ABUSE TRACKER

CALIFORNIA
Merced Sun-Star

Published: August 11, 2013

By Cynthia Hubert — chubert@sacbee.com

Just after sunrise on a crisp November morning, the Rev. Timothy Nondorf arrived at the Sacramento Catholic Diocese to tend to administrative duties for Bishop Jaime Soto.

Nondorf, an easygoing young priest with silver hair, celebrated Masses and heard confessions at Holy Spirit Church in Land Park and lived in its rectory. His primary job, though, was with the diocese, where he served as vice chancellor.

As he parked outside the brick building behind an Arco station on Broadway, Nondorf anticipated an ordinary day of answering telephone calls and huddling with the bishop about pastoral issues.

Instead, Tuesday, Nov. 29, 2011, almost instantly turned to crisis for him and the sprawling diocese.

By the end of the day one of the diocese’s most popular priests, accused of molesting a young girl, would be the subject of a criminal investigation. The Catholic Church, long criticized for protecting abusers, would be publicly tested about its declaration of “zero tolerance” for such crimes. Soto would steel himself for intense public scrutiny.

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VATICAN CITY
Eponymous Flower

(Vatican) This information was hardly known, but it is not without significance. The Italian Monsignor Franco Camaldo, 61, from Lagonegro (Potenza), formerly of Papal Ceremonies, whose name often appeared recently in connection with a “gay lobby”, was removed from the Vatican. Monsignor Camaldo was deported as a canon of the Lateran basilica “with right of abode.” That is to say that he has to leave the Vatican.

Monsignor Camaldo appeared, because of his “old and intimate friendship” in the headlines with the Former Gentleman of His Holiness, Angelo Balducci, as investigations were launched against the Balducci-Anemone conspiracy ( see separate report ). It was about forcing the contracts of large firms.

Although he is not from Rome, the whole career Camaldos played out from Rome under the pontificate of Pope John Paul II. In June 1984 he became an Honorary Prelate of His Holiness and Papal Ceremonies. Soon, even the title of Honorary came Conventual Chaplains ad honorem of the Sovereign Military Order of Malta and the title of Knight of the Grand Cross of the Order of St. Maurice and Lazarus were added. More melodious tributes were yet added.

At last Msgr. Camaldo was put into play by Patrizio Poggi. Poggi, a former priest, had been laicized for child abuse. Italian justice sentenced him to several years in prison, which he has since served. Recently he reported to the police and claimed that there is a “ring” of homosexual priests and laymen active in Rome, the young men and children to perform as prostitutes. However, Poggi was deemed not credible. He was arrested for libel. The prosecutor denied the allegations Poggi about a pedophile ring. However, they acknowledged in this context that there are aberrosexual priests in Rome who live out their immoral desires.

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UNITED STATES
SOL Reform

Posted on Aug 8, 2013

Why Survivor Lawsuits Have No Connection To Catholic School Closures

Introduction

In its most recent attempt to deny survivors of childhood sexual abuse the remuneration they deserve, the Catholic Church is attempting to link the newly proposed statute of limitations outlined in SB 131 to a ignificant financial burden on the state of California via the public school system. Essentially, they argue that more lawsuits would force them to divert resources from their private, Catholic schools to survivors, in turn, forcing them to close these Catholic schools. The effect, then, would be an influx of students to the public school system, and ultimately, more costs for the state of California.

While the Church is correct in it’s observation that private, Catholic schools are in decline both in California, and nationally, there is no logical connection between their closures and the lawsuits brought by victims of childhood sexual abuse. Rather, this decline nationally, and in California, can be attributed to a number of factors, including: (1) the economic recession, (2) middle income families’ flight from urban areas, (3) and the rise of charter schools.

The Economic Recession

Between 1970 and 1990, Catholic schools lost 75% of their religious faculty. This has forced Catholic schools to hire secular faculty who demand salaries commensurate with their public school counterparts. This has forced tuition at Catholic schools to rise, triggering enrollment declines and ultimately, school closings.[1]

“For Catholic parents, tuition is a key factor, a 2006 NCEA report suggests. The national study, performed from 2000 to 2005 by Georgetown University’s Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate, found that, among a randomized sample of about 1,400 parents with school-age children who attended Catholic services, 44 percent reported that insufficient tuition aid was “somewhat” or “very much” a problem.”[2]

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AUSTRALIA
Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse

The Royal Commission will be releasing Issues Papers on a range of topics that are relevant to the work of the Royal Commission. The topics of future Issues Papers will shortly be published to this website.

Submissions will be made public unless the person making the submission expressly requests (or the Royal Commission decides) that the particular submission is not made public. The Royal Commission will usually make its decision for reasons associated with fairness.

Submissions should be made, preferably electronically, to solicitor@childabuseroyalcommission.gov.au, otherwise in writing to GPO Box 5283, Sydney NSW 2001.

Issues papers

The Royal Commission has released its first Issues Paper on the Working with Children Check and is seeking submissions from interested individuals and government and non-government organisations by 12 August 2013.

Issues Paper 1 – Working With Children Check [DOC 1.5MB]
Issues Paper 1 – Working With Children Check [PDF 98KB]

The Royal Commission has released its second Issues Paper, Towards Healing and is seeking submissions from interested individuals, institutions, government and non-government organisations about the content and operation of Towards Healing by 4 September 2013.

Issues Paper 2 – Towards Healing [DOC 1.47MB]
Issues Paper 2 – Towards Healing [PDF 123KB]

The Royal Commission has released its third Issues Paper on Child Safe Organisations and is seeking submissions from interested individuals and government and non-government organisations about the content and effectiveness of strategies aimed at creating ‘child safe organisations’ by Friday 11 October 2013.

Issues Paper 3 – Child Safe Organisations [DOC 58KB]
Issues Paper 3 – Child Safe Organisations [PDF 94KB]

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AUSTRALIA
The Australian

PIA AKERMAN From: The Australian August 08, 2013

THE Royal Commission examining child sex abuse has called for community input on how organisations can keep children safe.

The commission’s third issues paper, released today, has declared a focus on ‘child safe organisations’ as the inquiry seeks to examine effective policies and procedures to protect children from sexual abuse.

“Conducting employment screening checks is only one aspect of keeping children safe from sexual abuse in institutions,” the paper says.

“Good child safe policies and practices are needed to reduce potential risks and keep children safer in institutions.”

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UNITED STATES
CBS Philly

By John Ostapkovich

PHILADELPHIA (CBS) — It’s a story we know all too well in Philadelphia, but a Pulitzer prize-winning journalist has now put the whole Catholic priest sex scandal in one volume.

Mortal Sins (Sex, Crime and the Era of Catholic Scandal) is not simply a crime blotter but a sweeping tale of an institution seeing its towering moral authority threatening to crumble.

“The shocking thing is that this has gone on for so long,” says author Michael D’Antonio. “This is three decades of horror stories.””

D’Antonio’s focus shifts from Rome to Washington to towns across the US (including Philadelphia) and Europe, from meetings of top church officials to the anguished voices of victims.

In the end, D’Antonio says, this is a story of hope.

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AUSTRALIA
lewisblayse.net

At a meeting of the Catholic Church’s discredited “Towards Healing” protocol for dealing with clerical sexual abuses, a member proudly announced he had personally destroyed over 40 boxes of evidence that morning, according to a church consultant.

Dr. Robert Grant, a U.S. psychologist who has previously advised the Catholic Church in several countries, said that he was “shocked, I was dumbfounded, not only the timing – I realized it was a statement to me how things were going to be run.”

Dr. Grant also revealed that meetings were attended by officials of the Catholic Church Insurance (CCI) company, and its lawyers. CCI officials would object to language used in the Towards Healing document “that would put the church at risk in terms of admitting culpability.” He said that “At first I thought maybe they were there to advise the church about the risk of taking certain pastoral stances, but I began to realize quite quickly that they were dictating policy.”

Clearly, the church was more interested in costs incurred by its insurance arm, which enjoys tax-free status in Australia, than in the welfare of victims. As Dr. Grant noted, “Quite to my amazement, I never heard victims talked about. I never heard victims being – people being concerned about the well-being of victims or how the document would affect victims. I heard more about Church liability and also I heard about priests that were victims. There was talk about priests that were being unjustly accused. I’d hear this every so often, but I hardly ever heard – and I even brought up a couple of times, aren’t we missing sorta the whole population that this document is designed for, which is the victims? But that again was not picked up or developed.”

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UNITED STATES
Richard Sipe

Thomas Doyle, J.C.D., C.A.D.C.
July 27, 2013
_____________________________________________________________
This year marks the end of the third decade of the contemporary chapter in the Catholic Church’s age-old reality of sexual violation of clerics. In 1983 Jeff Anderson filed the historic case in Minnesota that would launch him on his life-long vocation of bringing not only civil but human rights to the Church countless victims. That summer, the bizarre saga of Gilbert Gauthe was exposed to the light in Lafayette, Louisiana.

This nightmare did not begin in Boston in January 2002 as many erroneously believe. It did not begin in 1983 either. It has been a toxic virus in the Body of Christ since its very beginning. The Didache, a handbook for the earliest followers of Christ, written before the end of the first century, explicitly condemns men who sexually abuse boys….and the “men”included the leaders or elders of the infant Church. The Louisiana spectacle generally gets the credit for being the beginning of public wareness of the so-called “crisis.” I daresay though that had Jason Berry lived in Minneapolis and not New Orleans, things might have been different. Either way you look at it, Jeff in Minnesota and Ray Mouton in Louisiana opened a new era for the Catholic Church and in doing so, changed the course of its
history.

When I first became involved with the Gauthe case in 1984 I still believed in the Church. I thought the institutional Church and the People of God were one and the same. In spite of already having served three years on the inside at the Vatican Embassy I still had some confidence in bishops and shared the hope with my colleagues at the time, Mike Peterson and Ray Mouton, that once the bishops became aware of how terrible sexual abuse of a child could be and also aware of the potential for a very serious problem in the Church, they would quickly step up to the plate and do the right thing, especially by the victims.

I was dead wrong and by the time I left my position at the Vatican embassy I was quite convinced I was wrong. I had no idea however, of the extent of the problem but more important, and worse, I had no idea just how duplicitous and destructive the bishops could be.

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UNITED STATES
Richard Sipe

Dr. Marianne Benkert on Developmental Disruption

INTRODUCTION

It gives me great pleasure to with you here tonight. I would like to thank the leadership of SNAP for inviting me to share part of this evening with you. We are all here because of this organization that has done such incredible work supporting victims and survivors of clerical sexual abuse and has helped to
keep this issue before the public eye.

What I bring to you this evening as a physician and psychiatrist is expertise and experience, a history of treating thousands of people over my long professional career, a majority of them physically and sexually abused, all of them in deep pain. Initially no one comes into my office telling me how good their life is.

Tonight I want to talk with you about the normal psychological development of children and dolescents and the disruption that occurs with abuse, especially sexual abuse. First I would like to put all of us in the role of a basic scientist for just five minutes and share with you some of the amazing neurobiological discoveries that are taking place.

Psychology, psychiatry and the neurosciences are in a state of dynamic discovery. Our understanding of human nature and human development is constantly being refined. Recent studies have shown the anatomy of the brain actually changes in response to abuse and trauma. We call this ability neuroplasticity. We can identify which part of the brain is responsible for different sensations and emotions.

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UNITED STATES
Richard Sipe

SIPE ON THE PAST, PRESENT & FUTURE

PAST: Putting sexual abuse in perspective.

Sexual abuse of minors is not a recent phenomenon; the reality of clergy sexual activity has existed, as long as there have been priests and bishops.

Church documents from the earliest centuries record the ideal of religious celibacy and its violations. (Cf. Doyle, Sipe & Wall 2006) There is an element of basic asceticism in the practice of religious celibacy—the imitation of Jesus in having nothing: not a place “to lay his head”; poverty by choice; and forsaking all-family relationships in order to be like Jesus. Treating others as Jesus did was the object of the discipline.

This ideal was found especially in the earliest monks of the desert.

But the other side of the coin is the corruption of the ideal. In our time, publicity about abuse has refocused our knowledge of the frequency of sexual violations by clergy and the horrendous and long
lasting damage done to victims.

Purity was thought to be the source of clerical power.

Sexual abuse of minors does not stand alone within clerical culture. It is a symptom—and always has been—of a corrupt system of double lives and duplicity that reaches from local parishes to the
Vatican; it destroys the myth of clerical purity.The whole idea that clergy practice celibacy has imploded.

