ABUSE TRACKER

CHILE
El Dinamo

El ex párroco de El Bosque será interrogado el próximo 8 de agosto en calidad de acusado en el convento ubicado en Parque Bustamante de Santiago, donde el sacerdote cumple penitencia tras ser condenado por el Vaticano por el delito de abuso sexual.

El sacerdote diocesano Francisco Javier Errázuriz Huneeus (83), conocido como el padre ‘Pachi’, es uno de los citados a declarar por el ministro de fuero Juan Muñoz Pardo en la ronda de interrogatorios por la investigación previa a la demanda civil contra el Arzobispado de Santiago, que interpusieron las víctimas de abuso sexual del sacerdote Fernando Karadima.

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FLORIDA
Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests

For immediate release: August 2, 2013

Statement by Barbara Dorris, Outreach Director, 314-862-7688 SNAPdorris@gmail.com

Presbyterian officials kept an accused predatory minister on the job in Boca Raton for a year before finally ousting him because of credible allegations that he sexually exploiting a teenage girl.

Shame on them.

Rev. Kirk A. McCormick of Grace Community Church should have been suspended immediately. It is outrageous that this perpetrator would be allowed around children while investigations of his sexual abuse with a minor occur. We urge the church officials to put the safety of children ahead of everything else. And we urge them to discipline those responsible for this inexcusable recklessness.

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CALIFORNIA
Daily Democrat

Published By Daily Democrat
CREATED: 07/31/2013

Pope Francis made two statements of historic proportion Monday. He said of gays: “If they accept the Lord and have good will, who am I to judge them? They shouldn’t be marginalized. The tendency (to be homosexual) is not the problem. They are our brothers.”

What a heartening declaration from the Roman Catholic pontiff. We hope it helps open the minds of some vocal Christians opposed to gay rights.

We also were heartened to hear the pope carefully distinguish between being gay and being a predator. Chastising reporters for dwelling on possible homosexual affairs by priests, he said they are matters of sin — not crimes like sexually abusing children.

It is a distinction that opponents of gay rights often blur, and the pope’s reminder is timely. His church in California is strongly opposing a bill by state Sen. Jim Beall, D-San Jose, that would help victims of abuse. SB 131 should be approved as quickly as possible, and Gov. Jerry Brown should sign it.

Current state law allows childhood victims to sue abusers or abusers’ employers until age 26, or three years after psychological problems have been linked to the abuse. Beall wants victims to have another chance: SB 131 would open a one-year window Jan. 1, 2014 to file suit. One year is the most that victim advocates think can pass — partly because of intense lobbying by the church and some non-profit organizations.

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CALIFORNIA
The Worthy Adversary

Posted by Joelle Casteix on August 1, 2013

I had the pleasure of being a guest on KABC radio this morning, discussing secret personnel documents finally released by religious orders in the Archdiocese of Los Angeles.

Click here for the audio.

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PENNSYLVANIA
Tribune-Review

By Richard Gazarik

Published: Friday, August 2, 2013

Members of one of the oldest parishes in the Roman Catholic Greensburg Diocese have appealed to the Vatican to overturn Bishop Lawrence Brandt’s decision to remove a popular pastor and place the church under the administration of another parish.

More than 100 parishioners of St. Bruno’s Catholic Church in South Greensburg joined in the appeal to the Congregation for the Clergy, a ruling body for administrative issues relating to priests and parishes, to stop what they fear is the first step toward closing the 94-year-old church that has been staffed by Benedictines from St. Vincent Archabbey since it began as a mission in the early 1900s.

Diocesan spokesman Jerry Zufelt said Brandt is aware of the appeal but does not know any details.

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CHICAGO (IL)
Chicago Tribune

By Manya Brachear Pashman
Tribune reporter
August 1, 2013

A Chicago-based religious order on Thursday acknowledged sending a clergyman accused of inappropriate behavior to Argentina, the same day a victim’s advocacy group criticized the order for allowing him to remain in the ministry.

Brother Richard Suttle now works under the supervision of a monitor in Buenos Aires and is “not involved in any work with children,” the Rev. Rosendo Urrabazo, who oversees Claretian Missionaries in the United States, said Thursday. Urrabazo also confirmed that the order and the Roman Catholic Diocese of Phoenix investigated an accusation of inappropriate behavior against Suttle in 2008.

“A meeting was held with the victim to make amends to him,” Urrabazo said in a statement. “Bro. Richard has been removed from any ministry with children and assigned internal work for the Order.”

Urrabazo did not respond to questions about a June newsletter produced by the religious order’s United Nations ministry that listed Suttle as part of its team. The ministry at the U.N. is a human rights project that, among its priorities, addresses youth unemployment and development.

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SCOTLAND
Scottish Catholic Observer

The head of the UK’s largest group of Benedictine congregations has said he intends to co-operate fully with a police investigation into allegations of abuse at a boarding school in the Highlands that was run by his order.

A spokesman for the Scottish Catholic Church said he was horrified by the allegations made in a BBC documentary this week but stressed events at the schools fell out with the jurisdiction of the Scottish Catholic Church and hierarchy.

Dom Richard Yeo, abbot president of the English Congregation of Benedictines, said allegations of abuse, at the monk run schools Fort Augustus (below) in the Highlands and Carlekemp Priory School near Edinburgh had appalled him and he was ‘very sorry for any abuse that happened’.’

Dom Yeo said he was also liaising with senior figures in the Scottish Catholic safeguarding office, an agency of the Church that oversees child protection policy within the Church. Once the police inquiry was complete, he said, the Benedictines were likely to conduct their own investigation. He said that he had been aware of a few cases of alleged abuses at Fort Augustus made by some individuals over the past three years.

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AUSTRALIA
ABC Sydney

Yesterday afternoon there wasn’t a dry eye in the Newcastle court room at the Special Commission of Inquiry into alleged cover ups of Sexual Abuse in the Catholic Church.

It was the last day of the 8 weeks of hearings: 33 closed hearings, 41 witnesses, 100 summonses, 100 private hearings, and the community, directly and indirectly impacted by the devastating allegations of sexual abuse of children in the care of the church.

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SCOTLAND
Herald Scotland

Friday 2 August 2013

Sarah Nelson

As allegations mount this week about sexual and physical abuse by monks at Fort Augustus Abbey School in the Highlands, it must appear there are endlessly-unfolding paedophile scandals in the Catholic Church.

This will not just distress Scotland’s many Catholics themselves: it can encourage a sectarian prejudice which in parts of Scotland unfortunately remains tenacious.

Is there something about the Catholic Church which has encouraged this abuse, or is the answer much more complex? And can something positive come from all these revelations of cruelty and distress?

Here are some questions which people like myself, who have worked with sexual abuse for many years, might help to answer.

Is it Catholic doctrine – i.e. do particular religious beliefs cause sexual abuse?

Usually not: victims we have met come from many different religions, denominations and sects. Rather, aspects of values and structures often found in religious bodies have made it easier for a minority to abuse for years without being exposed or stopped.

These include special authority (“a holy man wouldn’t do that”); special status (“this would so damage our reputation, we must protect it”); trust and deference by the faithful, which allow ready access to children; authoritarianism or hierarchy; and the value of obedience.

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BRASIL
IPS

RÍO DE JANEIRO, 2 ago 2013 (IPS) – La presidenta de Brasil, Dilma Rousseff, promulgó este jueves 1 la ley que garantiza atención en la red estatal de salud a las víctimas de violencia sexual, pese a la fuerte presión contraria de sectores religiosos conservadores que la consideran una puerta abierta a la despenalización total del aborto.

“Si una víctima de abusos concurre de aquí en más al hospital, su personal deberá cumplir con todo el protocolo de atención”, destacó el ministro de Salud, Alexandre Padilha, al informar sobre la sanción presidencial de esta norma que entrará en vigencia dentro de 90 días.

La flamante ley 3/2013 solo reglamenta los procedimientos autorizados en la atención multidisciplinar en la red pública de salud para mujeres víctimas de violencia sexual, pero no modifica ninguna de las normas vigentes en cuestión de interrupción del embarazo.

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BRAZIL
Authin Mail

AFP

BRASILIA — Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff on Thursday ratified a law aimed at protecting victims of sexual abuse which has been condemned by the Catholic church as a first step toward broader legalization of abortion.

Four days after Pope Francis ended a week-long visit to Brazil, the world’s most populous Catholic country, Rousseff signed the text into law without any veto, her office said.

The legislation mandates that victims of sexual abuse receive emergency treatment in public hospitals and get access to medication to prevent unwanted pregnancies such as the “morning-after pill.”

The Catholic church and pro-life groups had urged the president to veto at least some of the most controversial passages of the legislation.

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FLORIDA
New Times

By Kyle Swenson Thu., Aug. 1 2013

For the past year, a pastor at a Boca Raton church has been serving up the good word from the pulpit while higher-ups in the faith look into allegations that he was sexually involved with a teenager in the 1980s.

Kirk A. McCormick has been a pastor for the past 18 years at Grace Community Church, a Presbyterian congregation on West Camino Real. But in early June, the pastor abruptly “renounced the jurisdiction” of the congregation’s parent body, the Presbyterian Church (USA).

McCormick’s decision came just as testimony was to begin in an inner-church trial over the accusations. By bailing from the faith, McCormick dodged the proceedings — which leaves the matter in a kind of unresolved middle ground.

The allegations stem from McCormick’s time as an assistant pastor at a church in Newport Beach, California, in the late 1980s, when McCormick was in his late 20s. The alleged victim was a 17-year-old member of the church’s youth group at the time. It wasn’t until 2012, in a letter addressed to the church in California, that she revealed her alleged sexual relationship with McCormick.

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ARIZONA
My Fox Orlando

YUMA, Ariz. (AP) – A Yuma church’s former youth pastor has escaped a possible prison term and instead been sentenced to probation for purchasing two sex toys for a young girl.

The sentence imposed Wednesday by a Yuma County Superior Court requires 44-year-old Robert Eric Warren to serve 36 months of supervised probation. He’s also required to register as a sex offender and successfully complete sex offender treatment.

The Yuma Sun reports that Warren recently pleaded guilty under a plea agreement to one count of criminal trespass with a sexual motivation.

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NEW JERSEY
The Star-Ledger

• Read Fr. Joseph Di Peri’s personnel file from the Marianist order here

By Mark Mueller/The Star-Ledger
on August 01, 2013

A court-ordered release of personnel files involving religious-order clergy members in California has revealed the name of another New Jersey priest accused of sexual abuse.

The Rev. Joseph Di Peri, now deceased, was removed from ministry in New Jersey in 2003 after the Archdiocese of Newark learned he had been credibly accused of molesting a teenage boy in the late 1970s at Chaminade College Preparatory High School in West Hills, Calif.

At the time of the alleged abuse, Di Peri was serving a one-year stint as a teacher and dorm chaplain at the school, run by the Marianists, an order of brothers and priests.

Former Archbishop Peter Gerety granted him leave from Newark after Di Peri told him he would benefit from a warmer climate because of health concerns, the 27-page personnel file shows.

Despite Di Peri’s removal from ministry, the archdiocese did not publicly disclose the allegations or the fact that he had been placed under a “permanent monitoring system,” according to the files. The documents indicate he was living in a retirement home in the Diocese of Trenton.

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LOS ANGELES (CA)
DFW Catholic

Los Angeles, Calif., Aug 2, 2013 / 02:03 am (CNA).- As the first set of religious orders’ files on accused sex abusers in the Archdiocese of Los Angeles is released, one leading priest has urged prayer for victims and continued efforts for child protection.

“Please continue to pray for the victims and their families and all impacted by this terrible tragedy in the history of our Church,” said Monsignor Joseph V. Brennan, Moderator of the Curia and Vicar General for the L.A. archdiocese.

“Let us all continue to remain vigilant and work together to protect children and young people from all harm,” he added in an Aug. 1 message to priests, deacons, parish life directors and principals of the archdiocese.

