ABUSE TRACKER

AUSTRALIA
Armidale Express

By STEPHEN JEFFERY
Jan. 17, 2013

A NEW report has made damning findings against the Catholic Church’s handling of child sex abuse allegations leveled at a former priest in the Armidale diocese during the 1980s.

The independent report, compiled by former federal court judge Antony Whitlam QC, found former Armidale Bishop Henry Kennedy failed to act on repeated allegations against the former priest, known by court order only as “F”.

F was abruptly moved from the Moree parish to East Tamworth in 1984, though no contemporary records explaining his departure have been found.

While F was taken to see psychologist Gary Boyle in East Tamworth, Mr Whitlam claimed he “was never given any version of the circumstances surrounding F’s removal from the parish in Moree except by F himself”.

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AUSTRALIA
SBS

An inquiry into the way the Catholic Church handled child sex abuse accusations against one of its priests has strongly criticised church procedures.

An inquiry into the way the Catholic Church handled child sex abuse accusations against one of its priests has strongly criticised church procedures.

Had the protocols of today been in force in the early 1980s, the abuse by the priest – identified only as Father F – could have been stopped in its tracks, the report says.

Two of those abused by Father F, in a northern NSW town, subsequently committed suicide.

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OHIO
Tribune Chronicle

January 17, 2013

Robert M. Hoatson is no stranger to calling foul on alleged sexual abuse.

Months before speaking out for 11 John F. Kennedy High School alumni who claim they were sexually abused by Franciscan Brother Stephen P. Baker, Hoatson, co-founder and president of Road to Recovery, took up the cause of a man who said he was sexually assaulted by former Penn State assistant football coach Jerry Sandusky.

The alleged victim in that case was about to be released from a Massachusetts state prison, where he was being housed for a “serious crime,” Hoatson said in July.

Hoatson would not talk about the specifics of the man’s background, his crime or his relationship with Sandusky, which occurred 25 years ago when he attended a summer sports camp at Penn State.

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CONNECTICUT
Patch

David B. Fein, United States Attorney for the District of Connecticut, John J. Arvanitis, special agent in charge of the Drug Enforcement Administration for New England, and Col. Danny R. Stebbins of the Connecticut State Police, today announced a federal grand jury sitting in Bridgeport has returned an indictment charging three Connecticut men and two California residents, one from Laguna Niguel, with conspiring to distribute methamphetamine.

According to a press release from the Department of Justice, the indictment was returned on Jan. 15, 2013. According to statements made in court, this matter stems from a joint investigation by the Drug Enforcement Administration and the Connecticut State Police’s Statewide Narcotics Task Force.

The investigation has included the use of court-authorized wiretaps, controlled purchases of methamphetamine, physical surveillance and the use of an undercover officer. The investigation revealed Kevin Wallin of Waterbury, Conn., allegedly received shipments of methamphetamine from individuals in California.

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BRIDGEPORT (CT)
CT Post

Tom Cleary

Updated 7:02 pm, Wednesday, January 16, 2013

BRIDGEPORT — The former pastor of St. Augustine’s Cathedral parish was indicted Tuesday by a federal grand jury charging him with conspiring to sell methamphetamine — and he now faces up to life in prison if convicted.

Msgr. Kevin Wallin, 61, of Golden Hill Street, Waterbury, was arrested on a criminal complaint Jan. 3 after a joint investigation by the Drug Enforcement Administration and the Connecticut State Police Statewide Narcotics Task Force.

Federal officials said Wallin allegedly received shipments of methamphetamine from California on six occasions between September 2012 and January 2013. An undercover officer then purchased the drugs from Wallin, officials said.

Wallin, who was ordained to the priesthood in 1984, previously served as pastor of St. Peter Parish in Danbury from 1996 to 2002. He also worked as secretary to Bishops Walter Curtis and Edward Egan in Bridgeport and Diocesan Director of the Ministry for Liturgy. He was a trustee at Sacred Heart University in Fairfield and served on the board of directors for the Bridgeport Catholic Elementary School system.

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CONNECTICUT
The Hartford Courant

By EDMUND H. MAHONY, emahony@courant.com
The Hartford Courant
6:58 p.m. EST, January 16, 2013

A federal grand jury has indicted five men – including a Bridgeport priest – as members of a drug distribution ring that sold methamphetamine in Connecticut, the U.S. Attorney’s office said Wednesday.

The priest, Msgr. Kevin Wallin, is accused of receiving shipments of the drug, known as crystal meth, from a California supplier and selling it to an undercover narcotics investigator six times since September.

Wallin’s, whose most recent address is in Waterbury, could not be reached. A spokesman for the Diocese of Bridgeport, said Wallin was “a gifted, compassionate and accomplished priest,” and said his colleagues reacted to his arrest with a sense of “shock and concern.”

Wallin had long been associated with St. Augustine Parish in Bridgeport, where he had been pastor for nine years until his resignation in June 2011. At the time of his resignation, he told parishioners that he was “struggling with a number of health and personal issues,” according to a statement distributed by the Diocese Wednesday.

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OHIO
WYTV

It took the two former student-athletes at John F. Kennedy High School in Warren years to cope with trauma caused by their baseball coach, sports trainer and religion teacher who sexually abused them and nearly a dozen other students during the late 1980s.

It cost one his marriage and nearly cost the other his family. But the two men, who will not be identified because they are victims of sexual assault, said the culture surrounding religious institutions and authority figures led their parents to largely ignore their claims of abuse by the friar, Brother Stephen Baker, who taught at JFK from 1986-1991.

They, and nine others, reached a settlement with JFK, the Youngstown Diocese and T.O.R. Franciscans that totaled in the high-five figures for facing sexual abuse during their time at JFK. Criminal charges can only be filed in one case because the statute of limitations has passed in the 10 other cases.

Both men, who played baseball and football at JFK, said they treated the molestation at the time by joking with each other about Baker.

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OHIO
WKBN

About a dozen men have settled out of court over alleged sexual abuse they suffered more than 20 years ago while students at John F. Kennedy High School in Warren.

The alleged abuse happened between 1986 and 1990 and is being blamed on Brother Stephen Baker. Because of Ohio’s statute of limitations, only one of the victims can file criminal charges because victims have 20 years after the last occurrence of abuse to file criminal charges.

Executive Director of Trumbull County Children’s Services Tim Schaffner said his office always recommends victims of abuse report the incidents as soon as possible.

“What we always recommend is there are lots of good counselors out there. There are a lot of folks that you can go talk to about this, talk about the impact this has had on your life, and they can help guide you through that,” Schaffner said.

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AUSTRALIA
7 News

By Stephanie Smail, ABC
January 17, 2013

The Catholic Church has been broadly criticised by a report it commissioned into allegations of a cover-up of child sexual abuse.

Former Federal Court Judge Antony Whitlam was asked by the Church to investigate how it dealt with a New South Wales priest, known as Father F, who was accused of sexually abusing children.

AM has obtained a copy of the report ahead of its public release this morning.

In the report, Mr Whitlam describes repeated failures by the Catholic Church, and says he cannot understand why Father F, who was accused of paedophilia, was allowed to move from one parish to another.

Father F worked in a number of New South Wales parishes in the 1980s and 1990s.

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AUSTRALIA
The Australian

Dan Box
From:The Australian
January 17, 2013

A CATHOLIC bishop failed to act on years of allegations of child sex abuse by a priest, or to pass these warnings on to another diocese where the priest was later accused of abusing an altar boy, a report has found.

The report, written by the former Federal Court judge Antony Whitlam QC and published today, makes a series of damning findings about the church’s management of the priest, who is identified only as “F”.

The bishop from a regional diocese in NSW, who has since died, “sat on his hands and did nothing”, after being warned about F’s behaviour, the report found. His failure to investigate these allegations “is utterly inexplicable”.

Mr Whitlam found a number of “glaring omission(s) from the records of the . . . diocese”, including the reason F was abruptly removed from his first parish, Moree in northern NSW, in 1984.

The report found that a year earlier, the vicar-general of the regional diocese, told another parish priest: “We’ve got a problem with ‘F’. He’s been mucking around with kids.”

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GALLUP (NM)
Gallup Independent

Published in the Gallup Independent, Gallup, N.M., January 14, 2013

Elderly woman was once target of alleged murder attempt

By Elizabeth Hardin-Burrola
Independent correspondent

GALLUP — Margaret Mary Liebst, the former Catholic nun who was once the target of an alleged murder attempt, died recently in Arizona.

Liebst, 90, died in Page, Ariz., Dec. 28, 2012, according to an announcement by Rollie Mortuary Jan. 4. However, details of Liebst’s funeral and burial are not being publicly released by the mortuary.

In 2004, Gallup resident Derek F. Kolb, a former seminarian for the Archdiocese of Denver, was charged with the attempted murder of Liebst, who was a close companion and assistant to the Rev. Thomas R. Maikowsi of the Diocese of Gallup. According to a Gallup Police report, Kolb admitted putting acid in Liebst’s cereal, Windex in her food and drinks, and replacing her insulin with water because he viewed Liebst as an obstacle to his relationship with Maikowski.

Liebst and Maikowski, however, proved to be reluctant witnesses against Kolb. In May 2005, prosecutors dropped the attempted murder charge in exchange for Kolb pleading guilty to a misdemeanor charge of harassment. As a result of the scandal, Maikowski was forced to resign from key positions in the diocese but was allowed to remain in the ministry.

Five months after Kolb’s plea agreement, the Diocese of Gallup issued a news release claiming Kolb had made a death threat against Gallup Bishop Donald E. Pelotte. No charges were ever filed in that alleged incident.

Liebst was born on Dec. 21, 1922, in Kansas City, Mo. She originally came to the Diocese of Gallup as a member of a Discalced Carmelite Cloister which established a monastery in Aztec.

Carmelite nuns live in a cloistered — enclosed — monastery and follow a contemplative life of prayer. According to Carmelite literature, they profess the vows of poverty, chastity, obedience and a fourth vow of enclosure in a monastery. The term “discalced” means barefoot and is applied to religious orders like the Carmelites whose members wear sandals or go entirely barefoot.

Internal discord caused Liebst’s Carmelite community to disband around 1983. A few of the Carmelite nuns moved to Gallup and established a new monastery here. Eventually those nuns left Gallup in January 2001 after Pelotte couldn’t guarantee a chaplain to celebrate their Masses. They relocated to Kansas at the invitation of Bishop Thomas J. Olmsted, then the coadjutor bishop of the Diocese of Wichita.

Liebst, however, left the religious order in the 1980s with the closing of the Aztec monastery. She then began working as an assistant to Maikowski. Although no longer a member of her cloistered community, Liebst continued to wear her habit and present herself publicly as a Carmelite nun.

For nearly 30 years, Liebst resided and worked closely with Maikowski, She followed him from Farmington to Gallup during the years he was director of education for the Gallup Diocese. In 2008, she moved into the rectory of the Immaculate Heart of Mary Catholic Church in Page, Ariz., after Maikowski was appointed administrator of the parish.

Maikowski, 65, remains a controversial figure in the Gallup Diocese. In recent years, he has attempted to repair his tarnished reputation by writing glowing professional profiles about himself and posting them on more than a dozen “reputation management websites” on the Internet. In an effort to distance himself from the Kolb scandal in the Diocese of Gallup, Maikowski falsely claims on most of these websites that he is instead a priest with the “Roman Catholic Diocese of the Midwest,” which is an entirely fictitious diocese.

