ABUSE TRACKER

UNITED KINGDOM
Channel 4

Detectives investigating historic claims of child abuse linked to Elm Guest House and the Grafton Close care home in London arrest two men on suspicion of sexual offences.

The arrests of the men, one age 66 from Norfolk and the other aged 70 from east Sussex, were made as part of Operation Fernbridge, which was launched after concerns were raised by MP Tom Watson.

Speaking in Parliament in October last year, he said that a file of evidence used to convict Peter Righton of importing child pornography in 1992 contained “clear intelligence” of a sex abuse gang.

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.

UNITED KINGDOM
The Guardian

Sam Jones and agencies
The Guardian, Wednesday 6 February 2013

Detectives investigating historical claims of child abuse have arrested two men on suspicion of sexual offences, Scotland Yard has said. A spokesman for the Metropolitan police said a 66-year-old man from Norfolk and a 70-year-old man from East Sussex were arrested on Wednesday morning and taken into police custody. The Diocese of East Anglia confirmed that the man arrested in Norfolk was Father Tony McSweeney.

Scotland Yard launched the investigation, known as Operation Fernbridge, last month after Labour MP Tom Watson claimed that a “senior aide of a former prime minister” had links to a member of a paedophile ring.

The investigations are focusing on allegations of child abuse in the early 1980s at the Elm guest house and the Grafton Close care home in Barnes, south-west London.

Watson claimed that a file used to convict Peter Righton of importing indecent images of children in 1992 contained “clear intelligence” of a “widespread paedophile ring”. Raising the issue during prime minister’s questions, Watson added: “One of its members boasts of his links to a senior aide of a former prime minister, who says he could smuggle indecent images of children from abroad.

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.

UNITED KINGDOM
The Independent

Martin Hickman

Wednesday 06 February 2013

Two men have been arrested on suspicion of sexual offences by Scotland Yard detectives investigating allegations that some MPs belonged to an establishment paedophile ring in the 1980s.

A pensioner, 70, from East Sussex and another, aged 66, from Norfolk were held in dawn raids and questioned by child-abuse investigation officers from Operation Fernbridge. Police are looking into allegations that figures from politics, diplomacy and other spheres of public life abused children at a guest house in Barnes, south-west London.

Children from the local Grafton Close children’s home are said to have been supplied to Elm Guest House. The 70-year-old man arrested at his home in St Leonards-on-Sea is understood to be John Stingemore, the former deputy head of Grafton Close. The other man was named by the Diocese of East Anglia as Father Tony McSweeney.

As The Independent reported last year, Scotland Yard launched Operation Fairbank into alleged historical sexual abuse, following claims by MP Tom Watson that an “aide of a former Prime Minister” had belonged to a paedophile network.

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.

UNITED KINGDOM
BBC News

[with video]

A Catholic priest has been arrested in connection with alleged child abuse at a London guest house during the early 1980s, his diocese has confirmed.

Operation Fernbridge is looking at claims that senior political figures and others sexually abused boys at the Elm Guest House in Barnes.

One of those arrested is 66-year-old priest Father Tony McSweeney from Norfolk.

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.

UNITED STATES
Christian Catholicism

Jerry Slevin

As HBO airs the revealing documentary, “Mea Maxima Culpa”, all are strongly reminded that child endangerment is immoral and usually illegal. Is child endangerment, however, always “evil” for the Pope, or only if it is allegedly done by a constant USA political opponent? The Pope’s record here is most troubling.

The Pope, reportedly acting through Los Angeles Archbishop Gomez, for the first time very publicy shamed a Cardinal, Mahony, even as “evil” for alleged child endangerment misconduct. The chosen term was an ontological one, “evil”, even “brutal”, not the usual and evasive papal theological or psychological euphemisms of “sinful” or “bad judgment”. To the likely dismay of Cardinal Mahony and his criminal lawyers, LA law enforcement officials have already noticed this unprecedented papal green light and have commenced new criminal investigations, as well they should. Better late than never. No offer of “Cardinal Law-style” Vatican immunity is apparently expected for Mahony.

Cardinal Mahony may well be asking himself, why me? Why now? After all, the Pope has already, in effect, previously given “free passes” without public shaming to many Catholic hierarchs who reportedly seriously mishandled many priest child sexual abuse cases, including Cardinals Law, Bevilacqua, Brady, Rigali, Egan, Pell, et al. The Pope has not really even similarly shamed hierarchs who admitted to actually committing child endangerment related crimes, for example, in Kansas City (Finn), Palm Beach (Symons), Belgium (Vangheluwe) and Norway (Georg Mueller). Moreover, the Pope even earlier also gave “free passes” to his brother and himself on reported failures to curtail child abuse in Munich and Regensburg and to Vienna’s Cardinal Groer for reportedly abusing numerous young seminarians. Cardinal Schoenborn blamed the last failure on Cardinal Sodano, who reportedly got an apology from Schoenborn.

Of course, significantly, the Pope and his imminent hand-picked successor could still turn on and shame any of these living hierarchs, as the Pope just did to the USA’s leading clerical “liberal Democrat”, Mahoney. This prospect likely is giving some hierarchs a few sleepless nights, especially voting Cardinals thinking about the next papal election expected in the near term. These Cardinals may be waiting to see what Mahony does, since Mahony is considered by some to be scrappy, seasoned and shrewd.

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.

UNITED STATES/IRELAND
The New York Times

By CAROL RYAN

Published: February 6, 2013

DUBLIN — Samantha Long and her twin sister, Etta Thornton-Verma, were born in 1972 and adopted at 9 months. They never knew their birth mother and decided to try to track her down in the mid-1990s. “Nothing prepared us for what we found,” Ms. Thornton-Verma, who lives in New York, recalled in a telephone interview last week.

Samantha Long and her twin sister, Etta Thornton-Verma, were born in 1972 and adopted at 9 months.

“We were prepared for the ordinary possibilities, like a teenage girl who got pregnant and wasn’t in a circumstance to keep us,” she said. “But we were not thinking that she might be incarcerated by nuns.”

In 1995 they found their mother, Margaret Bullen, here in the Sean MacDermott Street Laundry — one of Ireland’s notorious Magdalene Laundries, or workhouses for girls — where she had toiled since 1967, six days a week, without pay. They were shocked by her appearance. “She was very disheveled and looked more than 20 years older than she was,” Ms. Long said. “She was 42, but we were looking at a pensioner’s face. It was hard work, poor nutrition and forced labor.”

Ms. Long was among those present in the Irish Parliament on Tuesday as the government made public a 1,000-page report that concluded that there was “significant state involvement” in the incarceration of thousands of women and girls in a system of slave labor that continued until 1996. And she and her sister were among those disappointed when the Irish prime minister, Enda Kenny, failed to issue an official and unambiguous apology for the state’s role.

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 Times

MIRIAM LORD

Dáil Sketch The outcry following Kenny’s non-apology shows he has misread the mood

Nowadays, people know the price of everything and the value of nothing.

Good old Oscar Wilde there, neatly summing up the Government’s reaction to the Magdalene laundries report for us.

They hire lawyers and economists to tell them how to watch the bottom line. These are the men and women who are paid the big bucks to help politicians guard against themselves when they might want to go mad and follow their hearts.

No point in them doing something they might regret when the profit and loss columns are totted up.

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.

ROME
Irish Times

PADDY AGNEW in Rome

President Michael D Higgins has suggested that those who suffered in the Magdalene laundries were due compensation and a State apology.

Speaking in Rome yesterday, he said: “I was always very moved by their story and I am so glad that the facts of what they said, the wrongs committed, have been recognised and are now in print. I think that the Government will announce its response at the end of the debate and I am very happy that this debate is taking place.

“I think the important thing now is to recognise all the different elements that make for an appropriate response. There is the issue of involuntary detention . . . There is the issue of one’s labour being taken and perhaps not rewarded, and the issue of information being made available . . .

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 Times

JUDITH CROSBIE

A group of Magdalene laundry survivors has called on Taoiseach Enda Kenny to meet them to discuss the need for an apology.

“By meeting these women, he will understand the social significance of apologising,” said Steven O’Riordan, of the group Magdalene Survivors Together, which represents 27 women who were in the laundries.

Debate

They want a meeting ahead of a Dáil debate in two weeks on the report into the laundries, published on Tuesday, he said.

He explained that the women were upset at the lack of an apology and also at how Mr Kenny, in a Dáil statement on Tuesday, linked them with other groups including people who suffered as a result of symphysiotomy and thalidomide.

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 Times

Harry McGee

Analysis While there was some sense to his approach, Kenny’s response imploded

The report by Senator Martin McAleese into the Magdalene homes painted a picture of the bleak, harsh, shackled and indentured lives of a cohort of vulnerable, exploited and forgotten women in Irish society – or “penitents” as they were branded by Irish society during three-quarters of a century from 1922.

When addressing the Dáil yesterday Taoiseach Enda Kenny described his experience of reading the 1,000-page report the previous night as “harrowing”.

For a politician renowned for his emotional intelligence, that was surprisingly as empathetic as he has got over the past two days. Formally, the response from him, from Tánaiste Eamon Gilmore and from the Government to the report to date has been qualified, conditional and legalistic.

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 Times

Marie O’Halloran

Taoiseach Enda Kenny has appealed for the Government to be given “space” and time to put a structure in place to bring “closure and reconciliation” for women in the Magdalene laundries.

Speaking in the Dáil as he came under pressure to give a full apology to the estimated 1,000 survivors, Mr Kenny said “on behalf of the State I am sorry that so many women worked and were resident in Magdalene laundries in a very harsh, authoritarian environment”.
‘Unequivocal apology’

Fianna Fáil leader Micheál Martin said the McAleese report on the laundries was clear that “an unequivocal apology should be given to the women of the Magdalene laundries”.

Mr Martin apologised for Fianna Fáil’s failure to deal with the Magdalene laundries while in power. He said the only effective way to remove the stigma for survivors was a State apology declaring that what was done to the women was wrong. “It should be said that the apology is on behalf of the Government, the State and all the citizens, no ifs and no buts.”

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 Times

HARRY McGEE, Political Correspondent

Labour backbench TDs and Senators have laid down a strong warning to the Government over its response to the Magdalene laundries report, contending that the issue of a full formal apology now needs to be addressed.

