ABUSE TRACKER

PHILADELPHIA (PA)
Philadelphia Inquirer

Joseph A. Slobodzian, INQUIRER STAFF WRITER

Posted: Tuesday, January 22, 2013, 1:27 PM

Lawyers for a Philadelphia priest and ex-parochial schoolteacher today began calling character witnesses to convince a Common Pleas Court jury their reputations were inconsistent with men who would rape a 10-year-old altar boy.

It’s not known if the Rev. Charles Engelhardt or Bernard Shero will testify in their defense.
Five witnesses, mostly relatives, were called by lawyer Michael McGovern to testify about Engelhardt’s reputation. Shero’s attorney Burton A. Rose called Shero’s mother and sister to testify before the trial broke for lunch.

Bonita Shero testified that her son was born with congenital cataracts in his eyes and underwent 23 surgeries in the first seven months of his life. Shero said her son is blind in one eye and has limited vision in the other.

Shero said her son excelled in school though he endured nonstop bullying by other children because of his thick glasses and his appearance. She said her son needs to hold papers extremely close to his face to read and is a “close talker” who typically “invades the personal space” of others in conversations.

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PHILADELPHIA (PA)
CBS Philly

By Tony Hanson

PHILADELPHIA (CBS) — The prosecution wrapped up its case today in the trial of two men — a priest and a lay teacher — charged with sexually abusing a Philadelphia schoolboy more than a decade ago.

Father Charles Engelhardt and former lay teacher Bernard Shero have pleaded not guilty to charges they sexually assaualted the same boy in 1999 and 2000 (see related stories).

Today, the prosecution closed its case with the testimony of a pediatrician who testified to various maladies suffered by the alleged victim at about the time of the alleged assaults.

The alleged victim testified earlier that he suffered testicular pain, nausea, coughing, and other similar ailments.

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LOS ANGELES (CA)
The Catholic World Report

January 22, 2013

By Catherine Harmon

In the wake of the release of confidential documents showing how leaders of the Archdiocese of Los Angeles conspired to keep priests who sexually abused children out of jail, Cardinal Roger Mahony—archbishop emeritus of Los Angeles—has apologized for his role in “the archdiocese’s long struggle with the sexual abuse of minors.” Mahony claims he was “naïve” about the impact of abuse upon the priests’ young victims.

That archdiocesan leaders failed to report to the police priests who admitted abusing children was already known; Mahony admitted as much in a 2010 deposition. The documents posted yesterday on the L.A. Times website, which are part of the on-going civil case against the archdiocese, demonstrate a coordinated effort on the part of archdiocesan officials—specifically Cardinal Mahony and his then-vicar of clergy Thomas J. Curry (now an auxiliary bishop for the archdiocese)—to keep abusive priests away from law enforcement. From the Times report:

The newly released records, which the archdiocese fought for years to keep secret, reveal in church leaders’ own words a desire to keep authorities from discovering that children were being molested.

In the confidential letters, filed this month as evidence in a civil court case, Curry proposed strategies to prevent police from investigating three priests who had admitted to church officials that they abused young boys. Curry suggested to Mahony that they prevent them from seeing therapists who might alert authorities and that they give the priests out-of-state assignments to avoid criminal investigators.

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

NEW YORK
CBS New York

NEW YORK (CBSNewYork/AP) – An unlicensed counselor in Brooklyn’s ultra-orthodox Jewish community was sentenced to 103 years in prison Tuesday for the sexual abuse of a girl who came to him with questions about her faith.

Nechemya Weberman was convicted in December of sustained sexual abuse of a child and other charges.

Weberman was not a licensed counselor but spent decades working with couples and families in his community.

The girl, now 18, testified for days about the abuse. She said it started when she was 12 and lasted until she was 15. She had been questioning her faith and her teachers felt she was straying from the right path, so they sent her to Weberman for guidance. Instead, she said, he molested her.

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NEW YORK
New York Post

By JOSH SAUL
Last Updated: 11:59 AM, January 22, 2013

Nechemya Weberman, the prominent Hasidic counselor convicted of sexually abusing a young girl, was sentenced today to 103 years in prison for his heinous crimes.

Weberman is now doomed to die behind bars for his years-long abuse of a now-18-year-old woman. She was only 12 when the abuse began.

The kiddie-sex fiend was found guilty on all 59 counts of abuse by a Brooklyn jury in December. He’s been in jail ever since, awaiting today’s sentencing.

Weberman’s trial tore apart the incredibly private Satmar Hasidic sect, pitting the defendant’s fierce loyalists against the victim’s supporters who claimed the community turned a blind eye to abuse.

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NEW YORK
New York Daily News

By Oren Yaniv And Larry Mcshane / NEW YORK DAILY NEWS

Tuesday, January 22, 2013, 11:53 AM.

A prominent Satmar Hasidic counselor was sentenced Tuesday to 103 years in prison for his repeated sexual abuse of a teenage girl during a three-year stretch of depravity.

Nechemya Weberman, 54, said nothing as the stunning jail term was handed down after his victim delivered a heart-wrenching statement inside a Brooklyn courtroom.

“I remember how I would look in the mirror,” the victim recounted. “I saw a girl who didn’t want to live in her own skin. A girl whose innocence was shattered at age 12.

“A sad girl who wanted to live a normal life, but instead was being victimized by a 50-year-old man who forced her to perform sickening acts again and again.”

Weberman, who served as a counselor for members of the ultra-Orthodox Satmar sect, was convicted last month on 59 counts of abuse for the repeated attacks that occurred from 2007 to 2010.

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NEW YORK
Wall Street Journal

By Pervaiz Shallwani

A prominent ultra-Orthodox Jewish counselor was sentenced to 103 years in prison in connection with the sexual abuse of a teenage girl in the insular Brooklyn community.

Nechemya Weberman, 54 years old, was found guilty in December on 59 counts of sexual abuse and child endangerment, the most serious that he sexually abused the young woman for three years beginning when she was 12.

The victim, now 18, spoke for five minutes Tuesday, at times crying as she read from a prepared statement.

She described herself as “a sad girl who wanted to live a normal life but instead was being victimized by a 50-year-old man who forced her to perform sickening acts again and again.”

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NEW YORK
Washington Post

NY Orthodox counselor convicted of abusing girl who questioned faith gets 103 years in prison

By Associated Press

Updated: Tuesday, January 22, 11:37 AM

NEW YORK — A respected religious counselor in New York City’s ultra-orthodox Jewish community was sentenced Tuesday to 103 years in prison for molesting a girl who came to him with questions about her faith.

Nechemya Weberman was convicted in December of 59 counts, including sustained sexual abuse of a child, endangering the welfare of a child and sexual abuse.

The trial put a spotlight on the ultra-orthodox community in Brooklyn and its strict rules that govern clothing, social customs and interaction with the outside world. Both Weberman, 54, and the girl belonged to the Satmar Hasidic sect.

The girl and her family have been harassed and ostracized, reflecting long-held beliefs that any conflict must be dealt with from within. During the trial, men were arrested on charges they tried to bribe the girl and her now-husband to drop the case. Others were accused of snapping photos of her on the witness stand and posting them online.

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

IRELAND
Limerick Leader

THE REDEMPTORISTS have come out in support of the former head of the order in Limerick who says he is at risk of excommunication if he does not recant his liberal views.

Fr Tony Flannery, who is a former rector of the Redemptorists on Mount St Alphonsus, has been barred from ministry since last year and says he now faces being dismissed from his order outright.

As an author, Fr Flannery has long questioned official church teaching on women priests, clerical celibacy, homosexuality and other issues. But he has written this week of his belief that it was his role in setting up the Association of Catholic Priests, an independent grouping of clerics, in 2010 that brought him to the attention of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, the powerful Vatican office formerly headed up by Pope Benedict XVI.

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

SPRINGFIELD (IL)
Quincy Journal

From wmay.com:

The Springfield Catholic Diocese is releasing new details on the sensational case of a parish priest who is on a leave of absence after having to call 911 for help when he became trapped in a pair of handcuffs.

Bishop Thomas John Paprocki has issued a statement which he says is intended to clarify “misinformation” about the case of Father Thomas Donovan. The statement confirms that Donovan did bind himself in handcuffs and required assistance to get free, but says the incident was not sexual in nature, and was an example of “non-sexual self-bondage”… a psychological disorder as a result of stress. The bishop says Father Donovan was under stress because of factors such as lack of sleep, poor diet, and unreasonable expectations of himself as a pastor.

The statement says Donovan is on indefinite leave and is receiving medical and psychological care. His case will be reviewed by an independent panel before he is allowed to return to ministry.

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PHILADELPHIA (PA)
Daily Times

Published: Tuesday, January 22, 2013

PHILADELPHIA (AP) — Philadelphia prosecutors are wrapping up their case in the abuse trial of a priest and former teacher charged with abusing the same boy in about 1999.

The defense could begin to call witnesses Tuesday after testimony from the accuser’s childhood doctor.

The accuser says he complained of genital and stomach pain, but did not tell the doctor he had been molested.

Years later, he told a drug counselor he’d been sexually abused by two Roman Catholic priests and a teacher.

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SPRINGFIELD (IL)
Roman Catholic Diocese of Springfield in Illinois

January 19, 2012

There have been many stories circulating in the media and on the Internet about the 911 call for assistance made on November 28 by Father Thomas Donovan, Pastor of Saint Aloysius Parish Springfield, Illinois. Since some of those stories are untrue and even defamatory, I wish to provide as much factual information as possible about what happened and how it is being addressed.

As described in the transcript of Father Donovan’s 911 call and in the police report, both of which have been released to the public, Father Donovan had bound himself in handcuffs and called for assistance when he was unable to remove them. The police officers state that he was alone and fully clothed when they arrived at the rectory. There was no indication that anyone else had been present. No crime was committed, no one was arrested, no alcohol or drugs were involved.

I was first informed of this incident on December 6th. On December 8th, I met with Father Donovan and Monsignor Carl Kemme, my Vicar General, in my office at the Catholic Pastoral Center. Father Donovan said that he was mortified by what happened and acknowledged that the information that had been reported to me was basically accurate. He insisted that he had been alone the whole time of this incident and denied that there was any sexual component to this.

Following our discussion, Father Donovan requested a leave of absence, which I granted. Monsignor Kemme celebrated the Masses at St. Aloysius Church on the weekend of December 15-16, informing the parishioners of Father Donovan’s leave of absence and my appointment of Monsignor David Lantz, Pastor of St. John Vianney Parish in Sherman and St. James Parish in Riverton, as temporary parochial administrator of St. Aloysius Parish. Monsignor Kemme also read a statement to the parishioners from Father Donovan in which he said, “While I have not been involved in anything illegal or anything otherwise jeopardizing the safety, welfare, or morals of other persons, I have been responding to the stresses of priestly ministry in a way that has come to compromise my own personal safety and welfare. I am under the care of a doctor to get the assistance that I need.”

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SPRINGFIELD (IL)
The State Journal-Register

By DAN PETRELLA (daniel.petrella@sj-r.com)
The State Journal-Register

Posted Jan 22, 2013

The pastor of St. Aloysius Catholic Church in Springfield has been placed on “an indefinite leave of absence for an extended period of professional help and spiritual renewal,” Bishop Thomas John Paprocki of the Springfield Catholic Diocese announced today.

The Rev. Bernard Thomas Donovan, who has been on a leave of absence since mid-December, is seeking treatment from a clinical therapist for “non-sexual self-bondage,” according to Paprocki’s written statement released on Tuesday.