Reporter Elizabeth Hardin-Burrola can be contacted at (505) 870-0745 or ehardinburrola@yahoo.com.

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LOS ANGELES (CA)
Get Religion

As strange as it sounds, the goal of this post is to praise The Los Angeles Times for a page-one story focusing on a single case history linked to the decades of sexual abuse of children and teens by Catholic priests.

At the center of the story are two brothers, Damian and Bob Eckert and the priest, Father Robert Van Handel, who led the community boys choir in which they sang while growing up in Santa Barbara, Calif. Damian was 9 or 10 when he joined and Bob was about 8.

But the key to this remarkable story, other than the painful memories of Damian Eckert, is a once confidential document. This quotable source surfaced in the legal proceedings linked to the wave of sexual-abuse cases in California, including the Van Handel cases and others linked to the now-closed St. Anthony’s Seminary in Santa Barbara.

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TENNESSEE
Religion News Service

Bob Smietana / USA Today | Jan 16, 2013

NASHVILLE, Tenn. (RNS) A pastor known for promoting corporal punishment has been accused of physically abusing a woman for 25 years, beginning during her childhood.

The Rev. Larry Tomczak, an associate pastor at Bethel World Outreach Church near Brentwood, Tenn., was named in a Maryland lawsuit that was filed against leaders of Sovereign Grace Ministries, a denomination Tomczak helped found in the 1980s and later left.

The suit was originally filed in October by three alleged victims of abuse and was amended Friday (Jan. 11) to add five others. All eight were given pseudonyms.

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PHILADELPHIA (PA)
Philadelphia Inquirer

Joseph A. Slobodzian, INQUIRER STAFF WRITER

Posted: Wednesday, January 16, 2013

The defense lawyer for former parochial schoolteacher Bernard Shero today began trying to chip away at the credibility of a 24-year-old Northeast man who says he was sexually assaulted by Shero and two priests when he was a 10-year-old altar boy.

The witness – The Inquirer does not identify alleged victims of sexual assault – testified Tuesday in Philadelphia Common Pleas Court that the serial sexual assaults by Shero and two priests destroyed his childhood and led to his life as a drug addict.

But defense attorney Burton A. Rose, showing the jury blow-ups of the man’s report cards from 5th through 8th grades at St. Jerome’s, noted that his grades and attendance barely changed during the time of the alleged assaults in 1998 and 1999.

“So you went to school the next day after this man [Shero] anally raped you in the back of his car?” Rose asked.

“It was school, I had to go,” replied the witness, who was identified as “Billy Doe” in the 2011 county grand jury report.

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PHILADELPHIA (PA)
CBS Philly

By Tony Hanson

PHILADELPHIA (CBS) — Defense attorneys in the latest sex abuse case in the Archdiocese of Philadelphia today were attacking the credibility of an alleged victim who has testified he was sexually assaulted by a priest and a lay teacher when he was ten years old, a fifth grader, in 1999 and 2000.

The witness is now 24 years old and came forward a decade after the alleged abuse.

The defense today suggested through questioning that the alleged victim’s story — that he was sexually assaulted by Father Charles Engelhardt in the church sacristy after an early morning mass — is incredible.

At one point, Engelhardt’s attorney, Michael McGovern, noted that the sacristy had several doors for entrance and exit, including one to the outside and another directly to the school. He asked the witness, “Wouldn’t that be a crazy place to rape somebody?”

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PHILADELPHIA (PA)
Stamford Advocate

By MARYCLAIRE DALE, Associated Press

Updated 2:21 pm, Wednesday, January 16, 2013

PHILADELPHIA (AP) — A heroin addict whose complaint helped imprison a Philadelphia archdiocese official came under attack Wednesday, as jurors in a priest-abuse trial learned that he had given three different locations for one alleged rape.

Defense lawyers questioning the gaunt, 24-year-old policeman’s son poked several holes in his accounts, some of which he attributed to years of heavy drug use.

On the stand, he described himself as “semi-comatose … but standing” when he first spoke with a church investigator in 2009.

The witness, with prompting from a counselor, had called the archdiocese from a drug clinic. He ultimately disclosed that two Roman Catholic priests and ex-teacher Bernard Shero had sexually assaulted him in about 1999.

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VATICAN CITY
Catholic Culture

The Vatican is losing €30,000 (nearly $40,000) a day because of a freeze imposed by Italian regulators on bank-card transactions inside Vatican City, the ANSA news agency reports.

Italian banking authorities imposed a freeze on bank-card transactions inside the Vatican on January 1, saying that the Vatican has not yet met European standards designed to prevent money-laundering. The Vatican’s top consultant for banking security, Rene Bruelhart, has expressed surprise at the move, pointing out that the Vatican received a “good” evaluation from European banking examiners last July, and other European countries have expressed no major concerns about Vatican banking practices since the adoption of new security measures last year. The Italian regulators’ move against the Vatican seems to have been prompted by complaints that were lodged before the Vatican’s new security standards were put in place.

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VATICAN CITY
The Economist

Jan 16th 2013, 13:00 by D.L. | ROME

SINCE the beginning of the new year, tourists in Rome who want to visit the Sistine Chapel and see the papal art collections have had to put up with some unholy complications. At the end of a tedious hike from Saint Peter’s square and often lengthy queuing alongside the Vatican’s walls, they are being told that they cannot pay with credit or debit cards. Those without €16 ($21) in cash for an adult ticket have to walk ten minutes to the nearest bank with an ATM. (Cash dispensers in Vatican City are, incidentally, unique in providing the option of instructions in Latin.)

The refusal is the result not of a papal edict banning electronic payments, but of a decision by Italy’s central bank, which doubles as the country’s banking regulator. Payment services in Vatican City have been provided by the Italian arm of Deutsche Bank since 1997, but it did so with out the necessary authorisation. So the Bank of Italy told it to stop processing the payments. It even refused Deutsche’s request for a moratorium.

The reason for central bank’s tough stance is that it has to comply with the European Union’s banking and anti-money-laundering law. This law permits EU banks to operate in non-EU countries only if these have adequate regulatory frameworks and supervisory controls in place. Brussels keeps a list of countries that are considered to satisfy requirements, and the Vatican is not on it.

In July Moneyval, an international body that assesses anti-money-laundering systems, decided that the Vatican’s was not up to snuff—the Istituto per le Opere di Religione (IOR), the Vatican’s bank, has yet to clean up its reputation. The Bank of Italy says that it has been trying to make all banks operating in Italy aware of the situation. “Banking business conducted by IOR cannot benefit from the simplified controls for which EU banks are eligible,” it notes on its website.

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DEUTSCHLAND
Mittelbayerische

Hamburg. Fast jeder sechste Katholik in Deutschland erwägt nach dem Scheitern einer Studie zur Aufarbeitung des sexuellen Missbrauchs den Austritt aus der Kirche. In der Altersgruppe der 45- bis 59-Jährigen ist es mit 26 Prozent sogar mehr als jeder vierte Katholik, ergab eine am Mittwoch veröffentlichte Forsa-Umfrage im Auftrag von „Christ & Welt“, einer Beilage der Wochenzeitung „Die Zeit“. Demnach verschlechterte sich das Image der Kirche nach der Kündigung der Zusammenarbeit mit dem Kriminologischen Forschungsinstitut Niedersachsen (KFN) für 35 Prozent der Befragten weiter.

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DEUTSCHLAND
Frankfurter Allgemeine

[Bing Translator]

Von Daniel Deckers

Professor Christian Pfeiffer war schnell, wie immer. Kaum sah sich die katholische Kirche in Deutschland im Winter 2010 nach den Berichten über sexuelle Übergriffe von Ordensleuten am Berliner Canisius-Kolleg dem Vorwurf ausgesetzt, Täter in ihren Reihen um jeden Preis geschützt zu haben, war der langjährige Direktor des Kriminologischen Forschungsinstituts Niedersachsen (KFN) zur Stelle.

Es sei höchste Zeit für eine breitangelegte Untersuchung über sexuellen Missbrauch durch Priester, ließ er die Öffentlichkeit per Zeitungsartikel und einige Mitglieder der Deutschen Bischofskonferenz per Telefon wissen. Und die Bischöfe ließen sich das nicht zweimal sagen. Sie standen ja mit dem Rücken zur Wand, auch wenn die meisten Taten, die Gegenstand von Berichten wurden, lange zurücklagen und nach Kirchen- wie nach deutschem Strafrecht verjährt waren. Der Öffentlichkeit mussten sie neben Zeichen der Reue auch Werke der Buße präsentieren.

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OHIO
Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests

Posted by Judy Jones on January 16, 2013

Youngstown Catholic officials kept silent for more than three years about multiple credible child sex accusations against a Catholic school teacher. What else are they hiding?

“Open and transparent.” That’s what Catholic bishops are required to be in child sex cases, according to the official US church abuse policy. What’s ‘open’ about keeping quiet as child sex allegations trickle in – one after the other – against a Catholic school teacher? What’s ‘transparent’ about saying nothing even as settlements are quietly being paid out?

This is the same old, same old.

What did Youngstown officials do – besides say nothing – about this predator? They quietly let him move elsewhere.

The same old, same old.

How many more kids has Brother Baker sexually assaulted over the last three years while Catholic officials in Ohio and Pennsylvania (where he now lives) kept secrets about his crimes?

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UNITED STATES
Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests

Posted by Barbara Blaine on January 16, 2013

Florida’s most notorious predator priest, Fr. Neil Doherty, pled no contest on January 14 to molesting kids. Police and prosecutors built a strong case against him, in part, because of evidence unearthed in more than 20 civil lawsuits against Doherty over the years.

It’s a part of the clergy sex abuse and cover-up crisis that few people are aware of: the fact that civil lawsuits can lead to criminal prosecution of predators. Civil litigation enables victims and their advocates to expose long-secret church records as a part of the “discovery” process (including critical evidence—documents, photos, depositions, personnel files—that criminal investigations often overlook). The result: more predators are convicted and kept away from kids.

Civil litigation has led to the arrests of other predators, including Fr. Bruce MacArthur, Fr. A. J. Cote, and Fr. Donald McGuire (the Jesuit who was once Mother Teresa’s confessor). It’s happened at least six times in California alone (with Fr. George Neville Rucker, Fr. Denis Lyons, Fr. Michael Wempe, Fr. Michael Baker, and Fr. Edward Anthony Rodrigue).

Law enforcement authorities are human. They’re often overworked and underpaid. They always have plenty on their plates.

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OHIO
Tribune Chronicle

BRACEVILLE – Two men who said they were abused in the mid-1980s by a Franciscan brother who was baseball coach at John F. Kennedy High School said they have come forward in the hope they can encourage other abuse victims to get help.

The two, who did not want to be publicly involved, spoke at a news conference this afternoon at the Holiday Inn Express.

The two said the sexual abuse took place at the hands of Brother Stephen Baker and that most of the abuse took place when they played baseball for the Eagles and Baker was also the coach and trainer for the program.

The two men and nine others settled claims against the school, the Diocese of Youngstown and a branch of the Franciscan Order in October after a series of meetings in Cleveland in August.

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PHILADELPHIA (PA)
Houston Chronicle

By MARYCLAIRE DALE, Associated Press | January 16, 2013

PHILADELPHIA (AP) — The lone accuser in the rape trial of a former Catholic school teacher has given three different locations over the years for the site of the alleged attack.