At yesterday’s parliamentary party meeting, and in a series of interviews, a succession of Labour Party backbenchers and Ministers criticised the initial response of the Government to Senator Martin McAleese’s report, which found the State was responsible for a quarter of all admissions to the laundries since 1922.

They told party leader and Tánaiste Eamon Gilmore to re-engage urgently with the Taoiseach.
In a statement issued on behalf of the parliamentary party, the party’s TDs and Senators all but demanded a full apology and a form of redress scheme.

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 Examiner

Thursday, February 07, 2013

NOW we know the State’s share of the blame for the slavery of our women in the Magdalene laundries.

We know more than a quarter of the women were sent there by agents of the State. We know agents of the State, including the President, ate their dinners off tablecloths had washed by Magdalenes and dried their mouths with napkins they had starched.

Of course the Taoiseach should admit as much and say “sorry”. But when eventually that full apology and compensation come we will still be left with a huge feeling of disquiet. Because the truth is — as Martin McAleese’s report makes clear — it was our society which confined those women in those laundries.

And it is clear that some of the women could have been better off in those appalling conditions than they would have been outside them. There were no women’s refuges then, few social services, no lone parents’ benefit. Some of the homes the women came from were cruel and dangerous. “We were robbed of our childhood, but then I had a mother who beat the crap out of me,” one woman told Mc Aleese’s committee. Another told them she had ended up in the laundry as a safety measure because her father “interfered with the bigger girls”. You wouldn’t want to get “big” in the family, would you?

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
Yahoo! News

By Padraic Halpin | Reuters

DUBLIN (Reuters) – Irish Prime Minister Enda Kenny was criticized by his government’s junior coalition partner on Wednesday for not issuing the state apology sought by ex-inmates of the notorious Magdalene Laundries following a damning report.

More than a quarter of the women and girls subjected to harsh discipline and unpaid work at the 10 laundries, run by Catholic nuns, were sent there by the Irish state, an official report that ran to almost 1,000 pages said on Tuesday.

The laundries have been accused of treating inmates like slaves for decades of the 20th century, imposing a regime of fear and prayer on girls sometimes put in their care for falling pregnant outside wedlock. One in 10 inmates died in care, the youngest at 15.

Kenny said on Wednesday that he was sorry for the women who had to live in such conditions but again stopped short of a full state apology, angering groups representing women who were housed in laundries as recently as 1996.

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)
The New York Times

By LAURIE GOODSTEIN

Published: February 6, 2013

The Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Los Angeles says that it will release more documents and undo redactions in response to complaints that the files it released last week on priests accused of sexual abuse were incomplete or that the names of church officials who had handled abuse cases had been blacked out. J. Michael Hennigan, a lawyer for the archdiocese, said that he had no idea why the documents were missing, but that as journalists, lawyers and victims caught the omissions, the archdiocese would add the information to the files it had posted online. Last week the archdiocese, under court order after a six-year dispute, made public internal church documents on 124 priests accused of abuse.

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.

MISSOURI
KSPR

[with video]

Mary Moloney, KSPR News Reporter
mmoloney@kspr.com
10:06 p.m. CST, February 6, 2013

SPRINGFIELD, Mo. — A former Springfield church elder is accused of sex crimes against two children. Prosecutors charged 59-year-old Scott Blair with seven felonies including child molestation and statutory sodomy.

Prosecutors said for almost a decade, Scott Blair preyed on young family members. Investigators said both of his victims were under the age of 10.

“Our office takes an aggressive stance against child abuse cases and sexual abuse cases and whenever we can corroborate a child’s account, we’ll file a charge,” explained Greene County Prosecutor Dan Patterson. “The children in this case are known to the offender which is often the common scenario.”

According to court documents, Blair inappropriately touched one girl several times at his Springfield house. She told investigators the abuse occurred when she was between the ages of six and eight years old. The victim, who is now a teenager, said Blair had also kissed her with his mouth open. The girl said the abuse stopped after she turned nine.

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.

CALIFORNIA
Contra Costa Times

By Sandy Mazza, Staff Writer
dailybreeze.com
Posted: 02/06/2013

A Harbor City family filed a lawsuit this week against pastors, teachers and directors of the First Lutheran Church Child Development Center in Carson for allegedly allowing widespread sexual conduct between preschool students over several months.

Five more families are expected to file similar lawsuits in the near future, and the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department is investigating whether school officials neglected the children and covered up instances of sexual abuse.

The suit was filed Tuesday, the same day the sheriff’s Special Victims Unit began its investigation into allegations that the school turned a blind eye to students performing oral sex on other students. The lawsuit alleges intentional infliction of emotional distress, negligence, sexual battery and assault, among other things.

The school, at 19707 S. Central Ave., will shut its doors on Friday, amid the allegations and a barrage of state licensing citations for offenses over the past six months. School officials downplayed the sex abuse concerns and denied that the closure was due to the citations and criminal accusations.

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.

UNITED KINGDOM
Irish Independent

07 February 2013

A Catholic priest is one of two men arrested by detectives investigating allegations of historic child abuse centring around a guest house and a care home.

Reverend Tony McSweeney, 66, from Norfolk, was held along with another man aged 70 from East Sussex on suspicion of sexual offences.

The allegations are linked to Elm Guest House and the Grafton Close care home in Barnes, south west London.

A Diocese of East Anglia spokesman confirmed Fr McSweeney was arrested, and said: “The safeguarding of children and vulnerable people is of paramount importance to the Catholic Church and the Diocese is co-operating fully with the police in this investigation.”

The arrests were made as part of Operation Fernbridge, which was launched after concerns were raised by MP Tom Watson.

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
9 News

A former Baptist pastor says he didn’t report a girl’s allegations that she had been sexually abused by a church youth worker because he didn’t know a 14-year-old was considered a child.

In December 2002, then Senior Pastor Steven Chard and his wife Jill were approached by a 16-year-old girl at the church in Greenacre in Sydney’s west.

The girl, who can’t be named, told him she had been having sex with the church’s then youth group leader Wayne Paul Mason. On one occasion this was without consent, a court was told.

The teenager later told Mr Chard she had spotted Mason kissing another underage girl.

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)
Religion Dispatches

By Omar Shamout

Institutional transparency is tough to enforce in any situation, let alone when it comes to allegations of sexual abuse.

Los Angeles is only the most recent backdrop for a battle that’s been fought in courtrooms nationwide to get secret Church paperwork released. But unlike here, not all judges have ruled in the victims’ favor.

The Archdiocese of Los Angeles finally released the 12,000 documents it agreed to make public as part of a 2007 sex-abuse settlement in which the archdiocese and its insurers paid a total of $660 million to over 500 victims.

Ray Boucher was the lead plaintiff’s attorney in the civil suit against the L.A. Archdiocese. He says the nearly six-year battle to make the files public was difficult for the victims due to the numerous appeals made by lawyers for the archdiocese and priests.

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

LOS ANGELES (CA)
KCET

[with video]

Reporter: Vince Gonzales
Associate Producer: Lata Pandya
Editor: Jack Moody

February 6, 2013

The stories are shocking — men who call themselves holy messengers victimizing the innocent and defenseless. Each day, new details emerge from those now-public L.A. Archdiocese personnel files. And now, there is an L.A. Unified School District connection. “SoCal Connected” was the first to report on one priest who left under a cloud, only to end up working for the school system. Turns out, he’s not the only Archdiocese employee with a questionable past and a link to L.A.’s schools.

TRANSCRIPT
Vince Gonzales/Reporter: As “SoCal Connected” reported first this weekend — Joseph Piña, an admitted child-abusing priest, was removed from ministry by the Los Angeles Archdiocese, but soon found a home at another large, monolithic bureaucracy centered around children.

Jennifer London/Reporter [to anchor Val Zavala]: After Piña left the church, he went on to work at the L.A. Unified School District.

Val Zavala: So LAUSD hired Piña to do what?

London: He was hired as a community organizer.

London [on tape, to unidentified man]: Do you know Joseph Piña, this gentleman here? Do you know him?

Man: Yeah. I worked with him. He was the community rep before this project.

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.

UNITED KINGDOM
Norwich Evening News

Tom Bristow Thursday, February 7, 2013

A Norfolk priest was one of two men arrested yesterday by detectives probing allegations of child sex abuse centring on a guesthouse and a children’s home.

The priest, Father Tony McSweeney, 66, from St George’s Church in Norwich, and another man aged 70 from East Sussex were arrested yesterday morning on suspicion of sexual offences.

The allegations, dating from the early 1980s, are linked to the former Elm Guest House and the now closed Grafton Close children’s home in Barnes, south west London.

Detectives are probing claims the guest house was used by people to abuse boys from the home.

The 70-year-old arrested is thought to have worked at the care home.

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.

UNITED KINGDOM
News Tank

Written by:Suzanne Redburgh

A Catholic priest and another male have been detained by detectives, who are inquiring allegations of historical child sex abuse in London revolving around a guest house and a care home. The London child sex abuse case has led to the detention of Reverend Tony McSweeney in Norfolk. A 70-year-old male has also been arrested by the police officers in East Sussex on the suspicion of being involved in the London child sexual abuse case. The London child sex abuse allegations are connected to Elm Guest House and the Grafton Close care home in Barnes, southwest London.

The detentions of the two males were carried out as part of Operation Fernbridge. This investigative operation was initiated after apprehensions were raised by MP Tom Watson regarding the solid likelihood of the London child sex abuse case.

A spokesman of the Diocese of East Anglia has confirmed that the 66-year-old Reverend McSweeney was detained. Regarding the London care home sex abuse case, the spokesman has voiced that the protection of kids and of innocent people is of extreme importance to the Catholic Church. The Diocese is cooperating wholly with the police in the London child sex abuse case investigation.

Commander Peter Spindler, associated with the Metropolitan Police, has remarked that the London guest house child sex abuse case is being investigated by multiple agencies, which are obtaining support from NSPCC, Ceop and Richmond Social Services. The Commander has urged any person, who had been victimised in the guest house/care home, to talk to the local police or the NSPCC.

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.