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CONNECTICUT
The Day

[the lawsuit]

New Haven (AP) – Fairfield University and others that supported a charity designed to help feed and educate boys in Haiti are facing another lawsuit by a man alleging he was sexually abused by a school founder.

The federal lawsuit, filed Thursday in Connecticut, seeks $20 million in damages. The man was about 15 at the time of the abuse, according to the suit.

The university and others reached a $12 million settlement last month with children sexually abused by Douglas Perlitz, who was sentenced to nearly 20 years in prison for sexually abusing boys who attended Project Pierre Toussaint School in Cap-Haitien.

The victims’ attorney, Mitchell Garabedian, said he’s investigating 31 other claims of sexual abuse by Perlitz and may file additional lawsuits.

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ESPANA
El Pais

REYES LINERA / EFE Madrid 9 AGO 2013

El sacerdote Ángel Luis Saldaña ha vuelto al servicio activo en su diócesis de Tarazona, en Zaragoza, tras cumplir su pena por posesión de pornografía infantil. “Tiene cubierto su proceso penal, civil y canónico, entonces se puede decir que está rehabilitado”, ha explicado el vicario general de la diócesis, Esteban Aranaz.

No obstante, Aranaz ha matizado que, a excepción de “dos sustituciones en pueblecitos porque el párroco estaba enfermo”, Saldaña no desempeña ninguna labor pastoral, sino funciones administrativas en la curia diocesana.

El antiguo párroco de Maluenda fue detenido el 15 de marzo de 2011 por presunta posesión de archivos informáticos de pornografía infantil y pocos meses después fue condenado a menos de dos años de prisión. No llegó a ingresar en la cárcel porque no tenía antecedentes penales.

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ESPANA
EITB

[Summary: Angel Luis Saldana, the priest who was arrested and convicted in 2011 for possession of child pornography, celebrate Mass in place of the regular parish priest in town and people are uncomfortable with this.]

Ángel Luis Saldaña, el sacerdote que fue detenido y condenado en 2011 por posesión de pornografía infantil, celebró misas en sustitución del párroco habitual en el municipio.
Escuchar la página

La población de Saviñán (Zaragoza) se encuentra “incómoda” ante la noticia, que muchos desconocían, de que Ángel Luis Saldaña, el sacerdote que fue detenido y condenado en 2011 por
posesión de pornografía infantil, celebró misas en sustitución del párroco habitual en el municipio.

Así lo ha hecho saber el alcalde de Saviñán, Jose Ignacio Marcuello, quien ha afirmado haberse enterado de esta circunstancia esta misma mañana, a través de los medios de comunicación que se han hecho eco de la información.

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ESPANA
El Periodico

EL PERIÓDICO 10/08/2013

El Obispado de Tarazona considera “rehabilitado” al sacerdote Ángel Luis Saldaña, el expárroco de Maluenda condenado por posesión y difusión de pornografía infantil, según explicó a Efe el vicario general de la diócesis, Esteban Arana, que añadió que el religioso “ha cumplido” su pena.

Arana confirmó que el sacerdote, de 48 años y que fue condenado a una multa y una pena de cárcel inferior a dos años cuyo cumplimiento eludió al carecer de antecedentes, ha efectuado sustituciones puntuales del párroco de Saviñán, que también lleva las iglesias de Paracuellos de la Ribera y Embid de la Ribera.

El vicario precisó que Saldaña “solo” fue acusado de poseer archivos de pornografía infantil, pero “en ningún momento” de cometer abusos “ni otra cosa”. Ahora, aunque no tiene “responsabilidades pastorales”, se encarga de tareas administrativas en la diócesis de Tarazona y en “algún momento” puntual ejerce de cura para “ayudar” o “colaborar”.

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ESPANA
Hoy

[English summary: Priest Angel Luis Saldana, convicted in 2011 for possession of child pornography, has returned to active service in the Tarazona diocese, having served the sentence imposed on him in both civil and canon law. Some residents of Savinas (Zaragoza), the village where he was arrested and convicted, believe the “rehabilitation” of the priest is a disgrace and they want the church to defrock him.]

El sacerdote Ángel Luis Saldaña, condenado en 2011 por posesión de pornografía infantil, ha vuelto al servicio activo en la diócesis de Tarazona, tras haber cumplido la condena que se le impuso, tanto en el orden civil como en el canónico. Pese a ello, algunos vecinos de Saviñán (Zaragoza), el pueblo donde fue detenido y condenado, expresó su malestar por el hecho de que el sacerdote haya oficiado misas sustituyendo al párroco habitual. El alcalde de Saviñán, Jose Ignacio Marcuello, reconoció que el hecho, del que muchos se enteraron por la prensa, ha causado cierta zozobra entre los habitantes, que ayer no daban crédito a lo ocurrido. Para muchos de los vecinos, la «rehabilitación» del cura es «una vergüenza», al tiempo que abogaban por que la Iglesia obligara a Saldaña a dejar los hábitos.

El vicario general, Esteban Arana, corroboró que, en efecto, el sacerdote, de 48 años, sustituyó un fin de semana al párroco titular de algunos municipios de la diócesis, como Saviñán, Paracuellos de la Ribera y Embid de la Ribera.

Saldaña, entonces párroco de Maluenda, fue detenido el 15 de marzo de 2011 por posesión de archivos informáticos de pornografía infantil. Pocos meses después fue condenado a una pena de menos de dos años de prisión, pero no ingresó en la cárcel al carecer de antecedentes penales.

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CHILE
Cooperativa

El ex párroco de El Bosque Fernando Karadima negó ser el autor de los abusos sexuales que le imputan sus denunciantes y aseguró que sólo se enteró de estas denuncias a través de la televisión.

El sacerdote respondió este jueves al juez Juan Manuel Muñoz, quien lleva el proceso civil en la causa contra el Arzobispado de Santiago.

“No tengo conocimiento si el Arzobispado de Santiago sabía de los abusos sexuales o de cualquier índole que yo haya cometido, por la razón que yo no cometí ilícitos y así lo señalé en la causa criminal, menos a menores involucrados”, señaló Karadima en su declaración, a la que tuvo acceso Cooperativa.

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CHILE
El Dinamo

“Al perla no sólo haya que ir a atenderlo a su casa, con una justicia diferente a la de todos los chilenos, cuando él está en perfecto estado de salud. Estoy absolutamente asqueado por eso, asqueado por lo que dijo y asqueado por las cartas”.

Hoy se conoció parte de la declaración que dio Fernando Karadima al juez Juan Manuel Muñoz, donde el religioso señaló que “nunca cometió ilícitos contra menores de edad” y que se enteró de las acusaciones por televisión.

Ayer, en tanto, se revelaron las cartas que el círculo íntimo de Karadima, aglutinado en la parroquia de El Bosque, enió a El Vaticano y el Arzobispado para intentar convencerlos de la inocencia del prelado con argumentos tales como que esto se trataba de un montaje de la izquierda y un complot masón.

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CHILE
La Tercera

Karadima en su declaración ante Juez Muñoz: “Supe de las denuncias a través de un programa de televisión”

por Karen Soto Galindo – 09/08/2013

En el convento donde se encuentra cumpliendo penitencia tras ser condenado por el Vaticano por abusos sexuales, el sacerdote Fernando Karadima declaró ante el juez Juan Manuel Muñoz que no cometió los abusos que se le imputan.

En la declaración a la cual tuvo acceso La Tercera, Karadima aseguró que “no tengo conocimiento si el Arzobispado de Santiago sabía de los abusos sexuales o de cualquier índole que yo haya cometido, por la razón que yo no cometí ilícitos y así lo señalé en la causa criminal, manos aún a menores involucrados”.

“Una carta con preguntas que me envió el Arzobispado, referido a los temas que se me consultan, fue la oportunidad en que posiblemente el Arzobispado se enteró de esta situación, pero, en todo caso, no tengo recuerdos ni idea de estas cosas, porque la verdad es que voy a cumplir cuatro años en este convento en el mes de enero, y me encuentro solo y sometido a oración y penitencia”, continúa Karadima.

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CHILE
La Tercera

Primer investigador eclesiástico de caso Karadima entregó detalles de denuncias al Juez Muñoz

por Karen Soto – 09/08/2013

“El Arzobispado es un ente cuyo conocimiento de las cosas es imposible verificarlo”, dijo el investigador eclesiástico Eliseo Escudero Herrero.

El sacerdote prestó declaración ante el juez Juan Manuel Muños, el pasado 31 de julio, como pre prueba judicial para una demanda civil que pretenden interponer las víctimas de Fernando Karadima en contra del Arzobispado de Santiago.

Según indicó Escudero, “a mí se me encargó hacer una indagación formal sobre unas denuncias llegadas al Arzbispado de Santiago. Antes de eso, sobre esta persona en concreto, yo no tenía idea respecto de las conductas que se le atribuyen, ni menos que personas de la jerarquía católica tuvieran antecedentes sobre dichas situaciones”.

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CHILE
Terra

Sacerdote chileno niega abusos sexuales a menores en declaración ante la justicia

El sacerdote chileno Fernando Karadima, declarado por el Vaticano culpable de abusar sexualmente de menores, negó haber cometido el delito durante una declaración ante un juez que investiga su caso.

“No tengo conocimiento si el Arzobispado de Santiago sabía de los abusos sexuales o de cualquier índole que yo haya cometido, por la razón que yo no cometí ilícitos y así lo señalé en la causa criminal, menos a menores involucrados”, dijo en su declaración, difundida por medios locales este viernes.

Karadima, de 82 años, prestó testimonio el jueves ante el juez Juan Manuel Muñoz en la investigación sobre denuncias en su contra por abuso sexual que le formularon en 2010 cinco hombres, quienes de pequeños visitaban una parroquia en un exclusivo barrio del oriente de Santiago en la que era sacerdote.

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IRELAND
Irish Independent

SARAH MACDONALD – 10 AUGUST 2013

A POPULAR priest who is to leave his post as prior of an Augustinian order has denied he is being forced out by the Vatican.

Fr Iggy O’Donovan was responding to claims by the lay reform group ‘We Are Church Ireland’, which suggested he was being forced to take leave of absence by the Vatican’s watchdog on orthodoxy.

However, Fr O’Donovan (56) told the Irish Independent he was not stepping back from the priesthood, he was taking a sabbatical next month as his two terms as prior in Drogheda, Co Louth, were coming to an end.

He also rejected suggestions that he had meetings with Cardinal Sean Brady of Armagh, in whose diocese he serves, over articles appearing in an Augustinian newsletter.

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NEBRASKA
Star Herald

Posted: Friday, August 9, 2013

By KIM SCHMIDT World-Herald News Service

KEARNEY — A Kearney man is free on bond after being charged with sexually assaulting two boys 12 years ago.

Thomas Anthony Jones, 37, is charged in Buffalo County Court with two counts of felony sexual assault of a child on Jan. 1, 2001, in Kearney.

According to court records, the alleged victims, now ages 23 and 15, reported that their former church youth leader, Jones, allegedly exposed himself to them and touched their private parts. The alleged victims — who would have been 11 and 3 at the time of the alleged assault — reported the abuse Tuesday.

Jones was a youth leader at Lighthouse Foursquare Church at 3520 Ave. F.

Benjamin Rosenzweig, the church’s pastor, said Jones hasn’t been a youth leader for several years, and when he was, it was as a volunteer.

A Kearney Police Department report listed Jones as a youth pastor, but he never had that position, Rosenzweig said. The title of pastor requires licensing, he said, which Jones never obtained.

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VATICAN CITY
Gazzetta del Sud

Rome, August 9 – The success of the Vatican’s commitment to greater financial surveillance is demonstrated by the rise in suspicious activities detected, the head of financial intelligence there said Friday. In an interview published in the daily La Repubblica, Rene Bruelhart said the Vatican’s latest measures toward greater financial enforcement are already proving themselves. The rising number of suspicious transaction reports this year – with more reported to date in 2013 than in the previous year – proves the system is effective, said Bruelhart, director of the Vatican’s watchdog Financial Information Authority (AIF). ‘

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MILWAUKEE (WI)
God Discussion

Religious liberty, the resurrection of the dead, and $57 million … an interview with SNAP about Catholic bankruptcy case (Friday, August 9, 2013)

When a federal judge ruled on July 29 that the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Milwaukee’s free expression of religion and religious liberty would be violated if it was required to tap into its trust for the perpetual care of cemeteries — valued at over $50 million – to pay creditors who are mostly victims of abuse, many observers were shocked. Joining us Friday, August 9 to talk about the case are Peter Isely, Founding Member and Midwest Director of SNAP (Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests) and Judy Jones, Midwest Associate Director of SNAP (bios follow).