According to defense questioning Wednesday, the accuser has said the rape occurred in his sixth-grade classroom, outside an apartment complex and near a city park.

The accuser, a 24-year-old policeman’s son, says he was high on heroin when he spoke to the Philadelphia archdiocese in 2009. He says his habit once reached 15 to 20 bags a day.

He accuses two Roman Catholic priests and ex-teacher Bernard Shero of sexually assaulting him in about 1999.

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OHIO
Tribune Chronicle

January 16, 2013

WARREN — The Catholic Diocese of Youngstown said in a written statement this morning that it became aware of sex abuse allegations against Franciscan Brother Stephen P. Baker about two decades after the alleged abuse took place at Warren John F. Kennedy High School.

“Neither the diocese nor John F. Kennedy High School had any knowledge of the allegations of abuse while Brother Baker served the school,” the written statement says.

“Although the abuse is said to have occurred prior to 1991, the allegations were not reported by the former students to the school or the diocese until nearly 20 years later,” the diocese’s written statement says. The diocese said it then reported the matter to Trumbull County Children Services.

Baker sexually abused 11 JFK students as many as 25 times each, according to President Robert Hoatson of Road to Recovery, a nonprofit organization that provides emotional, psychological, financial and spiritual assistance to survivors recovering from sexual abuse by members of the clergy.

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OHIO
Fox Youngstown

A former Warren John F. Kennedy High School religion teacher, sports trainer and baseball coach used his authority positions to tell students they needed massages to avoid injury, then sexually molested them, one as many as 25 times during the late 1980s, a source familiar with the settlements reached in the cases said.

Boston attorney Mitchell Garabedian said Wednesday he negotiated settlements for 11 men who attended JFK High from 1986-1990 that claimed Brother Stephen P. Baker, a baseball coach, religion teacher and athletic trainer during his tenure at JFK, molested.

Garabedian said some of the men, who were between 14-18 when they were molested, are now all between 36 and 40 years old and live in places ranging from Massachusetts to Nevada. Garabedian said some went on to become successful businessmen.

Garabedian said a 12th man has since contacted him claiming he was also abused by Baker.

Brother Baker, reached at about 9:45 a.m. Wednesday in his room at St. Bernadine’s monastery in Newry, Pa., about seven miles south of Altoona, said he was shocked when alerted of the accusations in a brief phone interview with the newsroom. The Diocese of Youngstown said on Wednesday Baker was living there under strict supervision and is not teaching or involved in any public ministry.

“I’m flabbergasted,” Brother Baker said. “I’ll have to ask my superiors if I can say anything.”

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UNITED STATES
National Catholic Reporter

by Gary Macy | Jan. 16, 2013

Editor’s note: After our editorial “Correct an injustice: Ordain women” (NCR, Dec. 7-20), several readers asked us to provide more background on some of the issues raised by the editorial. This is the second in an occasional series of articles looking at these issues. The first article (NCR, Jan. 4-17) looked at the history of women in leadership roles in the development of the church up to the fifth century. This article picks up from the fifth century.

Two points are important to make about the development of leadership roles in the church in the period from the fifth to the 13th centuries. First, the definition of ordination changed radically during the 12th century. Second, women were considered capable of ordination up until the 13th century. This having been said, it is important to understand what ordination meant from the fifth to the 13th centuries. Only then can we understand what it meant to ordain women during that period.

During the first millennium of Christianity, ordination meant election by and installation of a person to perform a particular function in a Christian community. Not only bishops, priests, deacons and subdeacons but also of porters, lectors, exorcists, acolytes, canons, abbots, abbesses, kings, queens and empresses were all considered equally ordained. This makes perfect sense. An ordo (order) was a group in the church (or society) that had a particular job or vocation. In fact, any job or vocation was called an “order,” and the process by which one was chosen and designated for that vocation was an “ordination.”

To quote Cardinal Yves Congar, the French Dominican theologian who died in 1995 at age 91, “Ordination encompassed at the same time election as its starting point and consecration as its term. But instead of signifying, as happened from the beginning of the 12th century, the ceremony in which an individual received a power henceforth possessed in such a way that it could never be lost, the words ordinare, ordinari, ordinatio signified the fact of being designated and consecrated to take up a certain place, or better a certain function, ordo, in the community and at its service.”

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PENNSYLVANIA
Newsworks

[Click here for the story]

By Shannon McDonald

My very best friends today are the people I went to grade school with. In 1998, we were passing notes in class and testing the authority of our new sixth-grade teacher, Bernard Shero. In early 2011, we were exchanging frenetic text messages as Shero’s face popped on seemingly every TV screen in America. He and three priests from our Northeast Philadelphia parish had been named in a grand jury report for having allegedly sexually abused minors.

But since then, we’ve been relatively silent about it all. It’s come up a few times in conversations, especially when we run into old classmates we’ve lost touch with. Despite having spent our childhoods surrounded by these men, none of us has much to say.

We weren’t victims, fortunately, and so it almost feels unreal. There’s a sense of shock, not because of the ardent Catholic faith some of my friends have, or because we’d never have expected these accusations. What’s most shocking to me is that while I spent so many lunch periods with my friends groaning about Shero making us read The Phanton Tollbooth, somewhere in that same building, some of my schoolmates suffered in silence.

Shero is accused of offering a 10-year-old boy a ride home from school one day and then driving him to a neighborhood park and anally raping him. That boy is a year younger than me, one of probably 50 males in his class that year. Maybe he lived on my block, served at a mass I attended. He has not been named, but I must know him. He’s not the only alleged victim, and Shero isn’t the only accused.

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PENNSYLVANIA
Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests

Posted by David Clohessy on January 16, 2013

An accused predator priest, who quit his job in Philadelphia last week also worked in Pittsburgh. Now, a support group for clergy sex abuse victims wants Pittsburgh Catholic officials to “aggressively seek out others who may have been hurt by him.”

He is Fr. Michael Ledoux, a priest of the Franciscan order who for the past nine years has been working in an administrative role at Widener University in Chester, PA, a suburb of Philadelphia. Years before, Fr. Ledoux had been assigned to a parish in Derry, NH where he had been accused of abusing a young boy in the late 1980’s. The claim was found credible, a settlement was paid, and Fr. Ledoux’s supervisors pledged to keep him away from young people.

But until Philadelphia Inquirer raised questions about Fr. Ledoux last week, he was working as a Widener dean.

[Click here for the story.]

Leaders of SNAP, the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, are asking Pittsburgh Bishop David Zubik to seek out others who may have been hurt by Fr. Ledoux while he worked in the Diocese of Pittsburgh, and to do more than the “bare minimum.”

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NEW JERSEY
National Catholic Reporter

by Patricia Lefevere | Jan. 16, 2013

Newark, N.J. —
About 150 parishioners from St. Mary of the Assumption Parish in Elizabeth, N.J., traveled by caravan Jan. 6 to Sacred Heart Cathedral here in an effort to reverse an order by Archbishop John Myers that the four priests living in their parish rectory vacate this month.

The archbishop’s order — which parishioners view as an eviction notice and a summary dismissal of hard-working clergy without recognition of their longtime contribution to the church and the people of Elizabeth — was delivered to three of the priests by telephone the week before Christmas.

The pastor, Msgr. Robert Harrington, 67, said he received a letter from Myers in July notifying him that he was to leave at year’s end for health reasons.

“I have no idea why they wanted to clean house on the others,” he told NCR by telephone Jan. 6, while packing his belongings. Later this month he will move to Brighton Gardens assisted living facility in Mountainside, N.J.

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AUSTRALIA
7 News

Sam McKeith, AAP
Updated January 16, 2013

The head of the royal commission into child sex abuse says he will not hesitate to investigate alleged assaults that are the subject of confidentiality agreements.

Fronting the media with his five co-commissioners for the first time since they were appointed last week, Justice Peter McClellan said non-disclosure agreements would not stop the commission inquiring into institutional responses to child sex assault.

He indicated the likelihood of a lengthy wait for victims and their families anticipating the start of public hearings, saying the evidence gathering process would take months.

“Our task is complex and it will take significant time,” Justice McClellan said.

“It may be some months before the progress of the commission is apparent to the public.”

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AUSTRALIA
Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse

Media Statement from Justice Peter McClellan AM – Chair of the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse

Our purpose in meeting with you this afternoon is to briefly explain how the Commission will approach its work in accordance with the Letters Patent and the steps which must be taken before the Commission can commence the process of gathering evidence.

The Royal Commission has been charged with examining the sexual abuse of children in the context of institutions throughout Australia. Having regard to what is already publicly known of these problems the task before the Commission is large. However, until the Commission has commenced its work and people come forward to give us an account of their personal circumstances we cannot gauge the full extent of that task. In recognition of the complexity of the issues which the Commission must examine the government has appointed six commissioners. Each of us has different backgrounds, professional experience, qualifications and expertise. We live in different regions of Australia. To assist the Commission in its work we understand that the government proposes to amend the Royal Commissions Act to provide that the Commissioners need not all sit when conducting a formal hearing. If that legislative change is made the Commission will utilise this capacity in an endeavour to gain a complete understanding of the problems in various parts of Australia in the most efficient manner possible. Even with this legislative change our task is complex and will take significant time.

It is important to understand that the Commission is not a prosecuting body. Our investigative processes will be utilised to receive and consider what we expect will be accounts by individuals who tell of their experience when living within or when they were associated with an institution. The Commission will be concerned to examine these individual accounts to determine how the circumstances arose, the relevant management practices of the institution in which they occurred and the response which the institution has made to any complaint of sexual abuse by an individual. Because the Commission is not a prosecuting body it will establish links with the appropriate authorities in each State and Territory to whom a matter may be referred with the expectation that where appropriate prosecutorial proceedings may commence. It is also important to understand that the Commission is not charged with determining whether any person may be entitled to compensation for any injury which they may have suffered.

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AUSTRALIA
Courier Mail

THE royal commission into child sex abuse will have the power to over-ride confidentiality agreements, potentially exposing protected religious leaders.

In a move welcomed by victims groups, commission chair Justice Peter McClellan yesterday said he would not hesitate to exercise legal powers to “compel the production of evidence”.

The clarification comes after public concern that victims with non-disclosure agreements with institutions would not be able to tell their stories.

“Under the Royal Commission Act, the commission has powers to compel the production of evidence, including documents, and we will not hesitate in an appropriate case to exercise those powers,” Justice McClellan said.

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AUSTRALIA
The Australian

MILANDA ROUT and RICK MORTON
From:The Australian
January 17, 2013

THE head of Julia Gillard’s royal commission into child sex abuse has issued a fiery opening warning to churches, state governments and other institutions that he will not let them hide behind confidentiality agreements with their victims.

In his first public statement as chair of the commission, judge Peter McClellan said the inquiry expected full co-operation and it would “not hesitate” to use its powers to force reluctant organisations to provide evidence or hand over documents.

He also warned the public the task facing the commission was immense and it would take many months before they could even “gauge the full extent” of the work required to examine institutional responses to child sex abuse.

Joined by his fellow five commissioners at a press conference in Sydney, Justice McClellan said there was considerable public debate about confidentiality agreements and whether the commission had the powers to overturn them. It followed concerns expressed by victims groups, revealed in The Australian, that survivors may not be able to testify if they had signed non-disclosure clauses as part of any settlement.