“The archdiocese and our Catholic community of faith in Los Angeles remain committed to the assistance of victims, protection of children and the prevention of abuse.”

The file release is part of the $660 million abuse settlement reached in 2007. The first set of files has documents from five religious orders: the Missionary Oblates of Mary Immaculate, the Marianists, the Benedictines, and two orders of religious sisters.

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GERMANY
The Raw Story

By Tom Heneghan, Religion Editor

PARIS (Reuters) – An investigation into rumors of neo-Nazi activity at a seminary in Bavaria has resulted in two student priests being expelled for imitating the Nazi salute and making jokes about death camps, two bishops announced.

The commission probing rumors of neo-Nazi activity at the seminary in Wuerzburg also found a third student had said participants in recent anti-racism marches in the southern German state deserved “a smack in the face”, the bishops said.

Rumors of a “brown (Nazi) network” at the seminary began circulating in early May, including talk of a party in its basement pub to mark the Nazi leader’s April 20 birthday. Using the symbols of Nazism or glorifying it is illegal in Germany.

The independent commission found no proof it had taken place but even the hint of neo-Nazi sympathies was deeply embarrassing for a Church still struggling with the fallout from revelations of sexual abuse of minors by priests in recent years.

“All forms of xenophobia, racism and extremism are incompatible with Christianity,” Bamberg Archbishop Ludwig Schick told a news conference in Wuerzburg on Wednesday.

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AUSTRALIA
Perth Now

PAUL MAGUIRE AAP AUGUST 02, 2013

AFTER eight weeks of testimony casting light into humanity’s darkest corners, the emotional impact of a NSW inquiry into church abuse came down to one moment.

It happened as a nervous 37-year-old man stepped from the witness box.

Haltingly, he’d just read a 10-minute statement describing the appalling treatment he’d endured throughout his teens at the hands of Hunter Valley Catholic priest James Fletcher.

The packed gallery of Newcastle’s Supreme Court, many of them in tears, broke into spontaneous applause.

The man, who can only be identified as AH, explained how the abuse contributed to his alcoholism, his broken relationships, depression, business failures and a suicide attempt.

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MILWAUKEE (WI)
Washington Monthly

By Ed Kilgore

We’re all used to litigation involving efforts by religious institutions and individuals to exempt themselves from “secular” obligations like non-discrimination or giving employees access to contraceptives. But a ruling today by a federal judge in Wisconsin carries the debate into territory that its intended beneficiaries, the Catholic Church, may regret given the pounding they will get in the court of public opinion. Here’s the bland basics from the National Catholic Reporter:

The $57 million that Cardinal Timothy Dolan transferred from the coffers of the Milwaukee archdiocese to a fund for the maintenance of cemeteries is off the table and cannot be used to pay claimants in bankruptcy proceedings, a federal judge in Milwaukee ruled Tuesday.

Dolan, of course, is now Archbishop of New York and President of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, and a major public figure in all sorts of church-state issues. His transfer of all that money into cemetery funds was deemed “shocking” by the Editors of the New York Times because it was clearly intended to keep it out of the hands of plaintiffs in 575 separate lawsuits against the Milwaukee archdiocese alleging sexual abuse by Catholic clergy. Now that the archdiocese has filed for bankruptcy protection, it has sought in court to claim a religious liberty right to keep the transferred money off the table in the resolution of creditors’ claims, and Judge Rudolph Randa has agreed, citing the Catholic belief in the Resurrection of the Body as privileging the cemetery fund.

So victims of clerical abuse will not secure justice, but cemeteries will be well-tended.

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MASSACHUSETTS
Los Angeles Time

From Associated Press
August 1, 2013

BOSTON — James “Whitey” Bulger’s defense team released photographs showing the reputed Boston gangster’s softer side — including images of him cuddling with animals — in a possible prelude to him taking the stand in his racketeering trial.

Assistant U.S. Atty. Fred Wyshak complained to the judge that Bulger’s lawyers were merely trying to bolster his image after weeks of testimony from prosecution witnesses who described killings and extortion schemes he is accused of committing.

The photos show Bulger holding dogs, a parrot and even a goat. Others show him with his longtime girlfriend, Catherine Greig, and one appears to show him on vacation, smiling, shirtless and sitting on a wall overlooking the ocean.

“This is obviously an attempt to salvage Mr. Bulger’s public reputation by publishing dozens of photos with him holding all sorts of animals,” Wyshak said. “I don’t know if being an animal lover is going to salvage his reputation.”

One photo that probably won’t help Bulger’s defense shows him sitting with a priest who was identified Thursday as Msgr. Frederick Ryan, the former vice chancellor of the Boston Archdiocese who was defrocked for allegedly sexually abusing teenage boys in the 1980s.

Boston lawyer Mitchell Garabedian, who sued the archdiocese on behalf of two men who said they were abused by Ryan as teens, said one of his clients and a man who used to work with Ryan both identified the priest as Ryan after seeing the photo published in the Boston Globe.

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AUSTRALIA
lewisblayse.net

The NSW Government enquiry into cover-ups of child sexual abuse by priests in the Catholic Church’s Newcastle-Maitland diocese ended today with evidence from Maureen O’Hearn who ran the “healing and support” unit.

Tears again flowed at the enquiry when she read out victims’ statements from two of Fr. McAlinden’s victims. The abuse was separated by an almost unbelievable 32 years. McAlinden first offended in 1949, according to Ms. O’Hearn. She said she had dealings with 28 victims from between 1949 and 1984 who had been abused by McAlinden. He died in 2005, never having been held to account for his crimes against children. This was simply because he was protected by the Catholic Church during all those years, and possibly with complicity from the NSW police establishment.

This is what the enquiry report must focus upon.

One of the two victims’ statements noted that McAlinden was “an extremely bad tempered, evil man who was a sexual predator of little girls” who was “kept hidden by the Church.” She said that someone must be held accountable. The other victim said that she wondered what her life would have been like if she had never encountered McAlinden.

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UNITED STATES
Washington Post

By John Gehring, Published: August 1

Something unexpected and extraordinary is happening in the Catholic Church. Pope Francis is rescuing the faith from those who hunker down in gilded cathedrals and wield doctrine like a sword. The edifice of fortress Catholicism – in which progressive Catholics, gay Catholics, Catholic women and others who love the church but often feel marginalized by the hierarchy – is starting to crumble.

While that analysis carries a hint of hyperbole, a pastor with a natural instinct for engaging people and leading by example is now steering the ship at the Vatican. The change of tone and style in Francis’s papacy is striking. In recent decades, many Catholics got the message that a “smaller, purer church” was the top-down model preferred by Rome. A new spirit not felt since the reforming Second Vatican Council began five decades ago is now stirring in the air. …

Some have falsely accused gay priests of causing the clergy sexual abuse crisis. Pope Francis clearly rejects that ugly slander. His words also stand in contrast to a 2005 Vatican document, which said that men with “deep-seated homosexual tendencies” should not be ordained or allowed in the seminary. Pope Francis seems to be sending a message that being a good priest has nothing to do with sexual orientation, a point obvious to most of us in the pews but a revelation to some hard-liners.

In addition to his comments about gay clergy, Pope Francis told reporters that the church must do a better job reaching out to women. While he did not open the door to conversations about female clergy, Francis insisted that women play a central role in the Catholic faith. “We don’t yet have a truly deep theology of women in the church,” he admitted.

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AUSTRALIA
Maitland Mercury

Victims of paedophile priests Denis McAlinden and James Fletcher have come forward to report historic abuse as recently as the last two months.

On the final day of public hearings, Zimmerman Services healing and support co-ordinator Maureen O’Hearn said she knew of 28 victims of McAlinden and more had come forward during the eight-week special commission of inquiry.

Ms O’Hearn said the earliest report of abuse by McAlinden was in 1949 and the latest 1986.

She said victims had come forward from as far away as New Zealand and interstate.

Ms O’Hearn, who facilitates counselling referrals of victims and assists them going to police, has worked closely with Strike Force Georgiana – a Hunter sexual abuse task force that had resulted in 11 people being charged with 440 offences involving 110 victims .

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CALIFORNIA
Los Angeles Times

By Sandra Hernandez
August 1, 2013

On Wednesday, five Catholic religious orders publicly released some 1,700 pages of personnel files to victims of sexual abuse. The documents, which include myriad records that in some cases detail abuse, are yet another reminder of the vast scope of the clergy abuse scandal that resulted in hundreds of lawsuits against the Roman Catholic Church.

As The Times’ Victoria Kim and Harriet Ryan reported, the newly released files indicate that Father Ruben Martinez, who belonged to the Oblates of Mary Immaculate order, was among the worst offenders.

At 521 pages, Martinez’s file is the longest and chronicles decades of molestation that began soon after his 1968 ordination. In the 1980s, at churches in Pacoima and Wilmington, two mothers raised concerns about Martinez’s behavior with altar boys. But it was several years later, when Martinez himself complained of fatigue and burnout from parish work, that he was sent to therapy at a New Mexico center for troubled clergy.

After completing the treatment in 1991, he was allowed back into ministry by Father Paul Nourie, a newly appointed head of the order, even though Nourie wrote that he had “every reason” to believe the veracity of complaints of Martinez’s “alleged misbehavior with younger males.” Calling him “blessed and gifted,” Nourie sent Martinez to an Imperial Valley church, where he was soon working with youth.

The newly disclosed personnel files are deeply disturbing not just because they indicate that pedophile priests were placed back in the ministry even after problems were brought to the attention of the religious orders, but also because of what they don’t disclose. It remains unclear just how much information church officials shared about priests with troubled histories.

According to A.W. Richard Sipe, a former Benedictine monk turned counselor, religious orders normally operate independently of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Los Angeles. But the orders are required to share information with the archdiocese when they send a priest to work in parishes in Southern California.

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CALIFORNIA
Daily Mail (UK)

Priest confessed in therapy sessions to molesting more than 100 boys, including his own brother, 5, having sex with male prostitutes and frequenting gay strip clubs

A Catholic priest admitted to a psychiatrist he had molested more than 100 boys, including his 5-year-old brother, had sex with male prostitutes and visited gay strip clubs while serving in a Californian parish for years, according to explosive documents released overnight.

Ruben Martinez’s vile confessions are among nearly 2,000 pages of secret church documents on a dozen religious order priests, brothers and nuns accused of sexually abusing children while working in the Los Angeles archdiocese over several decades.

The papers, released under the terms of a $660 million settlement agreement reached in 2007, are the first glimpse at what religious orders knew about the men and women they posted in Roman Catholic schools and parishes around LA.

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CALIFORNIA
Pasadena Weekly

By Christina Schweighofer 08/01/2013

A reformist Roman Catholic priest from Austria who was barred from a Catholic parish in Boston in July will speak at Westminster Presbyterian Church on Friday.

Helmut Schüller and a group he represents and cofounded, the Austrian Priests’ Initiative, advocate greater lay participation as well as the ordination of women and of married people as a solution to the priest shortage. They have also called for the church to rethink its position toward remarried and gay people.

A soft-spoken, charismatic man, Schüller runs the parish of Probstdorf, a small town 30 minutes from Vienna. In the 1990s he served as the Austrian Cardinal Christoph Schönborn’s vicar general. In 2011, the Austrian Priests’ Initiative issued an “Appeal to Disobedience,” asking other priests to allow lay people of both sexes to preach. Seventy percent of Austrian Catholic priests and a vast majority of the Catholic faithful support the campaign, but the Vatican reacted by stripping Schüller of his formal title of monsignor.

In June, the initiative stated that it was hopeful Pope Francis will “lead the church in a new fashion.” But the Pope said in an unrelated press conference on Monday that his predecessor, Benedict XVI, had closed the door to female priests. He added that the church needed “a deeper theology of women” but did not specify.