This is a very important case that may play a role in future bankruptcy protection filings by religious institutions, particularly since the creditor victims allege that $57 million was moved on purpose to a cemetery trust to avoid compensating them. Here’s a timeline:

* The New York Times reported that in 2007, Cardinal Timothy F. Dolan, then the archbishop of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Milwaukee, requested permission from the Vatican to move nearly $57 million into a cemetery trust fund to protect the assets from victims of clergy sexual abuse who were demanding compensation.

* In January 2011, the archdiocese filed for bankruptcy protection. Archbishop Jerome Listecki said, “As a result of the horrific actions of a few, there are financial claims pending against the archdiocese that exceed our means.”

* Bankruptcy Judge Susan V. Kelley ruled the archdiocese could not use First Amendment protections to stop the Court from examining the possibly fraudulent creation of a $57 million “cemetery trust” by former Archbishop Timothy Dolan, who is now Cardinal of New York.

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British Medical Journal

Niklas Långström, professor12, Pia Enebrink, clinical psychologist, researcher3, Eva-Marie Laurén, senior forensic psychiatrist4, Jonas Lindblom, researcher56, Sophie Werkö, researcher56, R Karl Hanson, senior research scientist7

Author Affiliations

Correspondence: N Långström niklas.langstrom@ki.se
Accepted 15 July 2013

Abstract

Objective To evaluate the effectiveness of current medical and psychological interventions for individuals at risk of sexually abusing children, both in known abusers and those at risk of abusing.

Design Systematic review of interventions designed to prevent reoffending among known abusers and prevention for individuals at risk of sexually abusing children. Randomised controlled trials and prospective observational studies were eligible. Primary outcomes were arrests, convictions, breaches of conditions, and self reported sexual abuse of children after one year or more.

Results After review of 1447 abstracts, we retrieved 167 full text studies, and finally included eight studies with low to moderate risk of bias. We found weak evidence for interventions aimed at reducing reoffending in identified sexual abusers of children. For adults, evidence from five trials was insufficient regarding both benefits and risks with psychological treatment and pharmacotherapy. For adolescents, limited evidence from one trial suggested that multisystemic therapy prevented reoffence (relative risk 0.18, 95% confidence interval 0.04 to 0.73); lack of adequate research prevented conclusions about effects of other treatments. Evidence was also inadequate regarding effectiveness of treatment for children with sexual behavioural problems in the one trial identified. Finally, we found no eligible research on preventive methods for adults and adolescents who had not sexually abused children but were at higher risk of doing so (such as those with paedophilic sexual preference).

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news@JAMA

BY MIKE MITKA on AUGUST 9, 2013

Men convicted of sexually abusing children or those at risk of performing such abuse may be treated by mental health professionals in an attempt to prevent future episodes. But whether such treatment actually works remains an open question, say researchers whose findings appear today in BMJ.

The researchers, from Sweden and Canada, performed a systematic review of interventions intended to prevent reoffending among known abusers or to prevent those at risk of sexually abusing children from initiating such behavior. Of the 1447 abstracts reviewed, the authors selected 167 full-text studies. Ultimately, only 8 studies, 5 involving adult men and 3 involving adolescents or children, were considered as they had low to moderate risk of bias.

The researchers found that the research on the effectiveness of interventions for preventing sexual offending and reoffending against children remains inconclusive. They concluded that there is insufficient evidence about the benefits and risks of cognitive behavioral treatment for individuals who sexually abuse children or for children with sexual behavior problems (who are considered at risk of engaging in such abuse). No studies with minimal quality standards were found for pharmacological treatments or for interventions directed towards those who had not sexually abused children but were at a higher risk of doing so.

A small study found weak evidence that multisystemic therapy (family and community-based therapy focused on environmental factors affecting offenders) prevents reoffending among adolescent sexual offenders.

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PHILADELPHIA (PA)
The Republic

THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
August 09, 2013

PHILADELPHIA — A court date is set for an appeal hearing for a Roman Catholic church official in Philadelphia who is behind bars for child endangerment.

Monsignor William Lynn was the first U.S. church official convicted of covering up claims against Catholic priests accused of sexually abusing children.

A jury last year convicted the longtime secretary for clergy in Philadelphia. He is serving three to six years in prison.

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PHILADELPHIA (PA)
Philadelphia Inquirer

Joseph A. Slobodzian, Inquirer Staff Writer
LAST UPDATED: Friday, August 9, 2013

Pennsylvania’s Superior Court has set Sept. 17 for oral arguments on the appeal by Msgr. William J. Lynn, convicted last year of child endangerment for his role supervising Catholic priests accused of sexual abuse.

A letter setting the appeal date was filed Monday by the state’s intermediate appeals court for criminal and civil appeals. The appeals hearing will be held in Philadelphia before a three-judge panel: Judges John T. Bender, Christine L. Donohue and John L. Musmanno.

Lynn’s conviction by a Philadelphia Common Pleas Court jury was a landmark: the first church official criminally charged for his role supervising Catholic priests accused of child sexual abuse.

On July 24, 2012, Judge M. Teresa Sarmina sentenced Lynn to three to six years in prison. Lynn is in Waymart state prison in Northeast Pennsylvania. Lynn, 62, was not accused of personally molesting children; his job as Secretary for Clergy in the Archdiocese of Philadelphia required him to investigate allegations against priests and recommend action to the archbishop.

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UNITED KINGDOM
Telegraph & Argus

A former vicar, who has pleaded guilty to sexually abusing a teenage boy during a three-year period in the 1990s, will be sentenced next month. Peter Hedge, 50, appeared at Bradford Crown Court yesterday but his case was adjourned until September 17. He was remanded in custody. Hedge was vicar of Holy Trinity Church in Queensbury, and worked as a volunteer on the Keighley & Worth Valley Railway for many years.

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NEW HAVEN (CT)
United States District Court for the District of Connecticut

August 8, 2013

Gervil St. Louis aka St. Louis Gervil v. Perlitz, Carrier, Carter, Haiti Fund, Fairfield University, Jesuits, Order of St. John, and Order of Malta, Complaint, U.S. District Court of Connecticut, Case 3:13-cv-01132-VLB

2. Perlitz, Father Carrier, Fairfield University, the Order of Malta, Carter, and the Haiti Fund established a residential school in the Republic of Haiti, the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere. This school, Project Pierre Toussaint, a/k/a Project Venerable Pierre Toussaint (“PPT”), purported to provide services to the poorest children of Haiti, many of whom lacked homes and regular meals. Perlitz, residing in Haiti, was the director of PPT, which provided him with an image of substantial trust and authority.

3. Perlitz used that trust and authority to sexually molest Plaintiff and numerous other minor boys who attended PPT. Perlitz also threatened to withhold food and shelter from the impoverished children in his care if they did not comply with his sexual demands, in effect forcing them to earn their food and shelter by trading sexual favors for those necessities.

4. The other Defendants assisted Perlitz by providing him the means to travel to and stay in Haiti and by providing him the means to operate PPT in this manner. They failed to provide appropriate guidelines and supervision for the operation of PPT. They disregarded warning signs that should have alerted them to the improper nature of Perlitz’s relationship with some of the boys in his care and continued to provide funds to PPT long after it was, or should have been clear, that Perlitz was abusing the trust that had been placed in him. At least one Defendant other than Perlitz actively took steps to prevent enforcement of laws meant to protect minors from the conduct in which Perlitz engaged.

13. Fairfield University hired Perlitz in connection with PPT and retained him during the relevant time period. At all relevant times, Fairfield University had a duty to exercise due care in its hiring and retention, including its hiring and retention of Perlitz. At relevant times, Fairfield University had a duty to supervise and direct Perlitz, to exercise due care in doing so, a duty not to knowingly benefit financially from participating in a venture engaged in activities in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 1591, and a duty not to facilitate Perlitz’s travel to Haiti knowing that Perlitz was travelling to Haiti to engage in illicit sexual conduct.

99. In or around 2007, when Plaintiff Gervil St. Louis was approximately 15years of age, Defendant Perlitz, while in Haiti, engaged in explicit sexual behavior and lewd and lascivious behavior with Plaintiff, including but not limited to illicit sexual conduct with Plaintiff.

100. Without limiting either the generality of the preceding paragraph or the specific number of instances of illicit conduct, during the time period referenced above, Defendant Perlitz coerced Plaintiff into performing illicit sexual conduct by means of implicit threats to Plaintiff. Among other things, Perlitz fondled Plaintiff and engaged in acts of sodomy with Plaintiff.

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AUSTRALIA
The Age

[Patrick Parkinson – right of reply]

[Salesians of Don Bosco transcript]

August 10, 2013

Barney Zwartz

The Catholic Salesians of Don Bosco order misled the Victorian inquiry into child sexual abuse about its attempts to suppress an independent report that criticised it, according to the report’s author.

Patrick Parkinson, professor of law at Sydney University, told the inquiry in a right of reply published on Friday that Australians could not have any confidence in promises by the church ”if we are unable to believe that the truth will be told even to a parliamentary inquiry”.

Meanwhile, the church has in turn attacked the inquiry for making ”incorrect, unfair and misleading” claims, and savaged witnesses in a right of reply published this week.

Peter O’Callaghan, QC, has also submitted a string of rebuttals of witnesses’ testimony, posting eight replies since July 26.

And a former consultant to Towards Healing, the church’s national abuse protocol, has claimed that the church’s insurance company dominated its policies at the expense of victims, and destroyed 40 boxes of personnel records.

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UNITED STATES
Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests

For immediate release: Friday, Aug. 9

Statement by Steve Theisen of Hudson IA, Iowa director of SNAP, the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests (319 231 1663, Ltreggiefan@cs.com)

Next week, America’s largest group of nuns meets in Orlando. And today, a former top Catholic official publicly admits that child sex crimes by nuns are “invisible.”

[National Catholic Reporter]

But he opposes changing church policy so the same child sex guidelines that govern bishops would govern nuns. We strongly disagree.

The church’s abuse guidelines are weak, vague and rarely enforced. Still, they should apply to nuns as well as priests. Some oversight beats no oversight.

No one knows how many nuns have abused or are abusing kids. Nor does anyone know how many nuns have or are concealing those crimes.

But that’s not our primary concern. Our concern is that current child sex crimes and cover ups by nuns are stopped, future child sex crimes and cover ups by nuns are prevented and that those who’ve already been hurt by nuns are sought out and helped.

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UNITED STATES
National Catholic Register

by EWTN NEWS 08/09/2013

PORTLAND, Ore. — After the withdrawal of yet another abuse lawsuit against the Vatican, the Holy See’s lawyer said that such efforts are based on “erroneous ideas about the Catholic Church” that unravel under close scrutiny.

Jeffrey Lena, the U.S. counsel for the Holy See, said the case John V. Doe v. Holy See is “the third case of its kind against the Holy See to disintegrate in the face of legal and factual challenge.”

He said the lawsuit “should never have been filed” and that it was based on “factual misstatements and fallacious syllogisms that misled the public for years.”

He said other cases against the Vatican begin with “very strong complaints” stating apparent facts about Vatican involvement in local Church matters and priestly conduct.

But careful legal analysis and examination of these cases, Lena told Vatican Radio, made it clear they were “not sustainable.”

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NEBRASKA
Kearney Hub

KEARNEY – A Kearney youth pastor has been accused of sexually assaulting two boys 12 years ago.
The alleged victims reported the abuse Tuesday.

Thomas Anthony Jones, 37, is charged in Buffalo County Court with two counts of felony sexual assault of a child on Jan. 1, 2001.

According to court records, the alleged victims, now ages 23 and 15, reported that their former youth pastor, Jones, allegedly exposed himself to them and touched their private parts.

A Kearney Police Department incident report says Jones is a youth pastor at Lighthouse Foursquare Church at 3520 Ave. F. Calls to the church went unanswered.

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NEBRASKA
Fremont Tribune

A Kearney youth pastor has been charged with sexually assaulting boys a dozen years ago.

The Kearney Hub reports ( http://bit.ly/18gs8lj) that 37-year-old Thomas Jones faces two felony counts of sexual assault of a child.

Court records say the two males, now ages 23 and 15, told police that Jones had touched them inappropriately and exposed himself to them in 2001.