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AUSTRALIA
Canberra Times

January 17, 2013

Harriet Alexander

THE head of the royal commission into child sexual abuse has described the task facing the body as ”huge” after the six commissioners met for the first time in Sydney on Wednesday.

Justice Peter McClellan said in order to run it as efficiently as possible, the government would amend the Royal Commission Act to allow hearings to take place without all commissioners present. Some hearings may need to be private to protect victims.

Speaking publicly for the first time since his appointment on Friday, Justice McClellan also sought to allay concerns some matters may be excluded from examination because of confidentiality agreements.

”We wish to emphasise that under the Royal Commission Act, the commission has powers to compel the production of evidence including documentation and we will not hesitate in appropriate circumstances to exercise those powers,” he said.

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DEUTSCHLAND
domradio

Der Missbrauchsbeauftragte der Deutschen Bischofskonferenz, Bischof Stephan Ackermann, hat den Abbruch des Forschungsprojekts zum sexuellen Missbrauch in der Kirche bedauert, zugleich aber die Haltung der Bischöfe verteidigt.

Die Kündigung des Vertrags mit dem Kriminologischen Forschungsinstitut Niedersachsen von Christian Pfeiffer sei ein Rückschlag und bedeute eine massive Enttäuschung für die Opfer, räumte der Trierer Bischof am Montag im Interview mit Spiegel online ein. Die Aufarbeitung des Skandals sei aber nicht gescheitert, weil die Bischöfe das Projekt fortführen wollten und andere Untersuchungen erfolgreich abgeschlossen worden seien.

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DEUTSCHLAND
Aktuell

[Google Translate]

Die Mehrheit der Deutschen zweifelt einer Forsa-Umfrage zufolge am Aufklärungswillen der katholischen Kirche beim Thema sexueller Missbrauch.

75 Prozent der Befragten seien der Meinung, die Kirche wolle eine vollständige Aufklärung verhindern, geht aus der am Mittwoch veröffentlichten Erhebung im Auftrag der “Zeit”-Beilage “Christ & Welt” hervor. Nur 17 Prozent der Befragten glaubten, dass die katholische Kirche die Fälle sexuellen Missbrauchs, an denen Geistliche beteiligt sind, wirklich aufarbeiten will. Für die Umfrage wurden Mitte Januar 1.009 Bundesbürger befragt.

Wie die Forsa-Studie weiter zeigt, gibt es offenbar einen wachsenden Imageverlust der katholischen Kirche. 35 Prozent der Befragten erklären den Angaben zufolge, dass sich nach dem Streit um die Missbrauchs-Studie in der vergangenen Woche ihr Bild von der Institution verschlechtert habe. 16 Prozent der Kirchenmitglieder erwägten sogar einen Austritt. Besonders groß sei die Enttäuschung in der Altersgruppe der 45- bis 59-Jährigen: Mit 26 Prozent fanden sich in diesem Segment die meisten Austrittswilligen.

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DEUTSCHLAND
Humanistischer Pressedienst

BONN. (hpd) Die Pressemitteilung, mit der die Deutsche Bischofskonferenz am 09. Januar 2013 die Kündigung des Forschungsvertrages mit Prof. Pfeiffer bekannt gab, hatte den Titel „Deutsche Bischofskonferenz will kriminologisches Forschungsprojekt zum Thema sexueller Missbrauch mit neuem Partner durchführen“. Wie soll das gehen?

Leider bleiben die deutschen Bischöfe und der Missbrauchsbeauftragte Stephan Ackermann seitdem die Antwort auf die Frage schuldig, wie das Forschungsprojekt überhaupt sinnvoll fortgeführt werden soll. Denn die vom Kirchenrecht vorgeschriebene Geheimhaltung und Aktenvernichtung scheint mit den Zielsetzungen des Projektes nicht vereinbar:

Das Forschungsprojekt verfolgte fünf Zielsetzungen, die erste davon: „belastbare Zahlen“ zum sexuellen Missbrauch zu erbringen.

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CANADA
National Post

George Jonas | Jan 16, 2013

Liberal Justice Minister Irwin Cotler called it “the single most harmful, disgraceful and racist act in our history” and he was right. He was talking about Canada’s attempt to assimilate its indigenous population through compulsory residential boarding schools for native children. Such programs operated in various forms between the mid-1880s and the late 1940s, and merited Cotler’s description in every particular.

It’s important to note that the residential school programs were disgraceful, not just from the perspective of our times, but from the perspective of their own. Forcibly removing children from their families to place them in an alien, loveless, institutional environment and deliberately deprive them of their language and culture, even without subjecting them to routine humiliation and frequent physical or sexual abuse, would have been viewed as cruel, inexcusable, un-Christian and very possibly criminal in the late 19th and early 20th centuries no less than in ours.

The reason we didn’t view our own conduct in this light at the time was due to civilizational arrogance, combined with a type of social engineering fallacy that gives people a licence to do evil when they think they’re doing good. One might call it a missionary’s licence to do the devil’s work or a do-gooder’s exemption from common decency. The very names we gave to some of our legislation, such as the 1857 Gradual Civilization Act (it included, among other measures, gifting 50 acres of arable Crown land to indigenous males who completed elementary schooling) reflected this smug fallacy. We wanted our “Indians,” as we called them, to be more like us, little understanding how flawed we were as role models.

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AUSTRALIA
Sydney Morning Herald

January 16, 2013

Michael Kennedy

For 20 years I was a detective in the NSW Police force and for a time specialised in child abuse and sexual assault investigations. Whilst in the force, I was constantly reminded by sexual assault and child abuse experts, particularly in the NSW Health Department, that as a police officer I did not understand the plight of victims. I even recall a group writing an article accusing me of delivering ”prescribed advice” to a group of women who were concerned about the potential of sexual assault during a ”law and order” electoral campaign.

This couldn’t have been further from the truth. I did understand how it felt to be a victim of sexual abuse. In 1963 my three sisters and I were placed into an orphanage. Along with others in the home, we were all abused in the most horrible manner. Our cries for help were ignored by the institution. Eventually, after many years, the abuser was sent to jail. There was a civil matter that took many more years. At every turn the ”caring” institution seemed to stall the process on legal advice. All we ever wanted was some family support. But at every turn we were told ”this is a police matter” or ”this is a matter for the courts”.

The forthcoming royal commission on child sexual abuse is an opportunity to change the way we deal with the child abuse investigations. The statement by Julia Gillard that ”too many people have turned a blind eye to the shocking crime of child sexual abuse” hit home with me. Despite my own history, I am as guilty of turning a blind eye as many others.

Over the years the dogmatic approach to this serious social issue lacked both the natural and empirical scientific ingredients that would allow child protection specialists in the public and private sector to manage this problem effectively. The notion that mandatory reporting and demonising offenders would stop child abuse was always an irrational dream. This is particularly the case within an adversarial legal system. The recent action of the Indian defence lawyer, who blamed the deceased victim in a horrible sexual assault on a bus, is all too familiar. It is about the better argument and not the truth. The Australian legal system is exactly the same.

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AUSTRALIA
Advertiser

By Ben Chenoweth
Jan. 15, 2013

INGLEBURN resident John Hennessey celebrated a mini victory last week when Prime Minister Julia Gillard announced the terms of reference for a Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse.

Mr Hennessey was among the victims of Britain’s child migrant policy and one of many children who were cast into virtual slavery and sexually abused while institutionalised.

The policy saw more than 130,000 British children shipped to Australia, New Zealand, Canada and the then Southern Rhodesia from the 1920s to the 1960s.

Mr Hennessey who was taken from his mother at birth said he had been, “seeking justice for a long time”. He will also be called to testify at the royal commission.

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AUSTRALIA
Lawyers Weekly

16 January, 2013

Justin Whealing

Legal groups, including the Law Council of Australia, have welcomed the appointment of Justice Peter McClellan as chair of the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sex Abuse.

On Friday (11 January), the Federal Government formally established the Royal Commission, with Mclellan heading a six-member team of commissioners.

Mclellan is currently the chief judge at Common Law of the Supreme Court of NSW.

His almost 40 years of legal experience include being appointed as a Queen’s Counsel in 1985, being appointed to the Supreme Court of NSW in 2001 and being appointed the chief judge of the Land and Environment Court of NSW in 2003.

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AUSTRALIA
The Age

Harriet Alexander

The head of the Royal Commission into child sexual abuse has described the task facing the body as “huge” after the six commissioners met for the first time in Sydney on Wednesday.

Justice Peter McClellan said that in order to run it as efficiently as possible, the Government would amend the Royal Commission Act to allow hearings to take place without all commissioners being present, and some hearings may need to be held in private to protect victims.

Speaking publicly for the first time since his appointment on Friday, Justice McClellan also sought to allay concerns that some matters may be excluded from examination by the commission because of confidentiality agreements.

“We wish to emphasize that under the Royal Commission Act the commission has powers to compel the production of evidence including documentation and we will not hesitate in appropriate circumstances to exercise those powers,” Justice McClellan said.

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AUSTRALIA
Sydney Morning Herald

AAP

The head of the royal commission into child sex abuse says he will not hesitate to investigate alleged assaults that are the subject of confidentiality agreements.

Fronting the media with his five co-commissioners for the first time since they were appointed last week, Justice Peter McClellan said non-disclosure agreements would not stop the commission inquiring into institutional responses to child sex assault.

He indicated the likelihood of a lengthy wait for victims and their families anticipating the start of public hearings, saying the evidence gathering process would take months.

“Our task is complex and it will take significant time,” Justice McClellan said.

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AUSTRALIA
ABC News

[with video]

The head of the royal commission into child sexual abuse has vowed to use its powers to override confidentiality agreements between victims and institutions if the information is necessary to its investigation.

The six commissioners appointed by the Federal Government to investigate allegations of systemic abuse within religious and state-run institutions have held their first face-to-face meeting in Sydney today.

Justice Peter McClellan says it is too early to say when public hearings will begin, adding the task before the commission is “complex and will take significant time”.

He has also sought to address public concerns about how the commission will deal with the issue of confidentiality agreements and whether it has the power to override them.

“We wish to emphasise that under the Royal Commission Act, the commission has powers to compel the production of evidence, including documents, and we will not hesitate in an appropriate case to exercise those powers,” Justice McClellan told reporters in Sydney.

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UNITED STATES
Associated Baptist Press

By Bob Allen

Five new anonymous plaintiffs have joined the three original litigants in a lawsuit alleging a cover-up of sexual abuse by a church-planting network with ties to Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Ky.

New allegations in an amended lawsuit filed Jan. 11 accuse a co-founder of Sovereign Grace Ministries of physically abusing a female over a 25-year period spanning her childhood and young adulthood. The expanded complaint also describes a “pedophilia ring” on Sovereign Grace church and school premises, where perpetrators were not reported to police and went on to prey on additional children.

C.J. MahaneySovereign Grace Ministries, which recently relocated from Maryland to Louisville in part to strengthen informal ties with Southern Seminary, responded to amendments added to a class action lawsuit originally filed Oct. 17, 2012, in Maryland’s Montgomery County Circuit Court with a statement requesting “patience as we continue to investigate these new allegations.”

“As we initially stated and continue to reiterate, SGM considers the mistreatment of any child reprehensible and evil,” Tommy Hill, director of administration for Sovereign Grace Ministries, said in the statement. “We grieve deeply for any individual who has been a victim of abuse. We want to minister the love, grace, and healing of God to every child we encounter who has suffered such horror.”