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AUSTRALIA
Newcastle Herald

Aug. 1, 2013

CONSIDERING its relatively narrow terms of reference, the NSW Special Commission of Inquiry into alleged cover-up of sexual abuse within the Catholic Church has achieved much of value, even before its findings have been handed down.

The commission was set up by the O’Farrell government to investigate explosive allegations, by Detective Chief Inspector Peter Fox, of obstruction to police investigations of abuse by priests over many years.

But it has managed to illuminate much more than that specific issue, extracting unprecedented admissions and some surprising pieces of evidence from church figures, including some who had held very senior roles.

It is important to remember that the commission was established before the then prime minister, Julia Gillard, announced a full federal Royal Commission into the much broader issue of sexual abuse across a wide spectrum of organisations.

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AUSTRALIA
Newcastle Herald

By JOANNE McCARTHY Aug. 1, 2013

ONE of Australia’s worst paedophile priests raped a boy with a cane at a Hunter Catholic school in 1979, smiled as he said “this is for being a cry baby”, and then caned the sobbing boy’s hands.

Father John Denham was in his 30s when he raped a 12-year-old boy across a school desk in 1977 and left him bleeding but silenced after threatening to tell the boy’s violent father.

Denham targeted boys whose families were stricken by recent tragedy, gave them alcohol and molested them.

He used the school intercom to call victims to his room, fondled boys as they read religious texts in front of class, and molested a boy as he prayed on his knees while in church.

In a Sydney court yesterday Denham, 70, said the word “guilty” 25 times to confirm another 18 victims, only three years after pleading guilty to molesting 39 boys.

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AUSTRALIA
Newcastle Herald

By JOANNE McCARTHY Aug. 1, 2013

LATEISHA Pirona, 8, sleeps with a heart locket beneath her pillow.

“That’s Daddy,” said her mother Tracey Pirona.

“The heart is her Daddy and he’s close to her each night.”

It is one year since John Pirona’s disappearance, the discovery of his body five days later, and his funeral on August 8, 2012.

It is less than nine months since Mr Pirona’s suicide became the catalyst of the Newcastle Herald’s Shine the Light campaign that led to the NSW Special Commission of Inquiry into child sex abuse allegations, and the federal Royal Commission into child sex abuse.

It is only now that Mr Pirona’s daughters Lateisha and Siennah, 12, have started asking questions about their father’s death.

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AUSTRALIA
Newcastle Herald

By JOANNE McCARTHY Aug. 1, 2013

JOHN Sidney Denham was in his 30s when he prowled the halls of St Pius X School at Adamstown in the late 1970s and picked off victims at will.

Many were groped – some while reading the Bible during religion classes, after confession, at youth clubs, during “male bonding weekends” or in their altar boy garb while preparing for church services.

But as the 29 pages of agreed facts tendered to Sydney District Court Judge Ronald Solomon yesterday showed, Denham restricted his most violent sexual assaults and rapes to the most vulnerable children in his care.

They were the quiet boys, the sons of violent or alcoholic parents or from families described as “extremely devout”, “strict” or “ardent Catholics”, who invited Denham to dinner but were ignorant of the crimes he committed against their children, sometimes within earshot.

Denham targeted boys left shocked and numbed by recent tragedies, like the boy who experienced a succession of family deaths, only to have a priest’s “comfort” turn to forced sex and threats in his private quarters.

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

AUSTRALIA
Newcastle Herald

By JOANNE MCCARTHY Aug. 1, 2013

ONE of Australia’s worst paedophile priests pleaded guilty yesterday to multiple child sex offences at a Hunter Catholic school as victims’ statements reduced people to tears at a historic inquiry into child sexual abuse.

John Sidney Denham, 70, pleaded guilty to 25 child sex charges involving 18 boys at Singleton, Wingham and St Pius X School, Adamstown, in the 1970s, and accepted another 23 indecent assault charges had occurred.

The 25 offences, including buggery, forced oral sex and indecent assault, were committed against boys aged 11, 12 and 13.

The guilty pleas came three years after Denham pleaded guilty to crimes against 39 boys in the 1960s, ’70s and ’80s, and 13 years after his first child sex conviction.

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

MASSACHUSETTS
Huffington Post

By Sebastian Murdock
Posted: 08/01/2013

Among the things James ‘Whitey’ Bulger might have to explain in open court: What was he doing with a priest defrocked amid a pedophilia scandal?

In a photo released by defense lawyers, the notorious Boston mobster can be seen sitting next to a smiling man in clerical clothing. That priest has been identified as Frederick J. Ryan, who in 2005 was stripped of his priestly privileges for allegedly sexually abusing boys at Catholic Memorial High School in the 80s.

Attorney Mitchell Garabedian represented two former students who successfully sued the archdiocese in 2002, and he confirmed that the man in the photo is Ryan, according to Boston.com,

“Given Whitey Bulger’s lack of respect for humanity, it comes as no surprise that Whitey Bulger is associated with a serial pedophile such as Fred Ryan,’’ Garabedian said.

A 2002 Boston Globe article described how Ryan supposedly got a student intoxicated before orally raping the boy. The victim said Ryan’s room was covered with hundreds of photographs of student-athletes.

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

AUSTRALIA
WA Today

Richard Ackland
Sydney Morning Herald columnist

Father Brian Lucas approaches his work on behalf of the Catholic Church with the steady certainty that he is right, that proper procedures have been followed and that those in authority are untouchable.

At least that’s the way he presents himself. The smiling smoothness, the unctuous tones, the baffling semantics.

Thursday was the last day of public hearings for the special commission of inquiry into matters relating to the police investigation of certain child sexual abuse allegations in the Catholic Diocese of Maitland-Newcastle, to give it its official name.

Father Lucas, the local Mr Fix-It, of the Catholic Church, was one of the star witnesses. You’ll remember he had the job, as he unfortunately expressed it, to ”seduce” paedophile priests to resign.
t
At one stage, he had about 35 priests in his ”seduction” program, of whom more than 10 admitted to the allegations against them.

Essentially part of the church has been engaged in a large-scale cover-up of criminality. Of course, it’s dressed up in the usual subterfuge: looking after the interests of the victims, internal processes working their magic, sanctity of the confessional, uncertainty as to who is responsible, and the daddy of them all – shifting and moving priests known to have offended to new parishes and different jurisdictions.

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

CHICAGO (IL)
Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests

For immediate release: Thursday, Aug. 1

Statement by Barbara Blaine of Chicago, president of SNAP, the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests ( 312-399-4747, SNAPblaine@gmail.com )

Credibly accused Catholic cleric works now in Pope’s home diocese
14 Credibly accused yet information remains secret

We’re here today because we just learned this week about Br. Richard Suttle’s presence in Argentina. We’re here today because the Claretians are putting kids in harm’s way. And we’re here to warn Chicago parents and the public about these dangerous and potentially dangerous child molesters.

There are fourteen accused predator priests from the religious community, the Claretian Missionaries, yet their identities are not posted on diocesan websites and their whereabouts remain largely unknown, leaving children at risk.

We beg every single person who may have seen, suspected or suffered crimes or cover ups by Claretians to call law enforcement. That’s the way we protect kids – by reporting crimes and potential crimes to the independent professionals in law enforcement, not to self-serving and biased church officials.

Now, let’s talk about spin and hair-splitting. Because that’s what we predict the Claretians will do. They’ll likely back away from or even discredit their own finding that the allegation against Suttle is “credible.” They’ll likely claim that “credible” only means “possible.” That’s baloney.

They can’t have it both ways. The church’s allegedly binding child sex abuse policy plainly says that no cleric with a credible allegation of abuse can be in a church job. The Claretians told other church officials Suttle was “credibly accused.” The determination was made after what church officials call “a thorough investigation into the charges” against Suttle.

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

CALIFORNIA
Get Religion

It’s time for a quick dip into tmatt’s massive file of GetReligion guilt, the cyber-place in which I stash stories that I really wanted to critique, but other things (papal visits, health issues, my own travel, etc.) jumped in the way.

In this case, we’re talking about a Los Angeles Times report about the ongoing legal wars linked to one of the most painful subjects — ever — on the religion-news beat. I am referring to the waves of scandal in the Catholic church over the past quarter century linked to the sexual abuse of children and, in the vast majority of cases, teen-agers.

This story is, on one crucial point, somewhat better than many mainstream reports (but I’m afraid that isn’t saying much).

It’s a bit better, but I still think that one very crucial piece of information needed to go much higher in the text.

The subject of this report is a familiar one for those who closely follow the scandals. Here’s the all-to-familiar opening of the story:

At the height of the clergy sex-abuse scandal in 2002, Catholic leaders stayed silent as California lawmakers passed a landmark bill that gave hundreds of accusers extra time to file civil lawsuits. The consequences were costly.

California dioceses paid $1.2 billion in settlements and released thousands of confidential documents that showed their leaders, including Cardinal Roger M. Mahony of Los Angeles, had made plans to shield admitted molesters from law enforcement.

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

CALIFORNIA
Salon

[the files – Law Offices of Raymond Boucher]

BY MARY ELIZABETH WILLIAMS

The seemingly limitless book of sexual abuse by Catholic clergy – and its coverup by a doggedly self-preserving Church administration – added yet another new chapter this week. Just one month after Milwaukee released a mind-boggling 6,000 pages of documents revealing the personnel files of over 40 priests with “verified abuse claims against them” and the clever maneuvers the church went through to protect millions of dollars in its funds from lawsuits, on Wednesday five Los Angeles religious orders released 1,700 pages of documents pertaining to “a dozen priests, brothers and nuns accused of sexual misconduct.”

The move is not the first stark revelation of the massive abuses within the LA diocese. In January, the Los Angeles Times published a disturbing set of internal church documents – documents that “the Archdiocese fought for [five] years to keep secret” — detailing how Archbishop Roger M. Mahony and Msgr. Thomas J. Curry worked together to conceal abusers’ “past problems” from law enforcement. These new papers, released to sexual abuse survivors as part of “the first wave of a court-ordered public disclosure” in a $660 million settlement, are not quite as earth-shattering. Instead, they offer “little or no reference to abuse allegations” save for cryptic references to, for example, one priest’s “problem” and “difficulty.” They also shed no new light on the sex abuse charges toward two nuns named in the subsequent lawsuits.

The papers do however reveal 500 pages of documentation regarding Ruben Martinez, who in 2005 confessed that he had molested “as many as one hundred boys.” There’s a note from Fr. Paul Nourie about Martinez’s “alleged misbehavior with younger males,” and his assertion that he has “every reason to believe their veracity.” The note appears to have been written “shortly before he assign[ed] Martinez to another parish in the Imperial Valley… to work with children.”

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

MASSACHUSETTS
CBS Boston

BOSTON (CBS) – A priest shown in a rare photo with Whitey Bulger was defrocked by the Vatican for allegedly sexually abusing boys.

The photo, released late Wednesday night by Bulger’s attorney with a series of other rarely seen pictures, shows Bulger sitting on a couch with Rev. Frederick Ryan.

Ryan would eventually become a vice chancellor of the Boston archdiocese.

Attorney Mitchell Garabedian confirmed to WBZ-TV Thursday that the priest in the photo is Ryan.

Garabedian has represented several victims in the Boston Archdiocese clergy abuse scandal and called Ryan a “serial pedophile.”

Ryan, according to the archdiocese, was defrocked in 2005.

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

MASSACHUSETTS
NBC News

By Andrew Rafferty, Staff Writer, NBC News

Newly released photos meant to portray the softer, human side of James “Whitey” Bulger include a picture of the Boston crime boss hanging with a priest defrocked by the Catholic Church for allegedly sexually abusing teenagers, according to an attorney who represented the accusers.

Boston lawyer Mitchell Garabedian confirmed to NBC News that a priest pictured with Bulger in one of the photographs released by the notorious gangster’s defense team is Frederick J. Ryan, the former chancellor of the Boston archdiocese who was accused of abusing two teens in the 1980s.

