ABUSE TRACKER

NEW YORK
Buffalo News

ALBION – A pastor was ordered to stay away from his church Monday after he pleaded not guilty to six counts of sex abuse of young children.

Orleans County Court Judge James Punch told Rev. Roy Harriger, 70, of Middleport, that his $250,000 bail would be revoked if he were in the presence of children 18 and younger. After entering his plea, Harriger had asked the judge if he could go to church.

More than a dozen people have signed affadavits claiming that Harriger, pastor of Community Fellowship Church in the Town of Hartland, molested them when they were children.

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MONTANA
Independent Record

By David Clohessy

The Helena Catholic diocese is the third diocese in eight weeks to seek bankpruptcy protection, citing clergy sex abuse and cover up allegations. But don’t be confused. This is not about money. It’s about secrecy.

The huge eruption in victims reporting clergy sexual abuse happened more than a decade ago. But these three dioceses are filing Chapter 11 because they’re smart, not broke. Bishops have learned that this is a shrewd way to save the reputations and careers of top Catholic officials by keeping a tight lid on their horrific complicity.

Bankruptcy preserves secrecy by stopping all civil litigation, one of the precious few ways that victims have of piercing the long-standing and still-formidable walls of secrecy and self preservation that surround the Catholic hierarchy.

Bankruptcy court is a mathematic process. it divides money. it does not identify or punish wrongdoers. It deters no wrongdoing. it provides no chance to publicly expose those who knowingly and repeatedly committed and concealed heinous child sex crimes. It doesn’t help expose those who are committing and concealling child sex crimes right now. It thus protects and helps complicit officials, not innocent children or wounded adults.

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CALIFORNIA
Monterey Herald

By VIRGINIA HENNESSEY
Herald Staff Writer
POSTED: 02/10/2014

An appellate court has delayed at least temporarily the release of documents in the child sexual abuse case involving the Rev. Edward Fitz-Henry.

A two-judge panel from the 6th District Court of Appeals granted the Catholic Diocese of Monterey’s request to halt Monterey County Superior Court Judge Thomas Wills’ December order unsealing documents in the lawsuit by “John R.J. Doe.” The lawsuit was settled before trial with the diocese paying the man $500,000. All records turned over to his attorney during discovery remained sealed.

Justices Franklin Elia and Miguel Marquez stayed Will’s decision pending further review of a petition to permanently reverse it.

The diocese’s lawyers argued the records were never submitted as evidence in court. They only turned them over in discovery without a legal battle because the plaintiff’s attorney said he would not share them with the media. The court agreed to the protective order to ensure the jury pool would not be tainted.

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UNITED STATES
National Catholic Reporter

Mary Ann McGivern | Feb. 10, 2014 NCR Today

Back in the 1980s, a priest from Portland, Ore., Ray Carey, already had a reputation for assisting seminaries in identifying applicants who were pedophiles. I was on our Loretto membership team and participated in three of his workshops. I learned interviewing skills that stand me in good stead today, centering on how to frame questions to sample interviewee behavior. I also learned more than my mother would have ever wanted me to know about child sexual abuse by the clergy. (That joke is his, too, and I’ve borrowed it for weapons trade and prisons as well as pedophilia.)

I Googled Father Carey and learned that he gives frequent talks in Portland on spiritual growth and development. He gave a talk on the gifts of sexuality last month that drew high praise in the parish bulletin. I don’t know if he still advises seminaries or speaks on abuse issues, but I wish the U.S. bishops conference would consult with him. The sex abuse scandal continues, and I fear that in the search for vocations, some seminaries still don’t screen applicants adequately. Past and potential abuse continues to be buttressed by a parallel abuse of hierarchical power.

For example, according The New York Times, the United Nations is calling on Pope Francis and the Vatican to comply with the Convention on the Rights of the Child. Among the failures and shortcomings listed by the U.N. are obstruction to extending statutes of limitations; settlements that require victims signing confidentiality agreements; failure to assist birth parents seeking children adopted out of Catholic institutions without parental consent; and failure to identify and support children fathered by Catholic priests.

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ST. LOUIS (MO)
KSDK

[with video]

Brandie Piper, KSDK February 11, 2014

ST. LOUIS – Names of priests accused of sexual abuse in the last 20 years have been turned over by the Archdiocese of St. Louis.

Last week the Missouri Supreme Court ruled the Archdiocese had to release the names, which will not be made public. The names will be handed over to lawyers of a woman suing the Archdiocese.

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UNITED KINGDOM
BBC News

An Anglican priest jailed for sexually abusing young children has applied to be released from prison on compassionate grounds.

Canon Gordon Rideout, 74, from East Sussex, was sentenced to 10 years in prison in May after being found guilty of 36 separate sex offences.

The priest committed the offences against 16 children between 1962 and 1973 in Hampshire and Sussex.

One of his victims said she and her family were in “a state of disbelief”.

She said she felt anguish at Rideout’s “obvious ploy to manipulate the system” with his application.

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UNITED STATES
Marshfield News Herald

by Oliver Thomas, USATODAY

The United Nations’ scathing denunciation of the Vatican last week over its mishandling of sexual misconduct by priests is symptomatic of a larger credibility crisis for clergy. In a single generation, clergy have gone from being some of our most revered community leaders to some of our most reviled.

Atlanta real estate developer Tom Cousins recalls that when he moved to the city in the late 1950s, he was struck by the fact that three of the 10 most influential people in the city were ministers.

“I thought it spoke well for the city,” he recently told me. Last month’s issue of the popular Georgia Trend magazine identifies the 100 most influential Georgians, and there’s not a minister among them. More telling is that a December Gallup poll found that only 47% of Americans consider clergy to be honest and ethical – an all-time low.

Why such a precipitous fall from grace for America’s spiritual leaders? At least three possible causes spring to mind:

Politics. The mixing of religion and politics has always yielded a combustible brew, but the covert became overt when the late Rev. Jerry Falwell formed the “Moral Majority” in 1980. Ensuing decades found evangelical groups looking more like “the Republican Party at prayer.” Similar charges were levied about the cozy relationship between black churches and Democrats.

Money. Jesus said to give it away. But the money scandals of Jim Bakker and other televangelists left many wondering whether clergy were following the almighty dollar rather than the Almighty.

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UNITED STATES
BishopAccountability.org

Summary of Case: A priest of the Oregon Province of the Society of Jesus, Hargrave was ordained in 1947 and went on to spend the bulk of his lengthy priesthood in remote Alaskan villages. He was suspended from ministry in 2003 due to an allegation that he had made inappropriate sexual advance toward a 60-year-old woman. In a 2009 lawsuit Hargrave was called a “serial child molester”. He was accused of fondling a 6 or 7-year-old boy multiple times in 1956 in Nulato, Alaska, and of raping a 5 or 6-year-old boy in 1992 in the village of Numan Iqua. Hargrave spent the last decade of his life at the Regis Jesuit Community in Spokane, WA, working as a pastoral minister to native American communites. He died Feb. 22, 2013.

Ordained: 1947
Died: Feb. 22, 2013

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VATICAN CITY
Boston Globe

By John L. Allen Jr. | GLOBE STAFF FEBRUARY 10, 2014

Pope Francis is shaking things up in the Catholic church to such an extent that many talk about a “Francis revolution”. Yet the single most revolutionary act committed by any pope in at least the last 600 years fell exactly one year ago today, and it wasn’t Francis who did it.

On Feb. 11, 2013, Pope Benedict XVI used a meeting of cardinals discussing new saints to deliver the stunning announcement that he planned to resign, effective 8 pm Rome time on Feb. 28. The news was a total surprise to everyone except a handful of papal intimates, and it set the stage for all the drama that’s followed.

One cardinal said afterward that he sat in the room well after the meeting broke up, still unable to comprehend what had just happened. He played Benedict’s Latin phrasing over and over again in his mind to be sure he’d understood.

Yes, a handful of popes had resigned before, most recently Gregory XII in 1415. The circumstances, however, were so wildly different as to make Benedict’s decision essentially unprecedented – a pope not facing foreign armies or internal schism who decided voluntarily to step aside, while continuing to live on Vatican grounds and pledging “unconditional obedience” to whoever might succeed him.

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HAWAII
The Worthy Adversary

Posted by Joelle Casteix on February 10, 2014

How about some GOOD news out of a state legislature?

Hawaii State Legislature has TWO ground-breaking, victim-friendly bills that have just passed committee.

Why the legislative attention? The current Hawaii Civil Window, which closes in April, has opened lawmakers’ eyes to the problem of child sex abuse and cover-up across the state. Fortunately, these same eyes also see that two years are simply not enough time for many victims. Since the window opened in 2012, approximately 30 men and women have come forward to seek justice—but we are only really at the genesis of exposing the cover-up. Once that process begins, the real social and cultural change starts …

You can’t put a time limit on healing and you can’t instantly change a cultural stigma on abuse.
Here are the two bills:

SB 2687 – Sponsored by Senator Maile Shimabukuro (the sponsor of the original window) and Senator Suzanne Chun Oakland – If passed, this law would give victims of child sexual abuse up until the age of 55 to use the civil courts to seek justice and accountability.

HB 2034 – Sponsored by the Hawaii Women’s Legislative Caucus – If passed, this law removed the criminal and civil statutes of limitations on first and second degree sexual assault and the continuous assault of a minor under 14.

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AUSTRALIA
The Australian

DAN BOX THE AUSTRALIAN FEBRUARY 11, 2014

THE international head of the Salvation Army has written to the royal commission saying he was sickened by the revelations of widespread and brutal child sex abuse within the Christian organisation in Australia.

At least 157 men claim to have been physically and sexually abused while living at boys’ homes run by the army in NSW and Queensland, the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse has heard.

In what may be an unprecedented scandal in its international history, 23 men have been identified as alleged abusers, 19 of whom were officers or envoys of the Salvation Army itself.

In a personal letter to the commission chairman, Peter McClellan, the army’s London-based General Andre Cox said he has “been sickened by much of the harrowing evidence presented” to the hearing.

“I still struggle to comprehend that these acts were perpetrated by Salvation Army officers,” he said in the letter, tendered to the commission yesterday. General Cox, who has ultimate authority for the army’s roughly 1.1 million soldiers, has also revised the organisation’s child protection policies and written to every commanding officer in 126 countries about the commission’s hearing.

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AUSTRALIA
lewisblayse.net

Professor Julia Gillard
c/o The Guardian, Australian edition (http://www.theguardian.com/au)
c/o The University of Adelaide, School of History and Politics

Dear Professor Gillard,

RE: INVITATION TO BE THANKED FOR ROYAL COMMISSION AT LEWIS BLAYSE / LEWIN BLAZEVICH PUBLIC MEMORIAL EVENT, 1 MARCH, 2014

I have already sent via Katharine Viner of The Guardian an informal invitation for you to be the keynote speaker at a public memorial event for my father, Lewis Blayse (formerly Lewin Blazevich). I wanted, however, to send a formal invitation to you to be the keynote speaker at the event.

My father was a lifelong social justice and child protection activist and recent blogger on the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse and associated matters at www.lewisblayse.net. In addition to his child protection work, he was active throughout his life in areas as diverse as working to mandate seatbelts on school buses, securing better administrative treatment of welfare recipients, animal rights, women’s rights, rights for Indigenous people, anti-Vietnam war activism, activism against the Queensland ‘police state’ under the Joh regime, and many, many other areas. He died recently.

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ST. LOUIS (MO)
Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests

For immediate release: Monday, Feb. 10

Statement by Judy Jones of St. Louis, Midwest Assistant Midwest Director of SNAP, the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests ( 636 433 2511, 314 974 5003, snapjudy@gmail.com )

Some say Archbishop Robert Carlson is now obeying a court order but honestly, virtually no one knows for sure. And we’re upset that he now says he’s found seven more credible abuse reports that he allegedly didn’t mention earlier.