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KENTUCKY
Times-News

By Associated Press

Published January 15th, 2013

LOUISVILLE, Ky. — Five people have joined a Maryland lawsuit that claims a Kentucky-based evangelical church group covered up allegations of sexual abuse against children and failed to alert police and shield children from known sexual predators.

The new plaintiffs join three women who filed a civil lawsuit against Sovereign Grace Ministries in October. The suit accuses church leadership of encouraging parents of alleged victims to refrain from reporting abuses to police and creating “a culture in which sexual predators were protected from accountability and victims were silenced.”

The church moved its headquarters to Louisville last year after three decades in Maryland. The group has struggled in recent years with fractured leadership and criticism over its discipline methods. Leaders at the church must be men and women are not permitted to teach or to have authority over a man, according its website.

A message left at the church office in Louisville on Tuesday was not immediately returned. The church said in a statement about the suit last year that the suit contains “a number of misleading allegations, as well as considerable mischaracterizations of intent.”

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UNITED STATES
Courier-Journal

Posted on January 15, 2013 by Peter Smith

Two more congregations, including one named as a defendant in an expanding sexual-abuse lawsuit, have voted to leave the Louisville-based Sovereign Grace Ministries.

The congregations, both named Sovereign Grace Church, are in Fairfax and Chesapeake, Va.

The Fairfax church’s members voted by a 98-2 percent margin to accept its leaders’ recommendation to leave on Sunday, according to Executive Pastor Vince Hinders. He declined to go into details about the reasons but cited concerns about the denomination’s leadership and polity, which have been widely aired in controversies since 2011.

The Chesapeake church’s leaders also announced the congregation’s departure on Sunday. Both churches claim about 500 members.

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UNITED STATES
Christian Post

by Yvonne Perkins

The Washington (AP) reported on 10-17-12 three female plaintiffs claim in a lawsuit that Sovereign Grace Ministries, covered up allegations of sexual abuse against children. The lawsuit involving Sovereign Grace alleges that: 1) The Church failed to take the necessary steps to ensure the safety of children under its care, such as requiring that pastors be licensed or ordained.2) The Church failed to alert law enforcement authorities, and failed to take any steps whatsoever to protect the children from sexual predation….

How can churches prevent sexual abuse in their churches? What is the common theme in churches where the abuse has taken place? We have heard many similar stories of cover up of sexual abuse in the Catholic Church. Unfortunately, this situation occurs in churches of all sizes and all denominations. The common thread between churches where sexual abuse was reported to the church and cover us occurred is simple to see. They fail to protect the child, failed to warn parents of the threat thus allowing more children to be victimized and did not make a report to the police and state agency monitoring these situations. Clergy are mandated reporters which mean that the law requires them to report suspected child/sexual abuse. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mandated_reporter

How can churches prevent sexual abuse in their church? We are living in a time when churches must take steps to prevent sexual abuse from taking place in the church. There are many resources online to help provide guidance in this matter. The same guidelines that apply to day care homes, groups, camp settings and centers should also apply to children church programs and churches in general.

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TENNESSEE
The Tennessean

Written by
Bob Smietana
The Tennessean

A Franklin pastor known for promoting corporal punishment has been accused of physically abusing a woman for 25 years, beginning during her childhood.

The Rev. Larry Tomczak, an associate pastor at Bethel World Outreach Church in southern Davidson County near Brentwood, was named in a Maryland lawsuit filed against leaders of Sovereign Grace Ministries, a denomination he helped found in the 1980s.

The suit was originally filed in October by three alleged victims of abuse and was amended Friday to add five others. All eight were given pseudonyms.

It alleges that Tomczak, who lives in Franklin, and other church leaders covered up sexual abuse in the denomination and at a Christian school in Gaithersburg, Md., in the 1980s and 1990s.

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WASHINGTON
Yakima Herald Republic

By Robert Fontana
Coordinator, Voice of the Faithful Central Washington
Yakima

To the editor — I’m confused. Catholic officials have reported that 40 years ago visiting priest Father Horatio Ramirez abused four boys in Moses Lake. Yet these officials have still not released the names of all clergy and lay persons on its list of credibly accused sexual predators who served at churches in Central Washington including Holy Redeemer, St. Joe’s, St. Paul’s and Holy Family.

Also, the Yakima Herald-Republic reported on a lawsuit related to sexual predator Father Dale Calhoun. He is one of seven known sexual predators serving at St. Paul Cathedral within a 10-year period in the 1960s and ’70s who preyed on minors: Fathers Sondergeld, Calhoun, Scully, Dolan, Breen, O’Connor, and an unnamed priest (see votfcentralwashington.org). There are also allegations against an unnamed layman from that time.

How could eight sexual predators at one church get away with their crimes for over a decade, and at the Cathedral Parish?

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PHILADELPHIA (PA)
Big Trial

Ralph Cipriano

He was a slender, dark-eyed 24-year-old who sported close-cropped hair and a wispy goatee. He was also a methodical and more confident witness this time around as he grimly recounted the horror of being a 10-year-old altar boy who was callously passed from one child rapist to another.

The man dubbed “Billy Doe” in a 2011 grand jury report returned to Courtroom 304 today, after an absence of nine months, to testify against Father Charles Engelhardt and former teacher Bernard Shero in the second round of the Archdiocese of Philadelphia sex abuse case.

For nearly two hours, Billy told his story on the witness stand, and it seemed to have a profound effect on the jury. One man lowered his head and buried his face in one hand as Billy related the gory details of one rape, while other male jurors averted their eyes in obvious embarrassment. When Billy talked about his descent into drugs, another male juror sadly shook his head.

In short, it was a great day for the prosecution, but the big test is still to come. On Wednesday, Billy Doe will be cross-examined for the first time by defense lawyers for Engelhardt and Shero. It’s a battle that will probably decide the case.

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PHILADELPHIA (PA)
Philadelphia Inquirer

Allison Steele, INQUIRER STAFF WRITER

Posted: Tuesday, January 15, 2013, 8:03 PM

Speaking quietly but firmly, a 24-year-old man testified for more than two hours Tuesday about enduring a series of childhood sexual assaults by two Catholic priests and a teacher, all of whom worked at a church and middle school less than a mile from his Northeast Philadelphia home.

The molestation began in the late 1990s when the man was a 10-year-old altar boy at St. Jerome’s, a Catholic school near Pennypack Park, and left him overwhelmed by fear, guilt, and shame, he testified in Common Pleas Court. In his family and community, priests and nuns were given unquestioned authority, he said, and it would be years before he told anyone he had been abused.

“I was scared, I was embarrassed,” said the man, who was identified in a grand jury report as “Billy Doe.” The Inquirer does not identify alleged victims of sexual assault. “I was afraid I was going to get in trouble. I thought I did something wrong.”

After the assaults, Billy testified, he stopped seeing his friends, dropped out of most clubs and sports teams, and was expelled from two high schools. Within five years, he went from smoking marijuana to trying pills and hard drugs and, eventually, he said, developed a “full-blown heroin addiction.”

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CALIFORNIA
Los Angeles Times

By Ashley Powers, Los Angeles Times
January 15, 2013

There is something about me that is happier when accompanied by a small boy…. Perhaps besides the sexual element, the child in me wants a playmate.

— Father Robert Van Handel

Damian Eckert turned on the computer in his in-laws’ home office, a tiny, dim, book-strewn space. He left the door open so he could hear his 5-year-old daughter playing in the next room.

He pulled up a website and scanned it for Father Robert Van Handel, the priest who led the community boys choir he and his younger brother sang in when they were growing up in Santa Barbara. There he was — receding hairline, bulbous nose, gap-toothed smile.

Eckert opened a document: 27 pages that Van Handel wrote for a therapist years ago, his so-called sexual autobiography. It made Eckert’s palms sweat and his back knot.

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PHILADELPHIA (PA)
Washington Post

Philadelphia man testifies he withdrew, turned to drugs after abuse by 2 priests, teachers

By Associated Press
Updated: Tuesday, January 15

PHILADELPHIA — A policeman’s son with a history of heroin addiction has testified that he withdrew from friends, sports and school clubs after he was molested by two Roman Catholic priests and a teacher.

The 24-year-old has become a central figure in the prosecution of priest sexual abuse in Philadelphia.

His 2009 complaint led to the landmark conviction of a church official who sent accused pedophile-priests to new assignments.

The man says he was first abused at St. Jerome’s Parish at age 10 after the Rev. Charles Engelhardt caught him drinking altar wine. And he says sixth-grade teacher Bernard Shero sexually assaulted him when Shero drove him home after detention.

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UNITED STATES
Catholic League

Bill Donohue comments on a media blackout:

“Jimmy Savile beat and raped a 12-year-old girl during a secret satanic ritual in a hospital.” This is the opening line in an English newspaper’s story on Sunday about BBC child rapist Jimmy Savile. The BBC icon, who died in 2011, is believed to be responsible for abusing at least 450 males and females, aged eight to 47.

Dr. Valerie Sinason, president of the Institute of Psychotherapy and Disability in the U.K., revealed that the aforementioned girl told her in 1992 what happened to her in 1975. Savile wore a robe and a mask while he abused the girl in the basement of a hospital; during the rape, Savile and his cohorts (also pedophiles) chanted, “Hail Satan” in the candle-lit room. Five years later, Dr. Sinason says, Savile abused another girl during a Black Mass ceremony; she, too, heard Latin chanting and witnessed a group of men wearing Satanist regalia. Neither girl knew one another and lived in different parts of the country.

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PHILADELPHIA (PA)
Catholics4Change

by Kathy Kane

The section of the 2011 Grand Jury Report regarding the case of lay teacher Bernard Shero, documents that a mother had safety concerns about him when he taught at her child’s parish school. She contacted the local police to share her concerns. Subsequently, the pastor called the mother to the parish rectory and chastised her.

Think of the “hand slap,” familiar to many Catholic school graduates of a certain age, involving a ruler and an extended hand. The pastor was not pleased this mother made her concerns public and she received a verbal hand slap. This happened in the 1990’s, not that long ago.

I’ve been thinking about all of the Archdiocesan news developments this past year. When the high school teachers went on strike in September of 2011 and the Archdiocese would not agree to use a mediator, a local mother called a press conference and formed the group Catholic Parents Respond. When the Blue Ribbon Commission called for the closing of many schools in their 2012 report, people organized within hours to protest and challenge the decisions. People were very public with their opinions in broadcast interviews and newspaper articles. Some schools held rallies that the press covered. Social media was flooded with Facebook pages set up to protest the closings and the comments left on Archbishop Chaput’s pages were anything but passive.

There were other stories in the news. A student from Archbishop Carroll was banned from attending the prom without a date. That made local and national news. In recent weeks, a young girl made national headlines for protesting the Archdiocesan policy that prohibits her from playing football on her local parish CYO team. The petition on Change.org has over 30,000 signatures and was “retweeted “by Ellen DeGeneres.

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FLORIDA
WSNV

[with video]

FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. (AP) — A retired Roman Catholic priest accused of sexually abusing dozens of boys for decades pleaded no contest under a plea agreement in a Fort Lauderdale courtroom Monday.