Garabedian represented the two former Catholic Memorial High School students who successfully sued Boston’s archdiocese in 2002. He said Ryan molested one of his clients in 1980 when the student was 16-years-old, and the other in 1981 when the boy was 15.

“Bulger has been painted as a villain, and this helped solidify that,” said Garabedian.

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

ST. LOUIS (MO)
Get Religion

…All this to say that we received some reader complaints about a story reporting on a lawsuit. It’s out of St. Louis and the story appears in the Post-Dispatch. Here’s the top of the story:

St. Louis Archbishop Robert Carlson knew that a priest was a danger to children before that priest was charged last year with molesting a teenage girl, according to a lawsuit filed Friday in Lincoln County.

The lawsuit was filed by the parents of the girl, who told police last June that the Rev. Xiu Hui “Joseph” Jiang, an associate pastor at the St. Louis Cathedral Basilica in the Central West End, had molested her. Jiang, 30, eventually was charged with first-degree endangering the welfare of a child. The girl had described him as a family friend.

In the lawsuit filed Friday, the girl’s parents said Carlson “knew that Father Jiang was dangerous to children” and “that allowing Father Jiang access to minors as part of his duties as a priest would result in Father Jiang harming minors.”

The suit does not provide details of how Carlson would have known Jiang was a threat to children.

According to the suit, the girl’s parents asked Carlson last year if Jiang, who was ordained in 2010, would be removed from the priesthood. Carlson responded “that he would remove Jiang if he ‘had sex’ with the child, but not for activities other than that,” according to the suit.

Among the various readers to submit the story for critiquing here, one said, “The unvalidated quote attributed to the Archbishop is particularly outrageous.” But what’s outrageous about it — journalistically speaking?

I emphasized with boldface how clearly the reporter attributes each claim. What more is expected here? Right after the section I excerpted is a paragraph from the Archdiocese spokesman denying the claims in the lawsuit.

My question about how the reporter should have handled this is not rhetorical. What, specifically, are critics saying should be done? Not to report on the lawsuit? Not to include what the lawsuit claims? Simply to lay out more clearly that one side of a story is just one side of a story?

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

PENNSYLVANIA
Tribune-Review

By Richard Gazarik

Published: Wednesday, July 31, 2013

A defrocked priest ordered by the Vatican to leave St. Vincent Archabbey near Latrobe and enter a treatment center said he’s not going anywhere until the pope hears his appeal.

Mark Gruber on Wednesday challenged Archabbott Douglas Nowicki’s contention that Gruber coerced a former junior monk into making false sexual allegations against Nowicki.

Under oath, the former monk later recanted stating, “Father Gruber pressured me to execute this false affidavit to discredit the archabbot. … I remain fearful of Gruber to this day.”

Gruber has been ordered to leave St. Vincent on Tuesdayand report to the Vianney Renewal Center in Dittmer, Mo. The center offers treatment for priests with drug and alcohol addictions, depression and other vocational issues. His dismissal stems from a lengthy case that began when photographs of naked men were discovered on his computer in 2009.

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

CALIFORNIA
International Business Times

[the files – Law Offices of Raymond Boucher]

By Charles Poladian
on August 01 2013

The unsealed files from five religious orders, totaling close to 2,000 pages, reveal decades of abuse by priests, nuns and brothers working in Los Angeles. The files were unsealed as part of a 2007 $660 million settlement agreement and more files will be unsealed later this year.

The Los Angeles Times reports the documents that were unsealed include transcripts of Rev. Ruben Martinez’s, 73, therapy sessions as well reports filed on a dozen clergy members accused of sexual abuse. The newspaper reports the documents were unsealed as part of a settlement reached by the Roman Catholic Church in Los Angeles as part of a class action lawsuit that included hundreds of individuals alleging sexual misconduct. An additional 45 religious orders will release their own records relating to sexual abuse allegations in the fall.

The unsealed documents contain everything from daily administrative records, vacation requests and updates on various church projects. The Los Angeles Times reports a sense of “reluctance” when it came to documenting allegations of sexual abuse, with the documents using couched or vague terms to describe allegations or problem priests. One supervisor even wrote about the allegations against Rev. Ruben Martinez in Japanese while other parts of the note are in English.

Almost a third of the unsealed documents, 500 pages, contain reports on Martinez and include his therapy sessions which revealed the extent of his sexual misconducts, reports the Associated Press. In his therapy sessions, Martinez confessed to molesting his 5-year-old brother, 100 other boys, visiting gay strip clubs and having sex with male prostitutes, reports AP. Martinez claims he stopped any sexual contact with minors in 1986 and was removed from service within parishes by 1991 and was assigned to administrative positions prior to his retirement. The documents regarding Martinez can be read here, courtesy of the Los Angeles Times.

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

RHODE ISLAND
WPRI

By Shaun Towne

PROVIDENCE, R.I. (WPRI) — A local priest accused of molesting an elderly woman has been released on bail.

Rolando Rodriguez of the Light & Hope Methodist Church in Pawtucket appeared in Providence District Court Thursday on a charge of second-degree assault.

Rodriguez made the $25,000 surety bail and was released.

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

MISSOURI
Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests

[Fr. Ruben Martinez]

For immediate release: Thursday, Aug. 1

For more information: David Clohessy 314-566-9790 cell, SNAPclohessy@aol.com

Admitted predator priest is in St. Louis
He estimates he abused “more than 100” kids
New Catholic records shows he’s been here since 2006
SNAP: When will Archbishop Carlson ‘come clean’ about pedophiles?”
Group notes that documents were released only because victims insisted

A child molesting Catholic cleric from California who admitted abusing 100 kids now lives in St. Louis, according to newly released church records. The disclosure comes because victims insisted that the documents be made public when they settled their abuse and cover up lawsuits.

[Los Angeles Times]

The priest is Fr. Ruben D. Martinez who reportedly lives at the Vianney Renewal Center in Dittmer, according to a 2005 letter from then-Archbishop Raymond Burke that was posted yesterday on the LA Times website.

[BishopAccountability.org – assignments]

According to the LA Daily News, the files – which were made public yesterday by a lawyer for victims – include more than 500 pages about Martinez. The LA archdiocese, the newspaper says, “settled eight lawsuits accusing him of molesting boys from 1970-82” at three southern California parishes.

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

NIGERIA
Bitchspot

In Nigeria, the pastor of Deeper Life Bible Church, a pentecostal church in Orhiomwon, Fidelis Eze, has admitted that he took two 11-year girls home and had sex with them, yet he denies doing anything wrong, saying they “consented”.

According to Edo State Police Commissioner, Foluso Balogun, who laments the rising incidence of child rape in Nigeria, “This (pointing at Eze) is a pastor. He defiled two young girls; it is very nauseating.”

Eze told reporters “It was sometime last year which was when the two girls (Joy and Anthonia) came to my house. It was Joy that brought Anthonia to my house. It was the same day that I had sex with them and they agreed. The father of Joy got to know and he called me and I pleaded for forgiveness and since then I have not seen them again, they even packed out of our vicinity. It was this year (July14) that the father came with policemen to arrest me.”

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

NETHERLANDS
JTA

By Cnaan Liphshiz
July 31, 2013

AMSTERDAM (JTA) — More than a year after his alleged molestation by a male teacher, 6-year-old Ehud (not his real name) still won’t tell everything he knows about the sex scandal rocking Amsterdam’s Cheider, the Dutch capital’s only Orthodox Jewish school.

Ehud says the teacher, identified by Dutch media only as 25-year-old Ephraim S., used to touch him in a corner of the classroom known as “the dark room,” according to written testimony obtained by JTA. The teacher’s lawyer has declined to comment on the specific allegation but has denied any wrongdoing by his client.

Last month, after the Dutch media reported on a different abuse case at Cheider allegedly involving Ephraim S., Ehud asked his father whether the police would confront the teacher about “all the dirty things he did.” Ehud would not elaborate, but a child psychiatrist later determined he had undergone non-genital molestation — and perhaps worse.

Ehud is one of at least three boys from Cheider whose parents say were molested in the past two years by Ephraim S., who left for Israel shortly after the accusations were first made. Dutch police were informed of the complaints soon after they were made and have opened an investigation.

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

CHICAGO (IL)
Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests

Accused abusive cleric now on the job
Church admits charges against him are “credible”
But they let predator work in Pope’s home diocese
And he’s been put back to work twice since accusation
Religious order recently moved its headquarters to Chicago
SNAP releases list of 14 credibly accused clerics they oversee

WHAT
Holding signs and childhood photos at a sidewalk news conference, clergy sex abuse victims will disclose that a credibly accused child molesting cleric now has a church job in the Pope’s home archdiocese.

They will also:

–reveal a list of 14 accused child molesting clerics who belong to a Catholic religious order which recently made Chicago its national headquarters,
–highlight three of the alleged sex offenders who worked in the Chicago area, and
–prod the religious order officials to house its alleged abusive employees in a treatment center.

They will also urge victims, witnesses and whistleblowers to contact law enforcement with any information or suspicions they have about clergy sex crimes and cover ups in this religious order.

WHEN
Thursday, Aug. 1 at 1:30 p.m.

WHERE
On the sidewalk outside the Claretians HQ, 205 W. Monroe Street (corner of Wells Street) in downtown Chicago

WHO
Three-four victims of clergy sex crimes who belong to an international support group called SNAP, the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, including the organization’s long time president

WHY
A cleric now works for the church in Buenos Aires, despite a child sex abuse allegation against him that his Chicago Catholic superiors admit is credible. The same church supervisors oversee at least 13 other proven, admitted and credibly accused clerics, three of whom worked in Chicago.

[Claretian ministry]

their US headquarters here a year and a half ago.

Brother Richard Suttle now works for the Claretians on a “human rights project” in Buenos Aires – the archdiocese that was run by Pope Francis until just five months ago.

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

UNITED STATES
Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests

[Sister Agnes Santomassimo]

[Sister Mary Joseph]

For immediate release Wednesday, July 31

Statement by Steve Theisen, Iowa SNAP Director 319-231-1663

For the first time in history we believe that files on child molesting nuns have been made public. Credit for this goes to brave California victims, who wisely filed civil suits and persistently sought justice and heroically demanded the disclosure of this information,

We in SNAP have heard from hundreds of victims of nuns. Child sex crimes and cover-up by nuns remains an under reported and horrific part of the church’s continuing scandal. For many- men women and teens- it’s especially tough to report sexual assault at the hands of a woman religious. And nun officials are doing virtually nothing these days to reduce the fear shame isolation and self-blame of those hurt by sisters.

For decades Catholic nuns have had even more access to boys and girls than catholic priest have. (Most nuns work or worked in schools) no one has any idea how wide spread abuse and cover-up by nuns is. Based on our 25 years’ experience, we are convinced it is far more prevalent than anyone suspects.

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

TAMPA (FL)
Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests

For immediate release: August 1, 2013

Statement by Barbara Dorris, Outreach Director, 314-862-7688 SNAPdorris@gmail.com

We hope every single person who saw, suspected or suffered sexual misdeeds by this priest, Charles Leigh, will come forward.

And we hope law enforcement authorities are very careful about which clergy they work with. Often, sexually troubled ministers gravitate towards positions like this in which they have access to and power over vulnerable individuals.

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

CALIFORNIA/NEW JERSEY
Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests

[Fr. Joseph DiPiri]

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

Newly released church files about child molesting Catholic clerics show that a priest who sexually abused in California now lives in New Jersey.

He is Fr. DiPeri

[Daily News]

Now living in a retirement home for priests in New Jersey, the archdiocese claims that DiPeri is on a “permanent monitoring system”.

And why are Catholic officials only now releasing this information, and doing so only because they’re required to do so because of a settlement of clergy child sex abuse and cover up lawsuits.