UNITED KINGDOM
International Business Times

By Ewan Palmer

February 7, 2013

A Catholic priest is one of two men arrested in connection with allegations of child abuse at London guesthouse and children’s home in the 1980s.

Reverend Tony McSweeney, 66, from Norfolk, was arrested along with a 70-year-old man from east Sussex on suspicion of sexual offences.

The allegations are linked to claims senior politicians and other high-profile individuals sexually abused boys at the Elm Guest House in Barnes, south-west London.

The arrest of the 66-year-old priest was confirmed by his diocese. Father Mark Hackeson, of the Diocese of East Anglia, said: “The church diocese takes safeguarding of children very seriously and so we will be co-operating fully in any way with the police investigation.”

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.

UNITED KINGDOM
London Evening Standard

A Catholic priest was one of two men arrested yesterday by detectives investigating allegations of historic child abuse centering around a guesthouse and a care home in south west London.

Reverend Tony McSweeney, 66, from Norfolk, was held along with another man aged 70 from East Sussex on suspicion of sexual offences.

The allegations are linked to Elm Guest House and the Grafton Close care home in Barnes.

A Diocese of East Anglia spokesman confirmed Revd McSweeney was arrested, and said: “The safeguarding of children and vulnerable people is of paramount importance to the Catholic Church and the Diocese is co-operating fully with the police in this investigation.”

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
NEWS.com.au

Priest Frank Gerard Klep faces charges over allegations of sexual assaults at Rupertswood College, Sunbury

FORMER college principal priest Frank Gerard Klep is facing child sex claims after being charged with multiple offences from his time at the notorious Rupertswood College, Sunbury.

The former college principal was charged yesterday after being questioned by police about allegations he sexually assaulted students at the college during the 1970s and ’80s.

It is believed some of the charges also relate to assaults committed at Salesian College Chadstone.

Mr Klep, 69, was charged with six counts of indecent assault allegedly committed between 1974 and 1984. He was allegedly moved to Samoa by the Salesian order after investigations into sex assault allegations began.

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
Galway Advertiser

February 07, 2013

By Kernan Andrews

There are no reliable figures for the numbers of women sent to the Magdalene Laundry in Galway as the McAleese Report reveals blank or missing records, but strong hints it was one of the few in the State operating on an economic surplus.

This is the view of Independent city councillor Catherine Connolly, who was reacting to the publication on Tuesday of the McAleese Report into the running of the notorious Magdalene Laundries in the Republic of Ireland.

The report confirmed significant State involvement with the 10 laundries with more than 26 per cent of the 10,012 women and girls who spent time there being referred by the courts, the Garda, or the health authorities.

Cllr Connolly also pointed out that this figure excludes the two Magdalen Laundries operated by the Sisters of Mercy in Galway and Dun Laoghaire. There are no records for the Dun Laoghaire laundry, while for Galway only partial records survive – including one soft-back notebook which covers only 1944 to 1959 but with November 1949 to June 1954 left blank.

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
Galway Advertiser

February 07, 2013.

By Kernan Andrews

Women who spent time in the Galway Magdalene Laundry have been invited to meet with The Congregation of the Sisters of Mercy, who ran the institution.

The sisters invitation comes following the McAleese Report into the extent of State involvement with the controversial laundries. In a statement issued yesterday, the order said it was “regrettable that the Magdalene Homes had to exist at all”.

The Sisters of Mercy, who ran the Dun Laoghaire and Galway laundries welcomed the report, saying they hoped it would lead to “greater understanding and healing”.

The sisters said the Galway laundry was “already in operation before coming under our care” and that “many of the women who resided in the Galway home remained voluntarily in our care for the remainder of their lives”.

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.

UNITED KINGDOM
Evening News 24

Exclusive by Tom Bristow Thursday, February 7, 2013

A Norfolk priest was one of two men arrested yesterday by detectives probing allegations of child sex abuse centring on a guesthouse and a children’s home.

The priest, Father Tony McSweeney, 66, from St George’s Church in Norwich, and another man aged 70 from East Sussex were arrested yesterday morning on suspicion of sexual offences.

The allegations, dating from the early 1980s, are linked to the former Elm Guest House and the now closed Grafton Close children’s home in Barnes, south west London.

Detectives are probing claims the guest house was used by people to abuse boys from the home.

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.

UNITED KINGDOM
Daily Mail

Revealed: Face of boy abused in Elm House scandal as Catholic priest and head of boys’ home are arrested

Smartly dressed in his school uniform, the 12-year-old boy is a picture of youthful innocence.

But within two years of this photograph being taken, Peter Hatton-Bornshin’s life had been ripped apart.

He was orphaned following his mother’s suicide and then suffered appalling sexual abuse while in the care of social services in the early 1980s. Tormented by his experience at the council-run Grafton Close Children’s Home in West London, Peter took his own life in 1994. He was 28.

The first picture of Peter, whose tragic life was revealed by the Mail last Saturday, emerged today as two men were arrested by detectives investigating allegations that a VIP paedophile ring preyed on Grafton Close boys at the gay-friendly Elm Guest House in Barnes, South-West London.

A former deputy head of Grafton Close, John Stingemore, 70, was detained during a dawn raid at his housing association flat in St Leonards-on-Sea, East Sussex, over claims he sexually abused several boys in his care three decades ago.

A Roman Catholic priest from Norfolk – Father Tony McSweeney, 66 – was also arrested on suspicion of indecently assaulting boys at Grafton Close.

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)
CBS 12

February 06, 2013

By GILLIAN FLACCUS Associated Press

The Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Los Angeles says it will release more documents from clergy abuse files amid complaints that the 12,000 pages released last week are missing critical pages and contained excessive redactions.

The archdiocese acknowledged it had erred in keeping some documents sealed after The Associated Press inquired about them on Wednesday.

The documents from the file of former priest Michael Baker span a 14 year-period — from 1986 to 2000 — and provide insight into how Cardinal Roger Mahony and other church leaders dealt with him.

The AP obtained a complete copy of the Baker file last month that contains the documents that are left out of the archdiocese release.

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.

UNITED KINGDOM
BBC News

A Catholic priest has been arrested in connection with alleged child abuse at a London guest house during the early 1980s, his diocese has confirmed.

Operation Fernbridge is looking at claims that senior political figures and others sexually abused boys at the Elm Guest House in Barnes.

One of those arrested is 66-year-old priest Father Tony McSweeney from Norfolk.

The other is a 70-year-old man who was arrested in East Sussex.

Father Mark Hackeson, of the Diocese of East Anglia, said: “The church diocese takes safeguarding of children very seriously and so we will be co-operating fully in any way with the police investigation.”

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.

MILWAUKEE (WI)
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

By Annysa Johnson of the Journal Sentinel

Feb. 6, 2013 3:05 p.m.

UPDATE: Retired Los Angeles Cardinal Roger Mahony, censured by his successor last week for his handling of the sex abuse crisis there during his tenure, will not speak as planned at a Milwaukee area priests conference in May, organizers said today.

The Archdiocese of Milwaukee said Mahony canceled his appearance weeks ago, along with all of his 2013 commitments, before his sanction and before a local priest called on Archbishop Jerome Listecki to disinvite Mahony in an open letter earlier this week.

Former Vice Chancellor and victim advocate Father James Connell of Sheboygan was responding to the announcement in an archdiocesesan newsletter distributed last week saying Mahony would be among the speakers. Archdiocese spokeswoman Julie Wolf attributed the incorrect information to busy schedules and crossed wires.

Instead of Mahony, Connell asked Listecki to instead invite victim-survivors, their familes and friends, advocates, clergy and lay workers hurt by the scandal and others to speak, and that the conference be open to the media.

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
Bock the Robber

What’s the most powerful human emotion?

You might say fear, since it’s the primal impulse to survive, but you’d be wrong. You might say anger. Bah. That hardly counts as an emotion at all. Even insects get angry. Romantics will of course say love, while cynics will say greed, but it’s none of the above. The most powerful, overwhelming, all-dominating human emotion is shame. Salman Rushdie set out this concept in his novel of the same name, describing how an entire nation, its people and its beliefs could be defined by shame, and what holds true for a vast population like Pakistan’s is equally valid for a tiny bunch of disordered famine-survivors like the Irish.

You think I joke? You think it’s stretching it a bit to describe us as famine survivors, with our well-fed bellies and our ostentatious double-breasted houses (even if we are a bit down on our luck these days)?

Think again. The Irish famine is but a blink away in history yet it shaped every last thing about who we are today. There are few degrees of separation: my grandfather knew many people who lived through the famine. They swaddled him as a baby and perhaps they bounced him on their bony old knees. They told him stories in his cot, but one tale they never told was the tale of how they survived when so many did not. This was not a tale to be passed down the generations, because it carried not one, but two great shames embedded in its broken heart.

The first was the shame of survival and the second was the shame of oppression.

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 Times

The Government will seek a “clear strategy and a clear plan” as to how best to deal with the findings of the report into the Magdalene laundries, Taoiseach Enda Kenny has said.

The Government came under renewed criticism today following the refusal of Mr Kenny to issue a full apology to the women who spent time in the laundries, despite the fact that more than a quarter were sent there by the State.

Some Labour TDs say an apology is needed.

Minister of State for Mental Health Kathleen Lynch said it was her personal opinion that there should be an apology.

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
Independent

06 February 2013

THE findings by Senator Martin McAleese are a welcome, if predictable, outcome to an impressively swift and efficient investigation of material that has become well known to all of us over the past decade. And no one could take issue with his wish that the report will bring “healing and peace of mind” to those women whose lives were mostly wrecked by their incarceration in one or other of these hideously cruel and vicious places.

That being said, it must also be recognised that the putting right of these innumerable wrongs comes too late for a vast number of the victims who endured the Magdalene Laundries. The system was worse than the industrial schools, where the inmates, who were prisoners, were subject to the law. The young people sent to them served their time and were released at the end of their term imposed by the courts.

Those at the Magdalene Laundries had no end date to their “sentences” and many spent their lives in slavery. Often they were beaten, starved, had their heads shaved as punishment, their identity stripped from them, their names changed, and were kept in captivity for years longer than the industrial school victims.

