.

State police detectives have charged the 80-year-old former Marist teacher with three counts of indecent assault.

Police say they interviewed the two alleged victims on November 21 and December 3.

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AUSTRALIA
Newcastle Herald

By SAM RIGNEY
Dec. 18, 2012

POLICE have charged a retired brother, 80, with historical indecent assault offences which allegedly occurred in the Hunter in the 1960s and 1970s.

Two former students from a local Marist college spoke with police on November 21 and December 3 this year regarding allegation of indecent assault by a teacher who has since retired. Strike Force Georgiana investigators travelled to Cook, in the ACT, and charged the 80-year-old man with three counts of indecent assault allegedly committed against two victims in the 1960s and 1970s.

The retired brother was granted bail to appear in Newcastle Local Court on January 29, 2013.

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AUSTRALIA
Newcastle Herald

By SAM RIGNEY
Dec. 18, 2012

INVESTIGATORS expect to lay further charges against a retired brother who allegedly indecently assaulted two students at a Hunter Marist Brothers college during the 1960s and 1970s.

Strike Force Georgiana detectives, tasked with investigating historical sexual and indecent assault allegations levelled at several Hunter priests, travelled to Cook, about 10kilometres north west of Canberra, this month to interview the 80-year-old man.

He was later charged with three counts of indecent assault allegedly committed against two victims while they were at school in the 1960s and 1970s.

The retired brother was granted bail to appear in Newcastle Local Court on January 29, 2013.

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AUSTRALIA
ABC News

A New South Wales police strike force dedicated to handling complaints from clergy abuse victims has made another arrest, this time in Canberra.

Strike Force Georgiana has dealt with scores of abuse victims since it was set up in the Hunter Valley several years ago.

A number of local priests have been jailed as a result of complaints, while at least a dozen victims are known to have committed suicide.

Today detectives have announced another arrest.

They have charged a retired Catholic priest with three counts of indecent assault allegedly committed against two victims while he was working at a Marist college in the Hunter Valley in the 1960s and 1970s.

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AUSTRALIA
Maitland Mercury

A RETIRED priest has been charged with historical indecent assault offences which allegedly occurred in Hunter during the 1960s and 1970s.

On November 21 and December 3 this year, two former students of a local Marist college made allegations of indecent assault by a now-retired teacher who is now retired.

Strike Force Georgiana investigators travelled this month to Cook, in the ACT, and served future court attendance notices on an 80-year-old man at his home.

He has been charged with three counts of indecent assault allegedly committed against two victims while at school in the 1960s and 1970s.

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UNITED KINGDOM
EADT 24

Suffolk: His victims have a life sentence – Survivors in Transition charity question priest’s jail term

BY LIZZIE PARRY Tuesday, December 18, 2012

One of those who suffered at the hands of Haley Dossor today welcomed the custodial sentence.

Survivors in Transition offer a range of services, help and support for survivors of childhood sex abuse

The 71-year-old was yesterday sent to prison for 22 months after pleading guilty to six counts of indecent assault relating to two boys as young as 13.

One of the survivors of Dossor’s abuse, who today told story to The Star, said the sentence had not yet sunk in.

“In cases like this what the law defines as justice does not really help survivors of the crimes,” he said.

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UNITED KINGDOM
EADT 24

Suffolk: I live with the repercussions every day – survivor of abuse at the hands of Haley Dossor tells of his torment

BY LIZZIE PARRY Tuesday, December 18, 2012

NO child should have to endure experiences similar to mine from anyone, let alone from someone who chooses to label their spiritual and ethical beliefs as Christian.

I live with the repercussions of what happened to me every day and the fact that the benefits and mental health services have on many occasions totally failed to provide me with the help that I am entitled to.

I am open to the Bishop and the wider church making good on the Bishop’s ‘apology’ and if they wish to do that they know where I am and how I can be contacted.

In the meantime I would like people to know that Nigel’s words are for the moment just that, words with no apparent compassionate actions behind them to give them any meaning.

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AUSTRALIA
CathNews

Australia should use its seat on the United Nations Security Council to push for a UN inquiry into how the Catholic Church moves paedophile priests from First to Third World countries to avoid investigation, the Victorian inquiry into clergy sex abuse heard yesterday, reports The Age.

Victims’ lawyer Angela Sdrinis said she feared an epidemic of abuse in coming decades in developing countries that lacked a strong, independent police force.

”We know that the problem of child sex abuse within the Catholic Church is an international problem.”

No other religious group so often transferred abusers interstate or overseas, especially to Third World countries, she said.

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AUSTRALIA
Daily Telegraph

Mitchell Toy
Herald Sun
December 18, 2012

CLAIMS that orphans were murdered, tortured or left to die from injuries while under the care of religious organisations and the state were heard yesterday by a state parliamentary inquiry into child abuse.