A graying Father Neil Doherty appeared frail as he entered a plea reducing sex abuse charges from a capital felony to a second-degree felony, which could require him to serve up to 15 years in prison and register as a sex offender.

The plea comes after several other alleged victims came forward and were planning to testify in the case.

“It just came time for the case to be concluded,” Doherty’s attorney David Bogenschutz said.

Attorneys for the victims said Doherty befriended troubled young boys for years, plied them with drugs and alcohol and paid them to run errands and do odd jobs. But the relationships often turned to sexual acts.

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SWITZERLAND
National Catholic Reporter

by Christa Pongratz-Lippitt | Jan. 15, 2013

A leading Swiss abbot is calling for a change in how bishops are selected, saying that the nomination process should include greater local input, and he wants bishops and theologians to join him in pressing for the change.

“We are faced with serious systemic problems in our church. For me, as a canon lawyer, solving these systemic problems has absolute priority, as our other problems can only be solved if the structures are consistent and the procedures transparent,” Benedictine Abbot Peter von Sury of Mariastein said in an interview with the Swiss Catholic press agency Kipa/Apic last month.

Von Sury, 62, was elected abbot of the Mariastein Abbey, considered Switzerland’s second-most important monastery, in 2008.

Von Sury said that during the first millennium, three authorities were decisive in nominating a new bishop to a diocese, namely the local faithful, the local clergy and the neighboring bishops, which today would be the equivalent of the local bishops’ conference.

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UNITED STATES
Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests

Posted by Barbara Dorris on January 15, 2013

Today’s Washington Post reports that a Tennessee pastor has been accused, in a new civil lawsuit filed in Maryland, of:

—“forcing a victim over a period of 25 years to strip ‘against her will’ and assaulting her, and

— “covering up sexual abuse of minors, forcing small children to ‘forgive’ abusers and ostracizing families who wouldn’t hide the alleged crimes.”

He’s Larry Tomczak, a co-founder of the controversial Sovereign Grace Ministries, a 100-church evangelical denomination.

We fear deeply for the safety of kids in these strict, patriarchal, and secretive church groups like Sovereign Grace. We desperately hope that every single current or former Sovereign Grace member or staff will share whatever knowledge or suspicions they may have about child sex crimes or cover ups with law enforcement.

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BELGIUM
Vatican Insider

A storm of anti-Catholic fury has hit Belgium as the public protests against allowances granted to royals. These are taxing times for Queen Fabiola who is being accused of trying to dodge taxes

Giacomo Galeazzi
Vatican city

Belgium’s Catholic sovereign is under attack. “Fabiola is channelling the annual stipend she receives from the government to the Catholic Church and relatives of hers.” The widow of King Baudouin has sparked controversy in Brussels as mass media and lay parties revealed she has created a private fund to bequeath part of her fortune to a number of Catholic charities established by her late husband and to relatives such as her nieces and nephews.

Television channels, newspapers and anti-monarchy political representatives have branded the establishment of her new foundation as ethically flawed as it is claimed it is a means to dodge Belgium’s extremely high inheritance taxes. Separatist MPs, the government, republicans, lay people and constitutionalists have pointed the finger at the Queen, in protest.

The most serious accusation against her is related to fiscal evasion: one minister explicitly mentioned her trying to dodge taxes. Questions have also been raised about the fairness of the Queen’s allowance as she is able to bequeath part of her fortune to her favourite charities, avoiding regular tax amounts. Above all, the monarchy has been criticised for its denominational neutrality.

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UNITED KINGDOM
The New York Times

By ALAN COWELL

Published: January 14, 2013

LONDON — Is it ridiculous to be a Christian in England? Or, to put it another way, are Anglicans increasingly the object of ridicule in the land that enshrined their denomination as the established state church centuries ago?

The answer to the first question relates mostly to faith, or upbringing, or perhaps to the eternal yearning to unlock life’s myriad riddles. But the second is virtually a statement of fact since church leaders in recent weeks became embroiled in doctrinal contortions over gender and sexuality, prompting mockery, outrage and division.

The first ruling came in December when the Church of England voted — narrowly and against the judgment of its priests and bishops — to reject the notion of women’s joining the episcopate, even though the titular supreme governor of the church is a woman: Queen Elizabeth II.

In January, the bishops themselves followed up with a potentially epochal ruling admitting openly gay priests in civil partnerships to their ranks, provided that, unlike heterosexual bishops, they remain celibate. …

Such debates are not limited to the Church of England. Indeed, given the sexual abuse scandals that have roiled the Roman Catholic Church in particular, it is hardly surprising if the view from outside is, as one radio broadcaster observed, that the church is “obsessed with sex.”

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AUSTRALIA
Dungog Chronicle

By Janelle O’Neill
Jan. 15, 2013

A family broken by the alleged sexual assault by a priest 50 years ago was devastated to find an integrity award in his name presented annually to a student at St Joseph’s Primary School in Dungog.

Jan Van-Even said her sister was only seven-and-a-half when she was sexually assaulted by Fr William Cantwell when he worked as a parish priest in the Mayfield diocese in the 1960s.

Fr Cantwell was also a parish priest at St Mary’s in Dungog from 1975 to 1984.

“He had access to her as she and class members were studying for their first Communion,” Ms Van-Even said.

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AUSTRALIA
Melton Weekly

By ANDRIA COZZA
Jan. 15, 2013

A FREE counselling service is encouraging survivors to seek help following the announcement of a Royal Commission into child sexual abuse.

Western Region Centre Against Sexual Assault CEO Jane Vanderstoel said it could be more difficult for survivors to manage their symptoms because of constant reminders in the media and public discussion of abuse.

“Victims may find themselves experiencing nightmares, flashbacks, an inability to sleep, intrusive thoughts and issues with trust and intimacy,” she said.

“Many have tried to forget their experiences of sexual assault as children. With the issue being raised . . . some survivors no longer wish to keep their experiences hidden.”

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AUSTRALIA
Canberra Times

January 16, 2013

Bianca Hall and Jane Lee

CHURCHES and charities should pay compensation directly to survivors of childhood sexual abuse, and the terms of reference should be broadened, says the chief executive of the group of those formerly in child institutions.

The six royal commissioners examining past sexual abuse of children in institutional and organisational settings will meet for the first time on Wednesday.

But, said chief executive of Care Leavers Australia Network Leonie Sheedy, who represents about 1000 people who spent time as children in homes, orphanages and other institutions, many were shattered that physical abuse, neglect, forced and unpaid work and other forms of abuse would not be investigated by the commission.

”How do I tell the members of CLAN that were left dangling over orphanage balconies and never knew whether they were going to be dropped on their heads, and that they’d live or die, how can I tell them that, well, sorry, if you’d have been sodomised, they’d be interested? But that sort of torture’s not covered.”

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AUSTRALIA
ABC News

By Catherine Clifford

A legal academic says one of the most difficult tasks confronting the Royal Commission into Child Sexual Abuse is to ensure those accused of sexual assault are treated fairly.

Foundation Professor of Law and lecturer in evidence at the University of New England, Professor Eilis Magner, says vast amounts of evidence will be tendered naming alleged perpetrators.

She says some of that evidence and testimony will be impacted by the passage of time and will not be pristine.

“There’s always an issue when the memory is being invoked from that long ago as to whether or not the memory can be relied upon,” she said.

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DEUTSCHLAND
Yahoo! Nachrichten

München/Ettal (dapd-bay). Drei Jahre nach Bekanntwerden des Missbrauchsskandals im oberbayerischen Kloster Ettal wirft der ehemalige Sonderermittler Thomas Pfister der Benediktinerabtei eine Vertuschungsstrategie vor. Bis heute unterbinde das Kloster die Publikation seines Schlussberichts, sagte der Anwalt der “Süddeutschen Zeitung”. Dagegen kündigte die Benediktinerabtei an, im Frühjahr eine Studie zur Aufarbeitung vorzulegen. Sie stehe kurz vor dem Abschluss.

Pfister war auf Initiative des Erzbistums München und Freising als externer Ermittler eingesetzt worden, nachdem im Februar 2010 die Jahrzehnte zurückreichenden Fälle bekannt geworden waren. Später beendete das Kloster die Zusammenarbeit mit ihm. “Die Leitung der Diözese wollte, dass ich den Bericht öffentlich vortrage, aber das Kloster gab nur eine kleine Pressekonferenz, auf der verkündet wurde, dass meine Arbeit abgeschlossen sei. Zu dieser Konferenz war ich gar nicht mehr eingeladen”, erläuterte der Anwalt.

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DEUTSCHLAND
Augsburger Allgemeine

Zwei Tage, nachdem die Bischöfe ihre Studie zum sexuellen Missbrauch in der katholischen Kirche auf Eis legen, erklärt das Kloster Ettal, seine Studie bald zu veröffentlichen.

Im Gegensatz zu den deutschen Bischöfen will die Benediktinerabtei Ettal ihre Studie zur Aufarbeitung des Missbrauchsskandals hinter Klostermauern schon bald vorstellen. Das Papier stehe kurz vor seiner Veröffentlichung, teilten Kloster, Verein der Ettaler Misshandlungs- und Missbrauchsopfer sowie das Institut für Praxisforschung und Projektberatung (IPP) am Freitag in einer gemeinsamen Erklärung mit. Unterdessen wies der Münchner Kardinal Reinhard Marx den Zensurvorwurf um die gestoppte Studie zum sexuellen Missbrauch in der katholischen Kirche zurück.

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AUSTRALIA
ABC News

A Warrnambool law firm says the terms of reference for the Royal Commission into institutional responses to child sexual abuse should have followed Ireland’s lead.

The terms of reference include provisions for victims to seek compensation from institutions.

However, Gary Foster of Maddens Lawyers says, in Ireland, a separate body was established to fund compensation claims so victims did not have to deal with the churches and institutions where they were abused.

He says institutions usually make compensation claims difficult.

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MARYLAND
Washington Post

Suit accuses Sovereign Grace Ministries of covering up alleged child sexual abuse

By Michelle Boorstein

A Montgomery County Circuit Court lawsuit accuses past and current leaders of a 100-church evangelical denomination of covering up sexual abuse of minors, forcing small children to “forgive” abusers and ostracizing families who wouldn’t hide the alleged crimes.

The lawsuit filed Friday adds more accusers and more accused to a complaint filed last fall against Sovereign Grace Ministries, a movement founded in the 1970s in Gaithersburg. Among those named now is co-founder Larry Tomczak, who was a key figure in the movement’s early years but split from it bitterly in the 1990s.

Eight alleged victims are named. Tomczak is the only alleged abuser named. He is accused of forcing a victim over a period of 25 years to strip “against her will” and assaulting her .

Tomczak became well-known with Sovereign Grace leader C.J. Mahaney years ago for launching what is now a thriving trend of neo-Calvinism. Neo-Calvinism teaches that people are steeped in sin and need strict spiritual oversight.

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CANADA
Winnipeg Free Press

By: Mike McIntyre

A rural Manitoba church has been hit with allegations of sexual abuse and negligence in a pair of separate court filings.

Documents obtained by the Free Press on Monday confirm a member of the congregation was recently arrested following a lengthy RCMP investigation. The man has been charged with sexual assault against a young woman who also attended the church, although the incidents allegedly occurred outside of the church in a work environment. He is also facing the rare Criminal Code offence of “surreptitiously observing by mechanical device.”

None of the offences has been proven and the accused remains before the courts. The Free Press is not naming the church or the accused to avoid identifying the alleged victim.