The tragedy lies in the fact that the Magdalene Laundry system was fully known about from the birth of the State. Its operation has been acknowledged in various ways covered by Mr McAleese’s report.

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
Independent

06 February 2013

WHEN Taoiseach Enda Kenny stood up in the Dail yesterday afternoon he had the look of a man who wished he was somewhere else. Soon it was clear why. He wasn’t about to deliver the fulsome apology to the Magdalene Laundry victims that the country expected.

The failure of the State to say sorry to the thousands of women who suffered harsh conditions over seven decades in Ireland’s notorious Magdalene Laundries has outraged many. Retribution was being sought by the ‘inmates’ of these harsh institutions, and their families.

The report into the Magdalene Laundries was to be the women’s day, their vindication, and the time for the State to put its hands up to verify and reaffirm stories we have heard over the years of the suffering they have endured.

There are undoubtedly legal reasons why the Taoiseach was guarded and didn’t make an outright apology. His own backbenchers were said to be upset and puzzled by his omission. One can assume that one of the reasons he didn’t go further was that it would open the flood gates when it comes to the question of compensation.

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 Independent (United Kingdom)

The Magdalene Laundries report confirms the need to keep church and state matters separate in Ireland

John Walsh

It takes an age to squeeze much remorse out of the Irish government, doesn’t it? In 1999, after decades of child abuse in Catholic-run organisations, it finally issued “a sincere and long-overdue apology” to the victims and set up a Commission to Inquire into Child Abuse, which took nine years to present its findings.

Now the government has been told – by a report prompted two years ago by the UN Committee Against Torture – that the Irish state colluded in sending 30,000 women to the infamous Magdalene Laundries between 1922 and 1996.

The prime minister, Enda Kenny, didn’t apologise to the families of the women who’d been incarcerated in these hellish institutions despite committing no crime. He said: “The stigma [of] the branding together of all the residents… in the Magdalene Laundries needs to be removed.” No, it doesn’t. The stigma of the Laundries will survive as a reminder of how inhumanly innocent people can be treated by supposedly charitable institutions.

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
RTE News

The Labour Parliamentary Party tonight said the Government needs to address the issue of an apology to the Magdalene survivors in the context of honouring and vindicating them.

Labour TDS and Senators said the treatment inflicted on the women was a historical wrong that had to be put right.

The statement follows a meeting which heard widespread criticism of the Government’s handling of the issue.

Minister of State Kathleen Lynch earlier today said that it was her personal view that there should be an apology.

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)
Los Angeles Times

[Joseph Pina – Los Angeles archdiocese]

Los Angeles County sheriff’s detectives have launched an investigation of an ex-priest and L.A. school district employee about a sexual relationship he allegedly had with a 16-year-old in the late 1980s, The Times has learned.

The inquiry into the actions of Joseph Pina, 66, may be the first to result from the recent release by the Los Angeles Archdiocese of documents laying out the church’s handling of clergy accused of sexual misconduct.

Pina started working for the Los Angeles Unified School District in 2002, performing community outreach for its school-construction program. The job brought him into frequent contact with families, but no reports of problems in that role have emerged. The construction program is winding down and Pina was working only occasionally in recent months. L.A. schools Supt. John Deasy said he ordered Pina’s dismissal as a result of the recent revelations about his past.

The Los Angeles Police Department also is reviewing church files, looking for new cases or more information about old ones.

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.

MILWAUKEE (WI)
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

By Annysa Johnson of the Journal Sentinel

Feb. 6, 2013

A prominent Wisconsin priest and advocate for clergy sex abuse victims is asking Milwaukee Archbishop Jerome Listecki to disinvite disgraced Los Angeles Cardinal Roger Mahony from a spring assembly of local clergy, in light of the cardinal’s recent sanction over his role in covering up clergy sex abuse for more than two decades.

Father James Connell of Sheboygan, former vice-chancellor of the archdioces, is asking that Listecki instead invite victim-survivors, their familes and friends, advocates, clergy and lay workers hurt by the scandal and others to speak, and that the conference be open to the media.

“Truly, this is a moment to generate hope,” said Connell in an open letter sent to Listecki and distributed to media. A public accounting of the crisis and ongoing effects of the scandal would generate “optimism for the future of the Catholic Church,” he wrote.

Mahony is scheduled to speak in May at the spring priests assembly. The archdiocese did not immediately return e-mails and telephone calls seeking comment.

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.

CALIFORNIA
Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests

Posted by David Clohessy on February 06, 2013

Dear Mr. Birotte and Ms. Lacey;

We are members of a support group called SNAP, the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests (SNAPnetwork.org). Our mission is to protect the vulnerable, heal the wounded and expose the truth.

We are urging you both to convene new grand juries to investigate possible criminal charges against current and former LA Catholic officials for committing perjury, obstructing justice, destroying evidence, and similar offenses.

We’re aware that the LAPD has announced it is combing through the files, and we have confidence in the police.

But we believe a grand jury is a better approach, in part because of its subpoena powers. We also feel that if a grand jury is empanelled, other victims, witnesses and whistleblowers (including some with information about more recent wrongdoing by church officials) may voluntarily step forward.

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.

OHIO
Youngstown Dispatch

YOUNGSTOWN — A Roman Catholic bishop in Ohio has appealed for information from former students about alleged sexual abuse by a Franciscan brother who killed himself after the allegations emerged.

Bishop George Murry of Youngstown said yesterday that he has sent letters to about 1,200 adults who attended John F. Kennedy High School in Warren from January to June 1978 and August 1985 to January 1992, while Brother Stephen Baker worked there.

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

IRELAND
Herald

Michael Lavery– 06 February 2013

TAOISEACH Enda Kenny, pictured, was under increasing pressure today to issue a full State apology.

Survivors expressed their disappointment and anger at the Taoiseach’s response to the report’s findings.

The issue was due to be raised in the Dail today and at Fine Gael and Labour parliamentary party meetings this evening.

Justice Minister Alan Shatter said today the Government needed to reflect on all the information in the report.

The State needed to see what could be done to help individuals whose lives had been “blighted and burdened” by long stays in the laundries, he said.

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

MINNESOTA
Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests

Posted by Bob Schwiderski on February 06, 2013

Minnesota Catholic officials – with the Franciscans and the St. Paul-Minneapolis archdiocese – made a secret settlement seven years ago with a clergy sex abuse victim and have stayed silent about the child molesting cleric even though more than 70 kids in three states now say he molested them.

Why are they keeping this secret and how many other secret settlements are being made by the St. Paul-Minneapolis archdiocese and by Catholic religious orders in Minnesota?

Since the initial allegations against Br. Baker were announced (in Ohio last month), no church official in the Twin Cities area came forward to say ‘yes, he abused kids here too.’

Knowing that Baker abused at least one kid here, we want to know if there were any other victims.

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

VATICAN CITY
Vatican Insider

The Vatican’s new sexual crimes prosecutor, Fr. Oliver, confirmed this. The number of reports filed for sexual abuse against minors by priests reached its peak in 2004, at 800

Alessandro Speciale
Vatican City

A year has passed since the “Towards Healing and Renewal” Symposium – organised by the Gregorian University with the support of numerous dioceses and the Vatican Curia – which was intended as an occasion to reflect on and share the progress made by the Catholic Church in dealing with the sex abuse scandal.

Twelve months on, a meeting was held at the same university for the presentation – in 12 languages – of the proceedings of that Symposium. An occasion to look at all that has been done in terms of prevention and training since the suggestions were made at the Symposium. The Gregorian University’s Center for Child Protection is putting together an online programme – the project is still in its experimental phase which started a few months ago – that will allow all Church staff, from priests to catechists to volunteers, to prevent and respond to cases of abuse.

The goal of this initiative – which for the moment is being aimed at 250 people in 8 pilot countries – is to show that “we intend to take the word “path” seriously,” said Fr. Hans Zollner, head of the university’s Institute of Psychology and one of the Symposium’s promoters on 2012. The “road [to combating sex abuse against minors in the Church] will be long and difficult because of resistance, conflicts and tensions,” the Jesuit admitted, but the Gregorian University’s initiative “has created increased awareness of the extent of the problem in many parts of the world” and was “a crucial step in the efforts being made to achieve justice for abuse victims.”

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
Herald

Michael Lavery– 05 February 2013

A 1,000-page report into State involvement in the Magdalene laundries is expected to lead to fresh calls for a compensation scheme for the women.

An 18-month investigation into the Catholic-run workhouses will formally reveal State involvement with Magdalene laundries and knowledge of the harrowing life women in the institutions endured between 1922 and 1996.

The report, due to be published this evening, will respond to allegations by former residents that the State colluded with the Catholic Church by illegally incarcerating thousands of women and girls and forcing them to carry out unpaid work.

detained

An estimated 30,000 single mothers and other women were detained or resident in 10 laundries throughout the State.

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
Herald

Cormac Murphy– 06 February 2013

PUBLIC demonstrations in support of Magdalene survivors will be held on the streets of Dublin unless Taoiseach Enda Kenny steps up and makes a full and proper apology.

Claire McGettrick, of the Justice For Magdalenes group, today warned that the fight for justice for the women who lived in slave-like conditions in institutions run by nuns is far from over.

Redress

The comments come following the publication yesterday of an 18-month inquiry headed by outgoing Senator Martin McAleese.

So far there has been no official apology from the State or any commitment to provide a a redress scheme for the survivors.

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 Examiner

By Claire O’Sullivan and Conall Ó Fátharta
There was a stark contrast yesterday between the horrific stories we have heard over many years from the survivors of the Magdalene laundries and the report that was published yesterday.

The committee found no evidence that unmarried girls had babies there or that many of the girls were prostitutes. It found no evidence of torture or physical abuse. Martin McAleese has gone so far as to say that some of the women had “confused” their negative experiences in the industrial schools with their time at the laundries. The committee also stated that anybody who came to the homes via the State, from social services and the criminal justice system, were not locked up indefinitely but were aware why they were there and when they would leave.

This is entirely at odds with evidence, provided by Justice for Magdalenes and Magdalene Survivors Together, of women sent to laundries by the courts and who remained there for the rest of their lives.

The report instead said it was the girls whose families sent them to the nuns or who came from industrial schools that were “abandoned”, unaware of when they’d ever leave the laundry.