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UNITED KINGDOM
The Press

By Nadia Jefferson-Brown, nadia.jefferson-brown@thepress.co.uk

AN INQUIRY into the handling of allegations of child abuse by a former senior clergyman is appealing for help to gather information.

The Archbishop of York, Dr John Sentamu launched the independent inquiry into issues surrounding reports that the late Dean of Manchester, Robert Waddington, groomed and abused a chorister in Manchester in the 1980s.

Chaired by Judge Sally Cahill QC, it is gathering evidence about what complaints were made about alleged abuse by Mr Waddington, what the church’s response was, whether child protection policies were implemented and other issues.

Anyone who may have relevant information is urged to get in touch.

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UNITED STATES
Vatican Insider

This is the result of a study published in the latest issue of “Pastoral Psychology”

FABRIZIO MASTROFINI
ROME

The psychological profile Catholic priests in the U.S. comes under the category of “introverted”. They are more interested in the ministry in the strict sense and less involved in the social dimension of the apostolate. They are also less focused on the mission. This is according to the latest study published by a British team, led by Leslie Francis, an Anglican professor at the University of Warwick. The study appears in the current issue of “Pastoral Psychology,” an authoritative magazine on international studies published in the United States. Prof. Francis is a prominent figure in the field of psychology of religion and he has developed a special version of the test that is based on the theory of “Psychological Types” of Carl Gustav Jung and the statistical questionnaire developed by Myers and Briggs in the Sixties.

The inquiry carried out by Francis and his team is based on a fairly small sample- partly because of the complexity of the test to be administered – and it is compared with other similar surveys carried out in the Eighties and Nineties. What is new about this study, is that it looks into the inner center of gravity of the new generation of Catholic priests in the United States.

The first trait that characterises them, is “introversion.” The second is “sensing”, that is, the way in which information is gathered to make judgments. “Sensing” happens via the five senses, as opposed to ‘intuition’ for those who make exclusive use of intuition. “Sensing,” Francis notes, “meant to have priests that relate exclusively to the inherited tradition and do not care to adapt it to the needs of new generations”. Priests are accustomed to preserving rather than promoting changes in their pastoral activities. “They place an emphasis on preserving the existing rather than on the missionary dimension”. And this happens despite Pope Francis’ insistence on the missionary dimension of pastoral activity, on going outside the confines of the parish and welcoming anyone who knocks at the Church’s doors.

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VATICAN CITY
National Catholic Reporter

John L. Allen Jr. | Aug. 9, 2013 …

A Jesuit missing in Syria; the Vatican batting 1.000 in American courts

Jeffrey Lena, the lawyer who represents the Vatican in American courts, is still batting a thousand when it comes to sex abuse cases. On Monday, a federal judge in Oregon dismissed the case of John V. Doe v. Holy See, the last standing lawsuit in an American court related to sex abuse that named the Vatican as a defendant.

Two other such cases, one in Kentucky and one in Wisconsin, had already collapsed. In all three instances, the lawsuits were withdrawn at the request of the plaintiff’s lawyers as difficulties mounted of getting around the protections guaranteed the Vatican under the 1976 Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act.

So far, the Vatican has fought off these suits without admitting any wrongdoing and without paying a dime in settlements.

The Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, the main advocacy group on behalf of victims of abuse, effectively paid Lena a backhanded compliment, asserting in a statement Tuesday that “smart and aggressive lawyering” was to blame for the result.

Such lawyering, SNAP charged, “has protected top Catholic officials from having to answer in court for their repeated and reckless secrecy and complicity in a troubling child sex abuse and cover up case.”

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NEW JERSEY
Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests

Two more NJ predators are “outed”
Both are Catholic clerics from elsewhere
One sexually abused a girl in Los Angeles
The other molested in both Texas and Illinois
Neither priest has ever gotten attention in NJ
New records showed a third predator was in Newark
SNAP wants help from a parish, a school & three bishops

WHAT
Holdings signs and childhood photos at a sidewalk news conference, clergy sex abuse victims will disclose the names of two credibly accused child molesting clerics who worked in New Jersey, abused elsewhere and have never been “outed” here. They will also give more specifics about a third predator priest who was “outed” in New Jersey just last week.

The three worked in Perth Amboy, Jersey City, Newark, Garfield, Rumson, Summit and Englewood.

The victims will also announce that they’re writing to a parish, a school and three prelates – Newark’s archbishop, Trenton’s bishop and Metuchen’s bishop – urging all of them to “do aggressive outreach” to find other victims of the clerics

WHEN
Friday, August 9 at 1:00 p.m.

WHERE
Outside the Newark Catholic Archdiocese headquarters, 171 Clifton Ave. in Newark, NJ

WHO
Two-three members of an international support group called SNAP (the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests), including the organization’s long time New Jersey director

WHY
SNAP has learned recently about three credibly accused child molesting clerics who were in New Jersey. All molested kids elsewhere. Two have attracted no public attention in New Jersey. One was exposed as having lived and worked in New Jersey just last week.

The two being “outed” today by SNAP are Fr. Eusebio Pantoja and Fr. Rubin V. Abaya. Both worked at parishes in Perth Amboy. The one “outed” last week is Fr. Joseph B. DiPeri, who worked in five New Jersey cities.

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MICHIGAN
MLive

By Jessica Fleischman | jfleisc2@mlive.com

on August 09, 2013 at 8:08 AM, updated August 09, 2013

SEBEWAING, MI — Blue skies and sunshine welcomed 400 to 500 Catholics who rallied in rural Huron County to resist church reorganization.

Hundreds of lawn chairs lined the grass Thursday, Aug. 8, outside Sebewaing’s Holy Family Catholic Church, slated to move to “occasional use” next year as part of Catholic Diocese of Saginaw restructuring.

The “Save Our Rural Catholic Churches” rally was organized by parishioners who oppose the ongoing restructuring plan by the diocese.

“It is counterproductive to have churches merge and close,” said Mike Eisengruber, the first speaker of the night, who also acted as the emcee is one of six members of an advisory board for Save Our Rural Catholic Churches.

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VATICAN CITY
National Catholic Reporter

Joshua J. McElwee Biagio Mazza | Aug. 9, 2013

ROME
If U.S. Catholic sisters want to dialogue with the Vatican over a mandate requiring them to place themselves under the authority of a U.S. archbishop, they must understand that the “central point” of dialogue is upholding church doctrine, a key Vatican cardinal said in May.

The doctrinal problems identified with the main group of U.S. sisters, known as the Leadership Conference of Women Religious (LCWR), are “extremely important,” Cardinal João Braz de Aviz said.

“This is the central point of the dialogue,” Braz de Aviz said. “I have no idea how it will be resolved.”

Braz de Aviz, the prefect of the Vatican’s Congregation for Religious, made his comments in May in Rome during a talk at the triennial meeting of the International Union of Superiors General (UISG), a membership group for approximately 2,000 leaders of Catholic sisters around the world.

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UNITED STATES
National Catholic Reporter

Michael Sean Winters | Aug. 9, 2013 Distinctly Catholic

Father Helmut Schuller has wrapped up his speaking tour of the United States. The coverage of his talks here at NCR has been somewhat breathless and I am not sure why. Herr Schuller did not, according to the news reports, say anything that has not been said before by others.

When I was a teenager, I came under the happy influence of a priest whom I credit with keeping me in the Church. I played the organ at his church during the summertime and we would engage in conversations about our faith. He was an unreconstructed 60s liberal in both politics and theology. At one of our early conversations, he gave me a copy of Hans Kung’s “On Being a Christian” to read and I devoured it. In short, I shared many of the mundane liberal attitudes that Schuller continues to articulate.

In the intervening years, I have largely come to view the Church differently and have either severely qualified my early views or abandoned them. (Unfortunately, my priest friend was killed in a freak train accident and it is one of the great regrets of my life that he has not been able to accompany me on my subsequent intellectual journey.) I came to see that I had developed a penchant for taking ideas and intellectual constructs from the ambient, secular culture and placing them on the Church. As I came to learn more of the Church’s theology, and especially its history, I realized how often this habit of mind had, in fact, nearly wrecked the Church. Reforms that last and that help the Church to thrive can be deep, the pruning can be severe, but they are reforms that are rooted within the Church’s traditions.

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ISRAEL
Israel Hayom

Rabbi Mordechai Elon’s conviction of indecent acts rattles national-religious community • Forum Takana, which exposed him, says more serious complaints were not revealed in trial • Elon’s supporters insist: There is no one else of his caliber.

Yehuda Shlezinger

At 11 a.m. on Wednesday, merely an hour and a half after the Jerusalem Magistrates’ Court convicted him of two counts of indecent acts against a minor, Rabbi Mordechai Elon spoke by telephone with another prominent national-religious public figure, Rabbi Haim Druckman.

Druckman was taken aback by the judge’s verdict. “Dear God in heaven, that’s ridiculous. It can’t be, it simply can’t be. I’m no lawyer, but maybe you should appeal to the Supreme Court and explain it to the judges,” he told Elon.

Like other rabbis in the national-religious community, Druckman was struggling to come to terms with the new reality. Elon, who for years had been considered the star of the national-religious public, to the point where he was dubbed the “admor,” an honorific title meaning “master, teacher and rebbe,” had been deemed a sex offender. Neither Elon nor the Forum Takana, a group which seeks to fight sexual abuse by authority figures in the national-religious community and which first exposed Elon’s actions, ever envisioned that the outcome would be so conclusive.

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ISRAEL
Jerusalem Post

By DANIELLE ZIRI

08/09/2013

Crisis center head: Ruling of “immense importance in breaking silence surrounding… sexual assault in the religious community.”

The Association of Rape Crisis Centers in Israel reported a significant increase Thursday in the number of calls to its hotlines for religious men and women, following the Wednesday conviction of Rabbi Mordechai Elon for indecent assault by force against a minor.

The association also stated this week that it wished to strengthen victims of sexual assault who chose to speak out about the events.

Orit Sulitzeanu, the association’s director-general, said in a statement that the court ruling was of “immense importance in breaking the silence surrounding the phenomenon of sexual assault in the religious community.”

“We know that the sense of guilt and shame that accompanies sexual abuse victims prevents women and men affected [from seeking] help or to complain,” she added. “We hope that all victims feel better thanks to this court decision and that people will understand that justice always ends up coming to light.”

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ISRAEL
Israel Hayom

Rabbi Mordechai Elon said to be exploring legal options after conviction • “The court’s ruling is immensely important for breaking the silence around the phenomenon of sex crimes in the religious community,” says Association of Rape Crisis Centers head.

Yehuda Shlezinger and Yael Branovsky

Friends and associates of Rabbi Mordechai Elon are still struggling to come to terms with his conviction Wednesday on two counts of indecent acts against a minor.

“Naturally, spirits are low, but the rabbi is the king of Migdal,” said one of Elon’s associates. “We are reviewing the legal options the rabbi has before him.”

After Elon’s associates and family read the court’s decision, one said that “the judge has a very clear world view, which stipulates what is legitimate and what is illegitimate. In her view, if a person behind closed doors hugs someone it is illegitimate, and you must prove that if a person comes to you for consultation and that person is in distress, that such a situation is truly called for.”

Those in Elon’s circle understand that his conviction will lead many of his critics and those skeptic of his teachings in the national-religious community to believe the rabbi is guilty.

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UNITED STATES
National Catholic Reporter

Joshua J. McElwee | Aug. 9, 2013

Inclusion of two Catholic sisters in a July release of clergy sex abuse documents in the Los Angeles archdiocese highlights a need for sisters’ orders to investigate abuse allegations, says a former leader of the lay group set up by the U.S. bishops to monitor the church’s sex abuse policies.

“I think what we have learned in the last 10 to 12 years is that this is not a kind of misconduct that is peculiar to Roman Catholic priests,” Judge Michael Merz told NCR Aug. 5.

“All the stones need to be turned over,” said Merz, a federal district judge in Ohio who served as the chairman of the U.S. bishops’ National Review Board from 2007 to 2009. “We need to get this stuff out in the open and deal with it.”

Merz’s comments were in regard to the July 31 release of personnel and other files of clergy and sisters accused of abuse from five religious orders that have ministered in the Los Angeles archdiocese.

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IRELAND
Irish Times

Patsy McGarry

Fri, Aug 9, 2013

A man who was abused as a child in Ferns diocese by the late Fr Seán Fortune has expressed his shock at discovering that the parochial house in Poulfour where children were abused by the priest is in use as a creche.