[St. Louis Post-Dispatch]

We’re skeptical about Carlson being “in compliance” because Carlson and his lawyers twice succeeded in keeping these names under wraps– first, by keeping these records hidden for decades and now, under court-ordered sealed for eternity. So no one besides the judge and the lawyers involved know whether the documents Carlson has finally turned over really do meet his legal obligations.

We hope he’s been honest. But given the horrific track record of the Catholic hierarchy, and this archdiocese, on children’s safety, we would be foolish to assume he’s really honoring the court order.

Carlson has repeatedly protected predators and endangered kids and we firmly believe he’s still doing so.

He has also violated this order several times over the past few months and we fear he may still be doing so now.

The records remain hidden because of a protective order. But let’s be honest – it protects clerics who committed and are concealing heinous crimes. Those are the only people this really protects.

Finally, we continue to worry because Catholic officials are withholding at least 40 names because church staff claim the abuse reports against them are “unsubstantiated.” But across the country, for decades, Catholic employees have deemed abuse reports “unsubstantiated” that others find very credible. In fact, Archbishop Carlson is keeping Fr. Alex Anderson in a parish right now, despite three men (who don’t know one another) having each reported being molested by Fr. Anderson (and one of them was paid a settlement).

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MASSACHUSETTS
Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests

For immediate release: Monday, February 10, 2014

Statement by Barbara Dorris of St. Louis, outreach director of SNAP, the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests ( 314-862-7688 home, 314-503-0003 cell, SNAPdorris@gmail.com )

The assistant chaplain at Holy Cross and Director of Service and Social Justice Programs has been removed after allegations of “adult sexual misconduct”.

[MassLive]

We are glad that he has been removed, but we want to be clear it is inherently problematic when clergy have any sexual contact with congregants. There can be no true “consent” given the power difference between the individuals.

It has long been understood that a sexual relationship between a doctor and his patient or a teacher and his student is wrong. It is the same thing with a clergy member and one of his congregants.

We hope this charge will help others who were hurt by what may have initially seemed like “affairs” but were in fact crimes. We hope those victimized by clergy at any age will find the courage to step forward, get help, call police, expose wrongdoers, protect others and start healing

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UNITED STATES
Catholic League

Bill Donohue comments on a worldwide survey of Catholics by Bendixen & Amandi International for Univision:

The survey of 12 nations yields some interesting results, but first a note on its methodology. Asking people to identify themselves as Catholic is not a sufficient condition for drawing conclusions: we need to know whether they regularly attend to the sacraments, or not. The survey made no effort to distinguish between practicing and non-practicing Catholics.

Asking Catholics whether priests should be allowed to marry, or whether women should be allowed to become priests, does not tell us very much. Every survey says “yes” to both, but what counts is the intensity of the conviction: few Catholics have their bags packed ready to jump ship. If that were the case then the mainline Protestant denominations would be booming; instead, they are dying. In other words, there is a difference between a preference and a demand. There is no demand for either.

The survey is revealing in ways that the media are choosing not to discuss. On the two most contentious moral issues of our day—abortion and gay marriage—there is little sympathy for the secular perspective.

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WORCESTER (MA)
MassLive

By John F. Hill, MassLive.com

A chaplain at the College of the Holy Cross has been placed on leave after being accused of “adult sexual misconduct,” according to the student newspaper, The Crusader.

Rev. Philip L. Boroughs, president of the college, sent an email to the campus community stating that Rev. Gregory Lynch has been removed from “from his assignment at Holy Cross, pending the outcome of this matter,”, the newspaper reports.

Lynch is an assistant chaplain at Holy Cross and Director of Service and Social Justice Programs.

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NORTHERN IRELAND
UTV

[with video]

The Historical Institutional Abuse Inquiry has been told how one woman was cruelly treated by nuns and beaten during her time at Nazareth House in Londonderry.

On Monday, the inquiry heard from the 58-year-old witness who was a resident at the home from 1957 to 1969.

She described how during her time there, some of the nuns were cruel and one nun would often beat her, hitting her with a belt she wore round her neck.

She told the inquiry that she was beaten black and blue with a stick.

The witness, who cannot be named, said that at bath time, 100 girls were forced to queue up with no privacy and the bath water was never changed.

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WORCESTER (MA)
The Crusader

By Kevin Deehan
Chief News-Editor

On Wednesday, January 29, Father Boroughs informed the campus community in a mass email that a complaint had been filed against Rev. Gregory Lynch, S.J. regarding an allegation of adult sexual misconduct. Lynch is no longer at the College, having been removed “from his public ministry and his assignment at Holy Cross, pending the outcome of this matter,” according to Father Boroughs’ email.

The announcement warned that Lynch’s removal “does not represent a determination of Fr. Lynch’s guilt or innocence.” It also stated that the complaint in question did not occur at Holy Cross nor involve a student from the College.

Lynch was ordained a Jesuit priest in 2003. Prior to joining the Chaplains’ Office at Holy Cross, he worked as a history teacher and swimming coach at Creighton Preparatory in Omaha, Nebraska. While at the College, Lynch served as the Assistant Chaplain and Director of Service and Social Justice Programs. Under this title, Lynch served as faculty advisor to Student Programs for Urban Development, helped with the Spiritual Exercises retreat program, and acted as moderator of Pax Christi, among other duties.

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WORCESTER (MA)
Telegram & Gazette

By Mike Elfland TELEGRAM & GAZETTE STAFF
melfland@telegram.com

WORCESTER — A chaplain at the College of the Holy Cross has been removed from his post pending an investigation into allegations of adult sexual misconduct, according to the college newspaper.

The complaint against the Rev. Gregory Lynch is addressed in an email sent to students by the Rev. Philip L. Boroughs, the college president.

According to The Crusader, the president wrote that the priest’s removal from campus “does not represent a determination of Fr. Lynch’s guilt or innocence.” It also stated that the complaint in question did not occur at Holy Cross nor involve a student from the college.

The Rev. Lynch has been a priest for about a decade, most recently serving as an assistant chaplain and director of service and social justice programs at Holy Cross.

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

By Jennifer S. Mann jmann@post-dispatch.com 314-621-58040

ST. LOUIS • The Archdiocese of St. Louis has complied with a judge’s order and turned over the names of priests who were accused of sexually abusing minors over a 20-year period, along with the names and contact information of victims.

Because the list is under a court-ordered seal, available only to the judge and lawyers involved in the litigation, it is unclear exactly how many individuals’ names have been released.

Ken Chackes, lawyer for a woman whose suit prompted the disclosure, said he could not comment because of the protective order.

The disclosure is part of 2011 suit filed on behalf of a then-19-year-old woman who claims she was sexually abused from 1997 to 2001 by the since-defrocked Rev. Joseph Ross. The woman’s lawyers are trying to show the Archdiocese had a pattern of ignoring sexual abuse complaints, allowing future abuses to occur.

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ST. LOUIS (MO)
Fox 2

ST. LOUIS, MO (KTVI) – Last week the Missouri Supreme Court ordered the St. Louis Archdiocese to turn over the names of more than 100 priests suspected of sexually abusing children over two decades.

The church complied with the order on Monday.

According to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch the list is under a court-ordered seal. It is only available to lawyers involved in the litigation. So, it is still unclear exactly how many priests names have been released.

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NORTHERN IRELAND
Derry Journal

A public inquiry has heard that a young girl was cruelly treated by nuns and beaten “black and blue” during her time at Nazareth House Children’s Home in Derry.

Today, the inquiry, sitting in Banbridge, Co. Down, heard from a 58-year-old witness who was a resident at the Bishop Street home for girls from 1957 to 1969.

She recalled that, during her time there, some of the nuns were cruel and one nun would often beat her, hitting her with a belt she wore round her neck.

She told the inquiry that she was also beaten black and blue with a stick.

The witness said that, at bath time, 100 girls were forced to queue up with no privacy and the bath water was never changed.

She said that, when she was 12 years old, she was sent out to what was described as a placement at two farms in the summer and was forced to do manual work.

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UNITED STATES
Bilgrimage

A quick note to inform any of you who happen to be online right now that, in a few moments (1 P.M. EST, 12 P.M. CST, etc.), SNAP president Barbara Blaine will be interviewed by NPR’s Worldview program about the recent U.N. report.

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NEW JERSEY
Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests

For immediate release: Monday, February 10, 2014

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

We are sad but not surprised that an ex-priest has apparently broken his deal with a prosecutor by continuing to profess his innocence.

Michael Fugee, a one-time Newark archdiocese priest, is again showing how remorseless and selfish he is.

[The Record]

Prosecutor John Molinelli is right – the Lenehans are not helping Fugee. They are, however, helping law enforcement by publicly exposing a criminal who is incapable of keeping his word and honoring his commitments. And they’re helping the public by showing just how unrepentant and manipulative sexual predators can be.

We disagree with the prosecutor in one key way: We are glad the Lenehan family, no matter how misguided their intentions might be, have disclosed that Fugee has violated his plea deal. Every citizen who sees criminals break the law should speak up.

In light of this new information, we hope the DA will

– investigate and if possible, take stern action against Fugee, and

–use his bully pulpit and resources to beg anyone else who may have seen or may suspect that Fugee is breaking his agreement.

And we believe Archbishop John Myers -whose colleagues and staff helped recruit, educate, ordain, and protect Fr. Fugee – should also publicly urge those who saw, suspected or suffered Fugee’s crimes – whether old or new – to call police and prosecutors right away.

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OKLAHOMA
Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests

For immediate release: Monday, February 10, 2014

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

An Oklahoma prosecutor is charging that top Jehovah’s Witness officials knew about but concealed allegations of child rape. We are glad that the DA’s office is working to expose these heinous crimes.

[The Global Dispatch]

When officials conceal sex crimes, they are not only breaking the law, they are doing a huge disservice to the people and families that trust them. Victims who have suffered immeasurable pain and hardship are hurt anew when trusted officials hide crimes.

Now, every Jehovah’s Witness official who knew of or suspected or concealed these heinous crimes should be ousted and prosecuted for failure to report possible child sex crimes to law enforcement. If convicted, they should experience the most severe penalties possible. That’s how we as a society deter such callous recklessness in the future.

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POLAND
Sunday Catholic Weekly

Jerzy Robert Nowak

For the last several months the Polish mass media have been flooded with a shockingly high wave of anti-Church articles. In the post-communist Przeglad, 5 October 2004, it was even written about the possibility of ‘a new war’ between the Left and the Church. One could create a truly long ‘White Book’ about the fight with the Church only on the basis of the ‘literary output’ in mass media in the last half year. You could hardly see such a huge and concentrated amount of anti-Church articles in Poland in this relatively short period after the famous Gomulka’s smear campaign had been launched in 1966 on the occasion of the Millennium. (One should remember that in Gomulka times there were no periodicals, which would publish as many aggressive and lousy anti-Church articles as in today’s Fakty i Mity as well as Urban’s Nie.) What is the reason of this sudden and violent anti-Church explosion in mass media after so many years of pretending that the post-communists wanted a lasting agreement with the Church, and after their claims that they renounced all anti-Church and anti-religious phobias once for all? The answer is all too simple. The post-communists feel more and more isolated from the society when new political affairs and embarrassments have rapidly been revealed. And the polling squaring is at hand. Being more and more panic-stricken the post-communists decided to resort to the method they had tested long ago – to look for substitute subjects in order to divert people maximally from their pitiful affairs and deviousness.

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POLAND
National Catholic Reporter

Jonathan Luxmoore | Feb. 8, 2012

WARSAW, POLAND — When Ewa Orlowska, a mother of nine, decided to confront her local priest for sexually abusing her as a child, she had little idea what was to follow. The priest, Msgr. Michal Moskwa, had been the parish pastor for three decades in the southern town of Tylawa, and Ewa had been just one of his victims. But when she’d told her mother about the abuse, her mother beat her and ordered her to apologize.