The young woman has also taken civil action, filing a statement of claim on Monday against the church and her pastor. She is seeking unspecified financial damages. In her lawsuit, the woman claims the pastor was aware another member of his congregation was abusing her but took no action to stop it. She claims he turned a blind eye at a time she went to him seeking “spiritual guidance and emotional care.”

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ILLINOIS
Courthouse News Service

By JOE HARRIS

EAST ST. LOUIS, Ill. (CN) – TIG Insurance has no obligation to defend the Diocese of Belleville and its former priest Raymond Kownacki in two sex abuse cases, the insurer claims in court.

In its request for declaratory judgment, TIG claims the sexual abuse charges two John Does are excluded from its bodily injury policy, which covers injuries caused by Diocese members “within the scope of their respective duties.”

In its federal complaint, TIG also says the policy contains a child molestation exclusion that states: “This policy does not apply to any injury sustained by any person arising out of or resulting from molesting of minors by:

“1. any Insured;
“2. any employee of any Insured, or
“3. any person performing volunteer services for or on behalf of any Insured.

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PHILADELPHIA (PA)
The New York Times

By JON HURDLE

Published: January 14, 2013

PHILADELPHIA — A Roman Catholic priest and a schoolteacher sexually abused a 10-year-old altar boy at different times more than a decade ago, assaulting him in a church sacristy in Northeast Philadelphia and in the back of a car, a prosecutor alleged on Monday.

In opening statements before a jury of eight men and four women in Philadelphia Common Pleas Court, Evangelia Manos, an assistant district attorney, said the boy was abused first by the Rev. Charles Engelhardt, a priest with the Oblates of St. Francis de Sales, a teaching order, and then by Bernard Shero, a Catholic schoolteacher, during the 1998-99 school year. Ms. Manos said the boy was also assaulted by Edward V. Avery, a former priest who has admitted the abuse and is serving two and a half to five years in a Pennsylvania prison.

“He was subjected to the most vile of acts by not one but three of those who were entrusted with his care,” Ms. Manos said. She said Mr. Avery would appear as a witness for the prosecution during the trial, which is expected to last several weeks.

Father Engelhardt, 66, who wore a black jacket with a clerical collar in court, pleaded not guilty to four charges including involuntary deviant sexual intercourse with a child and indecent assault. Mr. Shero, 49, pleaded not guilty to five charges including the rape of a child and endangering the welfare of a child.

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PHILADELPHIA (PA)
Philadelphia Inquirer

Allison Steele, Inquirer Staff Writer

Posted: Tuesday, January 15, 2013

The trial of a priest and a former teacher charged with sexually assaulting a 10-year-old altar boy at a Northeast Philadelphia parish opened Monday with prosecutors portraying the men as predators who turned a happy-go-lucky honors student into a despondent teenager who was expelled from school, attempted suicide, and turned to drugs.

Defense attorneys questioned the credibility of the accuser, saying he had told many different versions of the abuse since reporting it in 2009. They described him as a “damaged” man whose personality shift was the result of drug addiction.

Defense attorney Michael McGovern, who represents the Rev. Charles Engelhardt, also spoke of a “presumption of guilt” that now exists in regard to Catholic priests.

“People look at a Roman collar and they see a bull’s-eye,” McGovern said Monday in his opening statement before Common Pleas Court Judge Ellen Ceisler.

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FLORIDA
News Chief

By KELLI KENNEDY
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

FORT LAUDERDALE | A retired Roman Catholic priest accused of sexually abusing dozens of boys for decades pleaded no contest under a plea agreement in a Fort Lauderdale courtroom Monday.

A graying Father Neil Doherty appeared frail as he entered a plea reducing sex abuse charges from a capital felony to a second-degree felony, which could require him to serve up to 15 years in prison and register as a sex offender.

The plea comes after several other alleged victims came forward and were planning to testify in the case.

“It just came time for the case to be concluded,” Doherty’s lawyer David Bogenschutz said.

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PHILADELPHIA (PA)
Big Trial

Monday, January 14, 2013

Ralph Cipriano

In the first Archdiocese of Philadelphia sex abuse trial, nobody got to cross-examine a key witness known as “Billy Doe,” a former 10-year-old altar boy whose testimony about sins committed in a sacristy led to the historic conviction of a monsignor.

At that first trial, defense lawyers in the case, facing a hostile judge, ultimately decided that the cost of cross-examing Billy was too high, so they reluctantly gave him a pass. That decision preceded the conviction of Msgr. William J. Lynn, the first Catholic administrator in the country to be sent to jail for the sexual sins of the clergy.

But this time around, at the second Archdiocese of Philadelphia sex abuse trial, Billy Doe is going to be tested, probably severely. And the fate of two additional defendants, a priest and a former Catholic teacher, will depend solely on whether the jury buys Billy’s story, because there’s not one shred of physical evidence in the case.

That’s the message delivered today in the opening statements of the second Archdiocese of Philadelphia sex abuse trial.

Assistant District Attorney Evangelina Manos got things started by describing the two defendants on trial as predators out stalking youthful victims. As she strode purposefully back and forth in front of the jury box, gesturing with one hand, and speaking in a loud, clear voice, the prosecutor sounded more like a preacher giving a sermon.

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PHILADELPHIA (PA)
Daily Times

Published: Tuesday, January 15, 2013

PHILADELPHIA (AP) — A troubled young man who says he was raped by two Roman Catholic priests and his sixth-grade teacher could testify Tuesday in a Philadelphia criminal trial.

The policeman’s son’s complaint led to the 2012 landmark conviction of a church official over his handling of abuse complaints at the Philadelphia archdiocese.

The Rev. Charles Engelhardt and ex-teacher Bernard Shero are on trial for alleged sexual assault. The other priest is in prison after pleading guilty.

The accuser’s mother, the first trial witness Monday, says her son was a good student until he was expelled in 9th grade.

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PHILADELPHIA (PA)
Daily Times

By MARYCLAIRE DALE
Associated Press

PHILADELPHIA (AP) — Priests have been marked with a “bull’s eye” by manipulative accusers who plan to sue the church, a defense lawyer said as Philadelphia’s latest priest-abuse trial opened Monday.

The case involves a single accuser: a policeman’s son-turned-heroin addict who said he was serially raped by two priests and his Catholic school teacher as a 10-year-old altar boy.

His 2009 complaint provided the hook for Philadelphia prosecutors to bring the nation’s first criminal charges against a U.S. church official for allegedly covering up sexual abuse by priests. The man’s accusation was pivotal because the now-24-year-old said he was assaulted in 1999 — within the time limit for prosecutors to file charges and pursue church higher-ups.

The case spawned last year’s landmark conviction of the Rev. William Lynn, who handled priest assignments at the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Philadelphia. He is now serving three to six years in prison for child endangerment.

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PENNSYLVANIA
Philadelphia Inquirer

John P. Martin, INQUIRER STAFF WRITER

Posted: Monday, January 14, 2013

A former Catholic chaplain at Graterford State Prison says state officials defamed him, wrongfully fired him and tried to block his unemployment benefits after the Archdiocese of Philadelphia suspended him in 2011 amid a review of past misconduct by priests.

The Rev. Robert Povish, 47, of Boyertown, was ultimately removed last year from active ministry by Archbishop Charles Chaput for what the prelate called violations of “boundary issues” with children.

But in a lawsuit filed Monday in federal court, Povish accuses prison officials of ignoring his spotless record there over a decade and savaging his reputation by portraying him as a child-sex abuser, something he says he is not.

“To this day, Reverend Povish has never been accused of sexual misconduct. He was not named in any grand jury report, nor have charges ever been filed against him, nor will there ever be,” said the lawsuit, filed by North Wales lawyer Brian K. Wiley. “What Reverend Povish no longer has is his reputation. Defendants took that away from him. Then, they took away his job.”

The complaint reflects the ripples that continue from the archdiocese’s mass suspension two years ago, the largest of its kind since the clergy sex abuse scandal unfolded in the United States.

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FLORIDA
GlobalPost

Thomson Reuters
January 14, 2013

* Church placed Father Neil Doherty on “leave” in 2002
* Victims’ lawyer says Doherty drugged his victims
* Doherty’s lawyer says plea deal was in his best interest (Adds comment from Doherty’s lawyer)

By Zachary Fagenson

FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla,. Jan 14 (Reuters) – A South Florida priest accused of sexually assaulting young boys for decades pleaded no contest to a half dozen charges on Monday and could face up to 15 years in prison under a plea deal.

It is the first time criminal charges have been brought against Father Neil Doherty, 69, despite numerous civil cases that named him.

A civil case involving Doherty last year ended in a jury awarding $100 million to one victim, among the largest awards in the United States to compensate for abuses committed by a Roman Catholic priest.

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PHILADELPHIA (PA)
Big Trial

Tuesday, January 8, 2013

Ralph Cipriano

Prospective Juror No. 61 told a judge today that his first cousin was a priest who got in trouble over “something he wrote to a fifth-grader.”

The prospective juror mentioned to the judge that he had talked over his potential jury service last night with his wife, something the judge had specifically asked him not to do, and that the wife suggested that maybe you should mention your first cousin.

Father Michael Murtha was a priest at St. Anselm’s in Northeast Philadelphia who in 1995 was found by a roommate to have a trove of pornographic magazines and videos stashed in his rectory bedroom. The roommate also discovered a love letter that Father Murtha had written but never sent to a seventh-grade altar boy that described the priest’s sexual fantasies involving the youngster, signed your “secret lover.”

Assistant District Attorney Mark Cipolletti challenged the candidacy of Prospective Juror 61. “I am disturbed about that relation,”Judge Ellen Ceisler said, as well as the fact that “he talked with his wife.”

The judge granted Cipolletti’s challenge to boot Prospective Juror No. 61. It was the most peculiar interview of the day as the judge and lawyers in the case slogged through questionnaires from 129 prospective jurors, before finally choosing six more, for a total of ten jurors in the case.

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PHILADELPHIA (PA)
Big Trial

Wednesday, January 9, 2013

Ralph Cipriano

When it comes to picking a jury, it’s interesting to see who doesn’t get picked.

As far as the prosecution in the Archdiocese of Philadelphia sex abuse case is concerned, it wasn’t exactly a plus to be a faithful, practicing Catholic.

The prosecution today bounced another earnest young woman who told the judge she went to Mass every Sunday. Lapsed Catholics, however, seemed to fare better; the prosecution even approved as an alternate juror a former altar boy who no longer attends church, and was convicted of assault at an Eagles game.

As far as the defense was concerned, defense lawyers on Tuesday rejected a born-again Protestant minister who proclaimed that she herself had been healed of sex abuse. Today, defense lawyers bounced the wife of an ordained Baptist minister. They also used a preemptory challenge to pass on an openly gay prospective juror who had previously served as a juror in a child rape case, and found it to be emotionally draining.

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PHILADELPHIA (PA)
Yahoo! News

By Dave Warner | Reuters

PHILADELPHIA (Reuters) – Prosecutors on Monday laid out a case of what they described as vile sexual attacks on a child by a priest and a former teacher, opening a new chapter in the sexual abuse scandal that has rocked the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Philadelphia.

Reverend Charles Engelhardt, 66, and former teacher Bernard Shero, 49, are accused of involuntary deviate sexual intercourse with a child, endangering the welfare of a child and corruption of a minor, in Common Pleas Court in Philadelphia.