We urge NJ Catholic officials to come clean about proven, admitted and credibly accused child molester clerics who live or work in the state, regardless of where they are, where they molested and which Catholic entity signs their paychecks.

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

AUSTRALIA
The Australian

DAN BOX From: The Australian August 02, 2013

DETECTIVE Chief Inspector Peter Fox looks at the 14 people sitting in the public gallery of Newcastle Supreme Court, then leans over to his wife, Penny, and whispers: “Not much of an audience today.”

It is an unusual choice of words for the man at the centre of a state government inquiry into the alleged cover-up of child abuse within the Catholic Church.

It is also a revealing choice.

After months of hearings, which have uncovered evidence that known pedophile priests were able to move freely across Australia and abroad, how will Fox’s performance be judged?

The NSW Special Commission of Inquiry yesterday held its final public hearing, after being established as a direct result of an interview the policeman gave to the ABC’s Lateline program last year.

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

AUSTRALIA
The Australian

DAN BOX From: The Australian August 02, 2013

A PEDOPHILE Catholic priest allegedly abused dozens of children across Australia and overseas over at least four decades, including after the church became aware of his crimes.

During its final day of public evidence yesterday, the NSW special commission of inquiry into church child abuse heard that a diocesan official had spoken to 28 of the priest’s victims, who were abused between 1949 and 1987.

Maureen O’Hearn, a current employee of the NSW diocese of Maitland-Newcastle, said Denis McAlinden had abused children in New Zealand and a number of Australian states.

A Catholic cleric in The Philippines, where McAlinden travelled and worked as a priest after being asked to retire from Maitland-Newcastle, told The Australian yesterday he feared the priest might have abused children there.

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

BOSTON (MA)
Boston Globe

[with photo]

By Colin A. Young and John R. Ellement, Globe Correspondent and Globe Staff

A man wearing priestly vestments while sitting next to notorious gangster James “Whitey” Bulger in a photo released by Bulger’s lawyers was identified today as the former vice chancellor of the Boston archdiocese, Frederick J. Ryan, who was defrocked by Rome for allegedly sexually abusing teenage boys at Catholic Memorial High School in the 1980s.

Boston attorney Mitchell Garabedian, who represented two former Catholic Memorial students who successfully sued the archdiocese in 2002, confirmed today that the man is Ryan.

“Given Whitey Bulger’s lack of respect for humanity, it comes as no surprise that Whitey Bulger is associated with a serial pedophile such as Fred Ryan,’’ Garabedian said.

Ryan was defrocked by the Vatican in 2006. Ryan was accused of taking two Catholic Memorial students from West Roxbury to the chancery, then located in Brighton, and molesting them. When he was defrocked, he was the highest-ranking priest to be dismissed since the clergy sexual abuse scandal erupted in 2002.

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UNITED STATES
Voice from the Desert

Thomas Doyle, J.C.D., C.A.D.C.

July 27, 2013

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

This nightmare did not begin in Boston in January 2002, as many erroneously believe. It did not begin in 1983 either. It has been a toxic virus in the Body of Christ since the very beginning. The Didache, a handbook for the earliest followers of Christ, written before the end of the first century, explicitly condemns men who sexually abuse boys. There were no “clerics” as such then so the “men” included the leaders or elders of the infant Church.

The Louisiana spectacle generally gets the credit for being the beginning of public awareness of the so-called “crisis.” I daresay though that had Jason Berry lived in Minneapolis and not New Orleans, things might have been different. Either way you look at it, Jeff in Minnesota and Ray Mouton in Louisiana opened a new era for the Catholic Church and in doing so, changed the course of its history.

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

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TAMPA (fl)
WTSP

[with video]

Charles Billi

Tampa — He’s a priest who looks like Jolly old St. Nick, but cops said his actions were anything but holy.

Charles Leigh is the head of Apostolic Catholic Church in Tampa, but Tuesday night, he was in custody- busted, cops say, for trading bogus community service hours for “intimate” hugs.

“He was a little too like- gripping too hard and then he was smelling my neck, and I was like ‘no way dude,” said one young woman who performed community service at the church. “That’s why I didn’t come back because I thought he was one of those pervs, man.”

Tampa cops said they were tipped off back in June that Leigh was falsifying court probation paperwork in exchange for a quick feel, so on two separate occasions, they sent in an undercover female officer to pose as a woman on probation in need of community service hours.

“He wrote down on the official department of corrections form that she did 17 hours, which she never did, in exchange for four hugs,” said Tampa Police Cpl. Felitia Pecora.

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

CANADA
CBC News

Nutritional experiments were carried out on malnourished aboriginal people in the 1940s and ’50s with the federal government’s knowledge, according to documents obtained by CBC News.

Minutes from a House of Commons committee show it approved a request from researchers to continue their experiments on aboriginal people in Norway House in northern Manitoba in 1944.

The experiments started when an Indian Affairs doctor, along with two others from New York and the University of Toronto, visited the reserve and linked malnutrition to a tuberculosis epidemic and cases of blindness. Instead of improving the food available to all 300 Cree in Norway House, the doctors decided to give nutritional supplements to just 125.

Two years later, researchers noted an improvement in the health of the group given the vitamins.

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CANADA
CBC News

Aboriginal Canadians were not only subjected to nutritional experiments by the federal government in the 1940s and 1950s but were also used as medical test subjects, says the chair of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission.

In an interview with CBC Radio’s All Points West on Tuesday, Justice Murray Sinclair told host Jo-Ann Roberts that commission staff has “seen the documents that relate to the experiments that were conducted in residential schools.”

Other documents related to experimentation in aboriginal communities outside of residential schools have not yet been obtained, Sinclair said.

“We do know that there were research initiatives that were conducted with regard to medicines that were used ultimately to treat the Canadian population. Some of those medicines were tested in aboriginal communities and residential schools before they were utilized publicly.”

Sinclair said some of those medicines developed were then withheld from the same aboriginal children they were originally tested on.

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UNITED STATES
Wonkette

by DOKTOR ZOOM

Whoohoo! Free Parking!Seems like only the beginning of this month that we were all outraged and stuff about the terrible news that the Archdiocese of Milwaukee was playing hide-the-assets in an attempt to avoid paying compensation to victims of sex abuse. And now, not only has a federal judge declined to say, “No, Archbishop, that’s arch-villainous,” the judge actually went several steps further and granted the Archdiocese ridiculously broad immunity from federal bankruptcy law, basically saying that large chunks of religious institutions’ finances are exempt from scrutiny under the First Amendment. Please summarize for us, ThinkProgress:

While the ostensible issue in this case is whether over $50 million in church funds are shielded from a bankruptcy proceeding triggered largely by a flood of clerical sex abuse claims against the Archdiocese of Milwaukee, Judge Rudolph Randa reads the church’s constitutional and legal right to religious liberty so broadly as to render religious institutions immune from much of the law.

That’s some catch.

The shell game worked like this: In 2007, while he was Archbishop of Milwaukee, Timothy Dolan (now Archbishop of New York) transferred some $57 million from the Archdiocese’s general fund into a special trust for maintaining cemeteries. Dolan wrote a letter to the Vatican explaining that this one weird trick would result in “improved protection of these funds from any legal claim and liability.” So the question for Judge Randa was whether as part of the Archdiocese of Milwaukee’s bankruptcy case — brought on largely because of claims in sex abuse cases — the court could require that the hidden asserts be moved back to the general fund so they would be available to creditors, including those abuse victims.

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MICHIGAN
Detroit Free Press

By Niraj Warikoo
Detroit Free Press Staff Writer

Catholics in metro Detroit have raised $107 million so far as part of an ongoing fund-raising campaign, the Archbishop of Detroit announced Wednesday night in Livonia.

Speaking to hundreds after services at St. Michael the Archangel church, Archbishop Allen Vigneron said that 71,500 Catholic households across the region have contributed to the campaign, called Changing Lives Together. Catholic leaders say they hope the campaign, which started in 2011 and concludes at the end of the year, will raise $135 million total.

“Working together … we have become stronger,” Vigneron said. “The parishioners in the Archdiocese of Detroit have responded generously. … They’re giving their parishes the resources to be able to share Christ, and that is what’s important. I’m so grateful that so many people want to be a part of that.”

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MILWAUKEE (WI)
National Catholic Reporter

[Judge Randa’s decision]

Marie Rohde | Jul. 31, 2013

The $57 million that Cardinal Timothy Dolan transferred from the coffers of the Milwaukee archdiocese to a fund for the maintenance of cemeteries is off the table and cannot be used to pay claimants in bankruptcy proceedings, a federal judge in Milwaukee ruled Tuesday.

In a 30-page decision issued Tuesday, U.S. District Judge Rudolph T. Randa reversed a bankruptcy judge’s decision that said the Religious Freedom Restoration Act and the First Amendment right of freedom of religion prevent the money from being included in a pool available to creditors in the bankruptcy proceeding.

Allowing bankruptcy claimants to appropriate funds from the cemetery trust “would substantially burden the Trustee’s free exercise of religion,” the judge ruled.

Part of the “exercise” of Catholics’ belief in the resurrection of the body is “the perpetual care of the Milwaukee Catholic Cemeteries,” Randa’s ruling states.

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UNITED STATES
IBN Live

Reuters | Posted on Aug 01, 2013

Chicago: An Austrian priest who has stirred controversy in Europe with his challenge to Catholic church teachings on taboo topics suggested on Wednesday that women should be allowed to become priests and said that gays need justice, not just mercy. Father Helmut Schuller, who has been banned by American bishops from speaking in Catholic churches while on a tour of the United States that began in mid-July, welcomed recent remarks by Pope Francis on gay rights, but said discussion could go further.

Schuller, in a telephone interview, said the pope’s words were a “good opener” and gay people seem to be happy there’s a friendlier tone from the church than in the past.

Schuller, leader of an Austrian priest group known for its “Call to Disobedience” challenging church teachings on taboo topics such as the ordination of women and priests marrying, has been drawing enthusiastic crowds during a 15-city U.S. tour that began in New York in mid-July and starts its West Coast leg on Wednesday.

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LOS ANGELES (CA)
The Kansas City Star

[Fr. Ruben Martinez]

BY GILLIAN FLACCUS
Associated Press

LOS ANGELES — In therapy sessions, the priest confessed the shocking details he’d kept hidden for years: He had molested more than 100 boys, including his 5-year-old brother. He had sex with male prostitutes, and frequented gay strip clubs.

The admissions of the Rev. Ruben Martinez are included among nearly 2,000 pages of secret files unsealed Wednesday that were kept on priests, brothers and nuns who belonged to religious orders but were accused of child molestation while working within the Los Angeles archdiocese.

The papers, which were released under the terms of a $660 million settlement agreement reached in 2007, are the first glimpse at what religious orders knew about the men and women they posted in Roman Catholic schools and parishes in the Los Angeles area. The archdiocese itself released thousands of pages under court order this year for its own priests who were accused of sexual abuse, but the full picture of the problem remained elusive without the orders’ records. Several dozen more files are expected to be released by the fall.

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NEW YORK
Roslyn News

Wednesday, August 7

Father Schuller Lecture

The Voice of the Faithful sponsors Father Helmut Schuller on “The Catholic Tipping Point – Reform and Renewal in the Catholic church.” Father Schuller, a priest of the diocese of Vienna, Austria, is founder of the Priests’ Initiative, a European-wide organization of diocesan priests called for dialogue with the hierarchy on issues pertinent to Catholic spiritual life. Father Schuler is on a countrywide tour of the United States talking to large groups across the nation on these matters. Manhasset is the last stop on the tour before he returns to Austria. He will be speaking at the Unitarian Universalist Congregation at Shelter Rock, 48 Shelter Rock Rd., Manhasset. Meeting will begin at 6:30 pm. Following the presentation there will be open discussion and a Q&A period. Coffee and cookies will be served. All are welcome, bring a friend. A goodwill donation of $15.00 is suggested, but not necessary. For further information contact: Pat Paone at 516-627-2438.