When the case came to light in 2001, Orlowska reluctantly agreed to give a statement to prosecutors. “I thought: When I stand before God and he asks me what I did for those other defenseless children, still threatened by the priest’s pedophile tendencies, what would I say?” she remembers. “Would I say I lacked courage, hadn’t the strength, was afraid of my own shadow?”

Moskwa was convicted in 2004 and given a two-year suspended jail sentence and an eight-year ban from teaching children. He ignored the teaching ban, suffered no canonical sanctions, and his ordinary, Archbishop Jozef Michalik of Przemysl, returned him to his parish.

The judge reprimanded Michalik, who is president of Poland’s bishops’ conference, for ignoring repeated requests to deal with Moskwa “in the way required by Christian morality.” On the contrary, Michalik assured the convicted pedophile of his “sympathy” in an open letter, protesting the affront “to the good name of our priests.”

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POLEN
Polen Heute

[Summary: The Polish Bishops’ Conference will publish a “white paper” on pedophilia among clergy. For the first time they will also show statistics and give information on the previously secret measures they used to keep abuse cases from becoming known. At the same time some Polish senators have launched a draft law against “anti-Catholic propaganda.” They are calling on the government to censure the “anti-Catholic propaganda from one of the United Nations agencies. The bill has provoked dissent, especially from abuse victims.]

Veröffentlicht von Lars Leschewitz am Samstag, 08. Februar 2014

Die polnische Bischofskonferenz will ein Weißbuch zu Pädophilie unter Geistlichen veröffentlichen. Erstmals sollen auch Statistiken und bisher geheime Maßnahmen zur Vorbeugung publik werden. Gleichzeitig haben Senatoren ein Gesetzesvorhaben gegen „antikatholische Propaganda“ gestartet. Missbrauchsofer sind empört.

Nach Medienberichten hat die polnische Bischofskonferenz heute angekündigt, ein Weißbuch zum Thema Pädophilie in der Kirche herauszugeben. Das Buch soll noch dieses Jahr erscheinen und sowohl Dokumente des Apostolischen Stuhls als auch päpstliche Lehren enthalten. Es sollen sowohl Prozeduren gegen Pädophilie innerhalb der Kirche, als auch Anleitungen zum Umgang mit Opfern und Tätern niedergeschrieben werden. Erstmalig sollen auch Statistiken zu Pädophiliefällen in polnischen Kirchen veröffentlicht werden.

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OKLAHOMA
KSWO

Lawton- The trial for a Lawton minister charged with child sexual abuse is set to begin Monday in Comanche County Court. Bobby Burrell was arrested last August after a ten-month investigation by Lawton Police.

A worker at a Lawton group home, the Sequoyah House, alerted authorities and told them Burrell exposed himself and performed lewd acts in front of kids.

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NORTHERN IRELAND
RTE News

A 58-year-old woman who has tried for over 40 years to find her sister gave evidence to Northern Ireland’s Historical Abuse Inquiry today.

The woman, who now lives in the Republic, spent 12 years in Derry’s Nazareth Home from 1957 until 1969.

She did not know she had a sibling in the home until one day when she was on a foster placement with another of the residents, who said to her “I’m your big sister”.

Giving evidence to the inquiry in Banbridge this morning, she said her sister left the orphanage as a 16-year-old and that she tried to take her with her but that she was too young to go.

The woman, named Joan, told the inquiry: “I’ve been trying to search for my sister for a long time since I left the convent, but I just can’t find her.”

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NORTHERN IRELAND
Irish Times

Mon, Feb 10, 2014

A witness to the inquiry investigating historical institutional abuse in Northern Ireland has recounted how nuns refused to believe her when she told them of how she was sexually abused when she was a young girl.

The 58-year-old woman also told the inquiry today how for almost 50 years she has been trying to locate her older sister who was with her in the Sisters of Nazareth home in Derry.

The witness – who was in Nazareth House residential home from 1957 to 1969 – described a “cruel” regime where she suffered a number of beatings from individual nuns. Her most serious allegations were of two occasions when she spent time on placement on two farms when she was about 11 or 12 years of age, the inquiry in Banbridge, Co Down heard.

She recalled an occasion on the first farm where she was driving a tractor when another girl on board the vehicle from Nazareth House almost fell off. She said that in the aftermath of that incident a man abused her by touching her private parts. That abuse stopped when another man intervened and told him to stop.

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AUSTRALIA
Broken Rites

By a Broken Rites researcher (article posted 10 February 2014)

Former students of a Catholic boys’ school in South Australia (Salesian College, Brooklyn Park, Adelaide) have complained that at least three senor priests at this school between the 1960s and the 1980s were child abusers. The abuse happened under the noses of the Melbourne-based national headquarters of this Catholic religious order, the “Salesians of Don Bosco”.

Here are details of the three priests in the Adelaide incidents:

1. The Salesians’ national headquarters have acknowledged that Father Patrick Laws committed child-sex offences in 1967-68 while he was a senior staff member at Salesian College, Brooklyn Park, Adelaide.

2. Another former student of the same school has lodged an official complaint about having been sexually abused in 1969 by another teacher, Father Adrian Wenting, who eventually rose to be the head of this school.

3. And in 1980-81, this school had a paedophile priest, Father Frank Klep, as its head. Eventually, Klep was jailed in Victoria for Victorian crimes.

These three priests also worked at other Salesian schools around Australia. Salesian priests and brothers belong to this Australia-wide order, instead of being confined to a particular local diocese.

The Salesian religious order has stated that it has a “special interest” in boys. As well as owning schools, the Salesians have also operated homes, clubs and camps for disadvantaged (that is, vulnerable) boys.

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NEW JERSEY
Patch

Posted by Jessica Mazzola (Editor) , February 10, 2014

A New Jersey couple says a priest who confessed in October to having sexually abused a Wyckoff teenage boy over a decade ago lied, according to a NorthJersey.com report.

According to the report, Michael and Amy Lenehan of Colts Neck say the day after Rev. Michael Fugee signed an agreement with prosecutors admitting he groped the teen between 1999 and 2001, he told them he didn’t do it. Fugee signed the confession, they told NorthJersey.com, to avoid jail time.

The remarks could become a legal issue, as one of the stipulations of the confession is that Fugee is forbidden from denouncing it, publicly and privately, the report said. He is also expected to be defrocked, and is not allowed to work with children again in any capacity, the report said.

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NEW JERSEY
The Record

MONDAY FEBRUARY 10, 2014

BY JIM NORMAN AND JEFF GREEN
STAFF WRITERS
THE RECORD

Molinelli ‘troubled’ by friends’ comments in abuse case

Bergen County Prosecutor John L. Molinelli said Sunday he would continue to monitor the comments of a confessed child-abusing Roman Catholic priest for evidence that he may have violated his agreement to never again profess his innocence.

The Rev. Michael Fugee, who has a history of violating a court order that he stay away from children, and of recanting a previous confession, agreed he would not deny his guilt as part of a deal last October to avoid prosecution and a possible prison sentence.

However, on Oct. 31, the day after he signed the agreement, he told Michael and Amy Lenehan, two of his most ardent supporters, that he had not repeatedly molested a teenager over a two-year period, but had only confessed because “my attorney said that I was sure to go to jail,” Michael Lenehan told The Record.

“The involvement of the Lenehans continues to trouble me,” Molinelli said in a telephone interview on Sunday. “I would prefer it if they would just stay out of it and keep quiet. I don’t know what they are trying to do, but I don’t think they are helping Fugee.”

The prosecutor added: “Our office knows a lot more about this case than the Lenehans do. I wish they would just be quiet and mind their own business.”

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IRELAND
Irish Examiner

By Niall Murray

That child sex abuse took place to such an extent within the Church as it did historically was inexcusable, he said. But while immense progress is being made in Ireland to deal with the issues, Archbishop Martin said there was a very strange situation in which people did not seem to realise the dangers of allowing abusers move around.

“The statistics will tell us that the number of paedophiles in society always remains the same,” Archbishop Martin told RTÉ radio’s This Week programme.

“The more you make certain areas no-go zones for paedophiles, then they appear somewhere else and they could appear somewhere else in the Church as well.

“For me, the big tragedy is: Why was it that, in the 1970s, there were 12 serial paedophiles active in the Dublin diocese at the same time. Something happened in those years, I don’t know, we haven’t got the analysis of it.”

Archbishop Martin said the recent European Court of Human Rights judgment in the case of Louise O’Keeffe, abused as a child in 1973 by her primary school principal, stated that the prosecution of child sex abusers waned a little after the 1960s.

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IRELAND
Irish Times

Patsy McGarry

Sun, Feb 9, 2014

Archbishop of Dublin Diarmuid Martin has said a dozen clerical child abusers were active in the Dublin archdiocese” in the 1970s.

He also described the Catholic Church’s handling of clerical child sex abuse in the past as “inexcusable”.

Archbishop Martin was speaking in the context of the UN Committee For the Rights Of The Child report last week which criticised the Vatican’s handling of clerical child sex abuse.

He said today that “12 serial (clerical) paedophiles were active” in the Dublin archdiocese” in the 1970s and described this as a “big tragedy”.

He said he had removed two priests from ministry due to abuse which took place during his period as Archbishop (since April 2004).

Where uncovering clerical child abuse was concerned “some inbuilt prejudices had to be overcome” and it would “take time to spread elsewhere,” the Archbishop said.

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NEW JERSEY
NJ.com

By Myles Ma/NJ.com
on February 10, 2014

WYCKOFF — Two supporters of the Rev. Michael Fugee told the Record he denied sexually abusing a teenage boy in Wyckoff a day after confessing to prosecutors in a written agreement.

Michael and Amy Lenehan said they spoke to Fugee in October, trying to convince him to void the consent order because they believed he was innocent.

Michael Lenehan said Fugee told him he didn’t molest the teenager, and that he only signed the confession to avoid prison time. The order forbids Fugee from renouncing his confession.

Fugee, 52, also had to petition the Vatican for his permanent removal from the priesthood, one of dozens of conditions under a court-approved agreement reached with the Bergen County Prosecutor’s Office in October. Bergen County Prosecutor John L. Molinelli said he took over supervision of Fugee from the archdiocese because he no longer had confidence in Archbishop John J. Myers’ ability to monitor him.

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CALIFORNIA
Redwood Times

The Associated Press
POSTED: 02/10/2014

SAN BERNARDINO, Calif.—A Southern California diocese has paid $3.8 million to settle two child-abuse lawsuits brought against a former Catholic priest.

The Diocese of San Bernardino announced Sunday that payments settling the two civil cases involving Alejandro Castillo came from a combination of insurance and diocese funds.

The Sun newspaper reports ( http://bit.ly/1fT80ca) parishioners were told during mass at each of the several San Bernardino County churches where Castillo served since the 1980s. He most recently served at Our Lady of Guadalupe in Ontario.

Castillo, now age 60 and recently defrocked, served eight months in jail after pleading guilty to lewd and lascivious acts involving a 12-year-old boy.

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ITALIEN
Tageszeitung

[Summary: The South Tyrol diocese four years ago hired an ombudsman for victims of violence and sexual abuse in church institutions. Werner Palla has dealt with 40 cases of abuse.]

von Artur Oberhofer

Es war nach einer Sitzung des Beirates von Fachpersonen, der die diözesane Ombudsstelle flankiert, als Werner Palla unfreiwillig Ohrenzeuge eines Gesprächs wurde. Er hörte, wie ein bekannter Südtiroler Psychiatrie-Primar zu einem Anwalt sagte: „Du, ich glaube, der Palla macht das mit Hausverstand.“

Das, so erzählt Werner Palla, „war für mich das schönste und größte Kompliment.“

Werner Palla, der ehemalige Volksanwalt, hatte im März 2010 einen gleichwohl delikaten wie schwierigen Job übernommen: Er wurde vom damaligen Bischof Karl Golser zum „unabhängigen Ombudsmann für Opfer von Gewalt und sexuellem Missbrauch in diözesanen Einrichtungen“ ernannt.