The man, who does not wish to be named, said he had visited the house on July 23rd last with photographer Kim Haughton, who is working on a project involving such places of abuse, and it was only then he discovered there was a creche on the premises.

It was, he said “a house of horrors”. At the scene that day, he “lost it. I really did. The priest who took over from Fortune in that parish refused to live there and they built a new one for him.”

He added: “Fortune is still there, if you know what I mean. He’s still hanging over the place like that house in the Psycho film, the house on the hill. You can see, you can smell him there. They should’ve knocked it. It’s so wrong. It’s not right.”

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IRELAND
Irish Times

Looking back, it was one incident that summed up the whole story.

In 1976, Mavis Arnold and I were interviewing a jittery Department of Education civil servant responsible for what had been industrial schools.

Our focus was on the institution run by the Sisters of the Poor Clares in Cavan.

We asked to see examples of the institution’s “dietary” plan and of a notification of punishment, both required by the 1908 Children Act.

Not available, he replied.

What about children sent out to work from the age of 10 in the early 1960s?

“You can’t see individual confidential reports.”

Could we see the accounts?

They didn’t exist.

By what process, we asked, had some Cavan girls been sent to the laundry-reformatory in Gloucester Street, Dublin?

His agitation increased: “We’d better not delve into that terrain.”

The point was that that institution, run by other nuns, was not certificated, thus the girls’ incarceration there was contrary to the rules of the Act governing the schools.

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NEW YORK
The Jewish Daily Forward

By Paul Berger
Published August 08, 2013, issue of August 16, 2013.

Twelve alumni of Yeshiva University have joined 19 other former students who are suing the Modern Orthodox flagship university for allegedly covering up decades of sexual abuse at its Manhattan high school for boys.

But the 31 students suffered a setback August 6, when United States District Judge John G. Koeltl denied their attorney’s request to gain access to more information through discovery at a court in Manhattan.

“You’re basically having plaintiffs tied one hand behind their back because much of the information is in the hands of the defendants,” Kevin Mulhearn, the students’ attorney, told the court, according to a transcript.

In New York, criminal and civil cases of child sexual abuse must be brought before a victim turns 23; the plaintiffs are older, and claim that they were abused during the 1970s and ’80s. Mulhearn, however, argues in the suit that the statute of limitations does not apply, because Y.U. fraudulently covered up the abuse.

Discovery would have given Mulhearn access to internal Y.U. documents and the ability to interview current and former Y.U. employees about the alleged cover-up. It is a legal maneuver he used in a similar abuse case against Brooklyn’s Poly Prep Country Day School, which the school settled with 12 men represented by Mulhearn.

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AUSTRALIA
The Age

[Royal Commission calls for submissions on ‘Towards Healing’ – Lateline]

August 9, 2013

Benjamin Millar

The Catholic Church’s insurance company destroyed records relating to sexual abuse and drove the church’s handling of victims of abuse, according to a former adviser to the church.

Psychologist Dr Robert Grant, who advised the Catholic Church committee dealing with sexual abuse, told ABC’s Lateline on Thursday that Catholic Church Insurance dictated how victims should be treated under the Towards Healing protocol, a claim CCI denies.

US-based Dr Grant said meetings he attended in the late 1990s with the National Committee for Professional Standards, which was drafting the Towards Healing document, were attended by senior representatives of church-owned CCI or their lawyers.

Dr Grant, who has worked with the Catholic Church on sexual abuse in seven countries, said discussions devising the Towards Healing protocols centred on church liability and priests “being unjustly accused” rather than the wellbeing of victims.

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PENNSYLVANIA
Times Leader

August 08. 2013

Testimony from the trial in Pittsburgh involving alleged child abuse by a former Pittsburgh public schools police officer underscores the need for better safeguards for our children and clearer reporting procedures for school officials if they suspect child abuse.

That is the goal of my legislation that would require school district authorities to report possible child abuse to authorities within 24 hours. My bill would remove the current confusing patchwork of reporting requirements involving school officials when they believe there are instances of child abuse in school. My legislation makes all school officials mandated reporters of suspected child abuse.

Witnesses at the trial testified that they were abused by the former school police officer on school premises as far back as 1998, yet no student came forward with abuse allegations at that time. That changed in 1999 when the former principal at the Arthur J. Rooney Middle School suspected that inappropriate activity occurred and reported his suspicions to the officer’s supervisors.

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CHILE
El Dinamo

Lo más interesante son las explicaciones de los obispos Tomislav Koljatic y Horacio Valenzuela quienes atribuyen las acusaciones no a los abusos sexuales de Karadima, sino a un complot de la izquierda y los masones.

Una veintena de cartas sobre la defensa que encumbrados obispos de la Iglesia Católica hicieron al ex párroco de El Bosque, Fernando Karadima, en un desesperado intento de convencer a El Vaticano y al Arzobispado sobre la inocencia del prelado, fueron dadas a conocer hoy por el portal Ciper.

Entre los escritos a los que tuvo acceso el sitio de investigación, se puede encontrar una varias enviadas por obispos y sacerdotes formados por él, donde se describe a Karadima como un hombre recto y bondadoso; “un hombre que ha centrado su vida en la Eucaristía, celebrada y adorada, con fervor”, según escribió el sacerdote Juan Ignacio Ovalle Barros. O un hombre que “atrae hacia las cosas de Dios”, según afirmó el sacerdote Francisco Javier Manterola Covarrubias.

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SCOTLAND
Scottish Catholic Observer

BISHOP Hugh Gilbert of Aberdeen has said it is ‘bitter, shaming and distressing’ that young boys were abused by monks at the Fort Augustus Abbey school in the 1950s and 1960s.

Bishop Gilbert travelled to St Peter’s and St Benedict’s parish in Fort Augustus last Sunday to celebrate Mass and express his profound sorrow after hearing news of the historic abuse cases.

A Church safeguarding advisor told the SCO this week that the Church now has the ‘robust, rigorous systems’ in place to help ensure such events are not repeated and it was vital that everyone used ‘common sense’ and embraced child protection policy.

The Scottish Church has continued to face the spectre of abuse this week following last week’s BBC Scotland investigation that uncovered a number of cases of child abuse at the Fort Augustus Abbey school, which lies within Aberdeen Diocese, and Carlekemp, its feeder school, in East Lothian. More alleged victims have since come forward.

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AUSTRALIA
Big Pond News

Friday, August 09, 2013

A man has been charged with grooming and sexually assaulting two teenage girls he met through a church in Sydney.

The 23-year-old man was arrested at his home in Westleigh, in Sydney’s northwest, on Wednesday and charged with 40 sexually-based child assault offences.

It followed investigations by the Child Abuse Squad into the alleged grooming and assault of two girls, aged 13 and 15, between March and July this year.

The girls met the man through their church, police allege.

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UNITED STATES
America

August 12-19, 2013
Bernard V. Nojadera

The reverberations can be heard nationwide. As church employees and volunteers receive notices requiring them to attend safe-environment trainings, their responses have become familiar: “Again?” “Didn’t we just do that?” “I went through this where I teach; do I need to do it in the parish too?” “I barely come in contact with kids; why do I need the program?” “I’ve been doing this work for 40 years; don’t they trust me?”

A decade into dealing with child protection efforts, I have come to expect such complaints. I see eyes roll and hear audiences sigh. On occasion, however, there is a more positive reaction: “Thank you. I was abused as a child. I’m here tonight because I have kids. You are now a part of my healing journey.”

While the safe-environment trainings may strike some volunteers as an imposition or an inconvenience, there is good reason not to take them for granted: Child protection programs work. In 2002 the U.S. bishops established stringent policies for the church in the United States that require staff and volunteers to be educated in child safety awareness and protection and to undergo background checks. The policies also demand that safe-environment instructors educate children on what is acceptable and unacceptable touch and how to report what makes them feel uncomfortable. The result? A decline in the reported number of new victims of sexual abuse and of perpetrators. In addition, with a call for men and women abused decades ago to seek help, the church is now seeing a decline in the number of old cases coming to the light.

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AUSTRALIA
ABC News

By Steve Cannane and Sashka Koloff
Updated Fri Aug 9, 2013

A psychologist who advised the Catholic Church committee that deals with sexual abuse says the church’s insurance company dictated how victims should be treated under the Towards Healing protocol.

Dr Robert Grant is a US-based psychologist who specialises in abuse and trauma, has worked with the Catholic Church on sexual abuse issues in seven countries, and has written a number of books on clerical abuse.

In the late 1990s he was living in Sydney and advising the St John of God brothers in relation to the psychiatric facilities they ran.

He was soon asked to help the National Committee for Professional Standards, which was working on the draft of Towards Healing, the church policy for dealing with clerical sexual abuse.

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INDIA
e-Pao

Source: Hueiyen News Service

Imphal, August 08, 2013: All Manipur Christian Organization (AMCO) has condemned the sexual exploitation of minor girls at Grace Home, Jaipur allegedly by its founder Pastor Jacob John.

According to a release of AMCO, the alleged child trafficking, sexual abuse and rape of children at Grace Home and the incarceration of accused Pastor John Jacob has brought shame, anger and challenge to the Christian ministers and members.

AMCO condemned the series of crime allegedly committed by John Jacob towards his maid-servants and innocent children at Grace Home, and urged the authorities for a just and speedy legal verdict against the culprit.

Further, the organization clarified that the accused Jacob John and the institution he runs (Grace Home, Jaipur) has neither link with any Christian organization nor has he taken permission from any Christian Church organization in Manipur.

All Manipur Christian Organization (AMCO) and its constituent Churches have no knowledge about the person and his institution, but only through the public and media.

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INDIA
e-Pao

Source: The Sangai Express

Imphal, August 08, 2013: Stating that the alleged ‘child trafficking,’ ‘sexual abuse’ and ‘rape of children’ at Grace Home, Jaipur, and the incarceration of the principal accused, pastor John Jacob, has brought shame, anger and challenge to the Christian ministers and members, the All Manipur Christian Organisation (AMCO) urged for a just and speedy legal verdict against the accused.

Feeling the need to address the issue of the heinous act, AMCO held emergency sittings on July 22 and 23 to express, clarify and appeal to the Christians in particular and people of Manipur in general regarding child trafficking, sexual abuse and rape, especially of children.

A statement issued by AMCO said that child trafficking, sexual abuse and rape, especially of children, is a heinous crime, a grave sin to be condemned by all while condemning the series of crime, allegedly committed by Jacob John against his maid-servants and innocent children at Grace Home at Jaipur.

Sharing the trauma, shame and pain of the innocent victims of Grace Home, Jaipur, the maidservants and the innocent children, AMCO said the indescribable psychological wound and the spiritual trauma caused to children will take a long time to be healed while expressing deep sympathy and assuring them of prayerful support.

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IOWA
Des Moines Register

A restraining order has been issued against the former Des Moines youth pastor who this week was accused of sexually abusing two teenage congregation members.

Ryan Matthew McKelvey, 27, was barred from contacting all minors and was ordered to stay away from all places where minors typically can be found, according to court documents filed Wednesday.

The restraining order also said McKelvey, who has a wife and young child, was allowed to see a specific minor, who was not named, only in the presence of the child’s mother.

McKelvey, who had served as a youth pastor at Heritage Assembly of God, 5051 N.E. Fifth St., was arrested Tuesday and charged with two counts of sexual exploitation by clergy and two counts of third-degree sexual abuse. As of Thursday afternoon, he was being held in the Polk County Jail on $100,000 cash bond.

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AUSTRALIA
ABC = Lateline

[with video]

Australian Broadcasting Corporation
Broadcast: 08/08/2013
Reporter: Steve Cannane

The Royal Commission into Child Sexual Abuse is taking submissions into the Catholic Church’s Towards Healing protocols which were introduced in 1996 to deal with abuse committed by clergy.

Transcript

TONY JONES, PRESENTER: The Royal Commission into child sexual abuse is taking submissions into the Catholic Church’s Towards Healing protocols, introduced in 1996 to deal with abuse committed by clergy.

The protocols are meant to be driven by pastoral concerns dealing with the pain of victims through a Christian response.

But tonight for the first time a consultant to the committee has spoken out, saying the Church’s insurance company had too much influence on the response and that a senior official from the company boasted of destroying Church personnel records.

Recently at the Victorian parliamentary inquiry into child sex abuse, the CEO of Catholic Church insurance, Peter Rush, said CCI officers remained independent of the underlying process.