Donovan called 911 about 4:45 a.m. Nov. 28 after he became trapped in a pair of handcuffs he had put on himself, according to a police report and a recording of the 911 call.

The priest, who was ordained in 2005, told the 911 dispatcher that he was “going to need help getting out before this becomes a medical emergency.”

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SPRINGFIELD (IL)
KHQA

SPRINGFIELD, ILL. — Bishop Thomas John Paprocki of the Diocese of Springfield in Illinois has issued a statement regarding a Catholic priest on leave from his church after police found him handcuffed inside the church rectory in Springfield.

Bishop Paprocki said he was first informed of the incident on December 6th. “On December 8th, I met with Father Donovan and Monsignor Carl Kemme, my Vicar General, in my office at the Catholic Pastoral Center. Father Donovan said that he was mortified by what happened and acknowledged that the information that had been reported to me was basically accurate. He insisted that he had been alone the whole time of this incident and denied that there was any sexual component to this,” Bishop Paprocki wrote in the statement.

Bishop Paprocki granted Father Donovan a requested leave of absence and acknowledged in his statement that, with Father Donovan’s consent to disclose patient information, “he is being treated by a clinical therapist and is receiving appropriate medical care.”

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CANADA
CBC News

Another sexual assault charge has been laid against George Smith, a retired Roman Catholic priest.

The paper work was filed Tuesday in Corner Brook.

Smith was supposed to be sentenced in Newfoundland and Labrador Supreme Court this morning on 40 charges related to the abuse of young people.

However, the additional charge has delayed proceedings.

The offences date from the 1960s through to the 1980s.

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VATICAN CITY
Vatican Radio

The schedule for a Study Day titled “The Code: A Reform Desired and Requested by the Council” was unveiled Tuesday to journalists in the Vatican Press Office. It will take place on 25 January, in the Pius X Hall, Rome, marking the 30th anniversary of the promulgation of the Code of Canon Law.

The study day has been organized by the Pontifical Council for Legislative Texts and the International Institute of Canon Law and Comparative Studies of Religion in Lugano, Switzerland and is sponsored by the Joseph Ratzinger (Benedict XVI) Vatican Foundation and the John Paul II Foundation. Participating in the conference were Cardinal Francesco Coccopalmerio, president of the Pontifical Council for Legislative Texts, Bishop Juan Ignacio Arrieta, secretary of that dicastery, and Msgr. Giuseppe Antonio Scotti, president of the Joseph Ratzinger (Benedict XVI) Vatican Foundation.

Cardinal Coccopalmerio began his address with the recollection that Blessed John XXIII, in his speech convening Vatican Council II in 1959, explained that the Council’s legal scope was to bring about the awaited revision of the 1917 Code. “In his broad perspective, the Pope saw clearly that the revision of the Code had to be guided by the new ecclesiology that emerged from an ecumenical and a global summit such as the Council.” Blessed John Paul II, under whose pontificate the Code was promulgated, also repeated that “the council’s ecclesiological structure clearly required a renewed formulation of its laws”.

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IRELAND
U.S. Catholic

By Bryan Cones

Another priest bites the dust, or may soon: Father Tony Flannery, an Irish Redemptorist priest and founder of the Irish reform group the Association of Catholic Priests, has broken the silence demanded of him by the Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith by publishing an op-ed in the Irish Times. In it, Flannery chroncles his interactions with the Vatican through his Redemptorist order. The CDF’s terms were that Flannery no longer speak publicly about reform issues in the church, specifically, “Either I sign a statement, for publication, stating that I accepted teachings that I could not accept, or I would remain permanently banned from priestly ministry, and maybe face more serious sanctions. It is important to state clearly that these issues were not matters of fundamental teaching, but rather of church governance.”

Flannery doesn’t say specifically which church teaching he must sign his assent to, but the work of the ACP has largely centered on issues of church governance and the new English translation of the Roman Missal. Flannery notes that a woman reading the gospel at Mass drew sanction against the priest who permitted it, and the role of women in the church’s ministry remains a neuralgic point for the Vatican. Either way, Flannery has decided that he cannot accept the Vatican’s demands and now awaits his fate, which could include expulsion from the community that has been his home since 1964. One hopes that Flannery does not suffer the same fate as former Maryknoll priest Roy Bourgeois.

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LOS ANGELES (CA)
Los Angeles Times

January 22, 2013 | 6:51am

Internal Catholic church records released Monday show that 15 years before the clergy sex abuse scandal came to light, then-Archbishop Roger M. Mahony and a top advisor discussed ways to conceal the molestation of children from law enforcement.

Times reporters Harriet Ryan and Victoria Kim will join L.A. Now Live at 9 a.m. to discuss the records.

Ryan, Kim and staff writer Ashley Powers reported that the records offer the strongest evidence yet of a concerted effort by officials in the nation’s largest Catholic diocese to shield abusers from police. The newly released records, which the archdiocese fought for years to keep secret, reveal in church leaders’ own words a desire to keep authorities from discovering that children were being molested.

The records contain memos written in 1986 and 1987 by Mahony and Msgr. Thomas J. Curry, then the archdiocese’s chief advisor on sex abuse cases. In the confidential letters, Curry proposed strategies to prevent police from investigating three priests who had admitted to church officials that they had abused young boys. Curry suggested to Mahony that they prevent the priests from seeing therapists who might alert authorities and that they give the priests out-of-state assignments to avoid criminal investigators.

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CALIFORNIA
Orange County Weekly

[exhibit 49 – Michael Buckley – via Anthony DeMarco, Jeff Anderson & Associates]

By Gustavo Arellano
Tue., Jan. 22 2013

Yesterday, the Archdiocese of Los Angeles released thousands of pages of personnel files that confirms what those of us who have followed the Catholic Church sex-abuse scandal have known for a good decade but which the vast majority of Catholics refuse to acknowledge: that their leaders, for forever, not only knew about the pedophile priests in their ranks but actively sought to cover up the rapes.

So why should we care about what happens in LA? Because some of those personnel files involve priests who raped in Orange County back when we were part of the Archdiocese of Los Angeles, which we’re going to display in the coming days. And, unsurprisingly, because part of the coverup up in LA involved the Diocese of Orange and our own former, perpetually bumbling bishop, Tod D. Brown.

In today’s episode of How the Brownie Protects Pedo-Priests, we turn our attention to disgraced priest Michael D. Buckley. We had previously written about Buckley in 2005, when information at the time revealed Buckley molested at least eight boys while at Immaculate Heart of Mary in SanTana, back when it was a part of the Archdiocese of Los Angeles. Information at the time on Buckley’s perversion was hard to find, though, namely because his personnel file hadn’t been released by then-Cardinal Roger Mahony, and it was technically an Archdiocese of Los Angeles case and thus out of my beat.

Now that his case file is out, though, it turns out that Buckley was a monster in Orange County–and that not only LA diocesan officials know, but that Brown never bothered to alert Immaculate Heart of Mary parishioners after hearing from the victims who finally brought Buckley down.

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LOS ANGELES (CA)
KABC

[links to the documents – Anthony DeMarco, Jeff Anderson & Associates]

Q McCray

LOS ANGELES (KABC) — Church sex abuse victims and their supporters are expected to blast the Roman Catholic Archdiocese and retired Cardinal Roger Mahony during a rally in Downtown Los Angeles Tuesday.

The protest is over newly released documents detailing a pattern of cover-ups.

Victims are demanding action in Tuesday’s conference and asking current Archbishop Jose Gomez to publically admonish former Cardinal Roger Mahony for knowingly covering for molester priests.

The newly released documents reveal that retired Cardinal Roger Mahony and other top officials with the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Los Angeles tried to conceal the molestation of children from law enforcement decades ago.

The files show church leaders moved abusive priests out of state, handled damage control and consulted with accused priests behind the scenes.

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DEUTSCHLAND
kath.net

Der «Anwalt der Kirche» habe einen Antrag vor dem Hamburger Landgericht zurückgezogen

München/Bonn (kath.net/KNA) Im Streit um die kirchliche Missbrauchsstudie hat die Deutsche Bischofskonferenz laut «Süddeutscher Zeitung» (Dienstag) offenbar einen Rückschlag hinnehmen müssen. Der «Anwalt der Kirche» habe einen Antrag vor dem Hamburger Landgericht zurückgezogen, der dem bisherigen Leiter der Studie, Christian Pfeiffer, kritische Aussagen über die Rolle der Kirche bei der Aufarbeitung des Missbrauchsskandals untersagen wollte. «Damit ist dieser erneute Zensurversuch gescheitert», zitiert das Blatt den Kriminologen.

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DEUTSCHLAND
Spiegel

Von Barbara Hans

Die Missbrauchsstudie der katholischen Kirche mit dem Kriminologischen Forschungsinstitut Niedersachsen ist gescheitert – aber wer trägt die Schuld? KFN-Chef Pfeiffer wehrt sich im Interview gegen Kritik an seinem Vorgehen und sagt: “Es ist der größte Frust meines gesamten Wissenschaftlerlebens.”

2010 erschütterte der Missbrauchsskandal die katholische Kirche: Immer mehr Opfer brachen ihr Schweigen, anhand immer weiterer Fälle wurde deutlich, wie die Kirche auf die Übergriffe durch Geistliche jahrelang reagiert hatte – indem sie die Kirchenleute versetzte, die Taten vertuschte. Die Glaubwürdigkeit der Kirche war ramponiert.

Gemeinsam mit dem Kriminologischen Forschungsinstitut Niedersachsen (KFN) wurde im Juli 2011 ein Forschungsprojekt aufgelegt, das die Personalakten Geistlicher untersuchen sollte. Nun, rund anderthalb Jahre später, ist das Projekt gescheitert.

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YOUNGSTOWN (OH)
Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests

WHAT
Holding signs and childhood photos at a sidewalk news conference, clergy sex abuse victims and their supporters will hand deliver a letter to the Mahoney County District Attorney urging him to investigate the Youngstown Catholic Diocese for clergy sex crimes and cover ups. They will also disclose that

–they believe at least two more credibly accused predator priests are still being kept in ministry, and
–a just “outed” credibly accused child molesting cleric worked at another Catholic school.
And they will
–urge victims to contact secular authorities, not church officials, and
–beg anyone who may have seen, suspected, or suffered clergy crimes in Youngstown to come forward, call police, expose wrongdoing, protect kids and start healing.

WHEN
Tuesday, January 22, at 1:00 p.m.

WHERE
Outside the Mahoney County District Attorney’s office, 21 West Boardman St. (corner of Phelps) in Youngstown, OH

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NEW YORK
Gothamist

This week, Nechemya Weberman—the ultra-Orthodox Jewish counselor who was found guilty of sexually abusing a teen girl in Brooklyn starting when she was 12—will finally be sentenced. Weberman, 54, was found guilty of 59 counts of sexual abuse after a long trial that included illegal courtroom photos, bleach attacks, and damning testimonies. Now, the News reports that Weberman allegedly sexually abused at least 10 more teens and married women who he counseled.

The News says the stories of the other woman who were allegedly abused by him matches up with that of the now 17-year-old woman who testified against him in court for four harrowing days in November. That woman had been forced by her school to meet with Weberman, who is not a licensed therapist, for counseling after she started questioning the strict rules of her ultra-Orthodox Hasidic Satmar sect.