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CONNECTICUT
Stamford Advocate

Brittany Lyte
Published 10:09 pm, Wednesday, July 31, 2013

You can discern a lot about the style and ambitions of a pope from his bishop appointments.

Father Anthony Ciorra, a professor of theology at Sacred Heart University in Fairfield, said Pope Francis’ appointment Wednesday of the Rev. Frank J. Caggiano to become the fifth bishop of the Diocese of Bridgeport illustrates of the pope’s will to modernize the church by infusing it with new, crisp energies. Caggiano, he said, appears to be no small part of that plan.

Ciorra knows Caggiano personally from his time helping parishes in Brooklyn. He describes the 53-year-old auxiliary bishop of the Diocese of Brooklyn, N.Y., as a skilled listener. Smart. Enthusiastic. Forward-thinking.

They are words Ciorra also uses to describe Pope Francis.

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SCOTLAND
BBC News

BBC Scotland has been contacted by more than a dozen former pupils of Fort Augustus Abbey School with fresh allegations of abuse.

Their calls were prompted by the programme BBC Scotland Investigates: Sins of Our Fathers, which was broadcast on Monday.

It contained testimony from former pupils, speaking openly, and for the first time, about life with the monks.

The BBC is attempting to check the new allegations.

They concerned a further three monks associated with the school, who were not featured in Monday’s programme.

Two of them are still alive.

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SCOTLAND
Daily Record

PREDATOR Jimmy Savile was a frequent guest of monks at the Catholic boarding school at the centre of a sex abuse scandal.

The serial sex attacker regularly drove to Fort Augustus Abbey at a time when ex-pupils claim they were being terrorised by some of the monks.

A BBC TV investigation, Sins of the Fathers, this week alleged that nine monks at the Benedictine Order school repeatedly beat, sexually assaulted and, in one case, raped boys in their care over several decades.

Victims of the abuse complained but their testimony was ignored and covered up. Police are now investigating.

Savile, who is known to have attacked scores of young girls and boys during decades of abuse, would park his Rolls-Royce, registered JS 247, at the school gates before swanning around the grounds.

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AUSTRALIA
ABC News

A notorious former Hunter Valley catholic priest has pleaded guilty to multiple child sex offences.

The trial of 70-year-old John Sidney Denham was due to start in the District Court, but the former Maitland Newcastle Catholic priest has now pleaded guilty to 25 charges, including indecent assault and buggery.

The charges relate to 18 boys, aged between 11 and 14 and date back to the 1970s.

Most of the offences occurred while Denham was working at St Pius College at Adamstown.

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AUSTRALIA
Newcastle Herald

By IAN KIRKWOOD Aug. 1, 2013

THE Special Commission of Inquiry was awash with tears on Thursday afternoon as two witness statements by survivors of serial paedophile priest Denis McAlinden were read to the proceedings.

Zimmerman Services healing and support co-ordinator Mauren O’Hearn read the statements after giving evidence of her work with at least 28 of the disgraced priest’s victims.

Ms O’Hearn confirmed that McAlinden was active from as early as 1949 and as late as 1986.

She said survivors of McAlinden were still coming forward and that people had come from New Zealand and interstate.

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AUSTRALIA
The Australian

DAN BOX From: The Australian August 01, 2013

A PEDOPHILE Catholic priest abused dozens of victims over five decades across Australia and overseas, an inquiry has heard.

The final day of the NSW Special Commission of Inquiry has heard a diocese official has since spoken to 28 of those he abused as children between 1949-86 – including in New Zealand and different Australian states.

Even the Commission’s lawyers wept openly as two victim impact statements were read out during today’s hearing, describing how Denis McAlinden infiltrated trusting, Catholic families and abused their children.

His victims were often aged about 10, the inquiry heard, and continue to endure the devastation this abuse caused.

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AUSTRALIA
ABC – Lateline

[with video]

Australian Broadcasting Corporation
Broadcast: 31/07/2013
Reporter: Lucy McNally

A woman hired by the Catholic Church to clean up its approach to paedophile priests has told the inquiry into sexual abuse by clergy in the Hunter Valley that victims were asked to sign documents agreeing not to go to police.

Transcript

TONY JONES, PRESENTER: A woman hired by the Catholic Church to clean up its approach to paedophile priests says victims of clergy abuse were asked to sign a document agreeing not to go to the police as part of the Church’s reconciliation process called Towards Healing. Helen Keevers is one of the last people to give evidence at the New South Wales Government inquiry into the cover-up of sexual abuse in the Maitland-Newcastle Diocese. As part of her role, the trained social worker set up Zimmerman House, a Catholic Church-run centre for sex abuse victims. Lucy McNally reports.

LUCY MCNALLY, REPORTER: Helen Keevers is not a Catholic. She says that meant she had no problem identifying just how bad the Church was when it came to dealing with suspected paedophiles in its ranks.

HELEN KEEVERS, WITNESS: If I can be somewhat flippant, it made me able to see the emperor wasn’t wearing any clothes. It made me able to question structures that – and ways of behaving that people within the Church hadn’t been able to do previously.

LUCY MCNALLY: In 2004, the then Bishop Michael Malone hired her to look at the Church’s so-called bad files, files of priests who’d been the subject of complaints. They included the records of Father Denis McAlinden, one of two paedophiles the inquiry is focused on. The social worker told the commission McAlinden’s file was three to four inches thick.

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CALIFORNIA
NBC Los Angeles

By Melissa Pamer | Thursday, Aug 1, 2013

An usher at a Jehovah’s Witnesses congregation in Sun Valley was charged Wednesday with sexually abusing four boys he met at the church.

Marcelo Lozano, 34, is expected to be arraigned Wednesday afternoon at Van Nuys Superior Court with nine felony counts, according to the Los Angeles County District Attorney’s Office.

Lozano, who was an usher for the church’s Spanish congregation, allegedly abused boys who ranged from 8 to 15 years old between 2006 and 2013.

He is charged with two counts each of aggravated sexual assault of a child, continuous sexual abuse and oral copulation of a person under 14. And he faces one count each of forcible lewd act upon a child, lewd act upon a child and sodomy of a person under 14 with 10 years difference.

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CALIFORNIA
Patch

Posted by Arin Mikailian (Editor) , July 31, 2013

A man who was an usher at a Sun Valley church was charged Wednesday with sexually assaulting four boys he met through the church.

Marcelo Lozano, 34, pleaded not guilty in Van Nuys Superior Court to two counts each of aggravated sexual assault of a child, continuous sexual abuse and oral copulation of a person under 14, along with one count each of forcible lewd act on a child, lewd act upon a child and sodomy of a person under 14 with 10 years difference.

The alleged crimes occurred between Jan. 1, 2006, and this June 30, and involved boys who were between 8 and 15 at the time who Lozano met through Jehovah’s Witness, Sun Valley Spanish Congregation, according to the District Attorney’s Office.

Lozano was arrested Monday by the Los Angeles Police Department’s North Hollywood Division officers.

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OHIO
newsnet5

Posted: 07/31/2013

By: Deb Lee, newsnet5.com By: Deb Lee, newsnet5.com

LORAIN, Ohio – A former member of the West Congregation of Jehovah’s Witnesses in Lorain filed a lawsuit Wednesday against the congregation, alleging she was sexually abused by one of the church leaders.

“I want to expose how they treat children and how they do not protect them,” Elizabeth McFarland, 26, said at a news conference in Cleveland.

McFarland claims Scott Silvasy, who served as a “Ministerial Servant,” gained her trust then sexually abused her for five years, beginning when she was 9 years old. She said Silvasy committed suicide on her 16th birthday.

Her attorney, Irwin Zalkin of San Diego, said the elders of the church did nothing when they learned of the abuse.

“Jehovah’s Witnesses believe in what is called the Biblical Two Witness Rule,” Zalkin said. “According to the Biblical Two Witness Rule, as they interpret it, unless the perpetrator confesses or alternatively there are two eyewitnesses to the abuse, they can do nothing about it.”

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CALIFORNIA
CBS Los Angeles

VAN NUYS (CBSLA.com) — A 34-year-old man who was a church usher in Sun Valley was charged Wednesday with sexually assaulting four boys he met through the congregation, announced the Los Angeles County district attorney’s office.

Marcelo Lozano pleaded not guilty in Van Nuys Superior Court to two counts each of aggravated sexual assault of a child, continuous sexual abuse and oral copulation of a person under 14, along with one count each of forcible lewd act upon a child, lewd act upon a child and sodomy of a person under 14 with 10 years difference.

The alleged crimes, which included victims ranging in age from eight to 15, occurred between January 1, 2006, and June 30, 2013.

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LOS ANGELES (CA)
U-T San Diego

By The Associated Press JULY 31, 2013

LOS ANGELES — Prosecutors say an usher from a Los Angeles Jehovah’s Witness congregation has been charged with sexually abusing four boys.

The Los Angeles County district attorney’s office says 34-year-old Marcelo Lozano was charged Wednesday with nine felony counts, including aggravated sexual assault of a child.

Lozano pleaded not guilty to all nine counts and a judge set his bail at $1.9 million.

Prosecutors allege he abused boys who ranged from eight to 15 years old between 2006 and 2013.

Deputy District Attorney Rena Durrant said the defendant met the victims through the Sun Valley Spanish Congregation in the San Fernando Valley.

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AUSTRALIA
ABC News

By Dan Cox

The public gallery was moved to tears today after two victim impact statements were read to the NSW inquiry into clergy sexual abuse in the Hunter Valley.

The public hearings have wrapped up after eight weeks and more than 40 witnesses.

The inquiry is investigating claims the Catholic Church covered up abuse by paedophile priests, James Fletcher and Denis McAlinden.

Maureen O’Hearn, the Maitland-Newcastle diocese coordinator for healing and support, has given evidence saying she has dealt with around 28 victims of McAlinden since she started in the job in 2007.

She said the earliest reported abuse was in 1949.

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CALIFORNIA
Los Angeles Daily News

By Brenda Gazzar, Staff Writer
Posted: 07/31/2013

Prosecutors have charged an usher at a Jehovah’s Witness church in Sun Valley with several sex abuse counts for allegedly assaulting four boys between the ages of 8 and 15 that he met through the church, according to the Los Angeles County District Attorney’s Office.

Marcelo Alonso Lozano, 34, who lives in the Sun Valley area, was charged with nine felony counts, including two counts each of aggravated sexual assault of a child, continuous sexual abuse and oral copulation of a person under 14. He also faces one count each of a forcible lewd act upon a child, lewd act upon a child and sodomy of a person under 14 with 10 years difference, officials said. The criminal complaint includes a special allegation of multiple victims.

Prosecutors identified the church as the Jehovah’s Witness, Sun Valley Spanish Congregation, though police identified it as the Jehovah’s Witnesses Kingdom Hall in Sun Valley. The church is on the 12000 block of Wicks Street. The abuse allegedly took place between Jan. 1, 2006 and June 30, 2013.

Lozano pleaded not guilty to all counts during an arraignment Wednesday, according to Uchin Jang, a judicial assistant for Van Nuys courthouse Dept. 100.

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AUSTRALIA
Newcastle Herald

By JOANNE MCCARTHY Aug. 1, 2013

NOTORIOUS Hunter paedophile priest John Denham has pleaded guilty to multiple child sex offences, a year after the suicide of one of his victims led to the federal royal commission into child sexual abuse.

Denham, 70, pleaded guilty to crimes against 18 boys in the 1970s, only three years after pleading guilty to similar crimes against 39 victims in the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s.

During a short hearing in the Sydney Downing Centre Denham repeated the word ‘guilty’ 25 times to charges including buggery, forced oral sex and indecent assault involving boys aged 11, 12 and 13.

The majority of the offences occurred at St Pius X College, Adamstown.