Former wards of the state have called for a public apology and compensation for abuse committed in orphanages and foster homes between the 1950s and 1980s.

Angela Sdrinis, of Ryan Carlisle Thomas lawyers, said the firm had been contacted by hundreds of alleged victims of abuse who had levelled claims against religious personnel from the Salvation Army, various church denominations and even a Buddhist monk.

She told the inquiry alleged victims had claimed the Bayswater Boys Home, operated by the Salvation Army in the 1950s, was a hotbed of paedophiles and that some boys had disappeared without a trace.

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AUSTRALIA
The Age

December 18, 2012

Barney Zwartz

AUSTRALIA should use its seat on the United Nations Security Council to push for a UN inquiry into how the Catholic Church moves paedophile priests from First to Third World countries to avoid investigation, the state inquiry into clergy sex abuse heard on Monday.

Victims’ lawyer Angela Sdrinis said she feared an epidemic of abuse in coming decades in developing countries that lacked a strong, independent police force.

”We know that the problem of child sex abuse within the Catholic Church is an international problem.” No other religious group so often transferred abusers interstate or overseas, especially to Third World countries, she said.

”In particular in Third World countries, where the Catholic Church is dominant and where the police and justice systems are much less advanced than in Western countries, there is a substantial risk that the influence of paedophile priests will be completely unchecked,” she said.

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HAMMOND (IN)
Hammond Community

Magazine, records show pattern of sex-related allegations at Hammond church

[Let Us Prey: Big Trouble at First Baptist Church – Chicago Magazine]

Marc Chase marc.chase@nwi.com, (219) 662-5330

HAMMOND | The alleged sexual indiscretions of religious leaders associated with the First Baptist Church of Hammond didn’t begin with the former head pastor’s recent admission to having sex with a 16-year-old church girl.

That is the picture painted in both a newly published Chicago Magazine article and in court records pertaining to other criminal defendants affiliated with church leadership.

An article in the magazine’s January 2013 edition characterizes the church’s history as consisting of overbearing and authoritarian pastoral control of parishioners, sexual abuse and affairs and criminal cases involving church leaders and some of their affiliates.

Former head Pastor Jack Schaap, scheduled to be sentenced in Hammond federal court next month, faces 10 years in prison after admitting he had multiple sexual encounters in Illinois and Michigan with a 16-year-old church girl he was supposed to be counseling.

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AUSTRALIA
ABC News

[with video]

A Victorian parliamentary inquiry has been told victims of child sexual abuse face a litany of difficulties reporting and settling their complaints.

The Care Leavers Australia Network told the child sexual inquiry that churches and institutions have confusing processes for dealing with complaints.

It says victims are deliberately isolated and that redress schemes are a “hopscotch” of secretive arrangements.

Spokesman Frank Golding told the inquiry it is also difficult for victims to access documentation.

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UNITED KINGDOM
EADT 24

Update: Retired priest jailed for historic sex abuse is branded a “sexual predator” by Crown Prosecution Service

BY LIZZIE PARRY Tuesday, December 18, 2012

IPSWICH/KIRTON/HADLEIGH: A retired priest branded a sexual predator is today starting a 22-month prison sentence for a string of indecent assaults on teenage boys at a church youth group in the early 90s.

Father John Haley Dossor, known as Haley, pleaded guilty to six counts of indecent assault relating to two boys, aged as young as 13.

Norwich Crown Court also heard that Dossor accepted he had abused a third boy between 15 and 20 times, although he was not charged with these attacks.

Nikki Miller, reviewing lawyer for the Crown Prosecution Service, welcomed the jail term.

“We are satisfied that the sentence handed down reflects the serious nature of his crimes and the way in which he abused his position of trust within the community he served,” she said. …

Today, Gavin Stone, assistant diocesan secretary for the St Edmundsbury and Ipswich Diocese, said: “Bishop Nigel Stock continues to offer unreserved regret and apologies to all those whose lives have been damaged by this individual, fully acknowledging the impact that broken trust by someone in a position of responsibility can have on the lives of all those involved.

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AUSTRALIA
9 News

A retired priest has been charged with sexually abusing two students in the 1960s and 70s in the NSW Hunter region.

Two former students of a local Marist college went to a police station on November 21 and December 3 this year.

They made sexual assault allegations against a teacher who is now retired, police say.

The 80-year-old man was served court attendance notices at his home at Cook, in the ACT, this month.

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UNITED KINGDOM
Harborough Mail

A retired Anglican priest from Suffolk who sexually abused teenage boys has been jailed for one year and 10 months.

Father John Haley Dossor, known as Haley, pleaded guilty to six counts of indecent assault relating to two boys aged as young as 13.

Norwich Crown Court also heard that Dossor accepted he had abused a third boy between 15 and 20 times, although he was not charged with these attacks.