Other women, who told the News they were sexually abused by Weberman, said they were too afraid of retribution from the community to speak out. He allegedly told one young victim, “That ‘I learned Kabbalah and we were a couple in another incarnation,’ ” said a friend of the woman. Rabbi Yakov Horowitz, who runs a Jewish youth program, said he had heard stories like that before from young women who had been sent to meet with Weberman: “The intimate acts he was performing were intended as a form of repentance for sins committed in their previous lifetimes,” said Horowitz.

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

LOS ANGELES (CA)
BishopAccountability.org

The long-awaited Los Angeles archdiocesan documents are beginning to appear. Already we see strong indications that Cardinal Mahony and his management team acted deliberately to prevent abusers from being apprehended by the police. We urge the U.S. Attorney and the Los Angeles County District Attorney to examine this evidence, and if Cardinal Mahony, Bishop Curry, and their associates conspired to obstruct justice, then indictments should follow. We urge prosecutors also to consider the evidence in the Aguilar files of international cooperation between bishops to help a known child molester evade criminal prosecution. These documents and other files that will be released in coming months offer a basis to determine whether priests were transferred in violation of federal law.

Terence McKiernan
President
BishopAccountability.org
508-479-9304 cell

About BishopAccountability.org
Founded in 2003, BishopAccountability.org is an online library with more than 100,000 pages of church records, legal documents, and media reports. Its mission is to give the public one-stop access to information pertaining to the crisis in all U.S. dioceses and throughout the world. An independent non-profit, BishopAccountability.org is an archive and data center. It is not a victims’ advocacy group nor a reform group.

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LOS ANGELES (CA)
KABC

[with video]

Leslie Miller

LOS ANGELES (KABC) — Confidential personnel records are now offering a glimpse into the Catholic Church sex abuse scandal. They detail a pattern of cover-ups within the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Los Angeles. For years, victims have been clamoring to get their hands on these documents.

The documents are part of a lawsuit seeking damages in a case involving a Mexican priest accused of abusing at least 26 children after he was transferred to Los Angeles in the 1980s. The documents include personnel files of 13 other clerics as well as notes written by Cardinal Roger Mahony and other church leaders.

The newly released documents reveal that retired Cardinal Roger Mahony and other top officials with the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Los Angeles tried to conceal the molestation of children from law enforcement decades ago.

The files show church leaders moved abusive priests out of state, handled damage control and consulted with accused priests behind the scenes.

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

LOS ANGELES (CA)
Alabama’s 13

Patrick Rimmer
Published: January 22, 2013

Documents released as part of a lawsuit against the Los Angeles archdiocese show the recently retired Cardinal Roger Mahony and other church officials shielded abusive priests from investigation to protect the church from the engulfing scandal.

The files show leaders moved priests out of state, handled damage control and consulted with accused priests behind the scenes.

Those types of details have emerged elsewhere, but the LA documents also contain criticism from a top official who condemned leaders for keeping followers in the dark rather than protecting children.

The pages were filed with a motion seeking punitive damages for the alleged victim of another priest.

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PHILADELPHIA (PA)
CBS Philly

By Tony Hanson

PHILADELPHIA (CBS) – The prosecution is expected to rest today and the defense will begin in the trial of a priest and former lay teacher charged with sexually assaulting the same boy back in 1999 and 2000. Both men have pleaded not guilty, but it’s not known whether either or both the defendants will testify.

The prosecution is expected to present medical testimony about physical maladies suffered by a then young boy after he was allegedly sexually assaulted by Father Charles Engelhardt and former lay teacher Bernard Shero in 1999 and 2000.

Then the defense will begin. There will be character and fact witnesses, even the alleged victim’s own brother could be called to testify and the defendants could testify.

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WISCONSIN
Legacy

Obituary

Age 64 ~ Originally of Milwaukee, WI On January 4, 2013 Preceded in death by mother Rose (nee Emanuele); father Joseph; and sisters Carmela Campanaro and Antoinette. Survived by brother Carmelo “Mel”; brother-in-law Paul Campanaro; many nieces, nephews, relatives, and friends. Father Joe touched many lives in service as a priest and will be deeply missed. Memorial service 2pm on Saturday January 12 with visitation one hour prior to service at O’Connell Family Funeral Home, 520 11th St. S., Hudson, WI. 715-386-3725

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WISCONSIN
Patch

January 8, 2013

The Rev. Salvatore Joseph “Father Joe” Collova A.A.C., 64, of Hammond, died Friday, Jan. 4, 2013, at the American Heritage Care Center in Hammond.

Father Joe served as a Roman Catholic Priest in the Milwaukee Diocese for such churches as St. Rita’s Catholic Church. Later, he dissolved his association with the Roman Catholic Church and become affiliated with the American Apostolic Catholic Church.

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NEW YORK
Las Vegas Sun

The Associated Press

Tuesday, Jan. 22, 2013

A religious counselor in New York’s ultra-orthodox Jewish community is facing 25 years in prison after he was convicted of sexually abusing a 12-year-old girl who came to him for help.

Nechemya Weberman (nuh-HEHM’-yuh) is scheduled for sentencing Tuesday. He was convicted in December of sustained sexual abuse of a child. The trial put a spotlight on the insular Satmar Hasidic sect and its strict rules governing clothing, social customs and interaction with the outside world.

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UNITED STATES
Christian Catholicism

Jerry Slevin

If it wasn’t already clear to fair minded people, the judicially ordered release of the Los Angeles Archdiocesan secret, at times obscene, priest abuse files, after years of stonewalling by Cardinal Mahony, just makes clear once again how the U.S. Catholic hierarchy flouts laws and treats easily managed local criminal justice officials as complete morons. And the hierarchy so far has gotten away with it.

Recently, experts at the Vatican conference on priest abuse of children reportedly estimated that so far over 100,000 children in the USA alone have been sexually abused by priests. Yet to date not a single U.S. bishop has been held criminally responsible for the crimes the LA files confirm once again the Catholic hierarchy routinely facilitates. With declining numbers of domestic priests, and women and married men needlessly excluded from the potential priest pool, more sexual deviates will likely be ordained needlessly and more predators will likely be retained criminally. It’s just arithmetic, you know! Priests are paid little, but generate per capita considerable revenues for the well fed Catholic hierarchy.

The LA files, like the Boston, Philly, Milwaukee, and many other U.S. dioceses’ previously released secret files, make clear, this is no coincidence. Rather it appears clearly to be a worldwide personnel policy orchestrated from the Vatican that is clearly anti-children.

What is holding up President Obama? Why doesn’t he step up here? Please see my statement, “Why Does the Pope Play the USA as a Fool”, accessible at: http://wp.me/P2YEZ3-ey

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CONNECTICUT
The Daily Beast

Jan 22, 2013

Amid reports of cross-dressing and having sex in the rectory, “Monsignor Meth,” was nabbed on charges that he used an adult novelty shop to launder a transcontinental drug enterprise. Michael Daly reports.

Sex toys, ruby red slippers, drug paraphernalia, and a Roman collar!

Those all were to be elements of The Land of Oz & Dorothy’s Place, a combination adult novelty shop that Monsignor Kevin Wallin apparently planned to take over and move to a new location after he was suspended from his Bridgeport, Conn., parish amid reports of him cross-dressing and having sex in the rectory.

Add methamphetamine to the list, according to the government, which alleges that the 61-year-old cleric now dubbed “Monsignor Meth” used the store to launder proceeds from a transcontinental drug enterprise.

That charge is in a criminal complaint federal prosecutors filed after Wallin was arrested on Jan. 3. He had been just hours from departing on a 12-day trip London, imparting to his latest flock a new sense of needing a priest.

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DEUTSCHLAND
Main Post

Streitthema: Zensur-Vorwurf an die Bischöfe

Christian Pfeiffer kann Zensur-Vorwürfe gegen die Bischöfe bei der Aufarbeitung von Missbrauchsfällen in der katholischen Kirche aufrechterhalten. Der Verband der Diözesen Deutschlands (VDD) wollte dem Direktor des Kriminologischen Forschungsinstituts Niedersachsen das per Einstweiliger Verfügung beim Landgericht Hamburg verbieten lassen.

Nun habe der VDD – wohl nach einem Hinweis des Gerichts über die Aussichtslosigkeit des Vorhabens – seinen Antrag zurückgezogen, sagte Pfeifer am Montag im Gespräch mit dieser Zeitung. Pfeiffer sieht sich „in der Sache bestätigt“.

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UNITED KINGDOM
The Guardian

David Leigh, Jean François Tanda and Jessica Benhamou

The Guardian, Monday 21 January 2013

Few passing London tourists would ever guess that the premises of Bulgari, the upmarket jewellers in New Bond Street, had anything to do with the pope. Nor indeed the nearby headquarters of the wealthy investment bank Altium Capital, on the corner of St James’s Square and Pall Mall.

But these office blocks in one of London’s most expensive districts are part of a surprising secret commercial property empire owned by the Vatican.

Behind a disguised offshore company structure, the church’s international portfolio has been built up over the years, using cash originally handed over by Mussolini in return for papal recognition of the Italian fascist regime in 1929.

Since then the international value of Mussolini’s nest-egg has mounted until it now exceeds £500m. In 2006, at the height of the recent property bubble, the Vatican spent £15m of those funds to buy 30 St James’s Square. Other UK properties are at 168 New Bond Street and in the city of Coventry. It also owns blocks of flats in Paris and Switzerland.

The surprising aspect for some will be the lengths to which the Vatican has gone to preserve secrecy about the Mussolini millions. The St James’s Square office block was bought by a company called British Grolux Investments Ltd, which also holds the other UK properties. Published registers at Companies House do not disclose the company’s true ownership, nor make any mention of the Vatican.

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AUSTRALIA
The Guardian

Anna Pha

The terms of reference and selection of Commissioners for the Royal Commission (RC) into institutional responses to allegations and incidents of child sexual abuse have been widely welcomed. The terms of reference reflect the sensitive nature of the issues and the difficulties many will have in recounting their experiences. They also give the RC considerable flexibility in how it conducts the inquiry.

For years calls by victims’ support and advocacy groups for a national inquiry have fallen on deaf ears as the cover-ups and atrocities continued. No government had the courage to stand up to the powerful church forces that stood in the way of justice. But the pain did not go away; the wounds could not even begin to heal without acknowledgement and justice. Lives continued to be destroyed. At last there is hope that their voices will be heard and appropriate action taken.

The trigger for the inquiry was the strength of public opinion following the ABC’s Lateline TV program on November 8, 2012 in which detective chief inspector Peter Fox put his life and job on the line in an interview with Tony Jones.

“I can testify from my own experience the Church covers up, silences victims, hinders police investigations, alerts offenders, destroys evidence and moves priests to protect the good name of the Church,” Fox said in a letter to the NSW Premier. (The Guardian 21 -11-12)

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LOS ANGELES (CA)
LA Observed

By Kevin Roderick | January 21, 2013

Documents ordered released from the sexual abuse files of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Los Angeles are starting to get out. Today’s LA Times lede is a grabber: “Fifteen years before the clergy sex abuse scandal came to light, Archbishop Roger M. Mahony and a top advisor plotted to conceal child molestation by priests from law enforcement, including keeping them out of California to avoid prosecution…”

The archdiocese’s failure to purge pedophile clergy and reluctance to cooperate with law enforcement has previously been known. But the memos written in 1986 and 1987 by Mahony and Msgr. Thomas J. Curry, then the archdiocese’s chief advisor on sex abuse cases, offer the strongest evidence yet of a concerted effort by officials in the nation’s largest Catholic diocese to shield abusers from police. The newly released records, which the archdiocese fought for years to keep secret, reveal in church leaders’ own words a desire to keep authorities from discovering that children were being molested.