Steve Cannane has this exclusive report, produced by Sashka Koloff.

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CHILE
Terra

El magistrado detalló que la cita “duró cerca de media hora” donde el religioso se vio “en muy buenas condiciones de salud”.

El ministro de fuero, Juan Muñoz Pardo, aseguró esta tarde que el ex párroco de El Bosque, Fernando Karadima, “respondió todas las preguntas”, tras el interrogatorio que realizó al religioso en el marco de la demanda civil que presentaron tres de sus víctimas de abusos sexuales.

El magistrado detalló que el cuestionario “duró cerca de media hora” donde el sacerdote se vio “en muy buenas condiciones de salud”.

“Yo he cumplido con la diligencia. Ahora son las partes las que tienen que evaluar su importancia y gravitación”, afirmó el juez.

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CHILE
Ciper Chile

CIPER accedió a una veintena de cartas que usó la defensa de Karadima en su último intento por convencer al Vaticano de que el ex párroco de El Bosque era inocente. Vistas desde hoy las cartas resultan demenciales. Particularmente las de los obispos Tomislav Koljatic y Horacio Valenzuela quienes atribuyen las acusaciones no a los abusos sexuales de Karadima, sino a un complot de la izquierda y los masones. Una carta del cardenal Errázuriz a Karadima revela la delicadeza con que lo trataba mientras cerraba la puerta a sus víctimas. Los hechos muestran lo débil que fue la Iglesia ante el cura abusador, exactamente lo que hoy reclaman las victimas en los tribunales.

En estos días el cura Fernando Karadima deberá volver a enfrentar un interrogatorio judicial debido a la demanda que mantienen sus acusadores James Hamilton, José Andrés Murillo y Juan Carlos Cruz. En ella se sostiene que la Iglesia Católica chilena es responsable por no haber investigado las denuncias contra el sacerdote que oportunamente se le hicieron llegar a sus autoridades. Más aún, los denunciantes acusan que los obispos formados por Karadima (Andrés Arteaga, Tomislav Koljatic, Horacio Valenzuela y Juan Barros) supieron por años de los abusos sexuales y sicológicos que cometía su mentor y los encubrieron. Y que el entonces arzobispo de Santiago Francisco Javier Errázuriz actuó indolentemente ante las denuncias y testimonios que recibió.

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CHILE
Terra

En el reportaje, realizado por Ciper Chile, destacan las misivas de los tres -de 19- curas que no se arrepintieron de apoyar al ex párroco de El Bosque tras el fallo condenatorio del Vaticano.

El portal Ciper Chile reveló esta tarde algunas cartas que obispos y sacerdotes enviaron al Vaticano para exculpar al ex párroco de El Bosque, Fernando Karadima, de las denuncias de abusos sexuales.

El medio tuvo acceso a una veintena de misivas de distintos religiosos del país, donde defienden a Karadima de las denuncias hechas por James Hamilton, José Andrés Murillo y Juan Carlos Cruz.

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CHILE
La Tercera

El ex párroco de El Bosque, Fernando Karadima, declaró hoy por cerca de media hora ante el ministro de fuero Juan Muñoz, en el marco de una demanda civil contra el Arzobispado de Santiago interpuesta por el abogado Juan Pablo Hermosilla, representante de tres demandantes del sacerdote por abusos sexuales.

Al terminar la diligencia, que se realizó en el convento de las Siervas de Jesús de la Caridad, donde se encuentra recluido el sacerdote, Muñoz señaló que Karadima se encontraba “en buen estado de salud”.

El ministro de fuero agregó que Karadima “respondió a una minuta de preguntas hechas por la parte demandante para constituir una prueba que va a servir para asegurar la pretensión que persigue que es establecer esa responsabilidad para los efectos patrimoniales”.

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CONNECTICUT
CT Post

Michael P. Mayko
Updated 5:59 pm, Thursday, August 8, 2013

HARTFORD — Just when it appeared the book had been closed on the sordid Haitian sex scandal involving Douglas Perlitz and his three-stage program to clothe, feed and educate street boys there, a new chapter is being written.

That happened Thursday when Mitchell Garabedian, a Boston lawyer, filed the first of what he anticipates will be another 32 lawsuits on behalf of boys who claim Perlitz sexually abused them while they were participants in his Project Pierre Toussaint program in Cap-Haitien, Haiti’s second largest city.

“Douglas Perlitz was a serial pedophile,” said Garabedian, who has won numerous cases on behalf of victims who claim sexual abuse by religious members. “In these types of cases it’s not unusual for victims to come forward over a period of time.”

In one case involving a Roman Catholic priest, Garabedian said 148 victims came forward.

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IOWA
Des Moines Register

Written by
Joel Aschbrenner

A restraining order has been issued against the former Des Moines youth pastor who this week was accused of sexually abusing two teenage congregation members.

Ryan Matthew McKelvey, 27, is barred from contacting all minors and is ordered to stay away form all places where minors typically can be found, according to court documents filed Wednesday.

The restraining order also said McKelvey, who has a wife and young child, is allowed to see a specific minor, who was not named, only in the presence of the child’s mother.

McKelvey, who had served as a youth pastor at Heritage Assembly Church, 5051 N.E. Fifth St., was arrested Tuesday and charged with two counts of sexual exploitation by clergy and two counts of third-degree sexual abuse. As of Thursday afternoon, he was being held in the Polk County Jail on $100,000 cash bond.

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NEW YORK
National Catholic Reporter

Ben Feuerherd | Aug. 8, 2013

NEW YORK
Fr. Helmut Schüller’s “Catholic Tipping Point” tour of the United States ended where it began: in New York. He gave an address Wednesday evening in Manhasset and on Thursday, he visited St. Patrick’s Cathedral in Manhattan, where he delivered thousands of red ribbons and signatures he collected in 15 cities across the nation.

The original plan was to give the ribbons, which symbolize Pentecost, to New York Cardinal Timothy Dolan, but no one from the archdiocese was there to accept them. Instead, it was agreed the ribbons would be delivered to the front desk of the chancery, wrote St. Joseph Sr. Chris Schenk, executive director of FutureChurch, in an email.

“I discovered many faithful Catholics working hard to change the church they love very much,” Schüller said at St. Patrick’s, according to a statement from FutureChurch, one of the tour’s organizing groups. “I also spoke with many priests who see the need for change but are afraid to raise their voices. There is no place for fear or intimidation in the Catholic church. We all must speak out for our rights as Catholics.”

In the last three weeks, Schüller traveled from the East Coast to the West, spreading a message of “disobedience” and church reform. In each city, Schüller preached the values of the “Call to Disobedience,” a 2011 document published by the Austrian Priests’ Initiative. His message includes opening the priesthood to women and married people. He also advocates for a stronger relationship between the church and Catholic gay couples.

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MILWAUKEE (WI)
National Catholic Reporter

Brian Roewe Marie Rohde | Aug. 8, 2013

MILWAUKEE A federal judge’s decision that creditors cannot access funds in a separate cemetery trust as part of the Milwaukee archdiocese’s bankruptcy proceedings could have a wide range of implications should it outlast a possible appeal regarding the judge’s familial ties to the cemeteries.

On Thursday, Bankruptcy Judge Susan V. Kelley ordered archdiocesan records related to any interest U.S. District Court Judge Rudolph T. Randa or some of his family members have in cemeteries, crypts, mausoleums or the trust to be turned over to lawyers for the claimants. Archdiocesan lawyers agreed to do so.

The order came in response to an emergency motion filed Aug. 2 by the creditors’ committee following Randa’s decision that $57 million moved to a cemetery trust in 2007 could not be accessed in the bankruptcy proceedings.

Describing the situation as “unusual and unique,” Kelley cautioned that the order should not be construed as a ruling on the “appropriateness or non-appropriateness of a recusal or non-recusal or finding that [Randa] has a financial interest.”

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MILWAUKEE (WI)
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

By Annysa Johnson of the Journal Sentinel Aug. 8, 2013.

The Archdiocese of Milwaukee must release to its bankruptcy creditors documents that could show whether a federal judge, who sided with the church on a key issue involving its cemeteries, might have had a conflict of interest that should have been disclosed, U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Susan V. Kelley ruled Thursday.

Kelley issued the ruling after a brief hearing Thursday, stressing that it was not a commentary on U.S. District Judge Rudolph T. Randa’s July 29 ruling or whether he should have recused himself from the case.

“This should not in any way, shape or form be construed as a ruling on the appropriateness of Judge Randa’s recusal or nonrecusal, or whether he has a financial interest or not” in the archdiocese’s cemetery litigation, Kelley said.

Randa ruled last week that forcing the church to use even some of the more than $50 million it set aside in a trust for the perpetual care of cemeteries to pay its bankruptcy debts — primarily sex abuse settlements — would substantially burden its free exercise of religion under the First Amendment and a 1993 law aimed at protecting religious freedom.

Randa’s ruling, which overturned an earlier decision by Kelley, was a key victory for the archdiocese in that it eliminated one of the last major assets available for a settlement with sex abuse victims who filed claims in the bankruptcy.

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CANADA
CBC News

by Jody Porter, CBC News Posted: Aug 8, 2013

A local doctor and a school nurse experimented with 14 different drugs to treat “ear troubles” in children at Cecilia Jeffrey Indian Residential School in Kenora, according to a 1954 report obtained by CBC News.

The report, from the Indian and Northern Health Services archive, said that some of the children being treated became deaf.

School nurse Kathleen Stewart wrote the report, entitled “Record of Ear Treatments and Investigation.”

“The most conspicuous evidence of ear trouble at Cecilia Jeffrey School has been the offensive odour of the children’s breath, discharging ears, lack of sustained attention, poor enunciation when speaking and loud talking,” she wrote.

Students at the Cecilia Jeffrey Indian Residential School in Kenora were the subject of nutritional experiments and exposed to experimental treatments for ear infections. Some became deaf.

So Stewart said the children were taught to irrigate their own ears, or the ears of younger children, with hot water. A doctor visited the school on a weekly basis looking out for ear infections “and the recommended medicine was used when possible,” Stewart wrote.

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IOWA
Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests

For immediate release: August 8, 2013

Statement by David Clohessy of St. Louis, Director of SNAP, the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests ( 314 566 9790, SNAPclohessy@aol.com )

A Des Moines youth pastor has been charged with child sex crimes. His church supervisors and members must now seek out others who he may have hurt.

Ryan M. McKelvey Heritage Assembly Church is accused of molesting two girls. The church’s pastor claims to be “unaware” of any of McKelvey’s inappropriate behavior. We doubt that.

In almost every case, evidence surfaces showing that church officials or members saw and ignored or hid “warning signs” of abuse.

We applaud the two victims and their families for courageously coming forward and cooperating with the police despite threats of doing so by the predator. We urge current and former Heritage Assembly Church members and staff to aggressively seek out others who may have been hurt by McKelvey and prod them to call police and prosecutors so that McKelvey can be convicted and kept away from kids for a long time.

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AUSTRALIA
National Catholic Reporter

Stephen Crittenden | Aug. 8, 2013

SYDNEY After eight weeks of intense, graphic and sometimes sad testimony, public hearings have ended for the New South Wales special commission of inquiry into clerical abuse in the Maitland-Newcastle diocese, north of Sydney.

Forty witnesses have given testimony in open court before Commissioner Margaret Cunneen, and many others have been heard in camera, or in closed proceedings.

New South Wales Premier Barry O’Farrell created the inquiry in November, days before former Prime Minister Julia Gillard called a national royal commission into child sexual abuse in Australia.

O’Farrell and Gillard were responding to allegations by a senior police whistleblower, Chief Inspector Peter Fox, who said he could “testify from my own experience that the church covers up, silences victims, hinders police investigations, alerts offenders, destroys evidence and moves priests to protect the good name of the church.”

The inquiry’s mandate was to look into whether the Catholic church covered up abuse by two late priests, Denis McAlinden and James Fletcher, and whether Fox was inappropriately removed from his investigations.

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AUSTRALIA
ABC

[with audio]

Stephen Crittenden gives a summary so far in the Newcastle Inquiry into the handling of clerical sexual abuse.

* the specific and narrow scope of the inquiry

* how the Inquiry relates to the Royal Commission into sexual abuse, and the Victorian Parliamentary Inquiry

* the testimony and examination of Detective Chief Inspector Fox

* “Misprision of felony” and possible consequences for church leaders who did not report felonies historically

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UNITED KINGDOM
BBC NEWS

A disgraced former Catholic priest has been given a three-year community order after admitting sexually abusing an altar boy in the late 1980s.