In agreed facts Denham admitted telling boys ‘‘this is our little secret. Don’t bother telling anyone because no one will believe you.’’

After the hearing a victim said: ‘‘That was what he always drummed into me – that I wouldn’t be believed. Now everyone knows. It happened.’’

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AUSTRALIA
9 News

A NSW inquiry has been left in stunned silence by a social worker reading statements from two women sexually assaulted 32 years apart by the same Catholic priest.

The letters spoke of the terror, suffering and sadness that still plagued them, in one case, almost 60 years after the abuse by Hunter Valley Catholic priest Denis McAlinden began.

Maureen O’Hearn, the coordinator of the Maitland-Newcastle Catholic diocese child protection unit’s healing and support services, read the statements because the women were unable to.

She said the first letter was written by a 68-year-old woman who was abused for years, from 1954, when she was 10.

The second was written by a 38-year-old who was abused from 1986, when she was 11.
The first woman described McAlinden as “an extremely bad tempered, evil man who was a sexual predator of little girls”.

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CALIFORNIA
Contra Costa Times

[the files – Law Offices of Raymond Boucher]

By Barbara Jones and Susan Abram, Staff Writers

Five Catholic religious orders released the confidential personnel files of a dozen priests and nuns accused of sexually abusing children for decades as they worked as trusted religious leaders in the Los Angeles Archdiocese.

The 1,700 pages pertain to the 10 priests and two nuns who were accused in civil suits of molesting children while working in the nation’s largest archdiocese. They were released under the terms of a 2007 settlement that paid $660 million to more than 500 alleged victims.

The archdiocese itself released thousands of pages in January — detailed files showing how now-retired Archbishop Roger Mahony and other church leaders handled molestation complaints by shielding suspect priests from law enforcement.

In contrast, most of the files released by the religious orders deal more with mundane personnel matters, and some don’t even mention sexual abuse at all.

The fact that the files don’t reflect the misconduct alleged in civil lawsuits doesn’t mean it didn’t happen, said victims’ attorney Ray Boucher, who posted the documents on his firm’s website.

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WISCONSIN
Opposing Views

By Jonathan Wolfe, Wed, July 31, 2013

U.S. District Judge Rudolph T. Randa has ruled that the Archdiocese of Milwaukee can shield $57 million from creditors in sexual abuse settlements because the money is in a fund designated for maintaining cemeteries. Judge Randa says the money is shielded in accordance with the First Amendment’s guarantee of religious freedoms.

The money in the fund was in dispute because the Archdiocese of Milwaukee recently filed for bankruptcy. The bankruptcy filing was largely, if not entirely, caused by the amount of money the Archdiocese owes in settlements to victims of the church’s sexual abuse. According to Think Progress, over 45 Milwaukee priests face sexual abuse accusations. One priest has been accused of molesting over 200 deaf boys.

Ordinarily, $57 million in assets would be seized during a bankruptcy filing. But Judge Randa Ruled that the cemeteries are sacred to followers of the Catholic Church. As sacred sites, Randa says, funding for them is shielded from the government in accordance with the church’s free exercise of religion.

“The care and maintenance of Catholic cemeteries, cemetery property, and the remains of those interred is a fundamental exercise of the Catholic faith,” Randa said. “If the Trust’s funds are converted into the bankruptcy estate, there will be no funds or, at best, insufficient funds for the perpetual care of the Milwaukee Catholic Cemeteries.”

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WISCONSIN
Think Progress

Federal Judge: Catholic Church Has A Constitutional Right Not To Compensate Victims Of Sex Abuse

BY IAN MILLHISER ON JULY 31, 2013

A federal judge in Wisconsin handed down an opinion yesterday granting the Catholic Church — and indeed, potentially all religious institutions — such sweeping immunity from federal bankruptcy law that it is not clear that it would permit any plaintiff to successfully sue any church in any court. While the ostensible issue in this case is whether over $50 million in church funds are shielded from a bankruptcy proceeding triggered largely by a flood of clerical sex abuse claims against the Archdiocese of Milwaukee, Judge Rudolph Randa reads the church’s constitutional and legal right to religious liberty so broadly as to render religious institutions immune from much of the law.

The case involves approximately $57 million that former Milwaukee Archbishop Timothy Dolan transferred from the archdiocese’s general accounts to into a separate trust set up to maintain the church’s cemeteries. Although Dolan, who is now a cardinal, the Archbishop of New York and the President of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, has denied that the purpose of this transfer was to shield the funds from lawsuits, Dolan penned a letter to the Vatican in 2007 where he explained that transferring the funds into the trust would lead to “an improved protection of these funds from any legal claim and liability.”

The issue facing the court is, essentially, whether the funds that Dolan split off into a separate trust can now be reabsorbed into the archdiocese’s assets in order to enable sex abuse victims and other creditors to be paid out of these assets. In holding that these funds cannot be so absorbed, Randa relies on a law that limits the federal government’s ability to “substantially burden a person’s exercise of religion,” Randa cites to the current Archbishop of Milwaukee’s statement that “the care and maintenance of Catholic cemeteries, cemetery property, and the remains of those interred is a fundamental exercise of the Catholic faith,” and concludes that this statement alone is enough to shield the church’s funds. As Randa explains, “if the Trust’s funds are converted into the bankruptcy estate, there will be no funds or, at best, insufficient funds for the perpetual care of the Milwaukee Catholic Cemeteries.”

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UNITED STATES
CNN

By Daniel Burke, CNN

(CNN) – The nation’s leading Roman Catholic archbishop said Wednesday that Pope Francis was “on a high” from his first international trip as pontiff when he said “Who am I to judge?” gays and lesbians.

Cardinal Timothy Dolan of New York, who traveled last week to Brazil with the pope for World Youth Day, said the massive turnout – estimates ran as high as 3 million – and ecstatic crowds likely gave Francis hope that he would “revive the church on his home continent of Latin America.”

Francis was the archbishop of Buenos Aires in Argentina from 1998 until his papal election in March.

“The pope was visibly `on a high’ from his first international pastoral visit in Rio,” Dolan said. “Understandably so. Because I was there with him, I can verify that the superlatives being used — `oceanic’ crowds, `frenzied’ welcomes, `inspirational, heartfelt’ words — are not exaggerations at all.”

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CALIFORNIA
Law Offices of Raymond Boucher

U.S Province of the Missionary Oblates of Mary Immaculate, Inc. and Oblate Fathers Western Province, Inc.

Fr. Robert Koerner

Fr. Ruben Martinez

Fr. Joseph Murphy

Fr. Emmett Schaller

Benedictine Fathers of Sacred Heart Mission, Inc. aka St. Gregory’s Abbey

Fr. Mathias Faue

Marianist Province of the United States

Fr. Joseph DiPiri

Fr. Charles Fatooh

Fr. James McGloin

Fr. Bernard Plieman

Fr. Thomas Havel

Missionary Sisters of the Sacred Heart of Jesus aka The Cabrini Sisters

Sister Agnes Santomassimo

Sisters of St. Joseph of Carondelet

Sister Mary Joseph

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

[the files – Law Offices of Raymond Boucher]

POSTED BY JOELLE CASTEIX ON JULY 31, 2013

Five Catholic religious orders have released, as part of a settlement, files regarding 12 proven, admitted or credibly accused child molesting clerics (two nuns and ten priests). (Individual names are below.)

This is not a voluntary move. It’s happening only because brave survivors insisted on it happening. So it’s misleading for anyone to say or claim that church officials are “releasing” this information. It’s been pried from them, following years – sometimes decades – of irresponsible secrecy and deceit.

We hope this long-overdue disclosure will prod every single person who saw, suspected or suffered child sex crimes and cover ups by religious order clerics to step forward. And they should step forward to law enforcement officials, not church officials.

The LA Times reports that “the files have little or no reference to abuse allegations…suggesting the orders were either unaware of molestation claims or opted not to document them.” There are two other likely scenarios: Catholic officials destroyed or are still not turning over records about child molesting clerics.

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IRELAND
Care 2

They have refused to make payment of compensation, leaving this to the Irish Government but it was they who exploited the women, they who ran the laundries and they who should pay for the abuse they committed.

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

LOS ANGELES (CA)
Huffington Post

[Ruben Martinez]

[the files – Law Offices of Raymond Boucher]

By GILLIAN FLACCUS 07/31/13

LOS ANGELES — Hundreds of pages of secret church files released Wednesday shed light on the troublesome careers of a dozen religious order priests, brothers and nuns accused of sexually abusing children while working in the nation’s largest Roman Catholic archdiocese.

The files include one case of a priest who later admitted to having sexual contact with more than 100 boys while serving in several Southern California parishes for years.

The papers, which were released under the terms of a $660 million settlement agreement reached in 2007, are the first glimpse at what religious orders knew about the envoys they posted in Roman Catholic schools and parishes around the Los Angeles area. The archdiocese itself released thousands of pages under court order this year for its own priests who were accused of sexual abuse, but the full picture of sex abuse in Los Angeles remained elusive without the religious orders’ records.

Several dozen more files are expected to be released by the fall.

The files cover five different religious orders that employed 10 priests or religious brothers and two nuns who were all accused in civil lawsuits of molesting children while working within the Los Angeles archdiocese. Among them, the accused had 21 alleged victims who alleged abuse between the 1950s and the 1980s.

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VATICAN CITY
Rome Reports

[with video]

July 31, 2013. (Romereports.com) For the first time ever, the Vatican Bank, or IOR, has launched its official website, available at www.ior.va

The website’s launch comes as a consequence of the new transparency policy prompted by Pope Francis himself, who wants the bank to carry out its activities in the clearest possible way.

Even though the website is still extremely simple in its structure, however it contains useful information about the IOR’s governance, the services it offers and a list of contacts. Another useful section is the ‘media’ page, in which various links and documents, but also recent press releases can be found.

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AUSTRALIA
Newcastle Herald

By IAN KIRKWOOD Aug. 1, 2013

SURVIVORS of child sexual abuse by priests were only offered “healing” – including a financial settlement – if they signed a statement saying they were not going to the police, the Special Commission of Inquiry has heard.

Helen Keevers, a founding manager until 2009 of sex abuse survivors’ centre Zimmerman House, said this was her understanding of the Church’s practices when she began helping Bishop Michael Malone after the Jim Fletcher case in 2003.

Ms Keevers said there was little chance for her to look at historical files of child sexual abuse because her unit was “inundated” with complaints about existing priests.

She said complaints were laid against seven priests of the Maitland-Newcastle Diocese, with four individuals subsequently convicted.

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LOS ANGELES (CA)
Calgary Herald

[the files – Law Offices of Raymond Boucher]

BY GILLIAN FLACCUS, THE ASSOCIATED PRESS JULY 31, 2013

LOS ANGELES, Calif. – Hundreds of pages of secret church files released Wednesday expose the troublesome careers of a dozen religious order priests, brothers and nuns accused of sexually abusing children while working in the largest Roman Catholic archdiocese in the U.S.

The files include one case of a priest who admitted to having sexual contact with more than 100 boys while serving in several California parishes for years.

The papers, released under the terms of a $660 million settlement agreement reached in 2007, are the first glimpse at what religious orders knew about the envoys they posted in Roman Catholic schools and parishes around the Los Angeles area.

The files cover five different religious orders that employed 10 priests or religious brothers and two nuns who were all accused in civil lawsuits of molesting children while working within the Los Angeles archdiocese. Among them, the accused had 21 alleged victims who complained of abuse between the 1950s and the 1980s.

The files include more than 500 pages on a priest named Ruben Martinez who belonged to a religious order called the U.S. Province of the Missionary Oblates of Mary Immaculate, a nearly 200-year-old Catholic organization with roots in France. The Los Angeles archdiocese settled eight lawsuits over Martinez’s actions in 2007.