In the confidential letters, filed this month as evidence in a civil court case, Curry proposed strategies to prevent police from investigating three priests who had admitted to church officials that they abused young boys. Curry suggested to Mahony that they prevent them from seeing therapists who might alert authorities and that they give the priests out-of-state assignments to avoid criminal investigators.

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LOS ANGELES (CA)
Southwest Riverside News Network

By City News Service, on January 21, 2013

Former Archbishop Roger Mahony and a top adviser discussed ways to prevent law enforcement from learning about molestations of children by clergy more than a decade before the abuses became public knowledge, according to internal Catholic church records released today.

Communications penned in 1986 and 1987 by Mahony and Msgr. Thomas Curry, then the archdiocese’s chief adviser on sex abuse cases, document efforts by the diocese to keep law enforcement in the dark, the Los Angeles Times reported on its website.

In the confidential letters filed in connection with a civil court case — and obtained by The Times — Curry proposed strategies to prevent police from investigating three priests who had admitted to church officials that they abused young boys.

Curry suggested to Mahony that they prevent the clergymen from seeing therapists who might alert authorities.

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LOS ANGELES (CA)
The New York Times

[links to the documents – Anthony DeMarco, Jeff Anderson & Associates]

By IAN LOVETT

Published: January 21, 2013

LOS ANGELES — The retired archbishop of Los Angeles, Cardinal Roger M. Mahony, and other high-ranking clergymen in the archdiocese worked quietly to keep evidence of child molesting away from law enforcement officials and shield abusive priests from criminal prosecution more than a decade before the scandal became public, according to confidential church records.

The documents, filed in court as part of lawsuit against the archdiocese and posted online by The Los Angeles Times on Monday, offer the clearest glimpse yet of how the archdiocese dealt with abusive priests in the decades before the scandal broke, including Cardinal Mahony’s personal involvement in covering up their crimes.

Rather than defrocking priests and contacting the police, the archdiocese sent priests who had molested children to out-of-state treatment facilities, in large part because therapists in California were legally obligated to report any evidence of child abuse to the police, the files make clear.

In 1986, Cardinal Mahony wrote to a New Mexico treatment center where one abusive priest, Msgr. Peter Garcia, had been sent.

“I believe that if Monsignor Garcia were to reappear here within the archdiocese we might very well have some type of legal action filed in both the criminal and civil sectors,” Cardinal Mahony wrote.

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LOS ANGELES (CA)
dotCommonweal

January 21, 2013, 9:28 pm

Posted by Paul Moses

Newly released documents detailing how far church leaders in Los Angeles went to conceal clergy sexual abuse in the late 1980s help fill in the story of the scandal and how it developed at the highest level of the nation’s largest diocese. As reported in the Los Angeles Times:

Fifteen years before the clergy sex abuse scandal came to light, Archbishop Roger M. Mahony and a top advisor discussed ways to conceal the molestation of children from law enforcement, according to internal Catholic church records released Monday.

The archdiocese’s failure to purge pedophile clergy and reluctance to cooperate with law enforcement has previously been known. But the memos written in 1986 and 1987 by Mahony and Msgr. Thomas J. Curry, then the archdiocese’s chief advisor on sex abuse cases, offer the strongest evidence yet of a concerted effort by officials in the nation’s largest Catholic diocese to shield abusers from police. The newly released records, which the archdiocese fought for years to keep secret, reveal in church leaders’ own words a desire to keep authorities from discovering that children were being molested.

The documents also show that in addition to hiding cases from police, an effort was made to avoid having predatory priests get counseling within the state because the California therapists would need to report the abuse to authorities. These scenes from internal records of the Archdiocese of Los Angeles offer further evidence that a coverup was orchestrated at high levels of the church. There is no sense that Mahony and his vicar were misled by therapists. They knew the abusive priests’ conduct was criminal. They may not have known the full scope of the sexual abuse that existed, but they knew it was a gigantic problem and sought to keep it secret.

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CALIFORNIA
Redlands Daily Facts

By Dana Bartholomew, Barbara Jones and Brenda Gazzar, Staff Writers
dailynews.com
Posted: 01/21/2013

Nearly a decade ago, Manuel Vega held a weeklong sidewalk vigil downtown in the hope of persuading the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Los Angeles to come clean about sexual abuse by its priests.

With Monday’s court-ordered release of hundreds of pages of unredacted personnel files, Vega feels that his prayers – and those of other clerical abuse victims – are finally being answered.

“Overall, I think it’s a win-win,” said Vega, a 46-year-old former policeman who lives in Oxnard and who testified more than a decade ago in the early days of the abuse scandal that eventually shattered the church.

“I think this should serve as a model for the release of other (unredacted) files by the archdiocese,” said Vega, a former altar boy whose lawsuit claimed he was abused by Father Fidencio Silva at Our Lady of Guadalupe Catholic Church in Oxnard.

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LOS ANGELES (CA)
South Bend Tribune

[links to the documents – Anthony DeMarco, Jeff Anderson & Associates]

Reuters
12:36 a.m. EST, January 22, 2013

(Reuters) – Two Catholic Church officials in California plotted to conceal child molestation by priests from law enforcement as late as 1987, the Los Angeles Times reported on Monday, citing newly released internal Church records.

The records show that Los Angeles Archbishop Roger Mahony, who is now retired, and his top adviser on child sex abuse cases, Monsignor Thomas Curry, worked with other Church officials in 1987 to send priests accused of abuse out of state to avoid prosecution, the newspaper said.

Mahony and Curry also tried to keep pedophile priests from confessing to therapists who would be obligated to report the crimes, the newspaper said, citing the records, which were released on Los Angeles Times’ website.

Curry even suggested in 1987 they send a pedophile priest to “a lawyer who is also a psychiatrist” to put the priest’s “reports under the protection of privilege,” the Times reported.

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LOS ANGELES (CA)
Anthony DeMarco
Jeff Anderson & Associates

[This site has links to priest files from the Archdiocese of Los Angeles.]

January 21, 2013

Because of one survivor’s fight in the California Civil Courts against Father Nicolas Aguilar Rivera and the Archdiocese of Los Angeles, never seen before documents containing vital evidence of how clergy abuse cases were handled by the Archdiocese are now available for public view.

Portions of the thousands of documents filed in this case are posted on the web site www.abusedinsocal.com. The documents, which were not a part of the documents involved in the 2007 settlements with the Archdiocese of Los Angeles, demonstrate that former Archbishop and now Cardinal Roger Mahony knew from his first days in office that priests under his supervision were sexually abusing children in Los Angeles.

The documents further demonstrate that contrary to Mahony’s past claims, he was imtimately involve in handling the sex abuse scandal of priests in Los Angeles from 1985 to 2011 and communicated directly with priest perpetrators and their therapists–just as his predecessors McIntrye and Manning had done before him.

Also included in the documents is evidence that as Archbishop, Mahony worked with his Vicar for Clergy to thwart law enforcement involvement by ordering Pastors to not give Altar Boy lists to LAPD detectives, while at the same time, cozying up to high ranking officers at LAPD Juvenile Division. …
Priest files.

A Priest cheat sheet

Father Cristobal Garcia O.P. 1985

Father Eleuterio Ramos 1975

Father James Ford 1987

Father Larry Lovell C.M.F. 1985

Father Lynn Caffoe 1975

Father Matthew Sprouffske O.Carm 1986

Father Michael Baker 1986

Father Michael Baker 1987

Father Nicolas Aguilar Rivera 1987

Father Nicolas Aguilar Rivera II 1988

Father Santiago Tamayo 1987

Monsignor Peter Garcia 1984

Monsignor Peter Garcia 1987

Wempe LAARCH 021282

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LOS ANGELES (CA)
The Worthy Adversary

Posted by Joelle Casteix on January 21, 2013

The complete library of documents can be viewed here.

For years, all we heard from Cardinal Roger Mahony was that he “may have made mistakes” and that “new policies would ensure child safety.”

Now we know that Cardinal Mahony’s role in the cover-up of child sex abuse in the Los Angeles Archdiocese was hands-on, insidious and evil.

From the Los Angeles Times:

“In a letter about Father Michael Wempe, who had acknowledged using a 12-year-old parishioner as what a church official called his “sex partner,” [Msgr. Thomas J.] Curry recounted extensive conversations with the priest about potential criminal prosecution.

“He is afraid … records will be sought by the courts at some time and that they could convict him,”Curry wrote to Mahony. ”He is very aware that what he did comes within the scope of criminal law.”

Curry proposed Wempe could go to an out-of-state diocese “if need be.” He called it “surprising” that a church-paid counselor hadn’t reported Wempe to police and wrote that he and Wempe ”agreed it would be better if Mike did not return to him.”

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IRELAND
GlobalPost

* Third cleric to face action for challenging teaching
* Called for reconsideration on contraception, celibacy
* Irish relations with Vatican strained over sex abuse

By Stephen Mangan

DUBLIN, Jan 21 (Reuters) – An Irish Roman Catholic priest said he is being threatened with excommunication by the Vatican because of his advocacy of liberal views on some of the Church’s teachings.

Father Tony Flannery is the third cleric in the past three months to face disciplinary action for challenging Roman Catholic teachings, following the expulsion of a priest in the United States and stripping the title of another in Austria.

Flannery, 66, was suspended last year by the Vatican’s watchdog, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, for calling for a reconsideration of Church teachings on issues such as contraception, homosexuality, women’s ordination and clerical celibacy.

“One of the threats that the Vatican have used against me is the threat of excommunication … my order has told me that I may also be facing dismissal if they are ordered by the Vatican to do so,” Flannery told Reuters on Monday.

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CONNECTICUT
CT Post

Anne M. Amato

Published 5:52 pm, Monday, January 21, 2013

BRIDGEPORT — Looking back there were the usual warning signs, those nagging red flags. In Monsignor Kevin Wallin’s case, there was the weight loss, the change in his usually meticulous appearance and his erratic behavior that concerned his parishioners and others, including church officials.

“He just didn’t look right; he didn’t seem the same,” said Brian Wallace, spokesman for the Diocese of Bridgeport.

Then came the talk about inappropriate sexual behavior by Wallin, then pastor at St. Augustine’s Church. “We became aware that he was acting out sexually — with men — in the church rectory,” said Wallace.

The main concern was to rule out what Wallin, 61, was doing was criminal, in particular that he was doing anything inappropriate with children.

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LOS ANGELES (CA)
Los Angeles Times

The former lead­er of the Los Angeles arch­diocese, Car­din­al Ro­ger M. Ma­hony, and a top ad­visor dis­cussed ways to con­ceal the sexu­al ab­use of chil­dren from law en­force­ment of­fi­cials, ac­cord­ing to in­tern­al church re­cords re­leased Monday.

In memos writ­ten to Ma­hony in 1986 and 1987 con­tained in per­son­nel files for 14 priests and filed this month as evid­ence in a court case, his chief ad­visor on sex ab­use cases pro­posed strategies to pre­vent po­lice from in­vest­ig­at­ing three priests who had ad­mit­ted mo­lest­ing young boys to church of­fi­cials.

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LOS ANGELES (CA)
Los Angeles Times

Cardinal Roger M. Mahony on Monday apologized for the way the L.A. archdiocese dealt with priest child abuse claims after a new round of documents were released.

“I am sorry,” Mahony’s statement concluded.

The new documents show:

Fifteen years before the clergy sex abuse scandal came to light, Mahony and a top advisor discussed ways to conceal the molestation of children from law enforcement.