Malcolm McLennan, 69, then an assistant priest in Walderslade, Kent abused the boy when he was 12 and 13.

McLennan, who has a string of previous convictions, lives in a closed church community in Quedgeley, Gloucester.

A judge at Maidstone Crown Court ordered him to attend a treatment programme.

McLennan was also put on the sex offenders’ register for five years.

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SCOTLAND
The Tablet

10 August 2013

Safeguarding in the Catholic Church in Scotland does not command public confidence, yet the attitude of some senior church leaders suggests defensiveness and even complacency. Bishop Joseph Devine, retired Bishop of Motherwell, is quoted in The Tablet this week as saying that an independent investigation into alleged abuse by priests – parallel, for instance, to the Nolan inquiry in England and Wales – was not necessary. The number of cases was “tiny” and most happened 20 or more years ago. “What about the number of people in other professions who have been involved in abuse?” He is entitled to make these points, but his tone does not reassure the public that the issue is being taken seriously. This is a Church, after all, that has seen its reputation all but destroyed by the sexual scandal involving Cardinal Keith O’Brien.

On top of that case comes the painful disclosures concerning abuse by priests at Fort Augustus School in the Scottish Highlands. It closed in 1993, and most allegations date from years before. Judging by the continuing mental distress suffered by some of the survivors, however, the abuse could have happened yesterday. The public, and that includes the Catholic public, will take some convincing that attitudes have now changed so much that further cases are impossible. Even the Catholic Church in England and Wales, streets ahead of Scotland in these respects, is still seeing a trickle of new cases reported to the authorities, as well as allegations of a more historical nature. And it has begun to flesh out its concerns to do right by those who were damaged by abuse, with an extensive programme being piloted in Hallam Diocese.

Child protection has to be managed independently of church administrative structures and their personnel, and has to have three guiding principles. The first is the priority of caring for survivors (the term “victim” is no longer deemed appropriate). They must say what they need – it is not for the Church to tell them – with the aid where necessary of independent professional advice. The second is to give prime responsibility to the statutory agencies, the police and local social services departments, in deciding how to respond to allegations, when to take them seriously and whether to prosecute. And the third, perhaps secondary to these but no less essential, is transparency. Subject only to the protection of survivors’ privacy and regardless of possible damage to the Church’s good name, detailed figures must be published annually by an independent authority whose work must be open to media and public scrutiny. The Catholic Church in England and Wales meets these criteria; the Scottish Church has a long way to go.

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SCOTLAND
The Tablet

8 August 2013

The Church in Scotland may call in an outside body to review its safeguarding records, a senior member of the bishops’ conference has revealed.

Fr Tom Boyle, Assistant Secretary General of the Scottish Bishops’ Conference, confirmed the Church would review historic files detailing alleged abuse kept in diocesan archives and that an independent agency may be used to carry this out.

He said the Church planned to publish the review next year, although no time span has been set for how far back the cases being examined would go.

The Scottish bishops have also revealed that they will hold an internal review of abuse cases handled by the dioceses for the period 2006 to 2012.

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KENTUCKY
The Courier-Journal

Posted on August 8, 2013 by Peter Smith

The Council of Elders of the Louisville-based Sovereign Grace Ministries is denouncing as a slanderer a former high-ranking official in the denomination who sparked upheaval in the denomination after his 2011 release of internal church documents.

Brent Detwiler of North Carolina, who has been a vocal and persistent critic of the ministry’s leadership, said he would respond on Friday to the charges.

The statement by the elders — who represent local churches in the denomination — defends the church and its former longtime president, C.J. Mahaney, pastor of Sovereign Grace Church of Louisville.

Here are excerpts:

“…we believe that Brent Detwiler has repeatedly and grievously slandered our churches and our leaders. We denounce as sinful and unbiblical his determined effort to accuse our brethren. Consequently, we urge our brothers and sisters in Christ to avoid giving audience to Brent Detwiler’s unbiblical speech until such a time that he repents of this ungodly pattern. Such harmful speech is ruinous to the church of God.

“Furthermore, in contradiction to Brent Detwiler’s ongoing statements, we vigorously reiterate our support of C.J. Mahaney as a qualified minister of the gospel….”

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UNITED STATES
TheMediaReport

[This is another entry in a continuing series of profiles about individuals whom the mainstream media often cites in its coverage of the Catholic Church abuse narrative.]

When the media needs a reliable voice to bludgeon the Catholic Church over the issue of sex abuse from decades ago, one of its favorite voices is Richard Sipe, an 80-year-old ex-priest and mental health counselor.

What the mainstream media never reports, however, is Sipe’s troubling track record of falsehoods, distortions, and nastiness. As is frequently the case with other purported experts cited by the media, Sipe uses the issue of clergy sex abuse as a means to advance his attack on the Catholic Church, especially its teachings regarding human sexuality.

Priest celibacy caused the Holocaust?!

To understand how disdainful Sipe can be of the Church and its teachings, especially those related to sexuality and priest celibacy, one can simply look to his 1995 book, Sex, Priests, And Power: Anatomy Of A Crisis.

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CONNECTICUT
Boston.com

AP / August 8, 2013

NEW HAVEN, Conn. (AP) — Fairfield University and others that supported a charity designed to help feed and educate boys in Haiti are facing another lawsuit by a man alleging he was sexually abused by a founder of the school.

The federal lawsuit, filed Thursday in Connecticut, seeks $20 million in damages. The man was about 15 at the time of the abuse, according to the suit.

The university and others reached a $12 million settlement last month with children sexually abused by Douglas Perlitz, who was sentenced to nearly 20 years in prison for sexually abusing boys who attended Project Pierre Toussaint School in Cap-Haitien.

The victims’ attorney, Mitchell Garabedian, said he’s investigating another 31 claims of sexual abuse by Perlitz and may file additional lawsuits.

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VATICAN CITY
Rome Reports

[with video]

August 8, 2013. (Romereports.com) An appeal has been withdrawn by a man who claimed the Vatican was financially responsible for the sexual abuse he endured back in the 60’s, when he was abused by a parish priest in Portland, Oregon.

The case ended in the 9th U.S Circuit Court of Appeals. The plaintiff had already reached a financial settlement with the religious order the priest belonged to, but he argued the Vatican should also be held liable, claiming the priest was ultimately a Vatican employee.

The man claims he was sexually abused in 1965 and the case itself had been opened since 2002. Last year, U.S District Court Judge Michael Mosman, concluded that the Vatican did not employ the pedophile priest, nor was it involved in transferring the priest to another diocese.

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UNITED KINGDOM
Kent Online

by Rebecca Hughes
rhughes@thekmgroup.co.uk

A former Catholic priest who molested an altar boy at a Medway church more than 20 years ago has today avoided a jail sentence.

Malcolm McLennan admitted molesting the boy, who is now in his late-30s, when he appeared before Medway magistrates last month.

The 69-year-old was handed a three-year community order at Maidstone Crown Court today.

After the sentence, the victim said: “I am devastated. Justice has not been served.”

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VATICAN CITY
The Daily Star (Lebanon)

August 08, 2013
By Peter McDonough
The Daily Star

Catholicism, among the most tradition-bound religions, contains at its core a paradox that has become increasingly sharp. With Pope Francis having just finished his first overseas trip – to Brazil, the world’s most populous Catholic country – it is difficult, despite the inertia of the past, to tell where the church is headed.

The accession of Jorge Mario Bergoglio to the papacy adds to the puzzle. The chief Jesuit confessor at the papal court used to be called “the black pope,” owing to his simple black cassock (if not his sinister intent). For the first time, a Jesuit has become pope – and has compounded the novelty by assuming the very un-Jesuit name of Francis.

As curious as such gestures are in an institution that thrives on imagery, they are symbolic frills. We already have plenty of pictures of Francis kissing babies; what he faces now are strategic matters of genuine substance.

One such challenge, the Vatican Bank, is equivalent to cleaning up the Augean stables. It is enough to mention the words “Vatican” and “bank” in the same sentence to start a cascade of jokes about comic-opera ineptness and skullduggery.

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VATICAN CITY
BBC News

The Pope has stepped up the fight against corruption at the Vatican by strengthening supervision of financial transactions at its internal bank.

Pope Francis issued a decree designed to combat money-laundering and prevent any financing of terrorism.

It is the latest move to stamp out abuses at the Vatican bank, which handles funds for the Catholic Church.

The Pope recently set up a commission to investigate the bank and report back to him personally.

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VATICAN CITY
The Raw Story

By Agence France-Presse
Thursday, August 8, 2013

Pope Francis intensified the fight against corruption in the Vatican on Thursday, strengthening the law to counter “money laundering, the financing of terrorism and the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction.”

The short “Motu Proprio”, a decree of Francis’s own initiative, strengthens the supervision of financial transactions “in response to a recommendation of the Moneyval Committee,” the European watchdog which carried out a review of the Vatican bank last year.

The decree is just the latest in a series of bold moves on the part of the pontiff to clean up the institution’s murky financial image.

“It is a means of ensuring the road (towards transparency) continues,” Vatican spokesman Federico Lombardi said in a press conference.

“In today’s world, it is all about resisting increasingly insidious forms of financial criminality. We have to be equal to the challenges in order to protect legality, and not be left behind,” he said.

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VATICAN CITY
Reuters

Thu Aug 8, 2013

* Francis issues special decree to tackle financial crime
* Watchdog given greater monitoring powers over Vatican bank
* Francis boosting bid to meet global transparency standards

By Catherine Hornby

VATICAN CITY, Aug 8 (Reuters) – Pope Francis on Thursday strengthened monitoring of the Vatican bank to prevent money laundering or the financing of terrorism as part of his campaign to clean it up after decades of scandal.

Issuing a “Motu Proprio” – a decree at his own initiative, Francis said the Vatican’s internal watchdog, the Financial Information Authority (FIA), would have increased powers of supervision over the bank and other Holy See departments involved in financial activities.

The move will lead to closer monitoring of the Institute for Works of Religion (IOR) – the formal name of the Vatican bank – and responds to a recommendation from the European anti-money laundering committee Moneyval last year.

The Vatican is trying to meet international standards on fighting crimes such as money laundering, funding of terrorism and proliferation of weapons of mass destruction. Moneyval said in a July 2012 report that the Vatican still had some way to go.

It said FIA’s powers should include reviewing policies, procedures, accounts and records and that it should have the right to enter Vatican premises and demand access to information.

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ILLINOIS
Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests

Aug. 5, 2013

Dear Bishop Braxton:

You and your brother bishops have repeatedly pledged to be “open and transparent” about clergy sex abuse. Yet you refuse to tell your flock

–that no Belleville predator priest is being housed and monitored by the diocese,
–that other dioceses do, in fact, house and monitor predator priests,
–that only two Belleville predator priests have been defrocked,
–that six or seven of Belleville predator priests are still on the payroll, and
— how many victims have contacted you or how much you’re spending on their therapy. (The last such figures, provided by your predecessor, are almost a decade old).

At the same time, you’re quietly renovating your home again and quietly and repeatedly traveling abroad. Who’s paying for this?

We respectfully but firmly urge you to reveal who paid for your trips overseas. We urge you to halt your new kitchen renovation and be honest about who paid for it.

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UNITED STATES
Stop Baptist Predators

A reader recently sent me an article with these comments:

“My childhood church had a young man who volunteered for years with AWANA and the youth group. I had also heard from adults that he was so wonderful to be a ‘father figure’ to several boys in the church whose parents were divorced. You can guess the result – he was eventually found out to be molesting these boys, and one case went to court.

Several of the boys he was close to seemed to ‘go off the rails’ and disappear. I am pretty sure that there must have been many more victims. He was described in the paper as volunteering for ‘several years’ with youth and children, but I was in that church back in the mid-nineties and he didn’t get prosecuted till 2005, so it was at least 10 years. He was basically a volunteer youth and children minister, extremely active in the ministries. He starred in the children’s musical I was in . . . . Knowing that there must have been more victims, I think it would be helpful to post this . . . . ”

I agree. So I’m posting this excerpt from a front-page article that was in the Daily News of Northwest Florida on November 5, 2005.

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TENNESSEE
Courthouse News Service

By KEVIN KOENINGER

CLARKSVILLE, Tenn. (CN) – After a youth minister was charged with sex offenses, a Baptist church promised to protect its children, but all it did was offer an optional first aid course, and a second employee sexually abused another child, the family claims in court.