A third accused abuser, former priest Edward Avery, 71, pleaded guilty to sexual abuse and is serving a prison sentence of 2 1/2 to 5 years.

The district attorney’s office said if Engelhardt and Shero are convicted, the maximum sentence for Engelhardt would be 28 1/2 to 57 years in prison and for Shero 33 to 67 years

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NEW YORK
The Jewish Week

01/14/13

Hella Winston
Special To The Jewish Week

For Jews, Chanukah is a season of light and miracles. It wasn’t like that last month for Sam Kellner, a chasidic resident of Brooklyn’s Borough Park.

Unemployed and facing mounting debt from his lonely fight against both the powers that be in his community and the Brooklyn district attorney, Kellner, 50, was contemplating a Chanukah in darkness: he had pawned the family silver, and the menorah along with it, to free up some cash to pay his attorney.

When his wife found out, she was upset, so Kellner trudged back to the silver shop on 13th Avenue to retrieve the menorah.

If anyone could use a miracle, it’s Sam Kellner.

“They took everything from me,” Kellner says. “They’ve killed me on the street, kicked me out of my shul. I have no job, no money, no friends. And the DA is going after me. All because I committed the sin of fighting for my son.”

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FLORIDA
Prensa Latina

Washington, Jan 14 (Prensa Latina) Arrested U.S. priest Neil Doherty, pastor at St. Vincent Catholic Church, appears in a Florida court today to respond for criminal charges related to sexual abuse of some kids.

His attorney expects that Doherty accepts an extra-judicial agreement at the Broward county Court and pleads guilty of multiple sexual molestation crimes, lust acts in front of infants and sexual assault to numerous victims under 12 years old.

Doherty, 69, remains in that county’s prison without a right to bail for sexually assaulting a boy.

His name also appears in 20 lawsuits for the same crime from 1970 to 2002, while in 2011, the Miami Archdiocese compensated one of his victims with 100 million USD.

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PHILADELPHIA (PA)
Washington Post

Lawyer says accuser can’t be believed in Philadelphia abuse trial involving priest, ex-teacher

By Associated Press

Updated: Monday, January 14

PHILADELPHIA — A defense lawyer for a priest charged with sexually assaulting an altar boy says the Philadelphia accuser has never told the same story twice.

Defense lawyer Michael McGovern represents the Rev. Charles Engelhardt, who went on trial Monday along with former teacher Bernard Shero.

McGovern says people now look at priests in clerical collars and “see a bull’s-eye” — because they hope to get money by suing the church.

Engelhardt and Shero are charged with sexually assaulting the now 24-year-old man at St. Jerome’s Parish in northeast Philadelphia in 1999. They have pleaded not guilty.

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PHILADELPHIA (PA)
CBS Philly

By Tony Hanson

PHILADELPHIA (CBS) — It was attack and counterattack today in a Philadelphia courtroom, as another case of alleged clergy sexual abuse in the Archdiocese of Philadelphia begins (see related stories).

Father Charles Engelhardt and former lay teacher Bernard Shero are charged with sexually abusing the same boy during the 1998 and 1999 school years (see related story).

Today, during opening statements, prosecutor Evangelia Manos told the jury that “evil lurks disguised in sheep’s clothing” — in this case a priest’s collar or the clothing of a teacher.

According to Manos, Engelhardt and Shero abused the boy, ultimately damaging his mind, his body, and his soul.

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PHILADELPHIA (PA)
Philadelphia Inquirer

Allison Steele, INQUIRER STAFF WRITER

Posted: Monday, January 14, 2013

The trial of a priest and former parochial-school teacher charged with sexually assaulting a 10-year-old altar boy at a Northeast parish in the late 1990s opened this morning in Common Pleas Court, with prosecutors portraying the men as predators who shattered the boy’s childhood, and caused him to turn to drugs to numb his pain.

Defense attorneys told jurors that the boy, identified in a grand jury report as “Billy Doe,” has told many different versions of the abuse since reporting it in 2010. They described him as a troubled, now-24-year-old man who has spent his life in and out of jail and drug treatment programs.

Defense attorney Michael McGovern, who represents the Rev. Charles Engelhardt, also spoke of a “presumption of guilt” sweeping the country when in comes to Catholic priests.

“People look at a Roman collar and they see a bulls-eye,” McGovern said Monday in his opening statements.

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FLORIDA
Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests

Posted by Barbara Blaine on January 14, 2013

For almost 35 years, Miami Catholic officials have known about credible child sex abuse allegations against Fr. Neil Doherty. Only now, however, is Fr. Doherty finally pleading guilty to criminal charges.

So while an egregious child molesting cleric will be deemed guilty today, dozens of his complicit Catholic colleagues will continue to escape responsibility for their recklessness, callousness and deception.

It’s still possible, of course, that both Fr. Doherty and other current and former Miami archdiocesan staffers can still face other charges – for either committing or concealing more child sex crimes. But it will take even more brave victims, witnesses and whistleblowers to step up for that to happen. We hope it does.

Doherty has been jailed before. This time, we hope he stays there forever. By any measure, he’s a sick and dangerous man.

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OKLAHOMA
Tulsa World

By JARREL WADE World Staff Writer
Published: 1/8/2013

A judge denied Victory Christian Center’s motion to dismiss a civil case against the megachurch on Monday, moving the lawsuit on behalf of a 13-year-old rape victim closer to trial.

The lawsuit, filed in Tulsa County District Court in September, claims that the church intentionally inflicted emotional distress by not reporting the rape to police or the victim’s parents for about two weeks after learning of the allegations.

The mother of the victim is identified as the plaintiff in the lawsuit. It is the Tulsa World’s policy not to identify victims of sexual assault.

District Judge Rebecca Nightingale heard arguments from both parties before denying the motion to dismiss on all points except for accusations that Victory Christian Center was vicariously responsible for the criminal conduct of their employee.

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NEW YORK
Patch

By David Reich-Hale

West Islip Patch on Friday reported that Thomas Bouklas, a retired teacher and former elite soccer coach at St. John the Baptist was arrested and charged with possessing child pornography.

He was taken into custody at the Seventh Precinct in Shirley and transported to First District Court in Central Islip.

According to Suffolk County Police, an investigation by detectives in the Computer Crimes Unit found evidence that Bouklas had child pornography downloaded from the Internet on his computer.

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NEW YORK
Moriches Daily

By Zachary Reis

Holbrook, N.Y. (MorichesDaily) — Suffolk police have arrested a retired Catholic school teacher and soccer coach from Holbrook on a child pornography charge, police said Friday.

An investigation by computer crimes detectives led to evidence that Thomas Bouklas, 64, “was downloading and possessing child pornography via the Internet,” police said.

A search warrant was executed at Bouklas’ home on Arnold Street in Holbrook and computers, hard drives as well as assorted media were seized.

Bouklas, who worked at St. John the Baptist Diocesan High School in West Islip from 1969 to 2006, was charged with possessing a sexual performance of a child, police and school officials said.

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NEW YORK
Empire State News

SHIRLEY – Suffolk County Police today arrested a retired teacher for possessing child pornography on his computer in Holbrook.

An investigation by detectives in the Computer Crimes Unit led to evidence that Thomas Bouklas was downloading and possessing child pornography via the internet. A search warrant was executed at Bouklas’ home on Arnold Street and computers, hard drives as well as assorted media were seized.

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NEW YORK
Long Island Press

By Rashed Mian on January 11, 2013

A retired teacher from St. John the Baptist Diocesan High School in West Islip was arrested Friday for allegedly possessing child pornography on his computer, Suffolk County police said.

An investigation by detectives with the computer crimes unit led to evidence that 64-year-old Thomas Bouklas was allegedly downloading and possessing child pornography over the Internet, police said.

Authorities executed a search warrant at the former teacher’s home in Holbrook, police said. Investigators seized computers, hard drives “as well as assorted media,” police said in a news release.

Bouklas is also a former soccer coach at the catholic school.

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NEW YORK
Back of the Net

A retired high schoolteacher from Holbrook who was an accomplished soccer coach was arrested Friday on a child pornography charge, police said.

An investigation by computer crimes detectives led to evidence that Thomas Bouklas, 64, “was downloading and possessing child pornography via the Internet,” Suffolk police said.

Bouklas, who worked at St. John the Baptist Diocesan High School in West Islip from 1969 to 2006, was charged with possessing a sexual performance of a child, officials said.

Among Bouklas’ accomplishments as boys soccer coach: 18 Catholic High School Athletic Association league titles, a perfect 18-0 season in 1993 and state CHSAA titles in 1996 and 1998.

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OREGON
The Columbian

By Patty Hastings
Columbian staff writer

Friday, January 11, 2013

A Vancouver man who was active in his local church group and enrolled in courses to become a child sex abuse counselor was arrested Tuesday on federal child pornography charges.

Bradley J. Gilliam, 24, was charged in U.S. District Court with allegedly possessing, receiving and distributing child porn, according to a news release from U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. He made his first court appearance Wednesday.

Gilliam allegedly shared illicit images of children, including toddlers, on an Internet file sharing network under the username “Bllover69,” the release said. Investigators traced the Internet messages back to Gilliam’s Vancouver home.

Homeland Security special agents and Vancouver police executed a search warrant at Gilliam’s home last summer, seizing a laptop and digital storage device. The equipment contained a library of images and video files of children engaged in sexually explicit conduct, the release said.

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OREGON
The Oregonian

By Everton Bailey Jr., The Oregonian
on January 11, 2013

A Vancouver man aspiring to become a child sex abuse counselor is facing federal child pornography charges.

Bradley J. Gilliam, 24, is accused of possessing, receiving and distributing illicit images of children, including toddlers, according to Andrew Munoz, a spokesman in the U.S. Department of Homeland Security’s Seattle office. Gilliam was arrested Tuesday and appeared in federal court in Washington on Wednesday.

Authorities traced Gilliam’s IP address from his username, “Bllover69”, on a peer-to-peer network to his Vancouver home.

Homeland Security investigators and local police searched Gilliam’s home last summer and seized a laptop and digital storage devices as evidence, Munoz said. Thousands of images and video files depicting child pornography were found, he added.

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OREGON
KOIN

Reported by: Faris Tanyos
Email: ftanyos@koin.com

A 24-year-old man who volunteered at a Camas church youth group and was reportedly studying to become a child sex abuse counselor was taken into custody this week on federal child pornography charges.

Bradley J. Gilliam of Vancouver was arrested Tuesday on counts of possession, receipt and distribution of child pornography, following an ongoing, multiagency investigation lead by U.S. Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE) Homeland Security Investigations (HSI).

According to a press release from ICE, Gilliam is accused of sharing illicit images through a peer-to-peer online network, where he used the username ‘Bllover69.’ Investigators traced the username to Gilliam’s Vancouver residence using his Internet protocol address.

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FLORIDA
CBS Miami

FORT LAUDERDALE (CBSMiami) – Retired South Florida priest Neil Doherty has pleaded no contest to six counts of lewd and lascivious acts on a child.

Circuit Judge Kenneth Gillespie in Broward Circuit Court also set sentencing for January 28th.

Doherty, 69, now retired from the Archdiocese of Miami, has served at several South Florida churches, including St. Vincent’s in Margate, St. Anthony in Fort Lauderdale and St. Phillip in Northwest Miami-Dade.

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