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CANADA
The Globe and Mail

ELIZABETH RENZETTI
The Globe and Mail
Published Monday, Feb. 10 2014

The Catholic Church probably thought the stormiest waters were behind. With a charismatic, groovy Pope at the helm, the church has been sailing an unexpectedly friendly sea. As if, perhaps, everyone had forgotten that thing. You know, that thing: The tens of thousands of children broken by abuse suffered at the hands of clergy. The priests left unpunished. The official silence.

And then, suddenly, a bolt from the sky, which religious types might imbue with a certain significance. Or you could see it as a glimpse of justice arriving far too late. A blistering report issued last week by the United Nations Committee on the Rights of the Child noted, “The Holy See has not acknowledged the extent of the crimes committed, has not taken the necessary measures to address cases of child sexual abuse and to protect children, and has adopted practices and policies which have led to the continuation of the abuse by and the impunity of the perpetrators.”

The language in the report is surprisingly blunt and fierce, as it should be. Victims, who suffered a double torment – abuse of their bodies by people who were meant to look after their souls – deserve a public reckoning at the very least, and ideally justice in a court setting. For too long the church has pretended this is an internal issue, a matter of ethics and doctrine and not of criminal justice, to be swept under a medieval carpet and never spoken of again. The UN committee notes that it took 14 years for Vatican representatives to answer its request to come and offer testimony.

A “code of silence” imposed on clergy has meant that transgressors were rarely brought to court, the report alleges. Astonishingly, it seems some of those priests still have contact with children.

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CZECH REPUBLIC
Fox News

Published February 10, 2014
Associated Press

PRAGUE – Czech police say they have arrested a Roman Catholic priest suspected of sexually abusing a teenage girl and raping a woman.

Police spokeswoman Dana Cirtkova says the 52-year-old suspect allegedly abused a 13-year old girl for producing pornography. No further details were given because of the girl’s age.

Cirtkova said Monday the priest is also suspected of raping a 37-year-old woman four times late last year.

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NORTHERN IRELAND
BBC News

The first female witness to give evidence to the Historical Abuse Inquiry said she was beaten by a nun until she was black and blue.

The woman, who is now 58, said she realised the nun enjoyed it when she cried so she stopped crying when she was hit.

She lived in Nazareth House in Bishop Street, Londonderry from 1957-1969.

The inquiry is investigating abuse claims against children’s residential institutions in NI from 1922 to 1995.

The witness also told the inquiry she was sexually assaulted by two foster carers she was placed with.

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AUSTRALIA
Gympie Times

Jessica Grewal 8th Feb 2014

THE man with the walking stick is hovering in the hall of Sydney’s Governor Macquarie Tower, resisting his wife’s attempts to coax him into the hearing room.

It’s been a long time since he has been in the company of Salvation Army uniforms and the prospect of spending the next few hours stuck with them on the 17th floor, is less than appealing.

Inside, there is nervous laughter, tears and warm greetings, as scores of grey-haired men and women, many of whom have travelled from other sides of the country, file through a door bearing the motif of the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse.

Hearing aids are adjusted and some move closer to get a better seat – they’ve waited decades for this moment and they don’t want to miss a word.

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AUSTRALIA
The Guardian (UK)

Australian Associated Press
theguardian.com, Sunday 9 February 2014

The Salvation Army is willing to discuss being part of a national redress scheme for victims of child sexual and physical abuse in its homes.

Commissioner James Condon, head of the army’s eastern territory, told the royal commission into institutional responses to child sexual abuse it already had a People First redress program in place.

However, he said the Salvation Army would take part in talks on a national scheme, proposed by the Catholic and Anglican churches.

“We are more than prepared to enter into dialogue regarding that,” Condon told the hearing in Sydney on Monday in reply to a question from commission chair Justice Peter McClellan.

The commission has heard the Salvation Army has unreservedly apologised to victims of abuse.

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AUSTRALIA
Sky News

The Salvation Army wants those who were abused in its homes to come forward.

The army has unreservedly apologised to victims of sexual abuse but understands that many victims remain traumatised.

‘There are people in the hearing room here who find it difficult to see the (Salvation Army) uniform and that makes me sad,’ Commissioner James Condon told a hearing of the royal commission into child sexual abuse in Sydney.

‘We invite all who were harmed to get in touch with us.’

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AUSTRALIA
The World Today

ELEANOR HALL: Now to the Royal Commission into Child Abuse, where one of the Salvation Army’s most senior leaders told the inquiry this morning that the organisation had received more than 150 abuse complaints, mostly over the last decade.

Commissioner James Condon’s evidence follows two weeks of public hearings which the Salvation Army conceded have shamed the organisation. Today he told the inquiry that the Salvation Army is no longer focused on protecting its reputation but on putting victims first.

Emily Bourke has been covering the inquiry and joins us now. Emily, is commissioner Condon the most senior Salvation Army witness to appear at the inquiry?

EMILY BOURKE: He certainly is. Commissioner James Condon has been serving with the Salvation Army for more than 40 years, and he was appointed to the Commander post in 2011.

He’s revealed today that, over the past decade, there’s been a transformation in the way the organisation handles complaints. Nowadays, victims are treated warmly, their stories are believed and respected – and this is in stark contrast to the policy of the 1990s, which was to acknowledge the abuse but not to apologise to victims and not to pay any compensation claims had been proved in court.

Now, James Condon told the inquiry that the organisation has received 157 complaints; 133 people have gone through the process and received an ex gratia payment, an apology and counselling costs over the last 10 years. Here’s a bit of what he had to say.

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AUSTRALIA
9 News

The world leader of the Salvation Army says he was not prepared for the horror of what is emerging about their children’s homes in Australia.

In a letter from Andre Cox read at a hearing of the Royal Commission into Institutional Response to Child Sexual Abuse in Sydney on Monday, he said he was disturbed “to the very depths of his being” by what he was reading out of Australia.

“While we knew that many of the stories would be harrowing, nothing could really prepare us for the full horror of the stories that are emerging.”

He said he had written to leaders of the army in 126 countries to ensure their policies and procedures were regularly updated and implemented without exception and called on the army in Australia to ensure its procedures were robust.

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UNITED STATES
Boston Globe

By James Carroll | GLOBE COLUMNIST FEBRUARY 10, 2014

ON THE QUESTION of how far papal authority extends, the canon law of the Catholic Church could not be clearer: “The vicar of Christ. . . possesses full, immediate, and universal ordinary power in the Church, which he is always able to exercise freely.” (Can. 331) Note that canon law does not say, “except in cases of priestly sex abuse of children.” Canon law does not say that priests and bishops are independent contractors. Canon law does not say that what happens in Catholic parishes and dioceses around the world has nothing to do with Rome. In fact, another canon reads, “By virtue of his office, the Roman pontiff not only possesses power over the universal church, but also obtains the primacy of ordinary power over all particular churches and groups of them.” (Can. 333)

How to square that sweeping papal power with the shameless dodge put forward by the Holy See in this era of church disgrace — the claim that, when it comes to protecting children from abuse, the Roman Catholic Church is legally responsible only to safeguard those living in the confines of Vatican City, a tiny city-state that would fit inside New York’s Central Park eight times? Washing the Vatican’s hands of broader responsibility for the staggering transnational accumulation of rapes by priests, and systematic enabling of those rapes by bishops, a Vatican spokesman said, “When individual institutions of national churches are implicated, that does not regard the competence of the Holy See . . . The competence of the Holy See is at the level of the Holy See.”

Last week, the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child mocked that claim by issuing a scathing indictment of Catholic child abuse, laying full responsibility at the feet of the pope himself. The committee, investigating priestly abuse under the authority of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, to which the Vatican is a signatory, reminded the Holy See that “by ratifying the convention it has committed itself to implementing the convention not only on the territory of the Vatican City state, but also as the supreme power of the Catholic Church through individuals and institutions placed under its authority.” The UN committee, that is, upholds canon law better than the Vatican does.

The pope’s men, including squads of lawyers who deny that offending priests and bishops are “employees” and insist that the pope as a sovereign head of state is immune from lawsuits, are obviously seeking to fend off the threat of multinational litigation that could saddle the Vatican with billions of dollars in liabilities. So far, courts have mostly sided with the Holy See.

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CZECH REPUBLIC
Prague Post

Charges include child abuse and porn production, suspected of abusing 13-year-old girl

Havlíčkův Brod, East Bohemia, Feb 10 (ČTK) — The Czech Police arrested a 52-year-old priest and accused him of rape, sexual abuse and other crimes and the man faces up to 10 years in prison if his guilt is proved, police spokeswoman Dana Čírtková said today.

Čírtková said the case is exceptionally serious not only because of the crimes concerned but also because “the perpetrator took advantage of the helplessness and trust of the victims with whom he was in regular contact as a clergyman.”

The priest was remanded in custody on Thursday.

A 37-year-old woman reported to the police that the priest exerted psychological pressure on her from mid-2012 and that he raped her four times in late 2013.

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UNITED KINGDOM
BBC News

14 October 2013

By Nic Rigby
BBC News

Missing police files relating to investigations into child abuse claims at an orphanage in Bedfordshire are now thought to have been destroyed.

Ex-residents have alleged they were abused at St Francis Boys Home in Shefford, in the 1950s and 1960s.

An ex-resident complained to police about missing files relating to police inquiries in 1993 and 2002.

Bedfordshire Police said they believe the files were destroyed and has begun a new inquiry into abuse at the home.

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UNITED KINGDOM
BBC News

By Nic Rigby
BBC News

7 November 2013

Former residents of a Catholic orphanage who claim they suffered physical and sexual abuse have expressed anger at a police decision to end an inquiry into the allegations.

In May Bedfordshire Police said it had started an investigation into abuse at the St Francis Boys Home in Shefford in the 1950s and 1960s.

Police said they had ended the inquiry as there was no-one alive to prosecute.

Ex-resident Tony Walsh said he was “disgusted” at the development.

The BBC has talked to former residents of the home who allege they were physically and/or sexually abused at the orphanage, run by the Catholic diocese of Northampton.

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UNITED KINGDOM
BBC News

10 February 2014

By Nic Rigby
BBC News

A former resident of a Catholic orphanage at the centre of a police inquiry has said he is still haunted by the “nightmare” of abuse inflicted by a priest and nuns.

Tom Browne, 70, originally from Cambridge, was sent to the St Francis Boys Home in Shefford, Bedfordshire, in about 1950.

Mr Browne has waived his right to anonymity to speak about the abuse.

He is the second man to allege abuse by Father Wilfred Johnson.

Fr Johnson ran the home between 1945 and 1954 and died in 1994.

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UNITED STATES
Bilgrimage

Quote for Day: “UN’s Message to the Church Is Stark. If You Want to Be a State, You Need to Act Like One”

In the Irish Independent Brendan O’Connor argues that we must not allow our “outrage fatigue” amidst a ceaseless stream of reports about the cover-up of sexual abuse of minors by Catholic authority figures to obscure the importance of the U.N. report on the Vatican:

That’s why the latest UN report is important, because it takes all that baggage out of it and treats the church as what it is – a de facto state, geographically dispersed throughout the world certainly, but a metaphysical and legal entity, and therefore, “a sovereign subject of international law having an original non derived legal personality independent of any territorial authority of jurisdiction.”
While some will argue about the Vatican’s claim to statehood, the UN uses the church’s claim to independent statehood against it. The UN is basically treating the Holy See as a state, subject to the same duties and responsibilities as other states. And what the UN finds is a rogue state.