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AUSTRALIA
The Age

December 18, 2012

Clare Quirk

VICTIMS of paedophile and former religious brother Edward Mamo wept in a Warrnambool court yesterday as they recalled the horror of his crimes.

The men, who were boys when the offences occurred, told of being taken into a dark basement at Monivae College in Hamilton and being indecently assaulted by Mamo, now 68, from 1976 to 1980.

Mamo, now of Sydney, pleaded guilty in the County Court to seven charges of unlawful and indecent assault of a child under the age of 16 on Monday. He sat emotionless throughout the plea hearing.

Mamo was aged between 31 and 35 when the incidents took place and was a brother of the Missionaries of the Sacred Heart of Australia.

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YAKIMA (WA)
KAPP

The Yakima diocese is responding to allegations of a abuse by a priest in the Moses Lake area in the 1970’s: The official release from the diocese is below:

The Diocese of Yakima has received credible allegations of abuse of a minor by a visiting priest from Mexico at the Catholic parish in Moses Lake, Wash. in the early 1970s. The Diocese is encouraging any other potential victims to come forward.

The alleged abuser, the late Rev. Hilario Ramírez, was invited to Our Lady of Fatima Parish in Moses Lake by a Hispanic family in the early 1970s. A member of the family had met him in Dilley, Texas where he had been a guest priest, and thought his ministry would be helpful in the Moses Lake parish.

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KENTUCKY
BishopAccountability.org

Summary of Case: Ordained for the Louisville diocese in 1963, Williams was a parish priest and convent chaplain. He held several chancery positions, including director of the Personnel Commission. In April 1984 Williams was appointed Auxiliary Bishop of Covington, and consecrated that June. He was appointed first Bishop of Lexington in Jan. 1988, and installed in March. In 2002 Williams was accused in lawsuits of the sexual abuse of two boys and one young adult; the earliest incident was said to have occurred in 1969, and the other two in the 1980s. Williams denied the accusations. He resigned in June 2002.

Ordained: May 25, 1963
Appointed: Auxiliary Bishop of Covington April 15, 1984
Consecrated: June 19, 1984
Appointed: Bishop of Lexington Jan. 14, 1988
Installed: March 2, 1988

Retired: June 11, 2002

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AUSTRALIA
Daily Telegraph

Dealing with pain caused by child-sex abuse is Catholic Church’s greatest crisis, say Archbishop of Adelaide Philip Wilson

[the letter]

Investigations Editor Bryan Littlely
adelaidenow
December 17, 2012

THE Catholic Church faces its greatest crisis of all time as it grapples with the reality of the pain caused by child sex abuse, Archbishop of Adelaide Philip Wilson says.

In a letter to the state’s Catholics responding to Prime Minister Julia Gillard’s announcement of a Royal Commission into child sexual abuse in the Catholic Church, Archbishop Wilson expressed his “deepest sorrow” to victims of clerical child sex abuse.

“The reality of child abuse is by far the greatest crisis we have faced as a church in this country,” he said.

“As people of God, we can only feel deep shame over the terrible betrayal of trust and the suffering inflicted on the abused and their families by those members of the church who engaged in this most serious crime.”

Archbishop Wilson, who declined to speak to adelaidenow, said in the letter the Archdiocese of Adelaide has been at the forefront of child protection in recent years and had introduced many initiatives that had been held up as best practice.

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AUSTRALIA
Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Adelaide

November 22, 2012
12/1275

RE : Royal Commission

My Brothers and Sisters in the Adelaide Archdiocese

As you are aware, Prime Minister Julia Gillard has announced that a Royal Commission is to be held to inquire into institutional responses to child sexual abuse in Australia. Also, on Wednesday the NSW Premier Barry O’Farrell announced a more focused inquiry dealing with specific issues raised in the media concerning the Diocese of Newcastle – Maitland.

This Royal Commission is a very important development in Australian society as a whole because it will be the first time when the horrendous issue of abuse will be examined in great detail on a national scale. It will enable people affected by child sex abuse to have a voice like they have never had before. They will be able to tell of their tragedies and be heard at the highest level – and in doing so it will help institutions, including our Church, to learn more about those experiences and, if necessary, better inform us about how we respond to these very difficult and complex issues.

Our Diocese will, of course, co-operate fully with the Royal Commission and the NSW Inquiry, and we will do so with absolute honesty and openness in an effort to do whatever we can to help shed light on the tragedy of child sex abuse. As people of God, we can only feel deep shame over the terrible betrayal of trust and the suffering inflicted on the abused and their families by those members of the Church who engaged in this most serious crime.