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 Examiner

Wednesday, February 06, 2013

Yesterday’s Magdalene report joined a litany of eviscerating documents detailing our past of neglect, abuse, and harrowing inhumanity.

And though we, as individuals, can sidestep the burden of guilt those horrors bequeath us, we cannot avoid the responsibility of making amends or belatedly showing some simple humanity to those so long denied it.

There have been so many reports — Ferns, Cloyne, the Murphy report on the diocese of Dublin, Raphoe, and too many others — that we might prefer to look away, to consign the horrors of the past to the past, but we cannot. We cannot, if we want to imagine ourselves a moral and decent people, pretend again that we do not know that there are hundreds if not thousands of women in our society who have been misused and betrayed in the name of cruel, medieval mores.

Thousands more died before we finally acknowledged that their lives, or at least a good portion of them, had been denied them, that they had been held against their will in a peculiarly self-righteous Irish gulag.

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 Eaminer

By Conall Ó Fátharta
Irish Examiner Reporter

Just one of the religious orders that ran Magdalene laundries has offered a specific apology to the women who suffered in their care.

The Religious Sisters of Charity, which ran laundries in Donnybrook, Dublin, and Peacock Lane, Cork, offered an apology but also said it acted in good faith.

“We apologise un-reservedly to any woman who experienced hurt while in our care. In good faith we provided refuge for women at our Magdalene homes in Donnybrook and Peacock Lane. Some of the women spent a short time with us; some left, returned and left again and some still live with us,” said a statement.

However, the remaining orders insisted they acted in good faith.

The Good Shepherd Sisters, which ran laundries in Limerick, Waterford, Cork, and New Ross, said in a statement: “We were part of the system and the culture of the time.

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 Examiner

By Sarah Stack

She was 12 when taken from her school in Co Carlow and put in the Good Shepherd Magdalene Laundry in New Ross, Co Wexford, because her father died and mother remarried.

Ms Sullivan said she was told the place would further her education, but she never saw her schoolbooks again.

For 48 years she had been haunted by memories of a lost childhood and slave labour and is demanding a full apology from the Government and religious orders for stealing her education, name, identity, and life.

“I feel that they are still in denial, but other parts of this report clearly state that we were telling the truth,” she said.

By day she worked in the laundry, was fed bread and dripping, and then made Aran sweaters or rosary beads before going to bed at night in St Aidan’s Industrial School.

“I remember being hidden in a tunnel when the school inspectors came,” said the 60-year-old. “I can only assume that this was due to the fact that I should not have been working in the laundry.”

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)
National Catholic Reporter

by Mario T. García | Feb. 6, 2013

This is my first blog of the new year because of other deadlines as well as the start of the winter quarter at UC Santa Barbara, where I teach Chicano studies, and this is always a hectic time. I thought my first entry this year would be on the second inauguration of President Barack Obama, and I have to say that I was very moved by his inspiring speech aimed at bringing about needed reforms on immigration, gun control, the environment, and dealing with the growing gap between the rich and middle classes and the poor. I am very hopeful that progress along these lines will occur, though Republicans seem to remain intransigent on many if these issues. Obama will have to be more forceful in his second term to push his agenda, but it will also require those of us who believe in that agenda to pressure from below for these reforms.

But I also want to write in my first blog of 2013 about the recent and startling revelations of the priest sexual abuse cases in southern California, where I live. A little more than a week ago, a court order forced the Los Angeles archdiocese to reveal all of its previously unreleased records on these cases, including the information as to how church officials dealt with them.

The church has stonewalled for a number of years in doing so, arguing that it would serve no purpose and only refuel the controversy. In fact, as these released records reveal, the intent was shamelessly to protect not only the abusing priests, but also Cardinal Roger Mahony and his top aides on this matter. One of his top aides — in fact, his major aide in these cover-ups and accessory to the crimes committed — was Auxiliary Bishop Thomas Curry of Santa Barbara.

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

VATICAN CITY
Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests

Posted by Barbara Blaine on February 06, 2013

The Pope’s top aide on clergy sex abuse, Fr. Robert Oliver, just told the AP that the pope “had spoken clearly about the need for transparency and justice in order to regain the trust of the faithful.”

We agree.

But the trouble is that the pope’s actions contradict his words. And his priorities are backwards.

Catholic officials must start truly protecting kids, exposing truth, and punishing wrong-doers, both those who commit and those conceal child sex crimes. That’s “job one.” When that happens, the “trust of the faithful” will be restored.

When the Pope denounces, disciplines, demotes or defrocks Bishop Robert Finn, Cardinal Roger Mahony and dozens of their corrupt colleagues, then “the trust of the faithful” will be restored. Even more crucial, then the safety of children will be enhanced and the cover ups of future abuse will be discouraged.

It’s ironic that Fr. Oliver is talking about “complacency.” A decade ago, in the beleaguered Boston Archdiocese, Fr. Oliver helped alter an archdiocese policy “to curtail access by alleged victims of abuse to church records — a move that surprised lay leaders who sat on the Cardinal’s Commission for the Protection of Children.”

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

VATICAN CITY
The Republic

By NICOLE WINFIELD Associated Press
February 06, 2013

VATICAN CITY — The Vatican’s new sex crimes prosecutor has insisted on the need for transparency about the church’s failures to protect children from sex abuse by priests.

In his first public comments since taking office, the Rev. Robert Oliver quoted Pope Benedict XVI in saying the church must recognize the “grave errors in judgment that were often committed by the church’s leadership.” For decades, bishops around the globe actively covered up abuse by priests in their care, while Vatican officials in Rome often turned a blind eye.

Oliver, previously a canon lawyer in the Boston archdiocese — ground zero of the U.S. abuse scandal — spoke days after thousands of pages of personnel files of abusive priests were released by court order in Los Angeles. They showed how retired Cardinal Roger Mahony and other top archdiocese officials protected the church by shielding priests and not reporting child sex abuse to authorities.

The archdiocese agreed to release the files as part of a $660 million settlement with abuse victims in 2007. Attorneys for individual priests fought for five years to prevent the papers from being made public and the archdiocese tried to blot out large sections of the files, including the names of hierarchy involved in decision-making. The Associated Press and Los Angeles Times fought successfully to have the names of Mahony and top church officials made public.

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
RTE News

Three Labour TDs have called on the Taoiseach to make an urgent apology to residents of the Madgalene laundries.

Labour TD for Dublin North Sean Kenny said that two weeks is too long to wait for an apology, after Taoiseach Enda Kenny earlier told the Dáil he wanted to use the next two weeks to decide how best to deal with the needs and requirements of the Magdalene survivors.

However, speaking on RTÉ’s News at One, Sean Kenny said that he believes the Taoiseach should have been more decisive about when an apology should be forthcoming.

He said that he was going to bring this up at a meeting with his parliamentary colleagues, and he added that the issue of compensation needed to be addressed in more detail.

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.

UNITED STATES
The New York Times

By FRANK BRUNI

Published: February 4, 2013

Last week, the Obama administration proposed a further tweak to its rules about insurance coverage of contraception, trying to quiet religious organizations’ complaints that the edict tramples on their beliefs. Roman Catholic officials have been especially vociferous. Their moral conviction, they insist, cannot be slave to secular convention.

Except, that is, when it works to their advantage. When it profits them. And this two-tracked approach was illustrated by another recent news story, one that flickered onto and then off the public’s radar more quickly than it should have, and deserves a closer look.

The news story brought to light a wrongful-death suit by a widower, Jeremy Stodghill, in regard to his wife and the twin 28-week-old fetuses inside her when she died in a Catholic hospital, St. Thomas More, in Cañon City, Colorado.

The hospital’s lawyers argued that the woman’s death couldn’t have been prevented. As to whether proper medical attention might have yielded the delivery of two healthy baby boys, lawyers argued that the question was ultimately irrelevant, because wrongful death can apply only to people and, legally speaking, fetuses aren’t human lives. …

We’ve been getting a fresh and galling peek into that with the court-compelled release of documents from the Los Angeles Archdiocese, which engaged in a pattern of willful blindness and outright cover-up so egregious that the current archbishop, José Gomez, took the shocking step last week of publicly reprimanding his predecessor, Cardinal Roger Mahony.

The documents show that Mahony and his lieutenants repeatedly failed to report allegations to law enforcement officials and urged accused priests to leave or stay out of the state, lest they face prosecution. They decided, in short, that the church’s representatives and reputation mattered more than justice: that the church could hold itself above laws that governed everybody else.

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 Journal

GOVERNMENT DEPARTMENTS AND State agencies used Magdalene laundries to do their washing over a period of many years, the report into the laundries has found.

The report notes that the State giving business to the laundries could be considered “indirect financial support”.

However it notes that there was no evidence to suggest a “deliberate policy or preference by State agencies for use of Magdalene or other institutional laundries over non-religious-operated laundries”.

Where the Magdalene Laundries won a contract from the State, it was either the only or else the cheapest tender that was submitted.

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
Galway Independent

Galway writer and artist Patricia Burke Brogan has expressed her disappointment that the report on the Magdalen Laundries has softened the reality of life in the laundries.

Ms Burke Brogan spent a short time in the laundry on Forster Street in Galway City as a young novice and was interviewed by report author and former Senator Martin McAleese, the independent chairperson of the inter-Departmental Committee charged with establishing the facts of the State’s involvement with the laundries.

Commenting on the report’s publication yesterday, Ms Burke Brogan, whose play ‘Eclipsed’ highlights the plight of women in the Magdalen Laundries, told The Galway Independent her initial reaction to the report was one of “disappointment”.

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

By David Hurley
Published on Wednesday 6 February 2013

ALMOST 100 women died at the Good Shepherd convent in Limerick between 1922 and 1982, the report of the Inter-Departmental Committee to establish the facts of State involvement with the Magdalene laundries has found.

The report, which was published by the Department of Justice yesterday afternoon, states that a total of 93 women died at the Clare Street convent over the 60-year period.

The report examined reasons why women and girls entered the 10 religious-run laundries which were operating in the State between 1922 and 1996.

It found that in a quarter of cases girls and women were send to the laundries by the State.