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OKLAHOMA
KTEN

[with video]

By Rick Springer, Exec. Producer

MCALESTER, OK — New developments in the case against a former McAlester Jehovah’s Witness Church elder accused of molesting children 30 years ago.

The McAlester District Attorney’s Office now claims the “entire body of the Jehovah’s Witness Church” covered up child molestation crimes.

Ronald Lawrence was charged in November with multiple counts of lewd molestation, forcible sodomy, and rape by instrumentation.

Two women claim Lawrence touched them inappropriately and bathed with them on several occasions between 1977 and 1982.

Back when Lawrence was an elder at the Jehovah’s Witness Church in McAlester.

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OKLAHOMA
NewsOK

BY DYLAN GOFORTH, Tulsa World • Published: February 4, 2014

McALESTER — The Tulsa World reports that Pittsburg County prosecutors have filed a motion alleging a church coverup in the case of a church elder who is accused of molesting multiple children more than 30 years ago.

Ronald Lawrence, an elder at the Jehovah’s Witness Church in McAlester, was arrested in November following a long investigation, McAlester police said at the time. The case stems from allegations made by three accusers who told police Lawrence abused them in the late 1970s and early 1980s.

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OKLAHOMA
McAlester News-Capital

By Jeanne LeFlore
Staff Writer

McALESTER — “The entire church body of the Jehovah Witness Church” allegedly concealed child molestation crimes alleged against a man identified as a former church elder, according to a motion filed in Pittsburg County District Court.

The motion was filed Jan. 28 by the District 18 District Attorneys office in connection with molestation charges against Ronald Lawrence, 76.

Ronald was an elder in the McAlester Jehovah Witness Church, according to McAlester Police Dectective Sergeant Chris Morris.

“He is no longer an elder but he is still a member of the church,” Morris said.

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OKLAHOMA
The Global Dispatch

The top leadership of the Jehovah’s Witness worldwide organization could face criminal charges in a cover-up of alleged child sexual abuse.

The District 18 District Attorney’s Office in the State of Oklahoma filed a motion on Jan. 28, 2014 in the case of accused molester Ronald Lawrence that alleges the top leadership of the Jehovah’s Witness Church knew about claims of child rape and molestation and deliberately concealed them.

“The actions of the church, their banishment of Lawrence on one or more occasion and the directives of the governing body toward the victims and their family members regarding these crimes were actions of concealment and further actions preventing the victims from reporting the crimes to law enforcement,” the motion states.

In November 2013, Ronald Lawrence a former church elder was charged in Pittsburg County Oklahoma District Court with 19 felony counts, including 11 of molestation, seven of forcible sodomy, and one of rape by instrumentation against two preteen girls and one 5-year-old boy.

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CANADA
London Free Press

By Randy Richmond, The London Free Press
Sunday, February 9, 2014

John Swales is happy, but hesitates to use the word.

After decades of fierce battles against church, state and all the bureacrats, lawyers and counsellors in between, the outspoken survivor of childhood sexual abuse has got one thing he’s always wanted — a voice at the table.

The Londoner and other men and women who were abused as children are helping lead a novel, $180,000, two-year plan to improve the help they get in London and Middlesex County.

“I’m excited, I don’t know if I like the word happy,” Swales said. “I don’t know if happy is in my vocabulary.”

The project, called Opening the Circle, is funded by the federal government and coordinated by the Sexual Abuse Centre London (SACL), an agency Swales targeted only a few years back.

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UNITED STATES
New York Daily News

Editorial

Down through the years, various arms of the United Nations have passed resolutions condemning what the world body calls defamation of religion. Now, the UN has committed the very offense it so heartily condemns.

The target was the Catholic Church, the one religious faith that is open to bashing in the best of circles. The perpetrator was the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child.

The committee used an investigation into the Vatican’s troubled history of dealing with child sex abuse cases to roam far and wide into church doctrine. The church views homosexual sex as sinful, thus the church has contributed to “the social stigmatization of and violence against lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender adolescents and children raised by same sex couples.”

The church’s moral teachings hold against contraception and abortion, thus the church is complicit in the abandonment of unwanted babies.

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COLORADO
TribTown

THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
First Posted: February 09, 2014

BOULDER, Colorado — A Longmont youth pastor accused of having an inappropriate relationship with a teenage church member over several years has pleaded not guilty.

The Daily Camera reports (http://bit.ly/M2o7vp ) 35-year-old Jason Roberson appeared in Boulder District Court on Friday and denied charges of sexual assault on a child by a person in a position of trust and invasion of privacy. He is scheduled to go to trial July 14.

The alleged victim, now 24, went to police in April and told investigators she and Roberson had an inappropriate relationship that began when she was 15 and continued for seven years.

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AUSTRALIA
Courier Mail

BY ANNETTE BLACKWELL AAP FEBRUARY 10, 2014

THE Salvation Army is willing to discuss being part of a national redress scheme for victims of child sexual and physical abuse in its homes.

Commissioner James Condon, head of the army’s eastern territory, told the royal commission into institutional responses to child sexual abuse it already had a People First redress program in place.

However, it would take part in talks on a national scheme, proposed by the Catholic and Anglican churches.

“We are more than prepared to enter into dialogue regarding that,” Mr Condon told the hearing in Sydney on Monday in reply to a question from commission chair Justice Peter McClellan.

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AUSTRALIA
The Australian

Salvation Army Commissioner James Condon apologises for child sex abuse cases

DAN BOX THE AUSTRALIAN FEBRUARY 10, 2014

A SALVATION Army commander broke down in tears today as he apologised for dozens of cases of child sexual abuse in its homes across Australia, describing it as the organisation’s greatest failure.

Commissioner James Condon, who reports directly to the army’s general in London, said the often brutal mistreatment of children in at least four boys’ homes between the 1950s and 1970s was “a betrayal … of everything the Salvation Army was meant to be.”

“Evil and damaged people were able to get away with child sexual abuse for too long. I think that is the Salvation Army’s greatest failure,” he told the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse.

To date, 157 former residents have complained of being sexually abused while living in the homes, Commissioner Condon said, and he believed other victims had not yet contacted the organisation.

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UNITED KINGDOM
MSN News

More than nine out of 10 people support the introduction of mandatory reporting of abuse in the wake of the Jimmy Savile revelations, according to a poll.

Staff at schools, care homes and hospitals should have a legal requirement to report sexual and other forms of abuse if they discover them, according to 94% of people surveyed by legal firm Slater & Gordon.

A host of child abuse charities have already called for the law change, alongside former director of public prosecutions Keir Starmer.

Liz Dux, head of abuse at Slater & Gordon, which represents 70 people who say they were victims of Savile, said mandatory reporting could have prevented many crimes being committed.

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CALIFORNIA
The Worthy Adversary

Posted by Joelle Casteix on February 9, 2014

According to the Riverside Press Enterprise, two victims of convicted priest Alejandro “Alex” Castillo settled their sex abuse and cover-up lawsuits against the Diocese of San Bernardino for $3.8 million.

In a statement, the diocese called Castillo’s acts “sinful and unlawful.”

They also added this:

The diocese acknowledges and deeply regrets the sinful and unlawful actions of Castillo, while noting it took immediate action to remove him from ministry and notify police as soon as the allegations … were known.

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AUSTRALIA
ABC News

By Thomas Oriti

A Salvation Army leader says the organisation no longer considers its reputation a priority when dealing with victims of child sexual abuse.

Commissioner James Condon is the leader of the Salvation Army’s Eastern Territory, covering New South Wales, Queensland and the ACT.

He has sat through two weeks of disturbing evidence at the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse, which is examining abuse at four boys’ homes in NSW and Queensland.

Former residents of the homes say they were raped by Salvation Army officers and “rented out” for sex between the 1950s and the 1970s.

The commissioner heard that whistleblowers were dismissed as liars and boys were bashed if they reported the abuse.

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CHICAGO (IL)
Chicago Sun-Times

EDITORIALS

February 9, 2014

The Vatican could learn something from the Chicago way, and we mean that in a good sense.

On Wednesday, a United Nations human rights panel ripped the Vatican for not doing enough to prevent abuse of children by priests. The committee said a decades-long code of secrecy and the silencing of abuse victims to protect the church’s reputation let priests sexually abuse tens of thousands of children worldwide.

The blistering report by the United Nations Committee on the Rights of the Child sounds a lot like what we’ve heard over the years about the Archdiocese of Chicago, where for years allegations were hushed up and priests known to have abused children were quietly switched to different parishes, where they resumed their predatory behavior and added to the horrific annals of painful human tragedy.

But in the early 1990s, the archdiocese changed its approach from combativeness, foot-dragging secrecy to greater openness and a strong emphasis on prevention. Its record hasn’t been perfect since then — the Rev. Daniel McCormack pleaded guilty to criminal sexual abuse crimes that took place in 2006 and later, and the pastor of a Schaumburg parish from 1994 to 2006 has just been added to the list of clergy against whom there are substantiated claims of abuse. But since 1992, the trends all have moved sharply in the right direction. Known abusers all are out of the ministry, all known incidents since 1996 have been reported to authorities; the number of new allegations has dropped dramatically, and therapeutic services have been made available to victims who have come forward. As part of a mediated settlement, the archdiocese also has released 6,000 pages of documents from case files of 30 offending priests. All adults, including volunteers, who work with children are trained to recognize and prevent abuse, and children are taught how to deflect inappropriate behavior. A 12-person review board makes recommendations to the cardinal on whether accused priests should remain in the ministry.

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CALIFORNIA
The Press-Enterprise

FEBRUARY 9, 2014 BY RICHARD BROOKS

A $3.8 million settlement has ended two child-abuse lawsuits brought against a newly defrocked Catholic priest, though a third lawsuit lingers, parishioners were told during weekend Masses.

“The Diocese of San Bernardino has reached a settlement in … two civil cases involving allegations of sexual abuse of two separate minors by Alex Castillo,” Father Gerald O’Shaughnessy told hundreds of people Sunday at a 9 a.m. Mass at St. Catherine of Siena Catholic Church in Rialto. “The settlement of $3.8 million for both cases was paid through a combination of insurance and diocese resources.”

Alejandro “Alex” Castillo, now age 60, served eight months in jail after pleading guilty to lewd and lascivious acts involving a 12-year-old boy. As a result of that conviction, he is a registered sex offender. And parishioners were told that the Vatican recently ordered him permanently removed from the priesthood.

He served at Our Lady of Guadalupe in Ontario from 2003 to 2010 and at St. George parish in Ontario from 2006 to 2008.

Before that, Castillo was at St. Catherine’s in Rialto from 2000 to 2003, and at St. Anthony’s in San Bernardino in 1988 and 1989, church officials have said.

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UNITED STATES
The Worthy Adversary

Posted by Joelle Casteix on February 9, 2014

There have been a number of things about the recent UN committee report on (and the global response to) the Vatican’s role in clergy sex abuse that have given me pause.

The first issue has been the one to which Vatican and global Catholic officials have clung : The report’s inclusion of language about the church’s teachings on homosexuality and abortion.

The church struck back hard, saying that the Vatican was “trampling on religious freedom.”

Even I had some issues with it. When I was asked for a comment by CNN International, I declined, saying that the focus of victims is clergy sexual abuse. And, really, it is. It is not the victims’
movement’s place to comment on other issues, because victims come from all beliefs. But personally, I believed that the committee had overstepped.

But late last night, it dawned on me: I’m wrong.

As far as the UN is concerned, the Code of Canon Law is not a religious document. It’s a constitution. The church’s teachings about abortion, homosexuality, etc., aren’t religious views—THEY ARE THE LAWS OF A NATION-STATE.