DOCUMENTS: Los Angeles Archdiocese priest abuse files

The archdiocese’s failure to purge pedophile clergy and reluctance to cooperate with law enforcement had been known previously. But the memos written in 1986 and 1987 by Mahony and Msgr. Thomas J. Curry, then the archdiocese’s chief advisor on sex abuse cases, offer the strongest evidence yet of a concerted effort by officials in the nation’s largest Catholic diocese to shield abusers from police. The newly released records, which the archdiocese fought for years to keep secret, reveal in church leaders’ own words a desire to keep authorities from discovering that children were being abused.

In the confidential letters, filed this month as evidence in a civil court case, Curry proposed strategies to prevent police from investigating three priests who had admitted to church officials that they abused young boys. Curry suggested to Mahony that they prevent them from seeing therapists who might alert authorities and that they give the priests out-of-state assignments to avoid criminal investigators.

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OKLAHOMA
Survivors Network of Those

Posted by Barbara Dorris on January 21, 2013

A case against a Victory Christian Church employee is set to move forward tomorrow, but he has filed a motion to get the case dropped.

We hope that the case against Israel Castillo is able to move forward and is not dismissed by some sort of technicality. The charges against him – making lewd comments and indecent proposals to a 14 year old girl – are serious and disturbing. Even more disturbing is the trend of child sexual abuse at Victory Christian Church, where Castillo worked as a janitor. Recently, another Victory Christian Church employee was sentenced to 55 years in prison for the rape of a 13-year-old girl on church grounds. Five other VCC officials stand accused of misdemeanors resulting from their delayed response to reporting that crime.

The victim in the case against Castillo deserves to have her day in court. We hope that the judge in this case will allow proceedings to move forward.

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LOS ANGELES (CA)
Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests

Posted by Joelle Casteix on January 21, 2013

These documents hold the truth that victims have known for years: Archdiocese officials knew their priests were abusing kids and concealed these heinous crimes.

For more than five years since the the LA settlement, victims and the public have been promised the truth of the documents. Instead, we were given delays, legal maneuvers and double talk. And since coming to Los Angeles, Archbishop Gomez has continued this secrecy and betrayal. What is he doing to ensure that crimes like the ones in these files have been stopped? What will we learn when all of the documents promised in the 2007 settlement are released?

We urge law enforcement to carefully evaluate all of these files and do the best they can to deliver criminal indictments to anyone who abused or knowingly endangered a child. It is only when criminals are punished to the fullest extent of the law that children are kept safe from abuse.

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LOS ANGELES (CA)
Cardinal Roger M. Mahony

Cardinal Roger M. Mahony
Archbishop Emeritus of Los Angeles

January 21, 2013

With the upcoming release of priests’ personnel files in the Archdiocese’s long struggle with the sexual abuse of minors by Catholic clergy, my thoughts and prayers turn toward the victims of this sinful abuse.

Various steps toward safeguarding all children in the Church began here in 1987 and progressed year by year as we learned more about those who abused and the ineffectiveness of so-called “treatments” at the time. Nonetheless, even as we began to confront the problem, I remained naïve myself about the full and lasting impact these horrible acts would have on the lives of those who were abused by men who were supposed to be their spiritual guides. That fuller awareness came for me when I began visiting personally with victims. During 2006, 2007 and 2008, I held personal visits with some 90 such victims.

Those visits were heart-wrenching experiences for me as I listened to the victims describe how they had their childhood and innocence stolen from them by clergy and by the Church. At times we cried together, we prayed together, we spent quiet moments in remembrance of their dreadful experience; at times the victims vented their pent up anger and frustration against me and the Church.

Toward the end of our visits I would offer the victims my personal apology—and took full responsibility—for my own failure to protect fully the children and youth entrusted into my care. I apologized for all of us in the Church for the years when ignorance, bad decisions and moral failings resulted in the unintended consequences of more being done to protect the Church—and even the clergy perpetrators—than was done to protect our children.

I have a 3 x 5 card for every victim I met with on the altar of my small chapel. I pray for them every single day. As I thumb through those cards I often pause as I am reminded of each personal story and the anguish that accompanies that life story.

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LOS ANGELES (CA)
Los Angeles Times

[with links to documents]

[statement from Cardinal Mahony]

Documents from the late 1980s show that Archbishop Roger M. Mahony and another archdiocese official discussed strategies to keep police from discovering that children were being sexually abused by priests.

By Victoria Kim, Ashley Powers and Harriet Ryan, Los Angeles Times
January 21, 2013

Fifteen years before the clergy sex abuse scandal came to light, Archbishop Roger M. Mahony and a top advisor discussed ways to conceal the molestation of children from law enforcement, according to internal Catholic church records released Monday.

The archdiocese’s failure to purge pedophile clergy and reluctance to cooperate with law enforcement has previously been known. But the memos written in 1986 and 1987 by Mahony and Msgr. Thomas J. Curry, then the archdiocese’s chief advisor on sex abuse cases, offer the strongest evidence yet of a concerted effort by officials in the nation’s largest Catholic diocese to shield abusers from police. The newly released records, which the archdiocese fought for years to keep secret, reveal in church leaders’ own words a desire to keep authorities from discovering that children were being abused.

In the confidential letters, filed this month as evidence in a civil court case, Curry proposed strategies to prevent police from investigating three priests who had admitted to church officials that they abused young boys. Curry suggested to Mahony that they prevent them from seeing therapists who might alert authorities and that they give the priests out-of-state assignments to avoid criminal investigators.

One such case that has previously received little attention is that of Msgr. Peter Garcia, who admitted preying for decades on undocumented children in Spanish-speaking parishes. After Garcia’s discharge from a New Mexico treatment center for pedophile clergy, Mahony ordered him to stay away from California “for the foreseeable future” in order to avoid legal accountability, the files show. “I believe that if Monsignor Garcia were to reappear here within the archdiocese we might very well have some type of legal action filed in both the criminal and civil sectors,” the archbishop wrote to the treatment center’s director in July 1986.

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LOS ANGELES (CA)
Huffington Post

GILLIAN FLACCUS | January 21, 2013

LOS ANGELES — Retired Cardinal Roger Mahony and other top Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Los Angeles officials maneuvered behind the scenes to shield molester priests, provide damage control for the church and keep parishioners in the dark, according to church personnel files.

The confidential records filed in a lawsuit against the archdiocese disclose how the church handled abuse allegations for decades and also reveal dissent from a top Mahony aide who criticized his superiors for covering up allegations of abuse rather than protecting children.

Notes inked by Mahony demonstrate he was disturbed about abuse and sent problem priests for treatment, but there also were lengthy delays or oversights in some cases. Mahony received psychological reports on some priests that mentioned the possibility of many other victims, for example, but there is no indication that he or other church leaders investigated further.

“This is all intolerable and unacceptable to me,” Mahony wrote in 1991 on a file of the Rev. Lynn Caffoe, a priest suspected of locking boys in his room, videotaping their crotches and running up a $100 phone sex bill while with a boy. Caffoe was sent for therapy and removed from ministry, but Mahony didn’t move to defrock him until 2004, a decade after the archdiocese lost track of him.

“He is a fugitive from justice,” Mahony wrote to the Vatican’s Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, who is now Pope Benedict XVI. “A check of the Social Security index discloses no report of his demise, so presumably he is alive somewhere.”

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DEUTSCHLAND
Cicero

Vor drei Jahren wurde Deutschland aufgeschreckt durch Missbrauchsfälle in katholischen Einrichtungen. Danach meldeten sich immer mehr Betroffene, die gesellschaftliche Dimension des Themas offenbarte sich. Was hat sich seither getan?

Es ist fast auf den Tag genau drei Jahre her, dass der Jesuitenpater Klaus Mertes, Rektor des Berliner Canisius-Kollegs, in einem Brief an ehemalige Schüler zum ersten Mal öffentlich machte, dass an der Schule Minderjährige durch Patres missbraucht und misshandelt wurden. Kurz danach wurden ähnliche Vorgänge aus der Odenwaldschule bekannt. Es war, als ob sich eine Schleuse geöffnet hätte: Hunderte Menschen meldeten sich und erzählten, wie ihnen als Jugendliche sexuelle Gewalt in kirchlichen und nicht kirchlichen Einrichtungen angetan wurde. Schnell war klar, dass es sich um ein gesamtgesellschaftliches Problem handelt. Die Bundesregierung benannte einen Missbrauchsbeauftragten.

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DEUTSCHLAND
donakurier

Eichstätt (EK) Hat der Bruch der katholischen Bischöfe mit dem Kriminologen Christian Pfeiffer, der die Studie zu Missbrauchsfällen hätte durchführen sollen, auch Konsequenzen im Bistum Eichstätt? Wie sieht es aus in der Diözese in Sachen Missbrauchsfällen, deren Aufklärung und der Prävention?

Nach der Entscheidung der deutschen Bischöfe, eine professionelle Studie zu Fällen des sexuellen Missbrauchs in der katholischen Kirche durchführen zu lassen, und der Erleichterung darüber, ist vor einigen Tagen schnell Ernüchterung eingekehrt: Die Kooperation mit Christian Pfeiffer vom Kriminologischen Forschungsinstitut Niedersachsen ist unter großem medialen Echo gescheitert. Während Christian Pfeiffer den Bischöfen Vertuschungspraktiken vorwirft, herrscht in den Diözesen Unverständnis über die Arbeitsmethoden des Kriminologen.

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ST. LOUIS (MO)
St. Louis Post-Dispatch

By Joe Holleman jholleman@post-dispatch.com 314-340-8254

A priest who was cited for peace disturbance in STL in 2007 is now a leading theologian in England and in the forefront of the Catholic Church’s opposition to same-sex marriage laws in the UK.

In January 2007, the Rev. Andrew Pinsent was issued a court summons in connection with an incident in front of St. Ambrose Church on The Hill.

Police said Pinsent placed his hands on the shoulders of Barb Dorris of the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests (SNAP). Dorris had been distributing fliers in front of the church before Mass, informing parishioners about the group’s concern with two priests who had served briefly at the church.

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OKLAHOMA
Tulsa World

By JARREL WADE World Staff Writer
Published: 1/21/2013

A man accused of making a lewd or indecent proposal to a child at Victory Christian Center is scheduled to appear in court Tuesday where a judge could decide whether the case against him will continue to trial.

Israel Shalom Castillo, 23, has pleaded not guilty and has a pending motion to have the case dismissed, arguing not enough evidence was presented at a preliminary hearing to have him bound over for trial.

The lewd or indecent proposal charge involves a 14-year-old girl Castillo met through the church.

Castillo and Chris Denman, both Victory Christian Center members who worked as janitors for the church, were charged in September with separate child-sex crimes.

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IRELAND
BBC News

A Catholic priest has claimed he has been threatened with excommunication from the church because of his views on matters such as women’s ordination.

Fr Tony Flannery, a high-profile Irish priest, is known for his liberal views on contraception and homosexuality.

Last year, he was disciplined by the Vatican’s watchdog, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF).

He claims he has now been asked to sign a pledge, supporting official church teaching on sexual matters.

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TENNESSEE
Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests

Posted by Barbara Dorris on January 21, 2013

A priest convicted of sex crimes in 2011 is seeking to have his conviction overturned. We are unsure of on what grounds Fr. William Casey is using to try to get his conviction on charges of aggravated rape overturned. Whatever it is, we hope that his appeal is tossed out.