Parents John and Jane Doe sued Spring Creek Baptist Church on behalf of their minor daughter Janie, in Montgomery County Court. The church itself is the only defendant.

“In 2009, a youth minister at Spring Creek was criminally charged with having sexual contact with minors in Spring Creek’s youth groups. The youth minister resigned voluntarily,” the complaint states.

“Afterwards, at least one member of Spring Creek communicated to Senior Pastor Paul Bunger that Spring Creek should adopt policies for protecting children in its care.

“Spring Creek adopted no policies for protecting children other than offering a first aid course for Sunday School teachers on a voluntary basis.”

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UNITED STATES
National Catholic Reporter

David Gibson Religion News Service | Aug. 8, 2013

For more than three decades, the Vatican of Popes John Paul II and Benedict XVI operated on a version of the conservative maxim, “No enemies to the right.”

While left-wing theologians were silenced and liberal-to-moderate bishops were shunted aside in favor of hard-liners, and liturgical traditionalists and cultural conservatives were diligently courted and given direct access to the apostolic palace.

But in a few short months, Pope Francis has upended that dynamic, alienating many on the Catholic right by refusing to play favorites and ignoring their preferred agenda items even as he stressed the kind of social justice issues that are near and dear to progressives.

“I’ve personally found many aspects of this papacy to be annoying, and struggled against that feeling from the beginning. I’m hardly alone in this,” Jeffrey Tucker, editor of the New Liturgical Movement blog, wrote as Francis basked in the glow of media coverage of his recent trip to Brazil.

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ROME
National Catholic Reporter

Joshua J. McElwee Biagio Mazza | Aug. 8, 2013

ROME A “new attitude” of cooperation and equality must govern relations between the Vatican and Catholic sisters around the world, a key Vatican cardinal said in May.

That attitude, Cardinal João Braz de Aviz said, must be grounded in the understanding that both the church hierarchy and the sisters “are two dimensions essential in the church.”

“Neither is greater than the other,” Braz de Aviz said. “Both the prophetic and the governing dimensions form the church.”

Braz de Aviz, the prefect of the Vatican’s Congregation for Religious, made his comments in May in Rome during a talk at the triennial meeting of the International Union of Superiors General (UISG), a membership group for approximately 2,000 leaders of Catholic sisters around the world.

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UNITED STATES
AlterNet

AlterNet / By Amanda Marcotte

August 7, 2013

Right-wing Christians have a lot of ridiculous sexual rules to control and direct sexual behavior: Everything from frowning on all nomarital sex to denouncing homosexuality to objecting to divorce. Of course, the problem they run up against is that consenting adults have lives that are complex, emotional and messy, and they’re going to make decisions based on their own circumstances and not the rules. This is so true that the very people espousing these strict rules about sex and marriage can’t even be bothered to follow them. Here’s some examples.

1) Catholic vicar Arthur M. Coyle caught with a prostitute.The Catholic Church has a long, long list of “nos” when it comes to sex, so long that it’s easier to list what you can do than what you can’t under their rules: Have contraception-free sex within marriage. That’s it, and if you’re a priest, even that is off the table for you. Which is why it’s newsworthy that Monsignor Arthur Coyle, who has been holding the high office of episcopal vicar for the Archdiocese of Boston was recently arrested for soliciting sex from a prostitute. The cops noted that Coyle was routinely spotted in the area where the prostitutes hung out, and so really, it was just a matter of time before he got caught. As usual, any lessons about what kind of behavior people will get up to if they’re denied healthy outlets for their sexuality will be ignored by the Catholic hierarchy.

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NEW YORK
Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests

For immediate release: Thursday, August 8, 2013

Statement by David Clohessy of St. Louis, Director of SNAP, the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests ( 314 566 9790, SNAPclohessy@aol.com )

Shame on the Franciscan Brothers of Brooklyn and the board and staff of St. Francis Prep for trying to intimidate victims of sexual abuse and harassment.

For decades, judges, courts, prosecutors and lawmakers across the US have let victims of sex crimes and sexual harassment seek justice while protecting their privacy. A small number of ruthless defendants, however, insist on trying to force victims to disclose their identities. This mean-spirited and desperate maneuver is designed to scare other victims, witnesses, and whistleblowers into keeping quiet.

We believe and hope it will backfire. We hope every single person who saw, suspected or suffered crimes, misdeeds or cover ups by Franciscan Brothers – at St. Francis Prep or elsewhere – will find the courage to speak up, get help, expose wrongdoers, warn parents, protect the vulnerable and deter future misconduct.

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AUSTRALIA
lewisblayse.net

The case of Fr. Richard John James Robinson, although occurring in the U.K., gives a clear indication of just how the Catholic Church has adopted the same strategy for its paedophile priests world-wide.

Robinson was shifted from parish to parish over a period of 25 years where he abused many boys, despite clear evidence that church officials knew of his offending. When, eventually, charges were mooted, the church sent him out of the country, to the U.S., in 1985.

About twenty years later, a victim tracked him down to California, but it was not possible to extradite him to the U.K. because of an American law placing a 10 year limit on extraditable offences. It was only when this law was changed, and a victim alerted U.K. authorities to that change, that Robinson was taken back to the U.K. He received a 21 year sentence for his offences, some dating back to 1959.

According to Anna Wheeler, a senior prosecutor with West Midlands Crown Prosecution Service’s Complex Casework Unit, who finally extradited Robinson back to Britain to face justice, it is likely that Robinson had offended in the 20 years he was in the U.S. She thinks more victims will eventually come forward.

In a curious fact of the U.K. justice system, two victims who came forward after Robinson’s extradition were unable to have their case prosecuted in the courts. However, they were permitted to give evidence in the case against Robinson by other victims.

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VATICAN CITY
Vatican Insider

Pope Francis has issued a new Motu Proprio which states that Vatican money-laundering laws now also apply to dicasteries of the Roman Curia. The document also gives greater supervisory powers to the Vatican Financial Information Authority

ANDREA TORNIELLI
VATICAN CITY

The Pope has taken yet another step to bring the Holy See’s structures in line with international money-laundering standards. Today he issued a Motu Proprio for “the prevention and countering of money laundering, the financing of terrorism and the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction,” a Holy See Press Office statement said. It follows on from the action taken by Benedict XVI in this field “reaffirm[ing] the Holy See’s commitment to the goal of preventing and countering money laundering.”

The new law “broadens the application of the relevant Vatican laws to the Dicasteries of the Roman Curia and to other institutes and entities dependent on the Holy See, as well as to non-profit organizations enjoying juridical personality in canon law and based in the Vatican City State”; it “strengthens the supervisory and regulatory function of the Financial Information Authority” headed by Cardinal Attilio Nicora; it “establishes the function of prudential supervision over entities habitually engaged in financial activities, in response to a recommendation of the MONEYVAL Committee of the Council of Europe, and assigns that function to the Financial Information Authority”; finally, it “establishes the Financial Security Committee, whose Statutes are appended to the Motu Proprio, for the purpose of coordinating the competent authorities of the Holy See and the Vatican City State in the area of prevention and countering of money laundering, the financing of terrorism and the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction.”

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VATICAN CITY
Chiesa

Name by name, Bergoglio’s personal team. A miniscule but highly active parallel curia in which he makes all the decisions. Including the mishaps of the appointments of Monsignor Ricca and Francesca Chaouqui

by Sandro Magister

ROME, August 8, 2013 – Francis is in no hurry to reform the curia, and some of his big electors are starting to get impatient. “We wanted someone with good managerial skills and leadership skills, and so far that hasn’t been as obvious,” the cardinal of New York, Timothy Dolan, complained in an interview a few days ago.

But pope Jorge Mario Bergoglio certainly does not like the curia the way it is. And in fact he often and intentionally does without it. The latest chirograph signed “Francis,” that of July 18 which instituted a commission of eight experts to rethink the organization of the economic-administrative structure of the Holy See, was made known to the Vatican secretariat of state only as a done deal.

This means that in the little office of pope Bergoglio on the second floor of the Casa di Santa Marta, where he has chosen to reside, many things are decided and done that never even pass through the majestic curial offices of the first and third loggia of the Apostolic Palace, a few steps away from the now-deserted pontifical apartment.

The secretariat of state continues its routine work, but much more at work is another secretariat, miniscule but highly active, which in direct service to the pope attends to the matters that he wants to resolve himself, without any interference whatsoever.

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CHILE
Diario U Chile

Para este jueves está contemplado que el ex párroco de El Bosque, Fernando Karadima, declare ante el ministro Juan Manuel Muñoz.

El ministro concurriría a las 16:00 hrs. hasta el convento de las Siervas de Jesús de la Caridad ubicado en Avenida Bustamante, en el marco de la acción civil presentada en contra del arzobispado por los denunciantes de Karadima, que lo acusan de abusos sexuales y abuso de poder.

Se trata del médico James Hamilton, el periodista Juan Carlos Cruz y el presidente de la Fundación para la Confianza, José Andrés Murillo, quienes, representados por el abogado Juan Pablo Hermosilla, preparan una demanda civil contra la Iglesia de Santiago.

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NEW YORK
Time

The 2012 trial of Nechemya Weberman captivated New Yorkers: the prominent and respected counselor of the Satmar Hasidim sect stood accused of sexually abusing a young girl entrusted in his care. Incredibly, the youthful victim—who was 12 at the start of her four-year ordeal—and her family were ridiculed and defamed by many in this intensely insular ultra-Orthodox Jewish community, nestled in a Brooklyn neighborhood famous for its hipster clubs and cafes.

In her new Kindle ebook The Devil of Williamsburg, which goes on sale today, writer-editor Allison Yarrow offers a compelling account of a crime that horrified a city and forced a devout group of believers to confront some unpleasant truths. It is a piece of long-form investigative journalism—based on reporting, interviews, and courtroom testimony—that has as its narrative spine the story of two women: the young (and now married) victim and Weberman’s wife, who even now professes her husband’s innocence.

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VENEZUELA
La Opinion

SAN CRISTOBAL | 06 DE AGOSTO DE 2013

La comunidad de San Cristóbal continúa esperando los resultados de la investigación que adelanta la Fiscalía, respecto a la responsabilidad del sacerdote Isaías Albarrán Villasmil, de 35 años, en cinco casos de abuso sexual registrados en la capital del estado Táchira.

El jefe del Cicpc, Luis Monroy, aseguró que aun no se pueden dar detalles de la investigación, en la que se conoció ya ha declarado un importante número de personas. Además, extraoficialmente se ha comentado que las mujeres violadas por el sacerdote podrían incluso llegar a ser diez, y no cinco como se viene informando.

Asimismo, dentro de las evidencias encontradas en el automóvil Spark, vehículo propiedad de Albarrán Villasmil y donde supuestamente cometía las violaciones, fueron hallados cabellos femenínos, un lapiz labial, papel higiénico y sangre, además de tres teléfonos celulares donde estarían los videos de las atrocidades que cometía el sacerdote.

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ILLINOIS
Univision

CHICAGO (AP) — Un ex sacerdote católico del área de Chicago que fue sentenciado a prisión por abuso sexual de un niño fue deportado a Bolivia, se conoció el miércoles.

Funcionarios de la Oficina de Inmigración y Aduanas (ICE) dijeron que Alejandro Flores, de 40 años, fue deportado el martes a La Paz. Fue enviado en un vuelo comercial y acompañado por dos agentes federales. Las autoridades dijeron que Flores tiene prohibido de por vida regresar a Estados Unidos.

Flores se declaró culpable en 2010 de abuso sexual criminal y fue condenado a cuatro años en prisión. Abusó de niño cuando trabajaba en la iglesia de St. Mary en West Chicago.

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CIUDAD DEL VATICANO
La Opinion

Ciudad del Vaticano – Una sentencia dictada en Estados Unidos considera que la Santa Sede no puede ser acusada de responsabilidad directa en los casos de abusos sexuales cometidos por algún miembro del clero en el mundo, informó este miércoles Radio Vaticano en su edición digital en inglés.

El Tribunal de Apelación de Oregón rechazó el pasado lunes una causa puesta en marcha en 2002 sobre la supuesta responsabilidad de la Santa Sede en un caso de abuso sexual.

Los hechos se refieren a un sacerdote irlandés demandado por abuso sexual por un menor de edad en 1965 y que la Santa Sede pasó al estado laico pocas semanas después de que su orden religiosa le informara de lo sucedido.

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