I was clouding my views on the report with American thinking about religious freedom. And that’s exactly what the Vatican wants.

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NEW JERSEY
The Record

SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 8, 2014 LAST UPDATED: SUNDAY FEBRUARY 9, 2014

BY JEFF GREEN
STAFF WRITER
THE RECORD

A day after the Rev. Michael Fugee signed an agreement with prosecutors in October in which he confessed for a second time to having sexually abused a teenage boy in Wyckoff, two of his most ardent supporters say he proclaimed his innocence to them, possibly violating the agreement and risking jail.

As part of the agreement with the prosecutors, Fugee had promised to stop denying the abuse, which took place over several years more than a decade ago.

Two of the priest’s supporters, Michael and Amy Lenehan, said that on Oct. 31, the day after Fugee signed the agreement with the Bergen County Prosecutor’s Office, led by John L. Molinelli, Fugee told them in a telephone conversation that he had never abused the boy. He said he had agreed to confess so he could avoid conviction on charges that could have sent him to jail, they said.

Fugee’s remarks to the couple represented his second recantation during a legal entanglement that has endured for more than a decade. The twists and turns have disturbed congregants in several dioceses who discovered that a priest who’s been accused of molestation was again in their midst and again in contact with young people — despite a legal agreement that he no longer work with children. It also ensnared the Archdiocese of Newark, which had agreed to enforce the accord and to monitor the priest.

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MEXICO
La Jornada

[Summary: Victims of sexual abuse by priests will continue on their paths to justice and reparation to end decades of impunity for crimes by priests around the world. This time 10 experts on the United Nationals torture committee will question authorities of the Holy See on April 28 to determine if they are complying with that international treaty. In an interview with La Jornada, Pamela Spees, a lawyer with the Central for Constitutional Rights, a non-profit organization, that along with the Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests have reported the Vatican to the International Criminal Court for alleged crimes against humanity and to the UN for sex crimes and cover-up of pedophile priests.]

Sanjuana Martínez
Especial para La Jornada
Periódico La Jornada
Domingo 9 de febrero de 2014, p. 9

Las víctimas de abusos sexuales por sacerdotes continúan en su ca­mino hacia la justicia y la reparación para terminar con décadas de impunidad en torno a los crímenes de curas en el mundo. Esta vez, 10 expertos del Comité Contra la Tortura (CAT) de la Organización de las Naciones Unidas (ONU), con sede en Ginebra, interrogarán a las autoridades de la Santa Sede el próximo 28 de abril, para determinar si están cumpliendo con dicho tratado internacional.

Los días de impunidad del Vaticano están contados, dice de manera categórica en entrevista con La Jornada, Pamela Spees, abogada del Centro de Derechos Constitucionales (CCR), organización sin fines de lucro, que junto a la Red de Sobrevivientes de Abusos Sexuales de Sacerdotes (SNAP, por sus siglas en inglés) han denunciado al Vaticano ante la Corte Penal Internacional (CPI) por crímenes de lesa humanidad y ante la ONU por crímenes sexuales y el encubrimiento de miles de sacerdotes pederastas y desprotección de niños.

Spees es el cerebro legal de la demanda internacional y los informes presentados en la ONU, primero ante el Comité de los Derechos del Niño y ahora ante el Comité Contra la Tortura: El Comité es muy claro: la violación y los distintos tipos de violencia sexual constituyen una forma de tortura, trato cruel e inhumano. El Vaticano ratificó la Convención contra la Tortura y otros Tratos o Penas Crueles, Inhumanos o Degradantes, y existe claramente una preocupación de que realmente la Santa Sede esté cumpliendo con ese tratado.

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BOSTON (MA)
Irish Central

JAMES O’SHEA @irishcentral February 09,2014

Cardinal Sean P. O’Malley of Boston, who is personally close to the pope, says he worries that people expect too much from him, especially on visits he makes outside the Vatican, stressing he was not a young man.

He was speaking in a lengthy interview in the Boston Globe.

The cardinal joined 77-year-old Francis on a visit to the Italian city of Assisi on Oct. 4, and saw the incredible pressure he was under.

“They dragged him to every cave, every altar, and every crypt,” he said. “Everywhere he would go, someone would stand up and say, ‘This is the first time a pope has ever come here.’ I kept thinking, ‘He shouldn’t be here this time!’ ”

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AUSTRALIA
Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse

The Royal Commission is holding a public hearing in Brisbane commencing 17 February 2014 into the response by the Catholic Education Office, Diocese of Toowoomba, to allegations of child sexual abuse.

The scope and purpose of the public hearing is as follows:

The response by the Principal and other members of staff of a Catholic primary school in Toowoomba, Queensland, to allegations of child sexual abuse made against a teacher at the primary school, in September 2007.
The response by officers of the Catholic Education Office, Diocese of Toowoomba, to information supplied by the primary school Principal regarding the allegations of child sexual abuse received in September 2007.
The adequacy and implementation of systems, policies and procedures of the Catholic Education Office, Diocese of Toowoomba, and the primary school for the prevention, detection, investigation and reporting of allegations of child sexual abuse since 2007.
Any related matters.

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NORTHERN IRELAND
Historical Institutional Abuse Inquiry

The next hearing will be on Monday 10th February 2014.

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CANADA
Sylvia’s Site

Posted on February 8, 2014 by Sylvia

It’s been an interesting 10 or elven days. No, I have not been out of circulation at all – still keeping busy writing, and on the phone, and doing a lot of thinking. Those who know me have heard me say time and again that I don’t write easily. I don’t. I envy those who sit down and everything flows. For me, it’s a bit of a hair -pulling struggle. As you know some days back I was settling in to write about Father Joe LeClair ‘s days in court. I had to set it that aside when other things cane up which I had to deal with then and there. Then I’d get back to writing and pondering. Obviously it’s not done 🙁 I will get it together as soon as I can. Ditto a few details about the Father Rene Labelle trial which I really do want to pass along.

And, yes, then came word of the new charges against former Cornwall School teacher Marc Lalonde.

Those who have taken the time to read The Marcel Lalonde investigation will get a very small taste of the Cornwall debacle. I found myself wading through testimony and documents and Justice Glaude’s final report to, as they say in court, “refresh” my memory. And all the dirt and the dirty details come rushing back.

What a tangled web.

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UNITED STATES
National Catholic Register

by BRIAN FRAGA 02/08/2014

UNITED NATIONS — A U.N. committee’s report that said the Holy See should change its moral teachings in order to comply with an international treaty on children’s rights is the latest example in a 20-year history of U.N. bureaucrats trying to coerce member states into accepting secularist values, according to several Catholic observers of the international body.

“This was a ‘gift from God,’ and the reason is because it points out to a huge audience the radicalism of the United Nations’ treaty monitoring bodies, who have been doing things like this for years,” said Austin Ruse, president of the Catholic Family & Human Rights Institute (C-FAM), a non-governmental organization that monitors the United Nations.

Since 1994, when the Holy See successfully fought back efforts to declare abortion an international human right during a U.N. conference in Cairo, abortion advocates and their allies, according to a C-FAM white paper, have looked to further their agenda by relying upon U.N. committees, known as treaty bodies, to interpret international human-rights treaties to cover topics not mentioned in the actual treaties, such as wider access to birth control, permissive abortion laws and the legalization of same-sex “marriages.”

“These treaty bodies have been sort of inclined to aggrandize for their own power, and they’ve done it by controlling the process by which countries report on their implementation of these treaties,” said Stefano Gennarini, the director of C-FAM’s Center for Legal Studies.

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IRELAND
Irish Independent

BRENDAN O’CONNOR – 09 FEBRUARY 2014

WE CAN tend to outrage fatigue when it comes to reports about the crimes committed within the Catholic Church in recent years. So when the UN Committee on the Rights of Children reported last week on its ongoing engagement with the Catholic Church regarding the rights of children within the Vatican and the Holy See, many people will have been tempted to ignore it.

After all, there wasn’t much new in it. The church has a history of trafficking babies, of discriminating against children based on their sexuality or that of their parents, and of allowing children to be abused, of protecting their abusers from the law, of moving abusers around –allowing them to abuse again, and when it came to abuse, of “consistently placing the preservation of the church and the protection of the perpetrators above children’s best interests”. The church has even protected priests from their own children, denying children the right to know the identity of their fathers and “only agreeing payments from the church until the child is financially independent only if they [the mothers] sign a confidentiality agreement not to disclose any information”.

We knew all that stuff already, didn’t we?

Except it is a little different this time. Because previously our engagement with the church has tended to stay within the family. There has been an emotional attachment that has clouded the issue for us. Because there is always a sense, in this country, that everyone was complicit in all this because, after all, we are, or were, the church.

And because the church was so intermingled with the State here, and with the provision of health, education and welfare, the crimes themselves became intermingled with social norms of the time and so on.

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NEW YORK
Buffalo News

By Jay Tokasz | News Staff Reporter | Google+
on February 8, 2014

A group of local Catholics battling Bishop Richard J. Malone over the future of an East Side church has found an unexpected ally – the Vatican.

St. Ann Church just six months ago was on track to be demolished.

But the Vatican’s Congregation for the Clergy, in a recent ruling on an appeal by St. Ann parishioners, has made it clear that repairs of up to $12 million are not a good enough reason for the building to be demolished or converted into something other than a Catholic church.

“Rome is saying it should be a church,” said Ronald Bates, part of the group fighting to keep the church going. “We can’t throw it away. It’s craziness.”

The Vatican decision marked a rare and resounding win for Catholic lay people objecting to a bishop’s decision.

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CANADA
Toronto Star

A tough new United Nations report challenges the Vatican to move decisively to curb clerical sex abuse, and advance child rights.

It’s a scathing report, bound to shake up Catholics who are comfortable in their pews. But the United Nations committee that has just lambasted the Vatican for letting clerical sex abusers get away with their crimes will help amplify Pope Francis’ message that the church in its entirety needs to clean up its act because its credibility is on the line.

Three popes now have forcefully condemned clerical abuse of children. John Paul II denounced it as “appalling sin” and outright “crime.” Benedict XVI promised to rid the church of such “filth.” And Francis has ordered Vatican prosecutors and bishops to “act decisively” to make sure that minors are protected and abusers are held to account. The Church’s moral witness and credibility is riding on this, he warned.

It is indeed, and the UN’s Committee on the Rights of the Child has forcefully reminded Catholic clerics and laity alike of just how harshly the wider world judges the church’s tragic failings in this area, including here in Canada, and its slowness to come to terms with past abuses. Stinging as it is, the high-profile UN report issued this past week serves to highlight some of what remains to be done. It stems from a routine review of how signatories to the Convention on the Rights of the Child are living up to their obligations. The Holy See signed on in 1990.

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Washington Post

Pope Francis faces church divided over doctrine, global poll of Catholics finds

By Michelle Boorstein and Peyton M. Craighill, Updated: Sunday, February 9

Most Catholics worldwide disagree with church teachings on divorce, abortion and contraception and are split on whether women and married men should become priests, according to a large new poll released Sunday and commissioned by the U.S. Spanish-language network Univision. On the topic of gay marriage, two-thirds of Catholics polled agree with church leaders.

Overall, however, the poll of more than 12,000 Catholics in 12 countries reveals a church dramatically divided: Between the developing world in Africa and Asia, which hews closely to doctrine on these issues, and Western countries in Europe, North America and parts of Latin America, which strongly support practices that the church teaches are immoral.

This global poll of Catholics was conducted by Bendixen & Amandi International for Univision. Find more details here.
Click here to subscribe.

The widespread disagreement with Catholic doctrine on abortion and contraception and the hemispheric chasm lay bare the challenge for Pope Francis’s year-old papacy and the unity it has engendered.