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 Journal

THE DEPARTMENT OF Justice neither sought nor received any specific legal advice from the Attorney General’s office prior to responding to the report on the State’s involvement in the Magdalene Laundries.

The government’s decision to not issue a full apology following the publication of a report which found the State responsible for admitting over a quarter of the women to the institutions between 1922 and 1996 has drawn widespread criticism.

It has also led to claims that the government was advised to avoid offering a full apology on behalf of the State for its role in the women being incarcerated in the laundries as it would amount to admitting full liability and open it up to claims from survivors.

Responding to a query from TheJournal.ie today, the Department said that the Attorney General received a copy of the report at the same time it went to the government at a Cabinet meeting yesterday morning.

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 Times

MARIE O’HALLORAN and MICHAEL O’REGAN

A former Fianna Fail minister has apologised for not investigating the Magdalene laundries when the party was in government.

Party leader Micheál Martin, who chaired the committee dealing with industrial school abuse, told the Dáil he was “sorry we didn’t deal with the Magdalene laundries at the time”.

Mr Martin said the committee led to a State apology to survivors of industrial schools. He told Taoiseach Enda Kenny that the 1,400 page report published yesterday on the Magdalene laundries “doesn’t take any stigma away. The report doesn’t take any stigma away. The only effective way for the stigma to be removed by the State is to apologise,” the Fianna Fail leader said, with “no ifs and no buts”.

The Fianna Fáil leader was speaking during leaders questions when the Taoiseach was repeatedly pressed to give a full and proper apology to the women in the laundries. Mr Martin said that the “most fundamental need articulated to me above and beyond redress” was for somebody to say that what was done was wrong.

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)
KABC

[with video]

Amy Powell

LOS ANGELES (KABC) — With last week’s release of thousands of church documents on clergy abuse, the LAPD is stepping in. Investigators say new legal charges are possible.

Detectives are focusing on the cases of about a dozen previously investigated priests and are auditing those past cases to see if anything was missed. They are also going over files of all the 122 priests made public last week by a court order.

“Most of these files have already had investigations done, and we weren’t able to get a prosecution or we couldn’t get to anything in terms of statue, so we’re going to go back, kind of re-audit everything that we’ve done before,” said LAPD Cmdr. Andrew Smith.

Authorities want to know if any crimes, such as failure to report child abuse, occurred.

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.

CALIFORNIA
The Monterey County Herald

Posted: 02/05/2013

The horror, the sordidness of the awful abuse of children by figures of spiritual authority is not much assuaged by current Archbishop Jose Gomez relieving Cardinal Mahony of “all public duties” after mounting evidence showed he shielded pedophile priests from law enforcement.

So Mahony won’t be overseeing the Sacrament of Confirmation at Our Lady of the Angels any time soon. But he is not only still a priest who can perform Mass— he is still one of the 120 cardinals who form the leadership of a church with more than 1.1 billion adherents worldwide.

Given what we now know about Mahony’s active efforts to protect known and suspected sexual abusers in clerical collars, this removal of him from public life is not only not enough — it’s no punishment at all.

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
Courier Mail

OPPOSITION Leader Tony Abbott vouched in court for the good character of a Catholic priest later struck off the clergy list by the Vatican following a child abuse case.

Fr John Gerard Nestor, who attended Sydney’s St Patrick’s Seminary with Mr Abbott in the 1980s, was a priest in the Wollongong diocese in NSW when he was charged with the indecent assault of a 15-year-old altar boy in 1991.

Fr Nestor, then aged 44, was convicted in Wollongong Local Court on February 18, 1997, and sentenced to 16 months in jail, with the magistrate describing the case as a ”gross breach of trust”.

In court, the priest admitted he had – while dressed in boxer shorts and a singlet – slept on mattresses on a floor in the presbytery with the boy and his younger brother some time between June and September 1991.

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 JERSEY
The Georgia Bulletin

WASHINGTON (CNS) — The assignment of a priest who at one time admitted inappropriately touching a teenage boy to a new administrative post in the Archdiocese of Newark, N.J., will not lead to unsupervised contact with children, an archdiocesan spokesman said. Father Michael Fugee was named as co-director of the Office of Continuing Education and Ongoing Formation of Priests in October by Newark Archbishop John J. Myers. Jim Goodness, archdiocesan spokesman, said that in the position Father Fugee primarily seeks out and forwards information on seminars, courses and books that night help clergy in their ministerial work. The information mostly is shared via email, Goodness said. “It’s important to note we’re not looking at a high, prestigious position,” Goodness told Catholic News Service Feb. 5.

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 JERSEY
NorthJersey.com

Wednesday, February 6, 2013

Herald News

IN THE wake of widespread sexual scandals involving its clergy, U.S. Catholic bishops established a series of procedures at a 2002 bishops’ conference in Dallas: The Charter for the Protection of Children and Young People. Newark Archbishop John J. Myers should reread it.

As reported this week, the Rev. Michael Fugee, a former Wyckoff assistant pastor who admitted fondling a 13-year-old boy in 2001, is still serving as a cleric.

Fugee has been the director of the archdiocese’s Office of the Propagation of the Faith, which raises funds for missionary work. In October, Fugee was also named the co-director of the Office of Continuing Education and Ongoing Formation of Priests, an office providing educational material to clerics.

Fugee was convicted by a Bergen County jury on a count of sexual contact for groping the boy. But the verdict was overturned by an appellate panel because it found Fugee’s statement to police questioning his sexual orientation should not have been admitted as evidence. Fugee said at trial that he playfully wrestled with the boy, but had given a statement to police earlier in which he admitted grabbing the boy’s crotch to satisfy an urge.

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
Deutsche Welle

The Vatican used to be able to count on Irish clergy to follow the rules. But now a group of Irish priests are openly questioning the Vatican’s conservative approach to Catholicism, despite the threat of excommunication.

On Sunday, January 20, during a news conference in Dublin, Father Tony Flannery became the unlikely face of the modern Irish Catholic. Unlikely, because Flannery supports allowing women and married men to become priests. He embraces the role of lesbians and gays in the Catholic Church. Flannery also questions the legitimacy of the Vatican’s hierarchy, and he warns that unless power is decentralized and free thought is encouraged, church attendance in Ireland will continue to stagnate.

These views would seem to be counter to the regular average Irish churchgoer, who, according to numerous polls and surveys, is older and slightly more conservative than the general population.

But Flannery has been embraced. The well-known 66-year-old Irish priest has been inundated with e-mails, texts and handwritten letters from supporters all over the country.

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.

IRLAND
ORF

Irlands Ministerpräsident Enda Kenny hat sich gestern für die Ausbeutung junger Frauen in katholischen Arbeitshäusern in Irland entschuldigt. In den Jahren 1922 bis 1996 wurden nach einem Bericht einer Regierungskommission bis zu zehntausend Frauen in den Arbeitshäusern entrechtet und ausgebeutet.

Zeuginnen berichteten, ihnen seien von den dort tätigen Nonnen neue Namen gegeben worden und sie hätten von früh bis spät unentgeltlich arbeiten müssen. Kindern wurde jede Bildung vorenthalten. Nutznießer der Arbeitshäuser, die „Wäschereien“ genannt wurden, waren unter anderem die Regierung, die Armee und Privatunternehmen, die Verträge mit ihnen unterhielten.

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.

IRLAND
20 Minuten

Irlands Ministerpräsident Enda Kenny hat sich am Dienstag für die Ausbeutung junger Frauen in katholischen Arbeitshäusern in Irland entschuldigt. In den Jahren 1922 bis 1996 wurden laut einem Regierungsbericht bis zu zehntausend Frauen in den Institutionen entrechtet und ausgebeutet.

Zeuginnen berichteten, ihnen seien von den dort tätigen Nonnen neue Namen gegeben worden und sie hätten von früh bis spät unentgeltlich arbeiten müssen. Kindern wurde jede Bildung vorenthalten. Nutzniesser der Arbeitshäuser, die «Wäschereien» genannt wurden, waren unter anderem die Regierung, die Armee und Privatunternehmen.

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.

IRLAND
Nachrichten Heute

Irische Regierung akzeptiert staatliche Mitschuld bei der Versklavung und Zwangsarbeit von rund 30.000 irischen Frauen in den Jahren 1922 – 1996

Dr. Alexander von Paleske — 5.2. 2013 —
Wir haben bereits mehrfach über die Versklavung, Zwangsarbeit, Medikamentenversuche und sexuellen Missbrauch in den vergangenen 100 Jahren in der sogenannten „zivilisierten Welt“ berichtet:

– Über die Zwangsemigration von englischen Heimkindern nach Australien und dortigen sexuellen Missbrauch und Zwangsarbeit

– über die Zwangsarbeit der Verdingkinder in der Schweiz

– über die Medikamentenversuche an Heimkindern in Österreich

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.

IRLAND
Neue Zurcher Zeitug

Martin Alioth, Dublin

Der erste Bericht über das Schicksal von rund 10 000 irischen Frauen in Wäschereien katholischer Frauenorden im Zeitraum zwischen 1922 und 1996 ist am Dienstag in Dublin vorgestellt worden. Frühere, aufsehenerregende Berichte über systematischen Missbrauch in kirchlichen Anstalten hatten die sogenannten Magdalenerinnen ausgespart, denn der Staat vertrat bisher die Auffassung, es habe sich bei diesen Wäschereien um private Organisationen gehandelt, in denen diese Frauen freiwillig arbeiteten.

Staatliches Umdenken

Der Bericht bestätigt indessen, was aus den Erinnerungen von Überlebenden schon längst festgestanden war. Angehörige der irischen Polizei brachten geflüchtete Frauen routinemässig zurück in die Wäschereien, die ihrerseits dem staatlichen Fabrikinspektorat unterstanden. Ministerien und die Armee benutzten die Wäschereien auf einer kommerziellen Basis. Der Staat selbst wies ein Viertel der Frauen ein. Doch der irische Premierminister, Enda Kenny, verweigerte am Dienstag im Parlament eine offizielle Entschuldigung im Namen des Staates. Er bedauerte bloss, dass es so lange gedauert habe, bis das Stigma von den Frauen entfernt worden sei, und dass sie unter diesen Bedingungen hätten leben müssen.

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.