Fr. Casey himself admitted that the accusation was credible and did not protest when he was forced to retire from the Diocese of Knoxville. The fact that he is now trying to get his conviction tossed out is simply legal maneuvering and attempts to exploit legal technicalities.

Tossing out this conviction would not only cause more pain to the victim who bravely stood up and brought these charges, but would undermine the legal system itself by allowing the guilty to get away. We hope that this conviction will be upheld and this painful chapter will be closed.

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DEUTSCHLAND
Sueddeutsche

Eichstätt – Nach dem Ausstieg der katholischen Kirche aus dem Forschungsprojekt mit dem Kriminologen Christian Pfeiffer hat der Eichstätter Bischof Gregor Maria Hanke zur Selbstkritik aufgerufen. Die Bischöfe müssten sich der Frage stellen, warum die Probleme, an denen die Zusammenarbeit letztlich gescheitert sei, nicht schon am Anfang im Blick gewesen seien, sagte Hanke am Samstag beim Neujahrsempfang des Eichstätter Diözesanrats. Zu fragen sei auch, warum überhaupt die Wahl auf Pfeiffer gefallen sei. Am heutigen Montag tagt der Ständige Rat der Deutschen Bischofskonferenz in Würzburg.

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DEUTSCHLAND
BR

Der Streit zwischen der Deutschen Bischofskonferenz und dem Kriminologen Christian Pfeiffer schwelt weiter. Die Aufarbeitung der Missbrauchsfälle ist auch Thema bei dem Treffen in Würzburg. Äußern wollten sich die Bischöfe bisher nicht.

Zum Auftakt des Treffens des ständigen Rates im Kloster Himmelspforten am Montag (21.01.13) gab es keine weiteren Informationen zur Aufarbeitung der Missbrauchsfälle. Es gebe nichts Neues zu berichten, ließ eine Sprecherin ausrichten. Die Zusammenkunft sei nur ein regelmäßiges Arbeitstreffen. Über die Tagesordnung der Klausur teilte die Kirche vorab nichts mit. Es handle sich um eines der regelmäßigen Arbeitstreffen.

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DEUTSCHLAND
kath.net

„Man mag sich fragen, weshalb das Projekt überhaupt mit Christian Pfeiffer geschnürt wurde, der doch von manchen seiner Fachkollegen skeptisch und kritisch beurteilt wird“, sagte der Eichstätter Bischof beim Neujahrsempfang seines Diözesanrates.

Eichstätt-Bonn (kath.net/pl) Der Eichstätter Bischof Gregor Maria Hanke (Foto) kritisierte in seinem Grußwort anlässlich des Neujahrsempfangs des Diözesanrates der Katholiken im Zusammenhang mit der abgesagten Zusammenarbeit mit dem Kriminologen Christian Pfeiffer die Deutsche Bischofskonferenz. „Man mag sich fragen, weshalb das Projekt überhaupt mit Christian Pfeiffer geschnürt wurde, der doch von manchen seiner Fachkollegen skeptisch und kritisch beurteilt wird.

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TENNESSEE
Greenville Sun

BY KEN LITTLE
STAFF WRITER
A legal brief filed this week with the Tennessee Court of Criminal Appeals on behalf of former Roman Catholic priest William Casey seeks reversal of his sex crime convictions in Tennessee, or a new trial.

Casey, 79, was convicted in July 2011 by a Sullivan County Criminal Court jury of first-degree criminal sexual conduct and two counts of aggravated rape in connection with sex abuse of then-altar boy Warren Tucker between 1978 and 1980.

At the time, Casey, a long-time resident of the Camp Creek community of Greene County, was serving as priest at St. Dominic Catholic Church in Kingsport.

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TENNESSEE
WCYB

KINGSPORT, Tenn. –
A former Kingsport Catholic priest convicted of rape, wants a new trial.

William Casey was sentenced to 35 to 40 years in prison after being convicted of molesting and altar boy more than three decades ago. This was after a Sullivan County jury found him guilty.

Casey, a long-time resident of the Camp Creek community of Greene County, was serving as priest at St. Dominic Catholic Church in Kingsport when the victim told authorities the crimes happened.

According to the Greeneville Sun, a brief was filed Tuesday by Casey’s attorneys requesting the Tennessee Court of Criminal Appeals to “reverse his conviction and dismiss the indictment against him with prejudice.”

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IRELAND
RTE News

An Irish priest has claimed he is being threatened with excommunication from the Catholic Church for supporting an open discussion on issues like women’s ordination.

Father Tony Flannery has called on the Irish bishops to state publicly what they think about the disciplining of priests like himself.

He blamed the breakdown of his year-long exchanges with the Church authorities on the intervention of Archbishop Gerhard Muller.

Archbishop Muller who took over as prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF) in July last year.

Fr Flannery told a news conference in Dublin that the German Archbishop had raised the bar for his readmission to active ministry by demanding he accept the Vatican’s ban on debate on women’s ordination and a pledge to support all Church teaching on sexual matters.

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IRELAND
Irish Central

By
PATRICK COUNIHAN,
IrishCentral Staff Writer

Published Monday, January 21, 2013

Outspoken Irish cleric Father Tony Flannery has admitted he faces excommunication from the church for backing the rights of women to become priests.

The 66-year-old priest has told a Dublin press conference that he is considering legal action against the Vatican after he was silenced.

Catholic Church leaders disciplined Father Flannery over his outspoken views last year.

He was also told that he will only be allowed to return to ministry if he ends his leadership of the Association of Catholic Priests in Ireland.

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UNITED KINGDOM
Southern Daily Echo

A HAMPSHIRE paedophile priest who was jailed for life for a catalogue of abuse against young boys, including raping an 11-year-old, has failed in a bid to reduce his sentence.

Perverted Simon Thomas made the challenge at the highest court in England almost seven years after being handed the life term by a judge who said he posed a danger to young boys that might never end.

Aged 44 at the time, he was the ordained minister in the United Reformed Church in Hythe, just a stone’s throw from his home in Atheling Road where he lived with his wife and children. Southampton Crown Court heard how the father-of-four had told scores of boys he met on the Internet that he was gay but in a heterosexual relationship with his wife.

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IRELAND
Association of Catholic Priests

The Association of Catholic Priests (ACP) affirms in the strongest possible terms our confidence in and solidarity with Fr Tony Flannery as he strives to clear his name and we wish to protest against unjust treatment he has received from the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. The ACP supports Fr. Flannery in his efforts to resist the undermining of his integrity as an individual, a priest and a member of the Redemptorist Order.

The effort to depict him as ‘disloyal’ and ‘dissident’ is unwarranted and unfair, but also extremely ill-advised in the present pastoral context in Ireland.

The ACP is disturbed by the procedures evident in this case: the unwillingness to deal directly with the accused person; the injunction to secrecy; the presumption of guilt; the lack of due process. They suggest a callousness and even brutality that is in sharp contrast to the compassion of Jesus Christ.

The CDF argues that its’ instruction to secrecy protects the priest’s reputation. We believe that the priest himself should be the person to decide whether and with whom he should speak or whether he might decide to remain silent.

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IRELAND
Association of Catholic Priests

Sunday 20th January 2013

The Irish Redemptorist Community is deeply saddened by the breakdown in communication between Fr. Tony Flannery C.Ss.R. and the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF).

Fr. Tony Flannery is highly regarded and respected by many in Ireland, both within and outside of the Redemptorist Congregation. He has been an effective parish missioner all over the country since the mid 1970s and from this context has raised matters which he believes need greater dialogue, debate and consideration. Within the Dublin Province of the Redemptorists there exists a very lively spirit of debate and dialogue; we are and over many years have been, committed to mature discourse. Although not all Redemptorists would accept Fr. Flannery’s views on all matters, we do understand and support his efforts to listen carefully to and at times to articulate the views of people he encounters in the course of his ministry.

As Irish Redemptorists we appreciate the difficulties this situation has created for others, especially for our Superior General in Rome, Fr. Michael Brehl. He has made every possible effort to resolve the matters which have emerged between the CDF and Fr. Flannery.

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IRELAND
Irish Times

Fr Tony Flannery

Three days after my 66th birthday I find myself forbidden to minister as a priest, with a threat of excommunication and dismissal from my congregation hanging over me. How did I find myself in this situation?

I joined the Redemptorist congregation in 1964 and was ordained 10 years later. That was the era of great openness in the Catholic Church. We believed in freedom of thought and of conscience, and that church teaching was not something to be imposed rigidly on the people we served – they were intelligent and educated, and could take responsibility for their lives.

As preachers we must try to present the message of Christ in a way and a language that spoke to the reality of people’s lives. This necessitated a willingness to listen to the people, to understand their hopes and joys, their struggles and fears.

Helping people to deal with the teaching on contraception during the 1970s was a great training ground. Just repeating the official line of Humanae Vitae was no help. During those years priests and people alike learned a lot about how to form their consciences and make mature decisions about all areas of their lives. As priests we learned more from people than they learned from us.

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IRELAND
Irish Times

PATSY McGARRY, Religious Affairs Correspondent

Ireland’s Redemptorists have said they are “deeply saddened at the breakdown in communication” between their colleague Fr Tony Flannery and Rome’s Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF).

Fr Flannery was removed from public ministry last February by the CDF pending the outcome of its inquiries into views he expressed in the Redemptorists’ Reality magazine.

In a strong statement last night, the Redemptorists said “we do understand and support his efforts to listen carefully to and at times to articulate the views of people he encounters in the course of his ministry”.

They felt “immense regret that some structures or processes of dialogue have not yet been found in the church which have a greater capacity to engage with challenging voices from among God’s people, while respecting the key responsibility and central role of the CDF”.

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INDIANA
The Observer

By John Cameron
News Editor

Published: Monday, January 21, 2013

Leadership and protecting children from sexual abuse will be the focus of a pair of lectures presented this week by Dr. Kathleen McChesney, former executive director of the Office of Child Protection at the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB).

The first presentation in the Provost’s Distinguished Women’s Lecture series, “Sexual Abuse in the Catholic Church: Where are We Now?” will take place Monday night in McKenna Hall. McChesney said the talk would include an assessment of the problem and a discussion of potential solutions.

“I’m going to discuss the nature and scope of the problem of sexual abuse over time in the U.S. and some of the actions that can be taken by Catholic bishops [and other Church leaders] to respond to allegations of abuse,” she said. “I’m going to talk about, from my perspective, having worked on this issue … why it’s important.”

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GERMANY
Spiegel

The German Catholic Church called off an independent review of allegations of sexual abuse in its ranks this week. The head of the investigation accused the Church of censorship. On Thursday, the two sides traded blame as German commentators largely mourned the end of the examination.

Representatives of the German Catholic Church and independent investigators traded blame Thursday after an agreement to have an independent examination of sexual abuse in the Church broke down earlier this week.

The Church’s Bishops’ Conference called off the investigation — agreed to in 2011 after a nationwide abuse scandal the year before — citing a lack of trust with the investigators. The Lower Saxony Criminological Research Institute (KFN) had been tasked with investigating personnel files from churches in all of the country’s 27 dioceses, to look for and examine cases of abuse.

But the Bishops’ Conference was allegedly unable to agree on a way to cooperate with the KFN, with some citing the issues of privacy and data protection. Some dioceses refused to make documents available, reportedly out of fear that private information on those involved could possibly be made public.

Christian Pfeiffer, who as the director of the KFN had led the investigation, told SPIEGEL ONLINE this week that the Church had refused to cooperate with the investigation, and that he had had to remind the Church of its promise of transparency.