Among the findings:

●19 percent of Catholics in the European countries and 30 percent in the Latin American countries surveyed agree with church teaching that divorcees who remarry outside the church should not receive Communion, compared with 75 percent in the most Catholic African countries.

●30 percent of Catholics in the European countries and 36 percent in the United States agree with the church ban on female priests, compared with 80 percent in Africa and 76 percent in the Philippines, the country with the largest Catholic population in Asia.

●40 percent of Catholics in the United States oppose gay marriage, compared with 99 percent in Africa.

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VATICAN CITY
Al-Arabiya

By Philip Pullella | Vatican City
Sunday, 9 February 2014

A year after his shock resignation, Pope Emeritus Benedict has no regrets and believes history will vindicate his tumultuous and much-criticized papacy, the man closest to him told Reuters in a rare interview.

Archbishop Georg Ganswein, who now works for the former pope as well as being the head of Pope Francis’s household, shed new light on how Benedict spends his days, his health, his feelings about his momentous decision and the relationship between the two popes.

“Pope Benedict is at peace with himself and I think he is even at peace with the Lord,” said Ganswein, whose twin roles bring him into contact with the current and former pope daily.

Benedict announced his decision to resign, the first pope to do so in 600 years, on Feb. 11, 2013, citing the physical and psychological strains of the papacy. He stepped down on February 28 and Francis was elected on March 13 as the first non-European pope in 1,300 years.

His eight-year papacy was marked by mishaps and missteps, often blamed on a dysfunctional Vatican bureaucracy, and intrigue befitting a Renaissance court. The “Vatileaks” scandal, in which Benedict’s butler was arrested for leaking the pope’s private papers to the media, alleged corruption in the Holy See, something the Vatican denied.

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AUSTRALIA
Sydney Morning Herald

February 10, 2014
Cathy Kezelman

Australia’s Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse is a global first. Its private sessions and public hearings, including those into the Catholic Church’s Towards Healing Process, have given a voice to victims. The royal commission, Australia and the world are listening and bearing witness to a litany of abuses and failures within the church as well as other institutions. More is to come.

The commission is helping to bring the deep-seated, pervasive and devastating issues of child sexual abuse into the light. It is an open and transparent process to uncover the systemic failures of institutions to protect children and respond appropriately to these alleged and established crimes. It is leading the way in how these investigations should be handled. Hopefully, this will be reflected around the globe.

Another world first is the unprecedented and scathing report from the United Nations into the Vatican’s handling of child sexual abuse. The UN has deemed the Catholic Church to be in breach of the Convention on the Rights of the Child, a human rights treaty prioritising the rights of children, to which it is a signatory. This finding confirms what survivors and survivor groups have long known: tens of thousands of children have been betrayed, harmed and violated within and by the church, its clergy and workers.

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BOSTON (MA)
Boston Globe

By John L. Allen Jr. and Lisa Wangsness | GLOBE STAFF FEBRUARY 09, 2014

Cardinal Sean P. O’Malley says he shares in the sense of wonder at how swiftly Pope Francis has captured the world’s attention and softened, with his sometimes startling words and personal gestures, the image of the Roman Catholic Church.

But he cautions that those with high expectations that the shift in tone presages major changes in church teachings on contraception, abortion, homosexuality, and other flashpoint issues are likely to be disappointed.

“I don’t see the pope as changing doctrine,’’ O’Malley said in an interview with the Globe, though he said the pontiff’s focus on compassion and mercy over doctrinal purity has reverberated powerfully throughout the church.

The Roman Catholic archbishop of Boston and the closest American adviser to the popular new pontiff, O’Malley said says it would also be unrealistic to expect the church to consider allowing divorced and remarried Catholics to receive the sacraments, even though Francis himself once appeared to signal openness to the idea. …

O’Malley, who has built a reputation as a reformer on clergy sexual abuse, expressed “distress” over a Feb. 5 report from the United Nations Committee on the Rights of the Child charging the Vatican’s policies allowed child abuse to continue and let perpetrators go unpunished.

He said Vatican could not be held responsible for policing the entire Catholic world — it is only in direct charge, he said, of its own citizens in Vatican City.

“I think the competence of the United Nations would have been to look at how they’re managing child protection with their own citizens,” he said. “I think that would have been a very positive contribution, because I think it’s very important the Holy See become a model of what we would like to see in other nations.”

Citing the UN panel’s call for the church to reverse its teachings on abortion, contraception, and gay marriage, he said the committee members had “allowed their ideological positions to enter into their judgments.”

Still, O’Malley said he thought the committee’s report would put new pressure on the Vatican to take stronger steps to prevent abuse. He agreed with the UN panel that the church must develop methods of holding bishops accountable when they fail to abide by a “zero tolerance” policy.

In December, O’Malley announced on Francis’ behalf that the pope was creating a new Vatican commission to lead the anti-abuse charge. In the Globe interview, O’Malley said that developing ways of holding bishops’ feet to the fire should be part of its mandate, but he did not indicate how long that would take.

“The first order of business is getting national policies in place, to have some clarity about what the expectations are throughout the world,” he said. “Once the policies are in place, what the [Vatican] might do to intervene where bishops are not following those policies has to be part of a future plan.”

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UNITED STATES
Bilgrimage

Quote for Day: “When Tribalism Takes Over” (with Commentary on the Tribalistic Reaction of Catholic Journalists to U.N. Report on Vatican)

William D. Lindsey

Steve Benen at Maddow Blog:

It’s amazing what tribalism can do to public perceptions.

Indeed. Case in point: just have a look at what the lock-arms, tribalistic reaction to the recent U.N. report is doing to the perceptions of one centrist Catholic journalist after another these days–to the folks who claim to offer us “balanced” and “objective” analysis of Catholic news, which describes rather than prescribes.

Same old stupidity, same old meanness, same old parochial insularity, same old casual, callous reading out of the Catholic circle of the huge percentage of fellow Catholics who question the teachings of which these centrist arbiters of the Catholic conversation have made a shibboleth.

A great deal of it driven by unacknowledged presuppositions about gender and sexual orientation . . . .
This is why I have said for some time now that, if something has really changed under Pope Francis, I simply can’t see it, when these same old, same old voices parse and determine Catholic meaning for me. Because they certainly aren’t new in any way.

The wine may be new. But the old wineskins are very shopworn and dried out.

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DEUTSCHLAND
Spiegel

[Summary: Investigation of Limburg Bishop Franz-Peter Tebartz van Elst is nearing completion and should be completed this week. According to information received by Spiegel, the five-member ecclesiastical commission of inquiry seems to have succeeded in documenting information that could lead to a prosecutor’s investigation. The church investigators first located forensic clues in the secret records which were stored in specially rented rooms, a kind of safe house in Limburg. Some previously unknown finance papers carry the episcopal signature and the investigators found the construction costs of the bishop’s new house were most costly than estimated. It was previously estimated that the cost of the bishop’s new house was 31 million euros but the actual costs are much higher. The entire report of the commission will go to the German bishops conference and to Rome and only then will a decision be made on fate of the bishop. At several meetings of Catholics in the diocese, it has been said they want a rapid final disposition on the bishop. One priest warned that every day he remains in office, it is at the expense of the credibility of Pope Francis.]

Die Ermittlungen zum Limburger Bischof Franz-Peter Tebartz-van Elst stehen nach Informationen des SPIEGEL kurz vor dem Abschluss. Die Untersuchungskommission belastet den Geistlichen schwer. Unter anderem sollen die pompösen Bauvorhaben mit Stiftungsgeldern finanziert worden sein.

Die Ermittlungen zum Limburger Kirchenbauskandal werden voraussichtlich schon in dieser Woche mit überraschend klaren Ergebnissen abgeschlossen. Sie sollen Bischof Franz-Peter Tebartz-van Elst, 54, nach Informationen des SPIEGEL stark belasten. Der fünfköpfigen kirchlichen Untersuchungskommission ist es offenbar gelungen, justitiable Ergebnisse zu dokumentieren, die zu einem staatsanwaltschaftlichen Ermittlungsverfahren gegen den Geistlichen führen könnten.

Die kirchlichen Ermittler waren bei ihrer Spurensicherung zunächst Hinweisen auf eine Geheimregistratur nachgegangen, die in den eigens angemieteten Räumen einer Art konspirativen Wohnung in Limburg lagerten. Dort fanden sie die wichtigsten Unterlagen zum kirchlichen Protzbau. Wegen fehlender Schlüssel verzögerte sich zunächst der Zutritt. Einige bislang unbekannte Finanzierungspapiere tragen beweiskräftig die bischöfliche Unterschrift.

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NORTHERN IRELAND
Belfast Telegraph

BY ALF MCCREARY – 08 FEBRUARY 2014

The United Nations Committee on the Rights of the Child did not miss its target when it claimed this week that the Catholic Church is more interested in protecting its image than in the welfare of children subjected to sexual abuse.

The Church has reacted forcefully and has claimed – with some justification – that it is tackling the issue, but much has yet to be done. The UN statement, plus the inquiries taking place into child sex abuse in Catholic institutions in the north, will mean that a dark cloud will continue to hang over the Church here for a very long time to come.

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SAN FRANCISCO (CA)
The Examiner

Sex-abuse scandal at North Beach church the latest dust-up that has garnered worldwide attention

By Chris Roberts @Cbloggy

In a time of trials that have tested the will of the faithful worldwide, the Roman Catholic Church in San Francisco has emerged relatively unscathed.

The sex abuse scandals staining archdioceses in Boston, Los Angeles and now Chicago have had no parallel in San Francisco. Instead, the local archdiocese’s reputation has recently been sullied across the world by lurid claims of sexual battery and harassment, all allegedly committed within one of its most sacred spaces.

Late last month, a lawsuit filed late by a 33-year-old woman formerly employed by the church accuses her ex-bosses of harboring a veritable den of sin underneath the roof of a shrine dedicated to The City’s patron saint. Jhona Mathews alleges that one of the men, who is in his 60s, hired and used her for sex. And a charming and popular priest who wielded significant influence as the archdiocese’s second-in-command let it all happen, the suit claims.

The lawsuit contains lurid details, including paddling the woman’s bare bottom, and comes after years of chaos at the North Beach church, including a fight over interring dead pets and a holy order’s dismissal from the chapel.

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PUERTO RICO
Sacramento Bee

By DANICA COTO
Associated Press
Published: Friday, Feb. 7, 2014

SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico — Prosecutors in Puerto Rico are investigating six priests who face sex abuse allegations and have been expelled by church authorities from a diocese in one of the island’s north coastal towns.

Government prosecutor Yolanda Pitino said Friday that she and other attorneys are interviewing several people who have accused the priests of sodomy, lewd acts and sexual harassment.

She said the Arecibo Diocese has provided prosecutors with information related to the six priests, but that they need more details.

“We are not satisfied with the information that the church gave us,” Pitino said in a phone interview, adding that the diocese has not responded to requests for more information.

The Diocese of Arecibo said in a statement that it is working with authorities and sharing information about the six priests that Bishop Daniel Fernandez expelled starting in 2011.

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UNITED STATES
These Stone Walls

Editor’s Note: The following is a guest post by Ryan A. MacDonald of A Ram in the Thicket.

A troubling back story in the trial and lawsuits against Father Gordon MacRae has been in open view for two decades, but overlooked by both Church and State.

In an article I wrote last September entitled “Judge Arthur Brennan sentenced Father Gordon MacRae to Die in Prison,” I aimed a spotlight at the glaring injustice of the 1994 prosecution of Father Gordon MacRae. Last week in these pages, Fr. George David Byers aimed another spotlight at a Church hierarchy morally paralyzed by litigation. A full and transparent view of justice now requires unveiling a related story in the background of the troubling case against Father Gordon MacRae. It’s a story, as the Rev. Richard John Neuhaus once described in the pages of First Things magazine (June/July 2009), “of a Church and a justice system that seem indifferent to justice.”