DEUTSCHLAND
MissBiT

Trier: Bistum hat bislang 56 Opfer entschädigt

Im Bistum Trier wurden inzwischen 56 Opfer sexueller Übergriffe in katholischen Einrichtungen entschädigt. Nach Angaben von Bistumssprecher Uzulis wurden alle Anträge bewilligt.

Die Opferinitiative MissBit spricht von zwei weiteren Fällen. Dabei gehe es um sexuelle Übergriffe durch einen Priester in Saarlouis. Das Bistum hat inzwischen weitere Fälle bestätigt.

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

OSTERREICH
der Standard

Katharina Mittelstaedt, 5. Februar 2013

Seit drei Jahren wird rund um die Missbrauchsfälle im Stift Kremsmünster ermittelt. Nun wird eine kleine Gruppe von Opfern aktiv. Denn noch diese Woche entscheidet sich, ob der “Haupttäter” vor Gericht kommt

Linz – Der ehemalige Klosterschüler ist inzwischen ein erwachsener Mann, und dennoch – jeden Sonntag aufs Neue holt ihn seine Vergangenheit ein, bis heute. Er bekomme dann zittrige Hände, Schweißausbrüche, werde nervös und sei angespannt. Doch zumindest, so erzählt das Missbrauchsopfer, das nicht namentlich genannt werden möchte, die Albträume von Pater A. habe er inzwischen im Griff.

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.

VATIKAN
20 Minuten

In letzter Zeit werden immer mehr Missbrauchsfälle in der katholischen Kirche aufgedeckt. Wie der Chefermittler für Missbrauchsfälle des Vatikans nun meldet, werden ihm jährlich etwa 600 neue Fälle zugetragen. Viele davon würden aus den 60er, 70er und 80er Jahren stammen.

Der bisherige Höhepunkt sei im Jahr 2004 mit 800 neuen Vorwürfen erreicht worden, sagte der US-Geistliche Robert Oliver am Dienstag weiter. Er werde nach dem Vorbild von Papst Benedikt XVI. eine Null-Toleranz-Politik gegenüber Kinderschändern verfolgen, kündigte Oliver an.

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.

IRLAND
kathweb

Mehr als 10.000 Frauen zwischen 1922 und 1996 ohne Bezahlung zu harter körperlicher Arbeit gezwungen

06.02.2013
Dublin, 06.02.2013 (KAP) Die Opfer systematischer Zwangsarbeit in den irischen “Magdalenenheimen” haben die Entschuldigung von Premierminister Enda Kenny abgelehnt. Die Opfergruppe “Justice for Magdalenes” (JFM) bewertete sie laut einem Bericht der Tageszeitung “Irish Independent” (Mittwoch) als unzureichend. Der rechtspolitische Sprecher der größten Oppositionspartei Fianna Fail, Niall Collins, kritisierte, dass sich Kenny nicht ausdrücklich für eine Entschädigung der Opfer ausgesprochen habe.

In den sogenannten Magdalene Laundries (Heime für “gefallene Mädchen” wurden zwischen 1922 und 1996 mehr als 10.000 Frauen ohne Bezahlung zu harter körperlicher Arbeit gezwungen. Eine Untersuchungskommission war zu dem Schluss gekommen, dass der irische Staat die von katholischen Frauenorden betriebenen Heime “direkt und grundsätzlich” unterstützt habe.

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.

VATIKAN
Radio Vatikan

Beim Vorgehen gegen sexuellen Missbrauch durch Kleriker will der Vatikan seine „Null-Toleranz-Politik“ fortführen; die Sorge um die Opfer soll dabei weiter im Zentrum stehen. Das hat der neue vatikanische Missbrauchsbeauftragte Robert Oliver am Dienstagabend bei einer Konferenz in der päpstlichen Universität Gregoriana in Rom unterstrichen. Der US-Amerikaner war vom Papst am 20. Dezember als Nachfolger von Charles Scicluna, dem „Anwalt der Gerechtigkeit“ in der römischen Glaubenskongregation, eingesetzt worden. Auf der Konferenz wurden die Akten des großen Missbrauchssymposiums vorgestellt , auf dem sich im Februar 2012 Vertreter fast aller Bischofskonferenzen der Weltkirche über Prävention und Folgen von sexuellem Missbrauch durch Kleriker austauschten.

Der Vatikan behandle jährlich etwa 600 Missbrauchsvorwürfe, gab Oliver an. Die Tendenz sei rückläufig, die meisten Fälle bezögen sich auf den Zeitraum 60er bis 80er Jahre. Der bisherige Höhepunkt sei mit 800 neuen Vorwürfen im Jahr 2004 erreicht worden, so der Kirchenanwalt. In den vergangenen drei Jahren sei die Zahl auf 600 pro Jahr zurückgegangen. Oliver lobte die internationale Missbrauchskonferenz von 2012 als wegweisend, was die Aufklärung und die Sensibilisierung für das Thema betrifft:

„Ein großes Problem war schon immer, dass man bei Vorwürfen zuerst alles verneint und zurückdrängt. Deshalb wurde mit der Konferenz von 2012 an der Gregoriana große Arbeit geleistet, weil man das Missbrauchsproblem direkt ansprach. Denn die beste Prävention besteht darin, das Problem von vornherein zu kennen bzw. zu wissen, wie es zu Missbrauch kommen könnte. Wichtig war und ist, dass alle Kirchenmitarbeiter – egal in welcher hierarchischen Position – davon Kenntnis haben.“

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.

MINNESOTA
Pioneer Press

By Emily Gurnon
egurnon@pioneerpress.comtwincities.com
Posted: 02/05/2013

A Franciscan brother who died by suicide in Pennsylvania after sexual-abuse allegations also molested a Minnesota boy while he served at the Church of St. Patrick in Inver Grove Heights, the victim and his St. Paul attorney said.

The Rev. Stephen P. Baker, 62, was found dead Saturday, Feb. 2, at the St. Bernadine Monastery in Hollidaysburg, Pa., of a self-inflicted knife wound to the heart, according to Blair Township police.

In 2003, Douglas Larson, 49, of St. Cloud came to a settlement with the Third Order Regular Franciscans, Province of the Immaculate Conception, a Catholic order of which Baker was a member, according to Jeff Anderson, a St. Paul attorney who represented Larson and other alleged victims of sexual abuse by clergy.

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.

VATIKAN
Zeit

Den Vatikan erreichen nach Angaben seines Chefermittlers für Missbrauchsfälle jährlich etwa 600 neue Missbrauchsvorwürfe gegen katholische Geistliche. Viele dieser Fälle stammten aus den sechziger, siebziger und achtziger Jahren, teilte der US-Geistliche Robert Oliver mit. Die bislang höchste Zahl wurde seinen Angaben zufolge im Jahr 2004 mit 800 neuen Vorwürfen erreicht.

Er werde nach dem Vorbild von Papst Benedikt XVI. eine Null-Toleranz-Politik gegenüber Kinderschändern verfolgen, kündigte der neue Chefermittler an. Nach seinen Angaben sind rund Dreiviertel der 112 nationalen Bischofskonferenzen einem Aufruf des Papstes von 2011 nachgekommen und haben Richtlinien im Kampf gegen pädophile Priester ausgearbeitet.

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)
Tri-City Herald

By HARRIET RYAN, ASHLEY POWERS AND VICTORIA KIM — Los Angeles Times

LOS ANGELES — In the midst of renewed public outrage over its handling of clergy sex abuse, the Los Angeles Archdiocese is considering a $200 million fundraising campaign that could erase debts brought on by the scandal.

The archdiocese has hired a New York company, Guidance In Giving Inc., to study the feasibility of a large-scale fundraiser that would shore up a bottom line hit hard by costly abuse litigation. It would be the archdiocese’s first capital campaign in 60 years.

The archdiocese’s $660 million settlement in 2007 with more than 500 victims was the largest in U.S. history. According to a December financial report reviewed by the Los Angeles Times, the archdiocese is still paying down loans it used to cover the settlement, and its liabilities now outstrip its assets by $80 million.

The archdiocese is contemplating the fundraiser as a way to repay settlement loans totaling $175 million, according to the report. An archdiocese spokesman confirmed that the capital campaign was being considered but in a statement did not address whether any proceeds would be used to pay down the settlement loan.

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 JERSEY
NBC New York

The Newark Archdiocese is under fire for continuing to allow a priest who admitted to fondling a teenage boy to wear the clerical collar. But the church is defending its decision. Brian Thompson reports.

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 Examiner

The Taoiseach has again declined to offer a full apology to the survivors of the Magdalene laundries. He appealed for “space” to formulate the Government’s response.

Opposition parties have rounded on Enda Kenny in the Dáil this morning after groups representing the women expressed their outrage that he had not given the apology they expected for the role played by the state in the laundry system.

This morning, the Taoiseach says the report needed to be examined, reflected on and debated in the Dáil in two weeks time.

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 Independent

By Fionnan Sheahan

Wednesday February 06 2013

A LABOUR Party minister has broken ranks and said the Government should make a full apology to survivors of the Magdalene Laundries.

Junior Minister Kathleen Lynch said her “personal opinion” is there should be an apology.

“You have to accept that I can’t speak on behalf of the Taoiseach. You have to accept that,” she told Today FM.

“I suppose the Government will take that decision and I don’t sit around the Cabinet table as I have already said.

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

IRELAND
Irish Examiner

By Maeve O’Rourke
ON Sept 4, 2009, the minister for education and science rejected Justice for Magdalenes’ proposal for an apology and distinct redress scheme for survivors of the Magdalene Laundries.

The minister said “the situation …… is quite different to persons who were resident in State-run institutions. The Magdalene Laundries were privately owned and operated establishments and did not come within the responsibility of the State. The State did not refer individuals to Magdalen Laundries, nor was it complicit in referring individuals to them.”

Yesterday, on Feb 5, Martin McAleese begged to differ. And the central finding of his report, that the State was indeed directly and fundamentally involved in the Magdalene Laundry institutions, is welcome.

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 Independent

By Dearbhail McDonald Legal Editor

Wednesday February 06 2013

WOMEN were sent to Magdalene Laundries for petty crimes, such as failing to buy a train ticket and snatching purses. Others were detained for more serious crimes, such as prostitution, manslaughter, murder and killing babies they had recently given birth to.