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UNITED STATES
Patrick J. Wall

“His winnowing fork is in his hand, to clear his threshing floor, and to gather the wheat into his granary, but the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire.” Luke 3:17

Twenty years ago this week I was ordained a Roman Catholic priest at Saint John’s Abbey in Collegeville, Minnesota. My ordination was performed by then-Bishop Jerome Hanus, O.S.B.

At the time, I knew I was being sent to a one-year assignment where I would fill in for monk who had been yanked from Saint Elizabeth Ann Seton, after a victim came forward and accused the monk of child sex abuse. This was not my first emergency assignment. The previous year—before I was ordained—I was ordered to replace a monk who had been working as a faculty resident at Saint John’s University. He had also been accused of sex abuse.

I was assured by Chancellor of the University, Abbot Jerome Theisen, O.S.B. that these were isolated incidents. Unfortunately, they were not.

In 1992, I could not imagine that hundreds of priests and religious currently in ministry were child molesters—or that the moral decay included Priors, Abbots and Bishops. But I would soon learn. After six years of hearing confessions and being a “company man,” I saw first-hand that the rot of clerical sex abuse of minors is centuries old (read the Didache) and that the knowledge of abuse runs all the way to the Pope.

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INDIA
Business Standard

Kerala Catholic Bishops Council (KCBC) today removed priest Father Jaison Kollannur, who has been listed as the third accused in a human trafficking case, from the post of Secretary of its Youth Commission.

Father Jaison was also the state director of the Kerala Catholic Youth movement.

In a statement here, KCBC Deputy Secretary General and spokesperson Stephen Althara said following media reports, the Council had set up a three-member commission to look into the allegations against the priest.

Kollannur’s name had cropped up in the case relating to Shadwells, an educational management company operating from nearby Kakkanad. It was found to be allegedly involved in the trafficking of unskilled persons to the US in the guise of attending educational conferences.

The company’s CEO Tom Boby and HR Manager Suby Kurien have been arrested

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YAKIMA (WA)
La Diocesis de Yakima

La Diócesis de Yakima ha recibido acusaciones fidedignas de abuso a un menor por un sacerdote visitante de México en la parroquia católica de Moses Lake, Washington que ocurrió comienzo de los años 1970. La Diócesis está animando a otras potenciales víctimas para que se presenten.

El presunto abusador, el ya fallecido Rvdo. Hilario Ramírez, fue invitado a la Parroquia de Our Lady of Fatima en Moses Lake por una familia hispana a comienzos de 1970. Un miembro de la familia lo había conocido en Dilley, Texas, en donde él había sido un sacerdote invitado, y pensó que su ministerio sería útil en la parroquia de Moses Lake.

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YAKIMA (WA)
Roman Catholic Diocese of Yakima

Published on Monday, 17 December 2012

[en espanol]

The Diocese of Yakima has received credible allegations of abuse of a minor by a visiting priest from Mexico at the Catholic parish in Moses Lake, Wash. in the early 1970s. The Diocese is encouraging any other potential victims to come forward.

The alleged abuser, the late Rev. Hilario Ramírez, was invited to Our Lady of Fatima Parish in Moses Lake by a Hispanic family in the early 1970s. A member of the family had met him in Dilley, Texas where he had been a guest priest, and thought his ministry would be helpful in the Moses Lake parish.

During his stay of a few weeks in Moses Lake, Ramírez lived with at least two families, and is alleged to have abused four children, all boys ranging in age from 7-13. Two of the victims are deceased.

One of the surviving victims, from Texas, was able to provide the Diocese basic information about the priest and the abuse. The Diocese, through its investigation, recently was able to surface the name of another victim, who lives in Washington state. Both men have been offered counseling.

Ramírez returned to Mexico after being treated for a stomach ulcer. The Diocese learned from parishioners who stayed in contact with Ramírez that he died in an automobile accident in Mexico in the early 1980s.

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YAKIMA (WA)
Yakima Herald-Republic

Posted on December 17, 2012

By Jane Gargas
Yakima Herald-Republic

YAKIMA, Wash. — The Catholic Diocese of Yakima says it has offered counseling to two men who reported that they were abused in the early 1970s by a priest while he was visiting a Moses Lake parish.

In a news release issued this morning, diocesan officials encouraged any other potential victims to come forward. They said the alleged abuser, the late Rev. Hilario Ramírez, a visiting priest from Mexico, came to Our Lady of Fatima Parish in Moses Lake for a few weeks in the early 1970s. During his stay, Ramírez lived with at least two families, and is alleged to have abused four children, all boys ranging in age from 7 to 13. Two of the victims are deceased.

One of the surviving victims, who lives in Texas, provided basic information about the priest and alleged abuse to the diocese. A second reported victim lives in Washington state. Both men have been offered counseling.

Ramírez returned to Mexico after being treated for a stomach ulcer. Parishioners who stayed in contact with Ramírez told diocesan officials that he died in an automobile accident in Mexico in the early 1980s.

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