This account begins in tragedy. Shortly after noon on Friday, May 11, 1979, Peter Linsley, 35, and Jane Linsley, 28, both of Concord, New Hampshire, walked unannounced through the open door of the rectory at Saint Rose of Lima church in Littleton, NH, a town of (then) about 5,400 in the north of that state. A year earlier, in May, 1978, Peter Linsley was discharged from the state psychiatric hospital after he was declared no longer a danger to himself or others. He previously entered a plea of innocent by reason of insanity to a charge of aggravated assault on a police officer in July, 1977.

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UNITED KINGDOM
Daily Mail

How a Pope called Pius turned the confessional box into a paradise for paedophiles: From a leading Catholic writer, a devastating exposé of a Vatican ruling

By JOHN CORNWELL

At my Catholic boarding school in the late 1950s there was a jolly priest who heard my confession in his room rather than in a vacant confessional box. After I had recited my laundry list of petty sins, he asked if I was ever tempted to ‘commit a sexual sin by myself’.

He suggested that I take out my penis so that he could examine it to see whether I was prone to sudden erections. I left the room immediately. The next year, his proclivities discovered, he was removed by his bishop to another school.

As a child barely out of infancy, I had joined the long queues in our parish church every Saturday to confess my sins. The confessor sat behind a grille inside a dark box like an upturned coffin, smelling of stale perfume and nasty body odours.

I did not realise that we child penitents were guinea-pigs in the greatest moral experiment ever perpetrated on children in the history of Catholicism.

When I started my investigation into Catholic confession I was shocked to discover that young children were not allowed to go to confession before the 20th Century – in previous eras children did not make their first confession until their teenage years.

It was the anxious and pessimistic Pius X, Pope from 1903-1914, who decreed in 1910 that children must make their first confession at the age of seven. Evidently he had taken to heart the Jesuit maxim: ‘Give me a child at seven and it’s mine for life’.

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PHILADELPHIA (PA)
My Fox Philly

By Dave Schratwieser, Reporter

PHILADELPHIA –
It was Tuesday afternoon when police say a 16-year-old male student at Saints John Neumann and Maria Goretti High School allegedly committed an indecent sexual assault on a female classmates in a third floor stairwell.

Parents, who spoke to us off camera, said they were angry to hear about the alleged assault on the 15-year-old girl and even more upset when they found out that school’s officials “inadvertently” sent out an email to staff and students containing a police report with sensitive information about the attack.

A spokesman for the archdiocese admitted the school sent out the sensitive information, but said a second email was sent out within 30 to 40 minutes asking anyone who received the first email not to read it and to delete it immediately. The school also sent a follow-up message home to parents about the incident and the email communication mix-up.

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NEW YORK
Post-Standard

By Jeff Stein | jstein@syracuse.com
on February 08, 2014

North Syracuse, N.Y. — A former youth pastor at a North Syracuse church was sentenced last week on charges of sexually abusing a minor in Maryland.

Shaun Michael Ross, 33, pleaded guilty to the charges. He is accused of groping a 16-year-old girl when he was in a position of authority over her from April 2008 to April 2010.

Ross was put in charge of youth programs at the Victory Christian Center in North Syracuse in April. Three months later, he was charged with crimes in Maryland, where he was director of a youth ministry.

Ross was sentenced on Jan. 29. As part of a plea agreement, he will serve 18 months behind bars and face five years of probation. One of the initial two child sex abuse charges was thrown out as part of the plea deal.

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UNITED STATES
The Worthy Adversary

Posted by Joelle Casteix on February 8, 2014

No matter your take on the recent UN committee report on the problem of sex abuse in the Catholic Church and no matter how you feel about the recent public argument involving Woody Allen and his daughter Dylan Farrow, two things are clear:

The more we talk about sex abuse as a crime, the more likely it is that victims will come forward.

The more we make ourselves aware of the problem, the easier it will be to protect our children.
Everything else is just semantics.

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UNITED STATES
The Open Tabernacle: Here Comes Everybody

Posted on February 8, 2014 by Betty Clermont

“Worldwide banking and financial activities” is a Vatican industry as noted in the CIA Factbook. While the pope has announced one commission to study his Church’s global sex abuse of children, he has created four commissions, hired 6 internationally-renowned consulting firms, and appointed additional clerical allies to make sure that not only his treasure is suitably-managed and expertly-reported but also that every penny is under his control.

Unanimously termed as “cleaning up,” “cleaning house,” “reforming” Vatican finances by the corporate and Catholic media, none have reported whether any of the above has a track record ensuring moral or ethical business practices. Neither have they noted why the pope made changes nor what alternatives were available.

Following 9/11, international bankers and financiers agreed to stop facilitating terrorists. Regulations were approved to prevent terrorists from hiding their financial backers and fund transfers. After the 2008/2009 financial crisis, governments also became more interested in curtailing tax evasion. Pressure was applied on countries known to be offshore havens for illicit transactions, including the Vatican.

An up-to-date account of how this affected the Vatican – including a background in the Holy See’s recent financial history – was expertly presented in the December 6, 2013, issue of The Financial Times.

Those familiar with the early 1980’s Banco Ambrosiano scandal already know that Pope John Paul II allowed the Vatican Bank to be used to benefit criminals, rightwing terrorists, Latin American military dictators, tax evaders and the world’s oligarchs and plutocrats because he wanted the facility left available for clandestine funding of Poland’s Solidarity movement.

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DEUTSCHLAND
Berliner Zeitung

[Summary: Jesuit Father Klaus Mertes said bishops involved in abuse cover-ups should lose or resign their office. Archishop Gerhard Ludwig Mueller, now prefect for the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, cover-up in Regensburg. Soon to be a cardinal, Mueller is the number three person in the Vatican and is still telling stories about malicious press campaigns against the Catholic Church, said. Father Mertes said Archbishop Mueller shows no trace of remorse and has not shown willingness to engage in structural problems of the church in context of abuse, he added. Mueller simply continues as if nothing happened. The situation is unbearable for the victims, he said. Mertes asked how Mueller could actually be credible regarding abuse. The issue goes behind Mueller and others in the Vatican show unwillingness to confront the problem in all its depth.]

Jesuitenpater Klaus Mertes spricht im Interview mit der Berliner Zeitung über Missbrauch in der katholischen Kirche und die fehlende Bereitschaft, sich den Fällen zu stellen.

Die Kritik der Vereinten Nationen am Umgang des Vatikans mit Fällen sexuellen Missbrauchs hat am Donnerstag ein geteiltes Echo ausgelöst. Tenor der Aussagen ist jedoch, dass die Opfer ein Recht auf Transparenz und Aufklärung haben. Das sagt auch der Jesuitenpater Klaus Mertes.

Pater Mertes, gehen Sie mit der Kritik der UN an der katholischen Kirche konform?

Nicht jede Kritik ist sachlich und sachdienlich. Zum Beispiel kann ich nur den Kopf schütteln, wenn der UN-Bericht immer noch auf einer zwingenden Meldepflicht von Missbrauchsfällen an die staatliche Justiz herumreitet. Darüber sind wir in der Diskussion längst hinweg. Gerade die Opferschutzverbände warnen vor solch einem Automatismus.

Warum?

Man kann nicht an den Opfern und ihren Wünschen vorbei melden. Als die bayerischen Bischöfe vor drei Jahren in Panik die Meldepflicht einführten, beklagten sich Missbrauchsopfer bei mir, dass ihnen damit vertrauliche und vertrauensvolle Gespräche mit Kirchenvertretern fast unmöglich geworden seien. Für einen staatlichen Ermittler steht an erster Stelle die Unschuldsvermutung zugunsten eines mutmaßlichen Täters. Das heißt, er muss die Angaben der Opfer zunächst einmal bezweifeln. Dann kommt die ganze Maschinerie mit Befragungen, Glaubwürdigkeitsgutachten et cetera in Gang. Davor haben viele Opfer Angst. Aber das sieht der UN-Bericht in seiner Naivität nicht.

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POLEN
Kipa

Warschau, 7.2.14 (Kipa) In Polen hat erstmals ein Opfer sexuellen Missbrauchs durch einen Priesters die Kirche auf Schadenersatz verklagt. Marcin K. (26) fordert nach eigenen Angaben von Donnerstagabend vom Bistum Koszalin-Kolobrzeg (Köslin-Kolberg), einer Pfarrei und deren zu einer Haftstrafe verurteilten ehemaligen Pfarrer insgesamt knapp 58.000 Franken.

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SPANIEN
Katholisches

Es geht los: Erstmals Kardinal wegen „Homophobie“ angeklagt – Papst-Freund Sebastián Aguilar soll vor Gericht

[Summary: Here we go. For the first time in history a cardinal of the Catholic Church is being prosecuted because of homophobia. The prosecution in Malaga brought charges on Feb. 6 against Cardinal-elect Fernando Sebastian Aguilar.]

(Madrid) Es geht los. Erstmals in der Geschichte wird gegen einen Kardinal der Katholischen Kirche wegen „Homophobie“ ermittelt. Am 6. Februar erhob die Staatsanwaltschaft von Malaga Anklage gegen den von Papst Franziskus zum Kardinal ernannten emeritierten Erzbischof von Pamplona, Msgr. Fernando Sebastián Aguilar. Der 84jährige Claretinerpater und Freund des Papstes, der in zwei Wochen das Kardinalsbirett aus dessen Hand empfangen wird, wurde kurz nachdem Papst Franziskus im Januar seine Erhebung in den Kardinalsstand bekanntgegeben hatte, interviewt. Bei dieser Gelegenheit wurde er auch zum journalistischen Dauerbrenner „Homosexualität“ befragt. Der ernannte Kardinal sagte dabei, daß Homosexualität „durch eine angemessene Behandlung geheilt werden“ kann.

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DEUTSCHLAND
Finanzen

Mitteldeutsche Zeitung: Sexueller Missbrauch in der Kirche Zentralkomitee deutscher Katholiken hält Kritik der UN für zu pauschal

[Summary: Alois Gluck, president of the German Catholics central committee said criticism of the church is handling sexual abuse cases is not completely unjustified.]

Halle (ots) – Der Präsident des Zentralkomitees der deutschen Katholiken, Alois Glück, hält die jüngste Kritik der Vereinten Nationen an angeblich mangelnder Aufarbeitung sexuellen Missbrauchs in der katholischen Kirche für zu pauschal, aber nicht für vollkommen unberechtigt. “Das ist in dieser Pauschalität nicht angemessen”, sagte er der in Halle erscheinenden “Mitteldeutschen Zeitung” (Freitag-Ausgabe). “Die katholische Kirche in Deutschland hat in einem Ausmass Konsequenzen gezogen, wie es der Situation entsprochen hat. Für Deutschland ist die Beschreibung sicher nicht mehr zutreffend.” Glück fügte hinzu: “Andererseits ist Kritik mit Blick auf die Vergangenheit und Wirklichkeiten in der Weltkirche nicht völlig unberechtigt.”

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DEUTSCHLAND
Augsburger Allgemeine

Hunderte Geistliche, die Kinder missbrauchten, wurden in den vergangenen Jahren ihres Amtes enthoben. Über die höchste Strafe im Kirchenrecht und was sie für Kleriker bedeutet. Von Daniel Wirsching

Der Fall macht 2012 Schlagzeilen: Der Trierer Bischof Stephan Ackermann entlässt am 10. Juli einen Ruhestandsgeistlichen aus dem Klerikerstand. Der Priester hatte zwischen 1966 und 1980 fünf minderjährige Jungen sexuell missbraucht. So steht es in einer Pressemitteilung des Bistums. In ihr steht ebenfalls: „Der Priester verliert damit sämtliche Rechte, die mit seinem Priesteramt verbunden sind….

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