One woman who was convicted of stealing a bike and attempting suicide was detained for a year, according to the report.

The vast majority of those who entered laundries through the criminal-justice system were put there on foot of minor crimes.

The most common entry method for girls admitted to laundries was on foot of probation orders requiring them to be resident for up to three years.

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 Independent

They were called Fallen Women. But in reality they were Loose Ends. The 10,000 and more women and girls who passed through the gates of the Magdalene Laundries since 1922 were regarded as no more than female flotsam and jetsam which washed up on the shores of the State.

The authorities didn’t know what to do with them, nor particularly care about what befell them. They were loose ends, round pegs in the rigidly square society ordained by the conjoined twins of church and State.

They were orphans, or children of neglected or abusive homes, or rejected by foster parents. They were dirt-poor, unloved, on remand or probation for crimes ranging from non-payment of a train ticket to manslaughter, but mostly convicted of petty offences.

They were unmarried mothers, or children born out of wedlock, or females accused of being morally suspect. They were girls released from industrial schools before the age of 16 and packed off straight to the laundries to see out the rest of their childhood. Some were disabled. Few, very few, were prostitutes.

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 Independent

By Louise Hogan and Shauna McLoughlin

Wednesday February 06 2013

SURVIVORS of the Magdalene Laundries branded the Government’s failure to apologise as “cynical” and “deeply disappointing”.

Advocacy group Justice for Magdalenes (JFM) described Taoiseach Enda Kenny’s response as a “half-hearted” acknowledgement of the pain and suffering in light of the report confirming state regulated institutions had allowed slavery within their walls.

JFM spokeswoman Claire McGettrick said the now elderly and vulnerable group of women deserved an apology and a transparent compensation scheme.

Ms McGettrick said if the government politicians were “people of honour” they would have apologised immediately. “By dragging out this process for a group of really vulnerable women who do not have any time left – it is cynical, cruel, it is prolonging the torture and it is simply not good enough.”

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 Independent

Wednesday February 06 2013

The Attorney General Maire Whelan was involved in yesterday’s cabinet deliberations about the 1,000-page report by former senator Martin McAleese.

But the Government has refused to say if Mr Kenny has been advised against delivering an apology for legal reasons.

The report has thrown new light on the operation of the 10 Magdalene Laundries in the State between 1922 and 1996. It confirmed, by examining the books of the religious orders, that 10,000 women had been in the laundries over that period – significantly fewer than the previous estimate of 30,000.

It exploded the myth that most of them were prostitutes or unmarried mothers who had their babies there and said the women went into the laundries for a variety of reasons.

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 Independent

By Dearbhail McDonald Legal Editor

Wednesday February 06 2013

THE State’s “significant” involvement in the admission of young girls and women to Magdalene Laundries contradicts previous claims by the Government that the “vast majority” entered on a voluntary basis or with parental consent.

Two years ago Sean Aylward, inset, then Secretary General of the Department of Justice, told the United Nations Committee Against Torture (UNCAT) that the vast majority of women who went to Laundries “went there voluntarily or, if they were minors, with the consent of their parents or guardians”.

But the report of the Inter-Departmental Committee (IDC) to establish the facts of State involvement with the Magdalene Laundries found that more than a quarter of referrals were made or facilitated by the State.

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 Independent

By Paul Melia

Wednesday February 06 2013

THE authorities were warned over 70 years ago that the Magdalene Laundries were not appropriate places to rehabilitate women convicted of crimes.

A report found that the laundries, which were offered as an alternative to prison, had a “lack of any specialist training” to provide girls with a “fresh start” in life and that education was “absent”.

Written by a probation officer in 1941, the report referred to “young country girls who get into trouble in Dublin, where their inexperience is easily recognised and readily exploited by the depraved”.

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 Independent

By Michael Brennan Deputy Political Editor

Wednesday February 06 2013

RTE’s ‘Prime Time’ is standing over its reporting of the money earned by the Magdalene Laundries in the wake of criticism in the official state report.

The Magdalene Laundry report said that the claim in a recent ‘Prime Time’ report about the profits of the Galway Magdalene Laundry in 1968 was “incorrect”.

Instead of making a €1m profit that year, the laundry actually made a loss of around €32,000.

But the Irish Independent has learned that ‘Prime Time’ is insisting that it made no such claim about the profitability of the Galway Magdalene Laundry and is fully standing over its report.

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 Independent

By Michael Brennan Deputy Political Editor

Wednesday February 06 2013

THE survivors of the Magdalene laundries had to battle hard for the long-awaited report into the State’s role in their detention.

They were excluded when former Taoiseach Bertie Ahern made an official state apology in 1999 to the victims of abuse in state-run institutions.

And they were excluded from the €1bn compensation scheme set up as a result.

The official state position was that the Magdalene laundries were run by four religious congregations – and that the State had no involvement.

But there were several factors that led to the publication of the report which has found that the State was actually responsible for around one-quarter of the 10,000 women who ended up in the laundries.

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 Independent

By Paul Melia

Wednesday February 06 2013

LIFE was harsh in the State’s Magdalene Laundries, with working days lasting from 7am to 6pm and little time for recreation.

The residents or penitents – that is, someone seeking forgiveness from God – normally began their day with Mass at 7am followed by breakfast. They then worked until 12.30pm when dinner was served.

Periods of prayer were observed during the day, including reciting the Rosary which the women would respond to while working and a pause for the Angelus at 12pm and 6pm, and the Sacred Heart prayer at 4pm. Silence was observed at other times. After dinner, work resumed until the evening meal at around 6pm.

Tea breaks were part of the daily routine, and there was a half-day on Thursdays. No laundry was carried out on Sundays, holy days or bank holidays.

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 Independent

By Eilish O’Regan Health Correspondent

Wednesday February 06 2013

VULNERABLE women were betrayed by health authorities and ended up in Magdalene Laundries after being in psychiatric hospitals, acute hospitals, foster care and mother and baby homes.

The trail of tears outlined in the report revealed how, even in the 1970s, a girl as young as 11 ended up in a laundry.

“Some referrals were of very young girls and it was not always clear why,” according to the McAleese report.

The youngest referred from a hospital or by a medical professional was just 13 years old and the oldest was 71.

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 Independent

By Paul Melia

Wednesday February 06 2013

THE religious orders which ran the Magdalene Laundries have expressed regret that some women did not find them to be places of refuge.

The Congregation of Our Lady of Charity of Refuge, which controlled two laundries in Dublin, said an important value of the report was to give a voice to the women and for their experiences, feelings and stories to be placed on record.

“Regardless of why a woman was in a refuge or how she came to be there, we endeavoured to provide care,” a statement said.

“It is with deep regret that we acknowledge that there are women who did not experience our refuge as a place of protection and care. It is with sorrow and sadness that we recognise that for many . . . their time in a refuge is associated with anxiety, distress, loneliness, isolation, pain and confusion.”

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
BBC News

TDs will be able to discuss the report into the Magdalene Laundries in the Irish Parliament later.

On Tuesday, Irish Prime Minister Enda Kenny apologised for the stigma and conditions suffered by the inmates.

Mr Kenny said the laundries had operated in a “harsh and uncompromising Ireland,” but he stopped short of a formal apology from the government.

The issue is also due to be discussed at the parliamentary party meetings of Fine Gael and Labour.

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 Examiner

Junior Finance Minister Brian Hayes has indicated the Government may make a full apology to the survivors of the Magdalene laundries, after it reads the report released yesterday.

The report under the chairmanship of Dr Martin McAleese was published yesterday and found there was significant state involvement in the laundries.

The women who spent time in the laundries have expressed their anger at the failure of the Taoiseach Enda Kenny to issue a full apology yesterday.

The issue is expected to be raised by TDs in the Dáil this morning.

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 Times

STEPHEN COLLINS and HARRY McGEE

The Government will seek a “clear strategy and a clear plan” as to how best to deal with the findings of the report into the Magdalene laundries, Taoiseach Enda Kenny has said.

The Government came under renewed criticism today following the refusal of Mr Kenny to issue a full apology to the women who spent time in the laundries, despite the fact that more than a quarter were sent there by the State.

The ‘Report of the Inter-Departmental Committee to establish the facts of State involvement with the Magdalen Laundries’ was published yesterday by an interdepartmental committee chaired by Martin McAleese found the women were from many backgrounds.

Some were referred by courts, others released on licence from industrial schools before they reached 16 years of age, while some were young women over 16 years of age who had been orphaned or were in abusive or neglectful homes.

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
NPR

by Philip Reeves

February 06, 2013

Ireland has expressed regret that thousands of women and young girls held in workhouses run by Catholic nuns were stigmatized by the label “fallen women.” But Prime Minister Enda Kenny did not apologize for the state’s involvement in decades of harsh treatment for women held in 10 Magdalene Laundries. He was reacting to a report that concluded the government oversaw the workhouses.

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 Independent

Johnny Fallon: Enda Kenny must swallow his pride, gather his courage and apologise to the Magdalene survivors

By Johnny Fallon

Wednesday February 06 2013

YESTERDAY was a dark day for Enda Kenny and this government. The failure to give a full and unequivocal apology to the survivors of the Magdalene laundries will haunt them. In time that apology must surely come. Everyone in the country knows that the right time is now.

This is a matter of deep national shame. We have failed as a state and a society in our primary obligation to care for citizens. The laundries were part of an Ireland we would rather forget. An Ireland born out of repressive ideals and dangerous practices enabled by people who consistently turned a blind eye. It was convenient to become convinced of the merits of such systems and it was all too easy to dismiss and abuse those who had no voice and could be shunned.

The part the church and religious orders played in this revolting scheme went against everything Catholicism is supposed to stand for. If Christ had treated Mary Magdalene in the same fashion, scripture and history would be very different. But it is not just a problem we can lay at the door of the church.

No, it’s a problem that involves the state too and this is where Enda Kenny ran into difficulty. We all like to blame someone else; taking responsibility is not an easy thing to do. For too long throughout successive governments these women have been ignored. The state used this system; it participated and enabled it to work. Just like it did in the schools where children were abused.

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.