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LOS ANGELES (CA)
Yahoo! News

[the files – Law Offices of Raymond Boucher]

GILLIAN FLACCUS

LOS ANGELES (AP) — Hundreds of pages of secret church files released Wednesday shed light on the troublesome careers of a dozen religious order priests, brothers and nuns accused of sexually abusing children while working in the nation’s largest Roman Catholic archdiocese.

The files include one case of a priest who admitted to having sexual contact with more than 100 boys while serving in several Southern California parishes for years.

The papers, which were released under the terms of a $660 million settlement agreement reached in 2007, are the first glimpse at what religious orders knew about the envoys they posted in Roman Catholic schools and parishes around the Los Angeles area. The archdiocese itself released thousands of pages under court order this year that covered its own priests who were accused of sexual abuse, but the full picture of sex abuse in the nation’s largest archdiocese remained elusive without the religious orders’ records.

The files cover five different religious orders that employed 10 priests or religious brothers and two nuns who were all accused in civil lawsuits of molesting children while working within the Los Angeles archdiocese. Among them, the accused had 21 alleged victims who alleged abuse between the 1950s and the 1980s.

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

LOS ANGELES (CA)
Los Angeles Times

[the files – Law Offices of Raymond Boucher]

By Victoria Kim and Harriet Ryan
July 31, 2013

Confidential personnel records from five Catholic religious orders were turned over to victims of sexual abuse Wednesday in the first wave of a court-ordered public disclosure expected to shed light on the role the groups, operating independently of the L.A. Archdiocese, played in the region’s clergy molestation scandal.

The documents pertain to a dozen priests, brothers and nuns accused of sexual misconduct in the landmark 2007 settlement with hundreds of people who filed abuse claims against the Roman Catholic church in Los Angeles. An additional 45 religious orders will release the personnel files of their accused clergy by this fall, completing what is believed to be the fullest accounting yet of the abuse crisis anywhere in the Catholic church.

The 1,700 pages released by the religious orders differ markedly from those disclosed in January by the Los Angeles Archdiocese to comply with the terms of its settlement with all victims abused within its three-county jurisdiction. The archdiocese handed over materials reflecting Cardinal Roger M. Mahony’s meticulous record-keeping of molestation claims and treatment of accused offenders.

By contrast, the order files are a hodgepodge of seminary report cards, vacation requests, baptismal certificates and breezy dispatches in which priests update their higher-ups on parish projects. For the most part, the files have little or no reference to abuse allegations that surfaced in lawsuits a decade ago, suggesting the orders were either unaware of molestation claims or opted not to document them.

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SAN DIEGO (CA)
KPBS

By Marissa Cabrera, Maureen Cavanaugh

Observers are declaring Pope Francis’ first overseas trip as Pontiff a great success.

He wrapped up his tour of Brazil, the world’s largest Roman Catholic country, on Sunday with an outdoor mass that drew 3 million people.

It’s his comments in an impromptu news conference Monday that have also impressed some Catholics. Pope Francis said “who am I to judge gay people” and added that gays shouldn’t be marginalized.

These statements may be good news to people who are working for institutional change within the Catholic church.

One such person, an Austrian priest, is currently touring America in an effort to bring reform within the Catholic Church to a tipping point.

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ARGENTINA
International Business Times

Roberto Francisco Daniel, Brazilian Priest Excommunicated For Defending Homosexuality, Wants Justice After Pope Francis Speaks Out Favor Of The LGBT Community

By Patricia Rey Mallén
on July 31 2013

Pope Francis’ first visit to Latin America has sparked all sorts of comments and headlines, some praising the Holy Father on his approachability, and others remarking his unorthodox take on leading the Catholic Church. One of the most talked-about bits of the Pope’s visit to Brazil was his statement on the gay community — which was very much unlike his predecessor’s position.

“If somebody is gay and looks for God, who am I to judge them?” he said in an unusually frank press conference on the plane back to Rome.

The unprecedented move has prompted Roberto Francisco Daniel, a former priest in Brazil, to seek justice. Daniel, who used to serve in the Bauru diocese in São Paulo, was excommunicated in April for publicly defending gays and criticizing the church’s attitude towards them.

“They treated me as if I were a teenager. I was publicly exposed. I didn’t even have the right to a trial,” he said to local newspaper Folha de São Paulo. He pointed out that his issue is not with the Catholic Church, but with his diocese.

Daniel never wanted to take back his comments, and went so far as to write them up in his book “Verdades Proibidas” (Forbidden Truths), in which he shed light into many of the controversial issues surrounding the Catholic Church. Brazil, with 126 million faithful, is the country with the biggest Catholic population in the world.

Daniel is now taking the new statements from Pope Francis as a sign that the Church is changing its views towards the LGBT community and hoping it will be the proof that he was mistreated by his diocese.

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MINNESOTA
Pioneer Press

By Emily Gurnon
egurnon@pioneerpress.com
POSTED: 07/31/2013

The Rev. Daniel Conlin, a St. Paul priest who fathered a child with a married woman, has been suspended from “his faculties as a priest” by the archdiocese, according to a fellow cleric.

“It is with personal and fraternal sadness that I write to you about the recent events concerning Father Daniel Conlin,” Rev. Charles Lachowitzer, pastor at St. John Neumann Catholic Church in Eagan, said in a letter Monday to parishioners and staff.

“His faculties as a priest have been temporarily suspended and for the time being, he is no longer able to exercise his public ministry,” said the letter, posted on the church website.

Conlin, 51, did not immediately respond to a message left for him.

The Pioneer Press reported July 21 about Conlin’s affair, his continued involvement with the child’s family, the response by the Archdiocese of Saint Paul and Minneapolis and the reaction of Conlin’s former parishioners.

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UNITED STATES
National Catholic Reporter

Jamie Manson | Jul. 31, 2013 Grace on the Margins

Full disclosure: I do not feel excited or hopeful about what Pope Francis said about women and gay priests during his epic press conference on the way home to Rome.

Now, wait. Before you click me off as a hater or an incorrigible pessimist or an angry feminist lesbian or another choice label, please understand this: I don’t dislike Pope Francis.

I think he has an authentic warmth. I appreciate his desire to be among the people. I laugh at some of his jokes, and there are themes in his sermons that genuinely move me. I share his desire to break down clericalism and the injustices of capitalism, and I believe wholeheartedly in his vision of ecological justice.

More substantively than even all of this, I share with him a deep passion for the poor and marginalized. Like Francis, I, too, have my most vivid encounters with Jesus among those who are homeless, mentally ill, incarcerated or suffering with addictions.

But Francis and I part ways on the topics of women’s equality and the full inclusion of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgendered people in the church. The pope’s statements on the plane only reinforced the depth of my disagreement with him.

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UNITED STATES
Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests

How does a pedophile join a youth group, molest kids despite warning signs and get everyone to keep quiet after he’s caught? Those questions are more are answered in the first book to examine how child molesters found success in one of America’s most revered youth organizations.

At a time of nonstop sex abuse scandals in churches, schools, youth groups and sports leagues, Scout’s Honor examines the phenomenon of institutional sex abuse through one group: the Boy Scouts of America. The book’s mission: Explore how good people inadvertently enable child molesters at the expense of children.

To find the answer, a veteran journalist reaches back to the beginning of Scouting more than 100 years ago; combs through nearly 2,000 of the BSA’s “Confidential Files” on molesters, and thousands of documents from court files and historical archives; and talks with molesters, victims, parents, Scout officials, investigators and child abuse experts.

But Scout’s Honor is also a personal story. It delves into the life one on of Scouting’s most notorious sex offenders – tracing his struggles as a child victim, a gifted young man with a horrendous addiction, a patient crying to be cured, and a prisoner racked by guilt.

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GERMANY
Expatica

Two Roman Catholic seminary students have been expelled for making anti-Semitic and racist jokes and attending a concert by a band accused of far-right ties, German bishops said Wednesday.

The decision came after an independent probe ordered by the German Church, which found wrongdoing by the students, who were not identified, but no evidence of a “right-wing extremist network” at the priest training college.

The bishops of the southern cities of Bamberg and Wuerzburg, Ludwig Schick and Friedhelm Hofmann, made the announcement in the wake of a scandal dating from May that was deeply embarrassing to the Church.

The report lists in detail incidents directly involving three students in a class at the Wuerzburg seminary, whose graduates go on to serve as priests in Wuerzburg and Bamberg.

“One student told at least three concentration camp jokes for fun,” they said in a statement, based on the findings of a three-member external commission.

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CONNECTICUT
Brooklyn Daily Eagle

Brooklyn Daily Eagle & Associated Press

The new bishop of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Bridgeport calls his new job “an awesome and exciting ministry” and is pledging to listen and learn about the needs of the diocese and collaborate with others.

The Most Rev. Frank Caggiano, an auxiliary bishop in Brooklyn, New York, will take over a post left vacant since the departure of Bishop William Lori, who was named Archbishop of Baltimore in March 2012.

The 54-year-old Caggiano praised Lori’s handling of the sex abuse crisis and says all bishops have the same commitment to protect children but it takes time to rebuild trust.

Caggiano, who was ordained a priest in 1987 for the Diocese of Brooklyn, has served in a number of pastoral and administrative positions. He has been both a pastor and also responsible for the formation of men for the permanent diaconate. Since 2006, Caggiano has served as Vicar General and Moderator of the Curia.

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CONNECTICUT
CBS New York

BRIDGEPORT, Conn. (CBSNewYork/AP) – The new bishop of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Bridgeport calls his new job “an awesome and exciting ministry” and is pledging to listen and learn about the needs of the diocese and collaborate with others.

Rev. Frank Caggiano, an auxiliary bishop in Brooklyn, will take over a post left vacant since the departure of Bishop William Lori, who was named Archbishop of Baltimore in March 2012.

Bishop Caggiano made a point of saying he’s eager to learn of all the good work done by the diocese since the taint of child sex abuse committed by priests decades ago still lingers.

The 54-year-old Caggiano praised Lori’s handling of the sex abuse crisis and says all bishops have the same commitment to protect children but it takes time to rebuild trust.

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WISCONSIN/NEW YORK
Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests

For immediate release: Wednesday, July 31

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

Cardinal Dolan and his colleagues have done what thousands of accused predator priests have done – exploiting legal technicalities instead of relying on the merits in cases involving child sex abuse and cover up.

And Dolan has just won.

Dolan acted legally, a Wisconsin judge says, when he quietly transferred $57 million into a cemetery fund as clergy sex abuse victims began suing.

That doesn’t mean, however, that Dolan acted morally. We believe he did not.

There are ways to fight. Some fight fair. Some fight dirty. In this case, Dolan fought dirty. Sadly, he prevailed. And this decision will encourage other church officials to act irresponsibly in the future.

The losers are not just child sex abuse victims. All Wisconsin Catholics have lost here. A judge is telling them “You have no recourse. Your bishop can misuse your donations. And no judge can stop him.”

Had a judge used Sharia law to rule on behalf of a Muslim official accused of hiding funds, there would be an uproar. But that’s basically what’s happened here. This Wisconsin judge has essentially said that internal church or ‘canon’ law trumps secular law. And for that reason, Catholic bishops get to spend their wealth in any way they like, without ever having to be held responsible – or even be questioned – by anyone.

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MILWAUKEE (WI)
The Tablet (UK)

31 July 2013

A federal judge has ruled that the US archdiocese of Milwaukee, which has filed for bankruptcy, cannot be forced to dip into a US$50 million trust fund it set up for the care of cemeteries in 2007 to pay for sex abuse claims.

Creditors of the archdiocese accused Cardinal Timothy Dolan, who was then the diocese’s archbishop, of creating the fund to protect the archdiocese’s money from abuse payouts. Judge Rudolph Randa yesterday said the archdiocese had a duty under canon law to use cemetery funds for their stated purpose.

Milwaukee cemeteries cover nearly 1,000 acres of land, in which more than 500,000 people are buried.

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