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DEUTSCHLAND
Wochenblatt

Die Bischöfe sollen im Streit um die Missbrauchsstudie der katholischen Kirche ihre Unterlassungsforderung gegen den Leiter des Kriminologischen Forschungsinstituts Niedersachsen, Christian Pfeiffer, zurückziehen.

Dazu hat Pfeiffer den Vorsitzenden der Bischofskonferenz, Robert Zollitsch, aufgefordert. Der Verband der Diözesen Deutschlands (VDD) hatte von Pfeiffer verlangt, die Darstellung zu unterlassen, die Kirche habe bei dem Projekt “Zensurwünsche geltend gemacht”. Pfeiffer hatte sich geweigert, die Erklärung zu unterschreiben, und bei den in Betracht kommenden Landgerichten Schutzschriften für den Fall hinterlegt, dass die Kirche ihm die Äußerung gerichtlich verbieten lassen wollte.

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DEUTSCHLAND
NDR

Im juristischen Streit zwischen der Deutschen Bischofskonferenz und dem Kriminologen Christian Pfeiffer ist weiter kein Ende in Sicht. Anwälte des Verbandes der Diözesen Deutschlands (VDD) schickten am Freitag an Pfeiffer und sein Kriminologisches Forschungsinstitut Niedersachsen (KFN) “eine konkretisierte Abmahnung”, wie der Sprecher der Bischofskonferenz, Matthias Kopp, am Wochenende bestätigte. Die Bischöfe wehren sich gegen Pfeiffers Vorwürfe, sie hätten die Erstveröffentlichung von Forschungsergebnissen verhindern oder zensieren wollen. Pfeiffer reagierte prompt und bezeichnete die Unterlassungsdrohung am Sonntag in einer Vorabmeldung des Nachrichtenmagazins “Spiegel” als “reine Show”.

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GERMANY
Vatican Insider

It was set up in February 2010 and was meant to encourage those who had suffered sex abuse in the Church to come forward. The hotline was apparently shut down due to lack of use

Alessandro Speciale
Vatican City

After the German Catholic Church stopped the KFN’s (Kriminologischen Forschungsinstitut Niedersachsen) study into the phenomenon of paedophilia in the Church because of a disagreement that arose between the two, on Thursday German bishops announced they were closing down the special hotline created as a first point of call for abuse victims.

Together with the study, the hotline was one of the key elements of the strategy for countering the paedophile priest scandal which exploded in Germany in 2010. The hotline was aimed at “encouraging victims to talk about their experiences of sex abuse in the Catholic Church.”

The hotline was initially meant to stay open until September 2011 but the project was extended several times, until it was finally shut down last December. The line was closed at the end of 2012 due to “a drop in the requests for advice sent” by post, online and via the telephone, a statement issued by the German Episcopate reads. There was no longer any reason to keep the hotline open.

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UNITED STATES
Pope Crimes & Vatican Evils…

Paris Arrow

The same medieval Reign of Vatican Terror that forced Galileo to sign a “Confession” against his scientific beliefs (read below) is today terrorizing Irish priest Tony Flannery, 66, who is now being forced to write, sign and publish – against his beliefs – a statement agreeing that women should never be ordained as priests and that he would adhere to church orthodoxy on matters like contraception and homosexuality (if he wants to return to ministry). Read more about the Irish priests being terrorized by the Vatican in our related article: Hypocrite Benedict silenced Fr. Tony Flannery, Brian D’Arcy – A compilation… but he does not silence Cardinal Bernard Law and JP2 Army – John Paul II Pedophile Priests

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AUSTRALIA
Moonee Valley Weekly

By NICK TOSCANO
Jan. 21, 2013

A WESTERN suburbs counselling service is dealing with a surge in demand from sexual assault victims as government inquiries trigger renewed trauma for survivors.

The Western Region Centre Against Sexual Assault (WestCASA), which helps hundreds of western suburbs residents a year, has had a 30 per cent statewide increase in demand since the Victorian parliamentary inquiry into child sex abuse began in April and the Royal Commission was announced in November.

WestCASA executive officer Jane Vanderstoel warned that demand was likely to jump further when proceedings begin.

“All our centres have had contact with people who have not talked about this before,” she said.

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PHILADELPHIA (PA)
Big Trial

Friday, January 18, 2013

By Ralph Cipriano
for bigtrial.net

Two moms who volunteered as school lunch room aides told a jury today that they thought former Catholic school teacher Bernard Shero was creepy.

“He’s always been awkward, touch-feely,” Denise Sosalski said. She met Shero when he was a teaching assistant at Nazareth Academy. Sosalski said she volunteered at Nazareth when her son Roman, now 24, was 8 or 9.

While working in the lunchroom, Sosalksi said, she noticed Shero “had a tendency to want to put his hand on their backs,” meaning elementary school kids. Then, when her son was in sixth grade, he was out skateboarding with some friends, Sosalski testified. He came home and said that Shero, who lived in their Northeast Philadelphia neighborhood, had invited the boy and his friends into his house.

Sosalski said she walked over to confront Shero. “He was out on his lawn,” she told the jury. She said she told Shero, “I’m Roman’s mother; stay away from my kid.”

Defense lawyers asked Sosalski when she decided to come forward to testify against Shero about events that happened back in the late 1990s. This week, she said, when a detective knocked on her door.

Apparently the district attorney’s office never stops working a case.

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IRELAND
The Association of Catholic Priests

REDEMPTORIST SUBJECTED TO “FRIGHTENING PROCEDURES REMINISCENT OF THE INQUISITION”

Redemptorist Fr. Tony Flannery is threatened with excommunication from the Catholic Church for suggesting that, in the future, women might become priests and calling for this and other matters to be open for discussion. Fr. Flannery, (66) who joined the Redemptorists in 1964 at seventeen and was ordained ten years later, has been told that if he is to remain in the Church and in his Congregation, he must also guarantee not to attend meetings of the Association of Catholic Priests (ACP) until he has publicly agreed to the conditions laid down.

Fr. Flannery was forbidden to minister as a priest for most of the past year, and this will continue until he meets the requirements of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.

“I have been ordered not to engage with the media or publish any books or articles,” he told a press briefing in Dublin today. “I have also been ordered not to have any involvement, public or private, with the ACP. I was put under a formal precept of obedience not to attend the AGM of the ACP last November by Michael Brehl, Superior General of the Redemptorists. But he made it clear he’d been instructed by the CDF to issue it.”

Fr Flannery will be allowed back into ministry only if he writes, signs and publishes an article (pre-approved by the CDF) accepting the Catholic Church can never ordain women to the priesthood and accepting all Church stances on contraception, homosexuality, and the refusal of the sacraments to people in second relationships.

“I could not possibly put my name to such an article without impugning my own integrity and conscience,” he said today. “The Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith is orchestrating all this while refusing to communicate with me. I have had no direct communication with them. I have never been given an opportunity to meet my accusers, or to understand why this action is being taken against me when I’ve raised the same issues, consistently, for decades.”

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IRELAND
Irish Times

An outspoken Irish Catholic priest has claimed he has been threatened with excommunication for suggesting that women might become priests in the future.

Fr Tony Flannery said he is being forced to choose between Rome and his conscience and revealed he is taking legal advice under canon and civil law to help defend his rights as a member of the church and as an Irish citizen.

The 66-year-old, who joined the Redemptorists in 1964, said he has been told by the Vatican that if he wants to remain in the church and in his congregation he must stop any involvement with the liberal Association of Catholic Priests (ACP), which he founded. …

Fr Flannery claimed he will be allowed back into ministry only if he writes, signs and publishes an article – to be pre-approved by the CDF – accepting the Catholic Church can never ordain women to the priesthood and accepting all church stances on contraception, homosexuality, and the refusal of the sacraments to people in second relationships.

“I could not possibly put my name to such an article without impugning my own integrity and conscience,” Fr Flannery said at a press conference he called in Dublin.

“The Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith is orchestrating all this while refusing to communicate with me. I have had no direct communication with them. I have never been given an opportunity to meet my accusers, or to understand why this action is being taken against me when I’ve raised the same issues, consistently, for decades.”

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IRELAND
RTE News

An Irish priest has claimed he is being threatened with excommunication from the Catholic Church for supporting an open discussion on issues like women’s ordination.

Father Tony Flannery has called on the Irish bishops to state publicly what they think about the disciplining of priests like himself.

He blamed the breakdown of his year-long exchanges with the Church authorities on the intervention of Archbishop Gerhard Muller.

Archbishop Muller who took over as prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF) in July last year.

Fr Flannery told a news conference in Dublin this afternoon that the German Archbishop had raised the bar for his readmission to active ministry by demanding he accept the Vatican’s ban on debate on women’s ordination and a pledge to support all Church teaching on sexual matters.

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NEW YORK
The Journal News

Written by
Steve Lieberman

NEW CITY — Two members of Rockland’s Orthodox Jewish community have pleaded guilty to charges of sexually abusing children, heartening children protection advocates who have been pushing for increased awareness and prosecutions of such cases. A third man is facing pre-trial hearings in County Court.

A 58-year-old Monsey man admitted in court Friday that he had anal sex with a 14-year-old boy.

The admission came after a judge promised the man a sentence of 10 years’ probation to spare the child from having to testify.

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NEW YORK
Failed Messiah

Shmarya Rosenberg • FailedMessiah.com

Two haredim in bedroom suburbs of New York City got sweetheart plea deals earlier this week from judges in Rockland County.

Both haredim pleaded guilty to child sexual abuse charges – one of them involving anal rape.

But even though one of those cases involves repeated anal rape of the child, neither haredi man will serve any time in prison.

Despite this bizarre agreement, Rockland County prosecutors are trumpeting the plea deals as major successes, the Journal News reported.

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UNITED STATES
Bilgrimage

A powerfully insightful observation by Jerry Slevin at his Christian Catholicism blog site:

Having despaired of the loss of papal credibility, more Catholics will now acknowledge the increasingly significant historical and scriptural evidence concerning the Eucharist. This evidence makes clear that for Jesus and his initial disciples, the Eucharist Meal was not intended to be an event mainly to be monopolized and controlled by a “mystical” celibate male priesthood managed tightly by an opportunistic and unaccountable hierarchy. For the current Vatican, the Eucharistic Meal appears too often to be mainly a weekly fundraising event for overly trusting Catholics dominated by low-paid priests that the hierarchy appears to believe must be protected and supported blindly, even when they sexually abuse children.

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IRELAND
Association of Catholic Priests

Following on from meetings of Catholic lay people in Dublin, Cork and Galway promoted by the ACP, a very successful gathering of up to 60 people took place in Blarney on 9 January 2013 .

The meeting was facilitated by Daithi ó hAoidh, a member of Ballineaspaig Parish Faith in Action group. The aim of the meeting was to allow the Catholic faithful from the Blarney/Inniscarra area the opportunity to dialogue over their particular cares and concerns with regard to faith matters.

As it was an occasion for dialogue the attendees were formed into smaller groups and Daithi the question to them as to why they were here. There was a huge diversity of answers:
◦People being curious
◦A feeling of being disconnected and alienation from the Church
◦Fears that the faith could be lost and concern about our young people.
◦A sense of helplessness that lay people are not being listened to
◦Upset that the teachings of Vatican 11 were not being implemented.
◦Concern that no plans were being made for the future.
◦A feeling of lack of leadership.
◦Some women expressed feelings of being disconnected from the Church.
◦Concern over lack of accountability at every level in the Church.
◦Concern over the treatment of priests and the silencing of priests.

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IRELAND
Corkman

Sunday January 20 2013

An outspoken cleric has claimed he has been threatened with excommunication from the Catholic Church for suggesting that women might become priests in the future.

Fr Tony Flannery said he is being forced to chose between Rome and his conscience and revealed he is taking legal advice under canon and civil law to help defend his rights as a member of the church and as an Irish citizen.

The 66-year-old, who joined the Redemptorists in 1964, said he has been told by the Vatican that if he wants to remain in the church and in his congregation he must stop any involvement with the liberal Association of Catholic Priests (ACP), which he founded.

The author, who was stopped ministering as a priest for most of the past year, said he has also been ordered not to engage with the media or publish any books or articles.

“I have served the church, the Redemptorists and the people of God for two thirds of my life,” said Fr Flannery.

“Throughout that time, I have in good conscience raised issues I believed important for the future of the church in books and essays largely read by practising Catholics, rather than raising them in mainstream media.

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NEW YORK
New York Daily News

By Chelsia Rose Marcius AND Daniel Beekman / NEW YORK DAILY NEWS

The “Meth Monsignor” busted for selling drugs after his kinky behavior got him suspended by superiors told his Connecticut flock he was leaving “to make more money,” a parishioner told the Daily News Saturday.

Pastor Kevin Wallin, 61, who could face life in prison for his alleged role in a cross-country methamphetamine ring, resigned from St. Augustine’s Parish in Bridgeport in June 2011, citing health and personal issues, church officials said this week.

But Wallin, who worked as a personal secretary to Edward Cardinal Egan for years when Egan was Bishop of Bridgeport, told parishioners a different story, one said.

“He said he was moving, being transferred,” recalled parishioner Bernedine Jordan, 52, a substance abuse counselor.

“He said he really liked it here but he was going to somewhere where he could make more money.”

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IRELAND
Limerick Leader

By Mike Dwane
Published on Sunday 20 January 2013

SUGGESTIONS to ordain a priest of the diocese as the next Bishop of Limerick had been “taken very seriously” by the Vatican, the papal nuncio to Ireland Archbishop Charles Brown insisted this week.

In appointing Fr Brendan Leahy – a native of Dublin and professor of theology in Maynooth – to lead Limerick’s 170,000 Catholics, Pope Benedict XVI has followed the recent pattern established in Killaloe and Cloyne, where diocesan priests were overlooked in favour of outsiders.

While Fr Leahy formally served as a curate in Clonskeagh, south Dublin, and has held a special pastoral role ministering to young people, he is regarded by colleagues in the priesthood as a theologian first and foremost, as was his predecessor as Bishop of Limerick Dr Donal Murray.

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IRELAND
Irish Times

A well-known Irish Catholic priest plans to defy Vatican authorities today by breaking his silence about what he says is a campaign against him by the church over his advocacy of more open discussion on church teachings.

Fr Tony Flannery (66) who was suspended by the Vatican last year, said he was told by the Vatican that he would be allowed to return to ministry only if he agreed to write, sign and publish a statement agreeing, among other things, that women should never be ordained as priests and that he would adhere to church orthodoxy on matters like contraception and homosexuality.

“How can I put my name to such a document when it goes against everything I believe in,” he said in an interview Wednesday. “If I signed this, it would be a betrayal not only of myself but of my fellow priests and lay Catholics who want change. I refuse to be terrified into submission.”

Fr Flannery, a regular contributor to religious publications, said he planned to make his case public at a news conference today.

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

IRELAND
Irish Central

By
PATRICK COUNIHAN,
IrishCentral.com Staff Writer

Published Sunday, January 20

Controversial Irish cleric Father Tony Flannery is to defy the Vatican and break his silence on the campaign against him by Catholic Church authorities.

Father Flannery was silenced by the church last year over his advocacy of more open discussion on church teachings.

The New York Times reports that the 66-year-old was suspended by the Vatican after a series of public interviews.

He was told that he would only be allowed to return to ministry only if he agreed to write, sign and publish a statement agreeing, among other things, that women should never be ordained as priests and that he would adhere to church orthodoxy on matters like contraception and homosexuality.

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

NEW YORK
New York Daily News

By Simone Weichselbaum / NEW YORK DAILY NEWS

He promised to drive her around in a limo, to take her on trips and let her move in with him.

He wanted to know what she wanted to do with a boy — and when she innocently replied that she wanted to hold hands, he responded, “That’s it?”

In a simple but harrowing account, a young woman who claimed she was one of Nechemya Weberman’s former clients recounted her sessions with the corrupt counselor on a blog called “A child’s voice.”

“He painted rosy pictures of the fabulous things we will do together,” she wrote. “He was the first adult that was ever nice to me.”

Sex abuse experts said her account shows how the once-respected religious leader was really a child predator in disguise.

“One way of grooming is to send up a little signal and see how far it goes. Like, ‘Can I take you home?’ It all starts out friendly,” said psychologist Richard Gartner.

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

NEW YORK
New York Daily News

By Charles Hynes / NEW YORK DAILY NEWS

The victim in this case showed extraordinary courage during her four days of testimony. This wasn’t just one victim or a case of her word against his. She was speaking for all who have suffered abuse but have been intimidated and forced into silence by scare tactics that support the abuser and discard the victim.

Certainly, it would have made for a better case if more victims were willing to press charges — but she was one of the finest witnesses a prosecutor can have.

Few people are as confident and as intelligent and as clear-thinking as this heroic, young woman. She said it very forcefully: “He was like a God.”

Someone like that shouldn’t be treated with the kind of absolute respect Weberman received. He didn’t deserve it. He was an unlicensed therapist masquerading as someone who cared, someone who wanted to help. In actuality, he was a predator.

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NEW YORK
New York Daily News

By Oren Yaniv / NEW YORK DAILY NEWS

She wasn’t the only one.

Nechemya Weberman, the unlicensed Hasidic counselor slated to be sentenced Tuesday for sexually abusing a Brooklyn girl, violated at least 10 others — including teens and married women he counseled, a Daily News investigation revealed.

The self-proclaimed religious adviser even invoked Kabbalah — a form of Jewish mysticism — to convince his victims that having sex with him was kosher.

“He’s a monster,” said a man whose daughter was repeatedly brutalized by Weberman a couple of years before the victim at trial came forward.

The beautiful, 18-year-old Brooklyn woman testified how Weberman, 54, touched her private parts, forced her to perform oral sex and ordered her to reenact porn during a three-year period that started when she was only 12. The disgraced Satmar counselor was convicted of all 59 counts against him last month.

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UNITED KINGDOM
The Voice

Written by Marcia Dixon
20/01/2013

THE HEAD of a community organisation that works provides mentoring to young black boys and provides support to families has said churches need to play more a role in combatting the sexual exploitation and abuse of children.

Melvyn Davis is Director of Boyz to Men. He told Soul Stirrings: “Churches have an important role to play. Firstly in the area of education and self awareness. Children who attend church are targeted just as much as children on the streets. Church members need to educate themselves about the problems that the children in their communities are facing and gain experience by having members trained as well as volunteering with organisations involved in tackling these issues.”

His comments come in the wake of a number of media stories about sexual exploitation and sexual violence against women which beg the question what pressure can the church bring to bear on this issue?

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PENNSYLVANIA
Tribune-Democrat

Ruth Rice rrice@tribdem.com

JOHNSTOWN — The co-founder and president of a nonprofit charity that has been advocating for the sexual abuse victims of Brother Stephen P. Baker in Ohio and Johnstown held a press conference Saturday across from Bishop McCort Catholic High School on Osborne Street in the city’s 8th Ward.

Robert M. Hoatson, who heads Road to Recovery Inc. based in Livingston, N.J., said he suffered similar sexual abuse when he was a teen. He founded the organization as therapy for himself.

“My therapist told me the best thing I could do is help other sexual abuse victims,” Hoatson said. “My salvation has been getting involved. I get so excited and energized because it takes amazing courage for them to talk about it in front of thousands through the media.”

Michael Munno of Lorain, Ohio, accompanied Hoatson on his trip to Johnstown.

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PENNSYLVANIA/OHIO
Youngstown Vindicator

Compiled from local and wire sources

JOHNSTOWN, Pa.

An alleged victim of sexual abuse by a Franciscan brother at Warren JFK high school and the founder of a support group for such victims urged Pennsylvania and Ohio victims of the brother’s purported abuse to come forward and get the help they need.

“We’d love for them to reach out and contact those of us who will support them,” said Robert M. Hoatson, co-founder and president of the Livingston, N.J.-based Road to Recovery Inc. support group, which will be distributing leaflets with that message from 10 to 11:30 a.m. today in front of St. Columba Cathedral in Youngstown.

Michael Munno of Cortland, who said Brother Stephen P. Baker sexually abused him at JFK, appeared with Hoatson at a Saturday morning news conference in front of Bishop McCort High School in Johnstown, Pa.

Munno was one of 11 men who reached an out-of-court cash settlement with Warren JFK concerning sexual abuse they said they suffered as students there between 1986 and 1990 at the hands of Brother Baker, who was then a teacher, baseball coach and athletic trainer at JFK. Some of the abuse was reported to have occurred during massages and whirlpool baths.

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OHIO
Tribune Chronicle

January 20, 2013

By VIRGINIA SHANK Tribune Chronicle (vshank@tribtoday.com) , Tribune Chronicle | TribToday.com

YOUNGSTOWN – A representative from the Diocese of Youngstown said help is available to anyone who has been identified as a victim of sexual abuse in connection with the church.

Nancy L. Yuhasz, chancellor, said that if it is determined someone has been sexually abused by an individual connected with the church in any position or capacity, the diocese provides counseling to the victim at the church’s expense.

Connection to the church could include, but is not limited to, clergy, teachers or other school staff and parish ministers, she noted.

“We always want to talk with (the victims) or, when possible, meet with them,” Yuhasz said Friday. “Some people don’t want to meet face-to-face and that’s fine.”

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

AUSTRALIA
7 News

ABC
January 20, 2013

The Catholic Church is defending the reinstatement of a priest who maintained a sexual relationship with a disabled woman for 14 years.

Father Thomas Knowles has returned to full duties at St Francis’ Church in Melbourne after 16 months of “administrative leave” for the relationship he began with the woman when she was 22-years-old.

Fairfax media is reporting the woman was paid $100,000 in compensation.

Father Pat Negry from the Blessed Sacrament Congregation says he believes the decision to return Father Knowles to his position was appropriate “after a prolonged investigation”.

But victims’ advocate Chris McIsaac from Broken Rites says his transgressions are too severe for him to have been let off so lightly.

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

IRELAND
The New York Times

By DOUGLAS DALBY

Published: January 19, 2013

DUBLIN — A well-known Irish Catholic priest plans to defy Vatican authorities on Sunday by breaking his silence about what he says is a campaign against him by the church over his advocacy of more open discussion on church teachings.

The Rev. Tony Flannery, 66, who was suspended by the Vatican last year, said he was told by the Vatican that he would be allowed to return to ministry only if he agreed to write, sign and publish a statement agreeing, among other things, that women should never be ordained as priests and that he would adhere to church orthodoxy on matters like contraception and homosexuality.

“How can I put my name to such a document when it goes against everything I believe in,” he said in an interview on Wednesday. “If I signed this, it would be a betrayal not only of myself but of my fellow priests and lay Catholics who want change. I refuse to be terrified into submission.”

Father Flannery, a regular contributor to religious publications, said he planned to make his case public at a news conference here on Sunday.

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